Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge

We found ourself at the end of last week at a dinner Gala held at the Abu Dhabi Golf Course, rubbing shoulders with top people from the International Auto Federation and the Automotor Federation, chatting to Mohammed bin Sulayem (who is 14 time international champion rally driver spokesperson for the IAF and IAM), international press, friends made in the past week, world class drivers and riders from around the world. By Thursday a photograph of mine had been published in the Arabic Khalij times, and a few photographs went with journalist/ quad rally-driver, Camelia Liparoti, to have a chance at being published in a well known French magazine.

On the previous Sunday I had been wondering what I was to do to keep myself busy last week.

How does this happen you ask? A bit of luck, a bit of help, and a bit of putting yourself out there.


Mohammed bin Sulayem

Friends.
Grant, the other 'live-at-home-husband' staying at the Liwa with us seems to be amazing at making connections. I heard that he would be going to help out as a marshal of sorts at the Desert Challenge. Virginia and I decided to go check things out. Grant introduced me to Dennis, the event co-ordinator, and later took us past the makeshift press office where we stood peering inside from a window, and were duely invited in.


The Media Centre

Having an idea.
Meanwhile, brewing in the background, I had been looking for things to do with my photography, and have been looking at things like entering the Emirates Palace Photography contest, and chatting to V about various other options, for instance going to the papers; I had noticed that pictures quite similar to ones I had taken had landed up being printed over the last few months.

Seizing the moment.
And so the the time was right. Just before leaving the media centre that evening, I got chatting to Fiona (who was invaluable and super helpful for the remainder of the week). I told her that I'd be taking photographs and that I would be delighted if the PR team could use any of them. By supper I was told that there would be room in one of the 4x4s chasing after the action, and carrying other photographers and press across the desert.

The next morning I woke bright and early, excited and nervous. I had no idea what to expect. For the first part of the morning I around in the office, while they waited for some journalists to arrive, drinking too much coffee and trying to familiarise myself with the various car, bike and quad numbers, who was important and where they would be driving.

How does it feel?
When we finally arrived at the spot where we would sit and wait sometimes for hours for the vehicles to come through, I walked around looking for good spots, great backgrounds. Turns out not to be as easy as it sounds. Eventually prepared, another photographer and I waited with our ears turned to the wind, listening for engines. We put our cameras to our eyes, and then came the frenzy.

It feels like skydiving. The long wait. The buiding excitement. And then the moment, that lasts for perhaps three or four seconds per car or bike. All along you're trying to get that one great shot. I enjoyed photography before. I fell in love with it as the first car (the BMW) came flying over the dune a few meters away, roaring, kicking up sand and speeding into the distance. It felt like everything I knew about taking photos came about together at once in a rush of adrenelin, and the camera clicked away in a burst.



We spent the next 3 or so hours on the dunes. I thought a bit about how this was in our back garden (the Desert Challege was about 20 minutes drive from the hotel... click here to watch a video of and get a feeling for the rally and for the desert area we live in... I saw this being edited in the media centre... and it was shown full size at the dinner gala)



Perseverance.
That evening I arrived with a camera full of photographs. After having spent the day zooming around with the press, and realising I'd taken the best photos of my life, I was disappointed to find that I seemed to have lost everyone and have been left out of the loop. I could have walked away then, happy with having one of the most exciting days of my life. Next thing I found myself marching back into the press room and insinuating myself into the editing process that was happening inside.

It took me half an hour to choose the photos I wanted to give the team. They were very busy, so I told Fiona that they were on the computer for her to peruse at her leisure and went out for a smoke. When I arrived back, a few people were crowded around the computer looking at the pictures. My heart skipped a beat. They were very excited, and told me they'd send them off to various papers, and then we'd have to wait and see what happened. I couldn't believe it.

