J-Rock in the UAE

Well after some harassment I am making my writing debut on the blog tonight. My skin is tingling with excitement. Well since Amy's last post not much has changed... Just kidding!!! We are just starting our third week of teaching with the lovely darling students. This is a good place to start, the students since well were here to teach them. My first day I was in awe of the whole atmosphere at the school. They are hourly putting a smile on my face with their behaviour and language. They have a real tough time keeping their hands to themselves. The students love the word Mista... Mista, Mista, Mista, can I goto the bathroom I have heard about 75 times a day since arriving. I have since put in place two bathroom rules to lessen that question and the amount of water being guzzled in the room has gone down slightly. The students are very eager learners and anytime they know the answer they are very excited to show it. I have had a number of students simply run up to me at the board and tell me the answer like its only me and them in the room. Most of kids come from rich Emirati families that have ten plus people living in the home. Some fathers have more than one wife and with that a large amount of children. The kids have nanny’s and drivers that pick them up from school which is different for sure. I don’t think any of my friends had a nanny growing up.  

Alright enough of the work talk. After schools we have been playing some volleyball with some of the teachers on staff. There are three nice gyms on the campus with everything you need for sports. I have decided I am going to make an effort to be on the opposite team of Amy. She is territorial about her volleyball playing space. She is constantly telling me to move out of the way. The games though have been great they are pretty competitive and I think my skills are at about 3.9 out of 10 now that I have three weeks of game time under my belt. We have also had three weeks to also bond with some of the staff which has been really fun. The first Thursday we spent together at the 12 villas. Which is a compound made up of 12 big villas that house some of the teachers we work with. We had a fun night at Dan’s a fellow teacher at the school and leader of the grade one team Amy is on. He is from the U.S., the Philadelphia area. The girls talked and socialized. The boys played play station as our means of socializing. The first game played was the London Olympics ooooooo was I awful in all aspects of that game. I did not represent Canada well. Afterwards we played some 7 player nhl and that was alot more fun. Jason my roommate, Dan and I destroyed 9-0 and had alot of laughs along the way. It reminded me of how I used to destroy my brother and dad at NHL when I was little.

The following weekend we went to Dan’s again on Thursday. Where we talked about the 93 World Series and relived Joe Carter’s big home run that won the Blue Jays the Championship. Dan and Jason were also trying to one up another on the Jack Daniels train during the night. The next morning did not go well for Jason he spent it throwing up and did not make the trip with us to Abu Dhabi. There were six of us that took a shared taxi, which is a minivan taxi to Abu Dhabi. It only cost us 25 dirham’s each for an hour and a half taxi ride which works out to $7.00 Canadian.  We stayed at a nice hotel called the Beach Rotana resort. It had a huge pool and I was able to show off my sweet new yellow shorts I had to buy since I left mine back in Madinat Zayed... I also got to try out my new swimming goggles as I was diving for dirhams in the pool. The dirham is the dollar coin here in the U.A.E. it is silver and has a picture of genie lamp on it.  Afterwards I played some squash with the boys and managed to score a whopping one point in like three games. The hotel was so nice it had three squash courts and a nice big gym I used to get my pump on at.  Vinnie a co-worker of ours from the U.K. organized a nice supper with unlimited buffet and booze combined into one deal for the group. I just ate and ate until I couldn’t anymore. My favorite food was the beef strips. Eventually we ended up going leaving the hotel/restaurant to the Hilton Hotel and they had three bars in one for some entertainment. The entertainment being find Dan a lady friend. Afterwards we went to another bar with a sweet cover band that played some sweet Guns and Roses. There was able to show off my sick dance moves. One major difference is that people can smoke inside the bar. My clothes were discussing by the end of the night as they smelt like cigarettes. Drinks are expensive too I bought Amy a vodka cran for around 46 Dirham’s which is about $13.00 Canadian.  After returning to the hotel the hamburglar ordered a million dollar burger from room service and didn’t even eat the whole thing. Amy has yet to pay me back for that or the million dollar room service water. We ended up catching a ride back to MZ with Vin master flash and hit up the caffoure grocery it is like the king of grocery here compared to what we have. In the store we found beef, lamb brain and heart!!!!! There isn’t beef anywhere in this place just chicken and like random birds.

The other night I heard this cat meowing outside and didn’t really think anything of it. Then I heard it again and mentioned it to Amy. She opened her window and here was this cat meowing at us saying feed me. So now we have been feeding this cat that lives in a metal box behind both our villas for a few days now. I want to name it Jasmine from Aladdin. Tonight I bought food for it and we went out back to feed it and bam. There was a kitten. I forgot to mention how these cats look like they haven’t eaten for weeks. There seems to be a number of homeless cats around. I feel pretty sorry for the both of them hopefully we can feed them back to health. Amy has been trying to pet them but no luck so far. We also went to the mall tonight and that place was busy. Kids and adults alike like to hangout at the mall at night. It was weird to see groups of little kids hanging out together at the mall at like 9. But that’s how things go around here the boys play all night unsupervised looks like fun. Anyways I am done for now. The experience has been full of highs and lows for me but Amy has kept me on a good path much love to her, peace.