There's a marching band in my backyard...

... or to be more precise, the marching band was on the soccer field that's right behind our apartment... and it was 8:45 pm.

We watched the men, all in uniforms like you see on American TV, and decided that instead of buying paint for the bedroom, we'd head out to see what all the fuss was about.

[During Ramadan, quite a few stores are closed during the day, but open much later at night. This includes the post office, which has very convenient opening hours of 9pm - 11pm *sigh*]

We headed out, hit by the heat as we left our air conditioned cocoon. We were dressed pretty casually in jeans and shirts (mine long-sleeved), and weren't expecting to do more than take a quick look around, then leave.

We went up into the empty bleachers, noticing that there were a lot of gold chairs set out in one cordoned-off section, as well as a glassed-in spot right up top. Workers and security guard were wandering around, and the sound crew was attempting to get the sound system working. The field itself was full of balloons, some decorated with the Sheikhs' faces. The marching band sat off to one side, sweating in their heavy uniforms.

We stood and looked at what was going on. Emiratis in white dishdashas shouted orders at different people, pointing and yelling into their cellphones. After about 5 minutes, a large Emirati man approached us from the gold seat section and asked, "Are you happy?" before instructing us on how to get into the gold seat part! We'd stumbled on the opening ceremonies of a two-week long soccer tournament.

We sat on the ornate chairs, alone in the section of about 20 seats, and were surprised by steaming cups of sweet Arabic tea (and speaking of steaming, we were both sweating profusely by this point). We sipped the tea and watched as a young guy in a dishdasha handed out hats and shirts to various workers on the field. Another guy came by to give us coffee, and yet another guy brought out some sweet fried bread things.

We sat there, watching as the organizers ran about, getting everything in order. We still weren't quite sure what the etiquette was for us to be sitting there, but nobody seemed to mind our presence. In fact, another stately Emirati man with a perfectly trimmed beard came up to us with shirts and hats bearing an Abu Dhabi logo (funny thing, he also addressed us first with, "Are you happy?") and tickets for a draw to be held later in the evening.

At one point, the marching band started up again, and some kids in soccer uniforms carrying flags and framed pictures of the Sheikh walked through a balloon arch, followed a line up of men in matching shirts and hats carrying placards. With our limited Arabic skills, we managed to read a few of the signs, which all seemed to correspond to cities or companies from the area. The announcer explained nicely that this was "just practice".

The stands on either side of our gold VIP section started to fill up, kids ran around with confetti-explosives, we got more coffee (the cup is filled while the coffee guy stands there and waits for you to finish, and he keeps refilling the little cup until you tell him to stop), and finally... it seemed things were starting.

The marching band came out in formation onto the field, the real procession of kids and men with placards went through the balloon arch. Behind almost each placard was either a full soccer team, or 3 people, or nobody at all - think of a quasi-Olympic parade, I guess. The band played the national anthem, and a little boy sang a verse of the Koran from behind a podium. Sheikh Hamdan, the ruler of the Western Zone (his palace is in Liwa, across the valley from the hotel we lived in) gave a speech, and everything was cleared away for a small laser light show (on the soccer field, crossing over the marching band that was still standing there). The funny thing about the laser show was that it was rather random: It started with words like "Happy Birthday" and "Happy New Year" flashing, followed by the alphabet, and then a few random shapes. We think it might have just been the demo program from the laser machine.

Finally, the soccer players arrived.

Two teams, one in red and one in white, but all with the number 90 on their jerseys (???) came onto the field, posed for photos and started playing. They were not exactly, um, the most athletic looking people. The older men sitting behind us were actually giggling once the game started.

As each team scored in turn, everyone applauded politely. I leaned over to Ty and asked, "Which team are we supposed to be pulling for?". He just shrugged. During all this, there was a very loud play-by-play (and how the announcer could do that while every person was wearing the same number is beyond me....). Happily, this game only lasted about 20 minutes.

Having sat and sweated there for about 2 hours, we took this as our cue to make a graceful exit. As we walked past the sound engineers, one of them ran up to us and asked us why we were leaving so early. We explained that we had to get up early and needed to get to sleep. He asked us to stay, explaining that the prize draw was coming up soon (he is also the one who explained to us that the match we'd just seen was the UAE World Cup team from 1990, which is why the players were all a bit older than your average soccer player, and that this was the start of a Ramadan soccer tournament, organized by Sheikh Hamdan). Finally, he took Ty's phone number and our tickets and said that he would call us if we won anything.

We returned home, our jeans damp from the heat of the evening, and were relaxing in the living room with a cocktail when... yes, Ty's phone rang! His ticket had been drawn, but we had to come to the field NOW. We both ran out the door, across the parking lot (where a group of teenage boys laughed and clapped for us) and into the stadium again. Ty was handed a bag with a wrapped gift inside, then photographed by a veritable paparazzi, then gently shooed away.

And his prize? A new cellphone -- which is amazing, since his phone is literally falling apart. And it's a nice one too: full colour, camera, video and a million other things that we haven't figured out yet.

We might head back over the next two weeks to see other games.... or just look out our living room windows.