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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.