In the mean time they gave me an official briefing for Nissan (which they already had their photographer for) as somewhere to aim my camera. Over the next few days I was given the numbers of various cars, quads and bikes to shoot. I didn't know what to do with myself. I did understand though that the chances of anyone actually using my photos on my first outting were slim.

Working hard, listening, and learning.
The whole thing was just a great opportunity to be out in the sun, practicing something I love. I got to play and experiment, as there was not any real pressure to get the perfect photographs. On the second dayout I forgot all this and it ended with me feeling disappointed. "You were just a bit self-concious today, because you knew what you were doing." someone said. Feeling a little down, we went to supper out in the open under the desert stars. There, my spirits were lifted completely when Camellia Liparoti came and spoke to me. It seemed that she had come as a journalist for a French sports magazine which does huge double-page, more landscapey kinds of spreads, and had ended up doing the story from the inside, as a contestant on one of the quads. She proposed that I should try get the photos she needed (I tried hard to walk away casually, and ended up literally leaping for joy about three steps away).

The third day out (Thursday) I decided not to be worried about making mistakes. To work really hard, to try remember all the advice I'd gotten from various people on the previous days, and to have fun.

One of the people who I had spoken to was Michele Cazzani. We spent an hour or so after the first day talking about photography. He's been doing this for 25 years, was trained by a National Geographic photographer, and has exhibitions in Italy and New York. When I ask him specifically about tips on how to take better photos he said this in his strong Italian accent, "My teacher told me - half joking, half serious - to take an egg, put it on a table, in a room with nothing in it. This was before digital. He said, to use a roll of film 36. Take 36 shots showing the egg in 36 ways. Make each picture express something."

He told me to move, take ten shots then move again. "You can always go back to where you thought it was good, but if you don't move you will never see." (turns out this may be good advise for life as well) He told me that photography is not just composition and light, or even passion. It can be a deep form of expression and you need to know what you are saying with the photo. We chatted for a long time more. Later he told me that Virginia and I should visit him in Tuscany, Italy, and he would show us around (and take me on a bit of a photo op too) Of course, us being us, we intend to visit as soon as we can.


Michele gets in close for the shot

On the third day I chased the rally around trying to get photos of bikes 2 and 42,and of car 206 (I'd gotten a phone call to tell me that there was a chance of payment for these), trying to get better shots for Nissan, trying to get more scenic shots that Camellia would want for her magazine. I set up near the finish and waited. The thermometers in the Land Cruisers were reading just above 30 while on the road, and temperatures above 50 once they got into the desert where we were readying ourselves. I walked for about 2kms to find my spot. And while we waited a sandstorm came up. It was all part of the excitement.

Waiting in the Sandstorm

The dust plumes. The engine sounds. The frenzy again. I got my shots over the next few hours and left. This time I had a deadline and after racing for an hour and a half to the office, I found I was too late by 3 or for minutes. The other photos had gone out for the day's coverage. I was not so disappointed this time, as I'd gone out with the idea of just enjoying the experience as I had on the first day.


The winning car

What came of it.
- I had one of the most exciting and fun weeks of my life.
- Fiona has sent photos off to a journalist/photographer friend of hers in Dubai, who is interested in apprenticing young photographers... hold thumbs
- We met Belinda, a lovely earthy person full of wise words and support for me. We've been invited to her hotel/villa in Thailand whenever we can go
- Anthony, who worked in the press office and is higher up on the PR side has recommended me as a photographer to the events manager of Sharjah University and has entered me into the system as a possible backup photographer
- Photographs were sent to Nissan, and hopefully some of them will be used... and hopefully they'll get back to me so I know they've used them
- I learned sooooo much
- There's a chance of some of my pictures being printed in Camelia's very nice French magazine
- On Friday I found out that one of my photos had been printed in the Khalij Times, the newspaper that we get at the hotel. The truck picture below is mine. I was over the moon that one photo made it after all the hard work... all be it a small insert on the mail picture.


