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So, it's the first week back at college and I'm already ready for another vacation.  I'm now teaching everything on a very expensive paperweight called an ipad.  On the bright side, I can now toss the stupid thing out the window of my new 'old' jeep.

I'm getting fairly comfortable driving and haven't killed anyone yet.  It did break down last weekend...a busted radiator hose in 50 degree temperatures is not a good thing.  Luckily, it's easy to get things fixed here and the mechanic had it taken care of by the next morning for $60.  He does housecalls...can you imagine :)  Next step; dune bashing.

End of Summer

So, any of you who have been following my blog may have noticed my absence over the summer.  It all started when I arrived in the UK at the beginning of summer and my netbook decided to transpose all its keys so I couldn't type anything.  Things progressed downhill when the monitor began doing a nifty little version of the samba.  The people at the repair shop just looked very sad when I explained my problems so I waited for the back-school-sales to replace it with a new laptop...I've decided that netbooks are fun but not very practical for real life.  I'm going to get a tablet for traveling and hopefully this new laptop will stay healthy and happy not being dragged around in a backpack.  I was computerless for the entire summer but have to admit that it was a nice break and I barely looked at email/facebook at all.

I did have a great summer although it went too fast as usual.  I started out in London where they were gearing up for the Olympics.  I took this picture while on a Thames ferry.  The rings lift up when the draw-bridge goes up.

I quickly went onto Edinburgh by train.  It was a great train ride and I would recommend it to anyone.  Booking the train months early saved me more than half the price at 34 Pounds.   Edinburgh was everything I thought it was going to be. 

 
I took the 'Free Walking Tour' and it was fantastic.  We were led through town by a great guide who had written a book about all the nasty elements of the city's history so we got all the juicy details.  He was very dramatic, especially when he got passionate about Scotland. 

After a couple of days in the city, I headed down south for four days of walking and visiting the Abbeys of the Scottish Borders. 

The walking was good the first day and I followed these little signs.

There was a lot of different terrain.

There was also lots of flora and fauna to see.

There were also weird man-made things along the way.  Temples, arches and odd places like this one which marks the spot where Thomas the Rhymer met the Farie Queen in the 13th century.  I definately got the Scottish experience.

The next three days were a bit muddy but I did love all the Abbeys.  I spent several hours in each of them and had picnics.  I also visited the place where Robert the Bruce's heart is buried at the Melrose Abbey for just that little bit of extra goolish history.

After the walking, I went back to Edinburgh for a week to see the sights.  I really enjoyed the Queen's Gallery at Holyrood Palace as it had a Jubilee collection of art from all the royal palaces and I loved the tour of the Royal Britanica and seeing the Queen's stateroom and bedroom.

Back to London where I did all the tourist stuff including a very impressive visit to the Victoria and Albert Museum and a night at the theater to see Wicked, which I recommend to anyone of any age.

Then on to Canada for a whirlwind few weeks with the family.

 

 

Now I'm back in the UAE and getting ready for another year.  I bought a jeep so I'll have a little more independence and be able to explore more...I'll be posting here whenever something interesting happens.

Last weeks at school

In these last few weeks of the semester I've said goodbye to a lot of people who are heading off to greener pastures.  It's been a bit rough saying goodbye to good friends like Rick..here in this picture he's getting crowned by the cake I baked for his goodbye party.

I've also been going to eat in restaurants everyday as my co-workers are as happy to take a break from the office as I am.  Last week, Tanya and I went to a great Indian restaurant and had delicious chicken lolly pops.

I also went up to Abu Dhabi to see the 'Treasures of the World" exhibit at the museum.  It's a collection of things lent from the British Museum so I'll have already seen the things that are missing when I go to the British Museum next week.   I went with some friends and we had a great lunch and then did the workshop afterwards.  It was fun making Llamas from the South American exibit.

Diane, me, Elke and Nancy

at the workshop

Our llamas taking a ride home on the dash

My next posts will be from the UK...where it will be sunny and warm...it will be sunny and warm...it will...really..it will.

Yeeehaw!   My last class today!!!!  I still have exams but no more teaching for the year.  I had a great class with really sweet students this semester but still, it's nice not to be lesson planning and trying to figure out how to make possessive adjectives sexier. 

