As awesome as THAT is, some schools had a 5 day weekend so my kids were pretty bummed to return on Tuesday. See, schools here set their calendars before the school year starts (duh, right?). But, a good number of the holidays here are based on the moon.... something that cannot be predicted quite so accurately months in advance. Therefore, you must keep in mind that the "officially printed school calendar" is really just a guideline.
This is what happened for the Eid holiday. Most schools anticipated that the first 3 days of the week would be within the moon phase associated with Eid (ours included). When the official report came out, the Ministry of Education had removed one of the days. Our school sent out a mass email (on Tuesday or Wednesday of the previous week) & everyone made the adjustment. Other schools said, "Screw it, we'll stay with our printed calendar." So they did...
It's very different here. Oh well, when in Rome....
The only really downside to the change in the calendar is how the schools manage the change. Our school didn't want to shift the whole 8 day schedule to now accommodate the extra day, so they told the kids we'd have two Day 8's in a row. So Tuesday followed the Day 8 class schedule, but so did Wednesday. Then we were back on schedule with Thursday being Day 1. Very confusing & not really productive from a teaching standpoint.
As it turns out, it didn't really master. Attendance was WAY down anyway. A lot of people just took the whole week to vacation (Eid is celebrated on par with our Christmas). A friend of mine who teaches in Al Ain said they had 22 kids (total 7th grade!) on Tuesday, 11 on Wednesday, & NONE on Thursday. LOL! She has a really easy week! Our school was no where near that bad, but all 3 kids said they had lots of friends missing in each class....
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's flash back to the official weekend, Saturday (still part of the holiday):
Lindsey had to work most of the long weekend (deadlines don't care about holidays), but we were still able to squeeze in a visit to a few new places & catch lunch with some friends.
We've heard about this local sport complex/club that offers horseback riding, water sports, paintball, skeet shooting, rifle ranges, & motor sports in addition to swimming pools, exercise facilities, club house, & 3 different dining experiences. We decided to get a day pass just to check it out...
We had a quick dinner in the cafe, then walked (some) of the complex. It's a HUGE place. From the outside, it looks like a prison as it's completely surrounded by tall solid tan walls. But inside, you drive past various complexes divided into the general sport activities. The resturaunts mostly overlook the motor sports & water sports areas so you always have something interesting to watch & these are the two sports we really investigated.
The kids were begging to drive the GoCarts, but the wait was over an hour.
Perhaps another time. The next day we had plans to meet friends for a little swimming... at their hotel: Ethiad Towers.
Both our friends have Filipino roots & they had stumbled across a local delivery placed that had awesome takeout. We agree. The food was fabulous! The kids agreed too...
But, all good things must come to an end, & we had school the next day...
We said our goodbyes knowing that this might be the last time we see our friends for many months; they are returning stateside later this month.
The first two days of school passed quickly with no real homework for the kids.
I found the fixings to make burritos (& even had one left over for lunch the next day)...
Watched the blood moon via streaming video (since it was broad daylight here)...
I tried my hand at homemade BBQ sauce from scratch (it was pretty good, if I do day so myself!)
And, I noticed that it's starting to cool off a few degrees (& I do mean only a FEW)... But the humidity is down too. So sudden we have "Fall" in the UAE.... which looks a lot like everyone else's Spring:
There are suddenly flowers everywhere!
It's a nice change from the sand & palm trees...
Since we had a shortened school week, all afterschool activities were cancelled. It actually was kinda nice... & it turned out to be a good thing. Here's why:
We are selling our house on Heather Glen & it's scheduled to close very soon (like today). Our agent called to say that we'd need to get some papers notarized & then overnight them back.
Well, easier said than done.
First, the papers emailed to us needed to be printed on legal-sized paper. Although we do finally have a printer in house, there is no such sized paper sold here in the UAE. We have A4, A3, A2... none of which is "legal-sized". So after several back & forth conversations with the title people, someone was finally able to reduce it down to something that would fit on letter (we can use A4 size... It's a fairly close match).
On to the next hurtle!
Notary services.
No one really offers notary services here. As a matter of fact, I think "notary" is an American concept. It's not offered here at a bank, not at Lindsey's office, not at the local police station. Nada. But the title company insisted that the papers must be notarized... No exceptions.
Sigh. Ok.
After some searching (thank goodness for google & Facebook), we found that we could get notary services at the US Embassy.... But you must have an appointment. Lindsey called. The ONLY appointment left this week was Thurdsay at 1:30 pm.
We'll take it!!!
They confiscated our purse/bag & all electronic devices, then we passed through 3 (I kid you not, THREE) separate checkpoints only to enter a waiting room where we were given a number & told to have a seat. Lindsey was a bit pissed; why have an appointment if you're just going to be given a cattle number anyway? Whatever....
The title document had 5 pages that needed a notary stamp. Damn if the embassy doesn't charge PER STAMP! We had to push the packet under the glass screen where a guy looked through it, took our IDs, & told us to go pay at the cashier. $250 later, we were given a receipt & told to have a seat to wait again. A few minutes later, a lady called us up, took the receipt, had us swear we were us, we signed each page as she watched, & we were done. We reversed our previous security checkpoints & went to lunch!
I had read about this place called Shakespeare & Company. It got good reviews & we were close. Plus, we needed a place to reorganize the title paper package. Between the guy & the lady, everything was a jumble.
The food was good & the decor was cute. Very "girlie" & Victorian with plush chairs & frilly table cloths. But there were plenty of business men in suits sprinkled around. It speaks to how good the food was; the guys were willing to tolerate all the pink, rose, & beige for the sake of their stomach! LOL!
But, our quest was not over yet! We still needed to get the notarized papers back to the title company.
Now, you might remember from a previous post that mailing anything isn't exactly easy. It's not that it can't be done, it's just not simple.
The title company wanted us to overnight the packet back. They have no idea. Their request is actually impossible. Seriously. Impossible.
There are no overnight services offered from Abu Dhabi. Period. Not via the regular mail (whatever that means), not via DHL, not via FedEx. It cannot be done.
After several phone calls back & forth with the title company (& a 3-way call with FedEx) earlier in the week, I think we finally got the message through. The best we can do is two-day. So, the title company emailed us a mailing label. All we had to do was physically carry the packet to a FedEx location.
Turns out, in all of Abu Dhabi, there are only 3 places we could drop the package. After several attempts with two different GPS services, we decided to go with the one at the airport. We felt like we'd have the best odds at finding it. Remember, nothing has an actual address here... It's all done by landmarks. The address for the FedEx drop was literally "FedEx Services at ADAC Logistics".
That's it. You had to already know that ADAC was at the airport... You also had to know that there is a separate airport entry used for the "logistics" area. I'd been to the airport a few times now & had noticed something to this effect.
Between Lindsey & myself, we knew just enough to get us to the general area. After that, we had to rely on luck & wits as the signage around here is just plain awful! Luckily, we were successful. But I will say this, the FedEx building is located in a kind of warehouse facility, past a guarded security gate, & a dirt road. There is no cell service. No wonder it's practically impossible to find & wouldn't show up in our searches. Luck was definitely on our side that day!
Whew!
The week ended with Olivia getting an award at school:
... A little time playing card games (Zombie Fluxx with me)....
... then Killer Bunnies with some neighbor kids the next day).
But for me, the highlight of the weekend was our dinner out to Amerigos. It's a Mexican resturaunt located inside the Raddison Hotel chain. The food was really good, but their margarita was awesome!
It's been over two months.... Ahhhh... Absence does make the heart grow fonder.... Yummy! LOL!
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