Al Khalij Times 26/03/2009, pg 2 - Truck Pic

- Oh and today I learned that I got published in at least 4 newspapers, and 3 websites (see picture 4 and 7) including the Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority's website :-D


Al Waqt Bahrain Sport 29/03/2009, Pg8 - Nissan pic.



Al Arab Qatar 26/03/2009, P11 . Quad and Bike pics AND the Truck pic



Al Khaleej UAE 28/03/2009, Pg15 - The Stopping BMW pic

A fair bit has happened since last Friday. We had the Dinner Gala, and Jakob has been awfully sickly and is still at the vet... but I'll let Virginia fill you in on these and her side of things later, as this blog has gotten a bit on the long side. So I'll leave you with a final pic



PS This blog is an engagement present for Stu, who wanted my life a few days ago :-p

News, news, news...

And so, you may ask, what have we been up to lately?

Well, we had great news last week, as our boxes from South Korea finally arrived. I’ll not get into the frustrations of waiting over 2 months for them, or the horror of finding two boxes with giant holes in them, but concentrate instead on how happy we were to have finally been reunited with all of our treasures. Happily, we didn’t lose anything.

(When we were in Dubai, looking at the piles of boxes scattered all over the old town, we’d had a few moments of wondering if everything would survive the move!)

On Thursday, we went to Abu Dhabi for the day. I had been asked by my school to go to the Abu Dhabi Book Fair to buy English books and source a few suppliers. While there, we also had a great time buying a few books for ourselves.

Ty bought me “Beyond the veil”, which is certainly going to fill me in on how politics, culture and religion have created a distinctive dynamic between men and women (found most obviously in the separation of the genders, including the wearing of the veil) in the Middle East.

We also finally found a copy of Arabian Sands, the account of the journey of Wilfrid Thesiger across the Arabian desert. The roads we take, the dunes we see, and the forts we’ve explored are the same ones that Thesiger visited when he came through the Empty Quarter, including Liwa, all those decades ago. If you’re interested in where we are living now, it’s a great book to pick up (we have actually met people who have stopped at the Liwa hotel as they try to recreate, to a certain degree, the explorations of Thesiger, the 20th century’s final “gentleman explorer”).

Taking advantage of a day in Abu Dhabi after a week of not feeling very well (general flu-ishness), we then headed to the famous Emirates Palace Hotel. Completely over the top in its opulence, size and sheer luxury, the Emirates Palace is also home to a few art galleries. One featured contemporary art by Emirati artists, which we both loved. Another gallery was full of photos by Henri Cartier, an absolutely amazing French photographer from the 1950s.

One of the main reasons we had stopped at the Emirates Palace was to take a look at the past winners of an annual photo contest that Ty is going to try out for. He’s been taking so many amazing photos since our arrival here, some of which you can see on this blog, and we’re hoping that a few of them might be good enough to enter the contest.

The best news of last week, I think, is that I’ve been offered a contract extension, which means committing to the UAE until 2011. Doesn’t that sound far in the future? We’re still waiting on an apartment, but now that we’re looking long term (a 2-year contract is the norm for the Mid East), a few months in a hotel doesn’t seem like such a chore anymore.

Blank Pages

Sometimes It's hard not to imagine what things must have been like before you arrived; before all the old places you see had collapsed, and were rebuilt for you to pay to look at.

Rebuilt, so that it's hard to envision them back in when they were already crumbling, let alone back when they were bustling with life and with purpose... a purpose other than to show how things must have been, how different it was back then, to a handful of tourists, emptying their pockets and happily snapping away, trying to capture on film what is already just a map, a representation of all that went before.

And yet when it's a quiet little fort, re-erected, re-plastered with mortar bristling with grasses and sticks which poke from the sand coloured walls, when there's no-one else around, no placard saying when and where and why, it's hard not to imagine those things that must - no, might- have been.

I quite enjoy blank pages ready to be filled. The forts around the Liwa are like that, for now. In time as we discover more of the facts and fill in the spaces, dates and times, a history will grow, we'll know who used them and why. The facts will be interesting no doubt, fabulous perhaps.