We had a class party today and everyone brought food.  We had mountains of shwarma sandwiches, stuffed pastries and sweets.  The students actually cooked themselves instead of having their housemaids do it so it was very authentic.   I learned today that the reason that there are always tons of plates of food at these things is that they always make up platters and spread them around to other classes/people who couldn't be at the party.  There was a store bought cake with KitKat bars all around the edges and malteesers on top.



It's about 50 degrees right now but you wouldn't know that to look at my back yard with all it's lush greenery.  The owners have told us that we can pick some of the fruit but I'm hesitant to do so in case the gardener gets blamed for anything missing.



I don't know what these are



ever present date palms...they clump them together for bagging and easy picking.

I also went to another Chaine dinner a couple of weeks ago.  We went up to the hotel/restaurant on the top of our only mountain which was a really cool drive.  I'll have to go up there with some time to take photos (and not in a fancy dress and heels).   The food was slightly less spectacular than other dinners I've been to but the company was great. 

Linda, Me and Sharon...all dressed up and tipsy on champagne

I went on a tour of the gold souq, the Pakistani market and the ababya (dress) shops in town.  The gold souq was really interesting.  When an Emirati woman gets married, she is given a lot of gold by the groom.  It can range from $25,000 to $100,00.  This gold is supposed to sustain her if something happens to the husband but with a 50% divorce rate in the country, the gold has become a problem.  If the woman wants the divorce, she has to return the gold and if the husband wants the divorce, she can keep it so what's happening is that husbands will try to force the woman to ask for a divorce.

Our guide told us that before the wedding, the mother of the bride will tell the mother of the groom what sort of things that the bride would like and the mother or her son goes out to get it. Typical pieces include a heavy belt.

Belts and a few light weight necklaces

A heavy necklace that covers the woman's breasts.

And a head piece that drapes over her hair.  The gold is usually 24K and is very yellow.  I didn't really like the color and apparently they've opened a few shops in the Dubai Gold Souq that cater to western tourists looking for 14k.  The designs were elaborate and really fanciful. 

An abaya is a black cover that women wear to go outside.  This sounds like a form of oppression to westerners but here, it's a fashion statement.  They mix up the cuts of cloth, the trims, the decorations and the shapes.  The current trend is to tie a rope around the waist which is very daring because the abaya is supposed to hide a woman's shape.  They cost about $200 in the shop we visited but our guide says that his sister shops there so we could get a deal if we wanted.  I have an ababya from last year's National Day festival so I don't need another but they were fun to look at.

The top pieces are shalas that the women cover their hair with

I've got two weeks of exams and sitting around before holidays so I might do something else cultural before I head out but with the heat, it will definately be indoors.

The Eagles have landed...in Dubai

Myself, some friends, and about 20,000 other people watched the Eagles concert last night at the Sevens Rugby Pitch in Dubai.  Fantastic is too mild of a word for the performance.  They put on a hell of a show.   Glen Frey started the show with "Same band, different dessert".  He told a few jokes about the band being old (same age as the UAE at 40) and also made light of their past fights with each other...he was funny without trying too hard.

The music was brilliant.  All the greatest hits with a handful of the solo hits too.  I was really impressed with the harmonies of Lying Eyes, Take It To The Limit and Peaceful Easy Feeling. 

Don on Drums, Tim, Glen and Joe on guitar

Joe Walsh's Rocky Mountain Way was brilliant, and even if he does look a bit grandfatherly stomping around with his guitar, he still belts it out like a madman.  His line "My Maserati does 185" couldn't have been sung in a more appropriate country.

Don did Boys of Summer and Dirty Laundry as well as Long Run...he looks fantastic and sounds exactly the same as on his albums. 







It was a great night in the open air venue after a severe sand storm that brought the first rain of the year and there was a cool dessert wind in our hair, with the smell of Jasmine rising up through the air :)

Greece

Yasoos (Hello/goodbye/how's it going in Greek)



Just spent a whirlwind week in Greece and I already want to go back.  Sharon and I had a great time eating and drinking our way through the country but there was so much we didn't have time for.  On our first evening there, we found a great little hole-in-the-wall restaurant that we compared every following place to and returned two more times to have their roasted feta with vegetables.  Alfa beer is not to be missed :)

We also took a lot of coffee breaks as this seems to be the main past time of Athenians.  Here we are in Plaka with the Acropolis behind us.  We had just finished walking the huge Sunday market and looking at the secondhand junk and handmade crafts and decided to try the tiny cups of 'Greek' coffee.  A little on the gritty side but strong.  Most people had tall glasses of coffee with 'fredo' (icecream) which we tried at another coffee stop.

