Anniversary, Christmas, Luke's visit, and Al Ain

Well, it's been a busy week.

We started the week off by celebrating our one-year anniversary. It's hard to believe that it's been a year already -- and we're still amazed at how much our lives have changed in that time. We celebrated by running a bunch of errands in Abu Dhabi (romantic, I know)... before heading for supper in a nice restaurant in the city (a bit more romantic, I tell ya).

The week was really marked by two events, though: Christmas (which you all know about) and our friend Luke's visit.

First off, I wasn't expecting Christmas to be such a big deal here. Being a Muslim country, and remembering the situation from when I lived in Saudi as a young girl, I thought Christmas would just go by without any notice at all. Instead, we were surprised to see Christmas lights up all over Abu Dhabi, as well as huge trees in the shopping centres. No Nativity scenes or anything, of course, but quite a few Santas and snowmen.

At school, we had been warned not to do any sort of celebrating, but then found that our Arabic teachers were the ones approaching us and wishing us "Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year". We went through the school with cookies and candy canes, and everyone seemed really happy. See, they include us in their celebrations (like Eid), giving us food and gifts, so it would have been offensive for us *not* to have reciprocated.

Now, for Luke's visit: When we were in Mokpo, we befriended this awesome Scottish guy. Now, his parents live in Dubai and he is back in Scotland. For Christmas, he came to visit us, I mean, visit his family... Ty went up to Dubai to see him, then brought him back to our place. Although he was only here for 2 days, he got to see a lot of the desert life around us. Here are a few of his photos:

The boys got up at 6 am and drove out to the desert to catch the sunrise. I was, of course, going off to work and couldn't join them. Anyway, when YOU come visit us, you can do the same thing!

For the actual Christmas weekend, we went to visit my step-sister and her family in Al Ain. Al Ain is a really lovely town - not as big a city as Abu Dhabi, and not as small as Madinat Zayed. Built around a big oasis, it's always been a rather important place in the UAE history (the ruling family is from there).

Seeing as my past five Christmases have been in odd places, doing odd things (like surfing in Mexico, or singing until 5am in a Korean karaoke room), it was nice to have a "normal" Christmas with kids opening presents around a tree. It was a great, relaxing weekend, and a perfect way to finish off a rather hectic week.