But for now those forts are anything, looking to me as the night skies must have to people gone before - back when the earth was flat and no bigger than a village - beautiful and absolutely mysterious. Once we know their history, there is only one thing they could possibly have been. For now they are anything, and nothing but playgrounds for my mind.

It's hard not to hear battles and cries in the night, or the whispers of lovers beneath the stars. If there's a placard there somewhere, all it says is, "You are here, and they were too."

My abaya

Last week in Dubai, I finally found an abaya that was exactly what I wanted.... long, flowy, open at the bottom (to show off my awesome colourful skirts), light enough that I won't die of heat stroke in the summer, but opaque enough that I can probably just wear a t-shirt underneath, long sleeves past my wrists (and wrist tattoo), and a bit of understated black-on-black bling on the cuffs and hem.

The ladies here walk gracefully, abayas flowing around their feet. Headscarves are flicked up, tucked in, and readjusted constantly in one fluid motion. Their abayas are worn extra long, in the UAE fashion, so that they seem to glide, fabric trailing behind them.

I can barely walk up the stairs without tripping over my hem, and actually got the end of my abaya so caught up in the wheel of my office chair that I almost choked myself when I stood up. I've shut it in a car door, and don't even ask me how I managed to negotiate a bathroom stall! I've had to stop myself from tipping over backwards (take a step back, hit the hem, get foot tangled, try not to over-balance, arms flailing as all the snaps come undone...) about 12 times a day.

Still, I do love wearing it. I feel like some kind of witch-princess in a flowy cape, scarves trailing behind me, and strong Arabic scent (also bought in Dubai) perfuming the air around me.... until I hit a flight of stairs, or a dreaded office chair, and turn back into the true klutz that I am.....

Dubai Weekend

In celebration of the Prophet's birthday, we got a long weekend. What better thing to do than run up to Dubai for a few days and explore around?

Now, the thing with the richest city in the world is that it's marketed as such. All you can ever find when you are researching Dubai hotels or Dubai sights or Dubai whatever is 7-star luxury accomodation and where to buy your newest Chanel bag.

You'll be happy to know that we managed to avoid the 7-star luxury and have ourselves a relatively affordable weekend without all that Chanel stuff.... well, affordable by Dubai standards anyway (it should be noted here that, apparently, the fashionistas of Europe have designated "Dubai" as an adjective denoting over-the-top flash... and I guess it sort of fits).

After numerous attempts to find something reasonable in the way of a hotel room, we finally copied our friends Grant and Dianne, and reserved a place in Deira, which is the old part of the city. We got to drive through the really posh parts -- past the Burj al Arab, and through Jumeirah. This is the part of Dubai that has given this place its reputation for lux lux lux. Crossing under the Dubai Creek, we found ourselves, literally, on the "wrong side of the tracks". Here, instead of glass and brass buildings, and monuments to glamour, we were deep in the hustle-bustle of what could have been New Delhi.

About 95% male, the population of Deira (or weekend visitors like us?) are mostly Indian, Pakistani, Afghani, and North African. All weekend, we marveled at how everyone (except us) seemed to be wearing some form of traditional dress, be it kurta pyjamas, colourful pangs or the famous Madras wrap (made me feel like I was back in Chennai anyway....). As it was a long weekend (2 days, not 3) for the UAE's huge migrant worker population, the streets were just packed.

Ty's stealth photography catches a quiet moment on the sidewalk just downstairs from our room

Deira and Bur Dubai straddle the Dubai Creek, which is a main thoroughfare for dhows taking tourists on cruises, or real live old wooden boats transporting cargo to Dar es Salaam and Iran. In case you were wondering why anything you've ever sent by cargo ship has ever gone awol or arrived smashed to smithereens, the boxes are jumbled all over the docks, where a fridge might find itself leaning upsidedown against a pile of matresses, or boxes of plates teeter on stacks of tires. The sidewalks themselves are crowded with people shopping in the souqs, dodging men with brightly painted handcarts.