Our first day was spent at the two most famous ancient sites in the city.  First the Temple of Zeus which was deserted and standing forlornly in a field down the block from our hotel.  It impressed me with it's gigantic columns.  The whole thing took over 700 years to build due to Athens being sacked repeatedly and was finally finished by the Roman Emperor Hadrian who had a special affection for Athens.  I've actually become rather obsessed with Hadrian after this trip as I had seen some of his building works in Jordan and will be seeing his famous wall when I go to the UK this summer.  He was a fascinating character (more to follow).

I was more impressed with the view of the city than with the actual Acropolis as a lot of it is under scafolding with debris and equipment laying around.  A lot of what is there is now a replica as most of the original has been moved over to the museum.  I didn't really feel the connection to the past like I have in places like Ephesus or Ankhor Wat. 

One nice feature of Athens is that we could buy a package of tickets for 12 euros that let us get in to the Acropolis and all of the other important ancient sites so we tried to see as many as possible through out the week.

Sharon really enjoyed the Acropolis and was especially happy to see the Caryatids (lady columns).  The ones here are replicas but we saw the real ones in the Acropolis museum which really impressed me.  They've built the museum over a dig site so you can view the ruins through transparent floors.  They also took the carvings from the top of the Parthenon and placed them around a huge rectangle room on the top floor so it's as if you were walking around the original, which you can see by looking through the glass walls of the museum. 

The Caryatids are in a special room that allows the restorations to be done with a newly developed laser.  We watched them working for a while and it was pretty amazing watching as they lasered off centuries worth of grime.

We did a day tour of three islands on the next day.  It was a perfect sunny day for lounging on deck so the boat ride was great and a couple of dolphins even made an appearance, skipping along the bow.  My favorite island was Hydra because it was quaint and compact.  There were donkeys and cats everywhere as we walked through the tiny white washed streets, taking photos and ducking into shops.  We also walked out of the village a little bit and saw a great place to go swimming in crystal clear blue water.



I'm definately going back to stay on one of the islands, probably Santorini.  I'm thinking that this time next year would be good but early summer would also be fine.  I saw a lot of 'rooms' to let signs everywhere so it should be easy to arrange.

 There were so many winding alleys and staircases that just begged to be followed...can't wait to go back.

At the bottom of the Acropolis is  the Agora.  This was the lifeblood of the city.  It's the place where democracy was first tried out, where Paul converted Greeks to Christianity, where Plato spoke and where Athenians went to shop or see a show.  It's now a great green space with florand, fauna, ruins, churches and temples.  I loved it here and we visted the Temple of Hephaestus, the most complete and my favorite of the whole country.  Hephaestus was the God of the Forge.  The temple was used as a Church until the 1800s and it would have been interesting to walk through the interior but it was roped off and it looked like they were doing some repairs.

We happened to be in the country for Independence Day which was a bit unsettling as they had been protesting in the streets with firebombs recently.  Luckily for us but, perhaps unfortunately for democracy, they closed off all the streets for the big military parade to prevent trouble.  We got to see if from our hotel balconcy.  Army, navy, airforce, search and rescue, red cross, forest rangers, divers, and guys with white togas and pompoms...oh my!  That's the Prime Minister sitting under the little blue tent. 

There were also hundreds of police officers out on the street and we noticed that all of them were really good looking...like GQ good looking. It became a game to try to find an ugly cop and it took me four days to find one.