And yet.... it was surprisingly clean. And safe.

Miles away from posh Dubai, edging our car forward through narrow alleyways where pedestrians took turns jumping in front of us, our first task was to find our hotel. Circling through the curving streets, we couldn't believe just how lucky we were to have found ourselves in such a place.

Now, $100 will generally get you a halfway decent hotel room in most cities. In Deira, you will find yourself in a cramped hotel with an alleyway entrance that is itself crammed full of all manner of boxes from Nigeria. Our room was basically an over-priced hostel-type thing, but with a view on the street below that kept us amused as we tried to guess where each passing person was from, and where Ty practiced his stealth-photography skills.

Needless to say, we were surprised and happy to find ourselves in such an aromatic, energetic and cacaphonic place. This was not the Dubai we had expected as we wandered around that first evening.

The next day, Friday, we awoke to find the streets devoid of all life and all the fun stores (selling everything from luggage to saris to shoes to gold) closed. Taking advantage of the fact that most people would be at mosque on Friday morning, leaving the highways more open for us, we headed to the Mall of the Emirates -- yes, this would be the Dubai you read about -- where the indoor ski-hill, among other things, can be found.

Me, being overcharged.... but I bought it anyway

Not wanting to waste too much time with boring shopping, we hit up a huge toy store, a Borders books and a few other necessities before fleeing back to our more picturesque neighbourhood, where we quite enjoyed haggling (and being fleeced) for a wall-hanging and a few blingy pashminas. We finally learned to introduce ourselves to the shopkeepers as locals. "We are not tourists," we insisted, "We live here". And prices would generally drop.

Of course, we were tourists in Dubai, and the one thing every tourist must do is a dhow dinner cruise. Dressing up in a pretty dress (me, not Ty), with a new blingy pashmina covering myself from the 95% male sidewalk population, we headed to the docks, where the dinner dhows were parked in a line, all lit up and waiting for passengers. Being the first on, we took the best table (right at the very front, on the top level) and ordered an over-priced bottle of wine. The trip, which lasted 2 hours, took us up and down the Dubai Canal, past both historical buildings and newly built office buildings that are slowly marching their way towards Deira, making me wonder just how much longer such a jumble of a neighbourhood will hold on to its prime real estate. Another over-priced bottle of wine, and we didn't feel the absolutely freezing breeze coming over the water anymore.

Our mission on Saturday, after an interesting breakfast of a mixed fruit juice and shwarma, was to locate the elusive Ras Al-Khor bird sanctuary. Apparently located in the middle of Dubai, at the end of the Dubai Creek, this place is home to a mix of the UAE's wild birds, including flamingoes. Finding the place, however, amidst the spaghetti-like trails of highway that cross each other like, well, spaghetti on a plate proved to be an insane challenge.

Our first unscheduled stop was a biker rally (!!!) at yet another shopping mall. Ty just keeps driving me to shopping malls, you know, it's really not my fault....

I'm hanging with the War Pigs...

A part of a convention/heavy metal festival, the bikers that we found ourselves rubbing elbows with were holding a blood drive. I'll let you insert your own jokes here: _____________. From there, we ended up in a fascinating antiques store, where a man let us play, literally, with all his artefacts from around the world. We swore we'd return, once we had our apartment....

After another two hours of driving in what seemed like a never-ending spiral, we decided to save Ras Al-Khor for a day when it wasn't playing hide-and-seek with us. With a better map, maybe we would have found it. We did, however, find a camel racing track, a lot of desert, a ton of soon-to-be built buildings, and the Burj Dubai, which at almost a kilometre high is pretty hard to miss.
Returning to Deira, we decided to walk through the more touristy area of the Gold Souq where throngs of cruise ship day-trippers followed their guides, never straying too far into the "real" old Dubai. Every few metres, we were approached by muttering man after muttering man, offering us "Copy watch, designer purse, Madam, do you want Chanel, Fendi, Prada..." or "Nice pashmina, Madam, for you, gold jewellery, best price..." As soon as Ty or I faced them, though, and they got a better view of the rather hippie-ish people they were trying to sell to, they tended to turn around and leave us be. We did, at one point, try to sell our own jewellery to a nice muttering man, but he backed off.... I guess our prices were too high.

We spent the rest of our afternoon, surprisingly, at the Deira Heritage House, a sort of interactive museum with free admission, and free coffee and snacks in the courtyard. I finally got to speak to an Emirati who wasn't one of my students, as a young sheikh chatted with us for a few minutes. Most of the people we have been interacting with on a daily basis are non-Emirati, and it was nice to be able to speak openly with someone who is actually from the UAE.

I won't go too much into the museum, except to say that, if you are ever in Dubai, you shouldn't miss it. It's got to be one of the nicest, most informative visits I've had, even though it is a small place. The free coffee, chickpea soup and homemade pancakes are a nice touch too, especially when eaten while sitting on a cushion, under a tent in a courtyard.

Ty in the museum courtyard

Chasing the sunset, we walked back to the docks and noticed that there were fleets of small wooden boats ferrying people across the Dubai Creek. We hopped on one, paid our one dirham each (about 30 cents Canadian or 2 SA Rand), and enjoyed the evening in Bur Dubai, eating supper, then spending about an hour smoking apple shisha on the waterfront, where we met up with Grant and Dianne again, just outside a collection of historical buildings that we were too tired to explore that evening, but wanted to return to for our last morning.

Apparently forgetting that everything is closed in the morning, or seems to be anyway, we packed up and checked out of our hotel on Sunday morning and went back across the Dubai Creek. There is a real lack of breakfast restaurants or even simple coffee shops, and our first goal was to find something to eat. Walking along the hot, dry pavement of the Bur Dubai docks, we turned into the Heritage Village in the hopes of finding at least a snack shop of some sort.

Much like the Heritage Village that we saw in Abu Dhabi our first week here, it was a collection of dry tents showcasing the local handicrafts, all clustered around a sandy lot where a few tethered camels yawned in the heat. Much to our surprise, though, we found a tent of burqa-ed ladies cooking up honey filled sweets and pancakes. Yay. Breakfast!

Taking a few minutes to explore, we watched a lady making silver embroidery, then had a rather interesting conversation (in Arabic, which neither of us speak) with another lady who seemed to be weaving a tent. We wandered back out to the seaside, where we fed, watered and bathed a stray kitten (yup, they know how to spot us), before calling an end to our rather varied and full visit to Dubai.

During our trip, we got to see parts of Dubai that are, unfortunately, left out of a lot of the tourist brochures, except for a passing mention of dhow cruises or the gold souq. I can only hope that you, Dear Reader, will come to visit us so that we can show you some of these incredible, off-the-beaten track things, that certainly don't come with a 7-star rating.

Desert life, desert camp...

Alright, so we've been bad about updating. What, pray tell, have we been up to that we've been too busy to blog???

Well, we are still living at the Liwa Hotel. There are certainly perks to living here, such as how the resident population of the hotel increases by about 1500% on the weekends. Although we may be slightly disgruntled at having to share "our" hotel with these upstart strangers from Abu Dhabi or wherever, it's also nice to have a few visitors.

Quite a few of the people in Madinat Zayed will come up to spend a Friday or Saturday afternoon up at the Liwa, taking advantage of the pool, the work-out room and the alcohol policy. It's the best/only place if you're looking for a beer and a burger in the Western Zone. (I will add that it is by no means the worst place to live in general, and the privelage gets more pronounced as we see other visitors travel a long way to get the pleasures of the service, the buffets and lounging around the pool, as well as the beauty of the surrounding desert) This past weekend was no exception, with a variety of visitors coming out to play in the sun.

One group of people from MZ invited us along to the dunes. They were planning on staying the night just off the road to the Moreeb Dune (about 25km from the hotel), and asked if we'd be interested in coming out just until the sun went down and we could then come back to the hotel.

As soon as we arrived, helped set up tents, and had cocktails in hand, we were invited to stay the night, if we so wished. Although we didn't want to seem the freeloader, we quickly decided that we'd rather stay than leave.

The sun set, the campfire was built, music and laughter filled the air and a small BBQ was even brought out (It's a braai my angel. When there's boerewors and kuirering around the fire involved, it's a braai... oh so much delicious meat!). At one point, someone saw something scuttle across one of the mats we were sitting on around the campfire. Could it be a scorpion? A snake? Nope, our little visitor was the cutest desert mouse in the world. His eyes were huge, his fur was soft, his tail was twice the length of his gerbil-ish body and he happily ran up and down our arms and through our hair before hopping away across the sand. Apparently, desert mice like Doritos.

One thing that we were looking forward to in this new desert life, and one aspect that disappointed us when we first arrived at the Liwa, with its well-lit parking lot just outside the window, was the stars. We had expected to go out star-gazing every night and instead found that, besides light-pollution, dust in the air or fog made it so we could only ever see 3 or 4 stars in the sky.

Not so with the camping.

Out there, with no light except the fire and hidden in a valley of dunes that shielded us from any other road lights or vestiges of civilization, we were treated to an incredible display. A million constellations (all in the wrong places, says I... and at four in the morning when I opened my eyes to the streak of the Mikyway lying just above the lightening horizon, they were all the right way up again... told you so) marched over us as the night went on.

No matter how hot it is during the day, the nights are always cold in the desert. We had been lucky enough to have been given a tent and a sleeping bag by our happy hosts, but once the wind picked up in the middle of the night, the violent snapping and rustling of the material made it pretty much impossible to sleep. Deciding that it was only an hour or two until daylight anyway, we knocked the tent down, climbed on top of it (so that we weren't just laying on sand) and fell back asleep, but not before a few more minutes of star-gazing.

Once the sun came up, we broke camp and everyone scattered back home before the heat of day could knock us out. Apparently, in a few weeks, it will be "too hot to camp". And yes, it has been getting hotter and hotter here. The newspaper has already reported that it's hit 35 degrees - which is a new record for springtime here (and they're predicting 40 by the end of the month). I guess this means that we can look forward to a very very hot spring/summer.

The heat is actually not too much of a bother, since the aircon runs 24/7 here (except in our environmentally concious hotel room). Leaving school at 2:30pm, with the required long sleeves (sometimes 2 layers on top, to be sure that I'm covered completely from neck to wrist to ankle) and extra scarf and such, is like walking into an oven.... but that's really not too bad. Yet.

The worst weather this week has been sandstorms. The sky is yellow-orange and visibility is nil on the road from Liwa to MZ. My computer is full of sand from using it on the hotel balcony, where sand drifts like snow along any horizontal surface. It blows across roadways like a blizzard and makes your skin and teeth feel gritty. Don't even ask me about what you find on the end of a Qtip. No chance of star-gazing these days.

I'm still enjoying my job, but it's 100% different from life in Korea. Instead of spending hours on msn chat or blogging away, I have very full days, with barely a chance to check e-mails.

Last night, Ty and I joined a group of ex-pats at our first Arabic lesson. Today, I spent the day regaling/torturing my co-workers with my terrible Arabic skills and/or showing them how well/terribly I can write my name, which looks like someone tied a pen to a drunk snail and sent them through a maze....

That's all for now, thanks for reading and we hope to update with a few of Ty's incredible adventures in a few days.... trust me, his life is far more interesting than mine!!! (on some days... BUT I definitely have nothing to complain about)