We got out of the city the next day to visit Delphi...I had an important question for the Oracle but it turns out that she only gave answers twice a year...nice job if you can get it!  The countryside was beautiful and we saw Mount Parnasus with its snowy peaks.  The ruins at the bottom of the mountain were pretty thoroughly ruined but the whole site was covered in wild spring flowers so it was still worth visiting.  It turns out that a large part of the world was colonized by Greeks after they visited the Oracle for advice.  Istanbul and Ephesus are two examples.  Apparently the advice was kind of obscure but they put on a good show.  They would sprinkle cold water on a goat and if the goat shivered, that meant that the God Apollo would speak through his vessel the Oracle and you would get an answer. Before getting to the goat, you had to purify yourself for seven days...cold water was a big part of this deal.

The last day we went to the big museum and I got to find out more about Emperor Hadrian.  It turns out that he was a great traveler, slept alongside his soldiers, helped out the poor, created massive building projects to stengthen the empire and had a tragic love affair with a young Greek man named Antinoos.  After Antinoos drowned in the Nile, Hadrian went a little nuts.  He turned the young man into a God by starting a cult, building a city named after him, having over 200 statues created and naming a star after him.  Due to the large number of statues and paintings made of this beautiful young man, he has often been used as the model for the ideal male form...I had no idea and had never heard of this so I was amazed at the large impact that the two had on art.  The museum has placed busts of the two men together in a kind of touching way. 

This tragic love story has an even wider impact because, n his grief over Antinoos' death, Hadrian, who had always been very tolerant of Jews, had them all thrown out of Jeruselum and created the state of Palestine which has, in turn, created all the strife in the Middle east that we have today. 

I hit a cheaper part of town on my last day to compare...coffee in the tourist area is about 4euros and 1.50euros in the rest of town. Graffiti is everywhere including the rich areas.  Traffic is bad all over town.  The pretty green squares with their flowers and orange trees disappear outside of the tourist area.

 As I was walking back to the hotel on the final day, I got a perfect picture of Greece at the University of Athens.  You can see the classical Greek architecture, with the Greek flag in the center, Athena on the left stella, Apollo on the right, Plato and Socrates seated in front and, if you look closely, you can see two sweet Greek boys kissing on the stairs. 

Anyways,  we had a great time strolling the steets, drinking Alpha beer, eating baklava and learning about ancient history.  Two final pictures to finish the story, a lovel springtime scene of the Agora and a typical tourist shot of the Acropolis which I like because Sharon and I are both in the picture together.

A good Week

Roses and garnets on the
cake for Rose and Garnet!

So I'm counting down the days until I go to Athens for spring break.  It's going to be sooooo good but I'm also still having fun here.  Rose, one of my 'podmates' in the office got engaged so we had a little lunch and I baked a cake.

I was also invited to a 1920's murder mystery dinner so I spent some time the last couple of weeks sewing and creating a costume.  I went with the drop waisted look with pearls and a fancy headband.

The dinner was great.  We all had to use a password to get into the speakeasy onboard the SS Titania and Chernell (Sharon) and Lord Luton (Serge) had set the mood with roaring '20s music, old newspaper articles and games.  Apparently, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches had just been invented and were all the rage so those were our appetites as well as deviled eggs which were big at the time.  My character was Agatha Sotherby, a mystery novelist and I decided she was from the south so I spoke with a southern accent all night.  I also kept promoting my newest novel "Murder on the Mississippi", the cover of which I created and taped to my Kindle. 

Lots of fun with costumes.

The dinner was fantastic and discovering all the clues was so much fun.  My character had been having an affair with Vic Tory the flyboy and we had faked my kidnapping so that he could get airplane parts in an attempt to cross the Atlantic before Charles Lindburg.  I was also responsible for writing poison pen letters to a few of the characters...quite the trouble maker :)  Liz (in front) was an opera singer with a lot of secrets.  Linda (the ship's doctor) was a gambler and a womanizer and Sharon (to the right) was a fashion designer with an secret child by the Lord.  Jerry (next to me) was a black widow..all very scandalous.  I won't say whodunit but it wasn't me :)

Another Chaine Dinner

I went to another Chaine dinner last weekend.  It was so good that I've decided to join. 
There are about six dinners per year. 

The menu for this dinner was really creative and delicious and it was held at the Danat hotel just down the road from my apartment.  We started with champagne cocktails and hors d'oeuvre on the patio.  The dinner started with foie gras and mushroom rissoto with ripe blueberries for an appetizer followed by a seafood chowder ala cappaccino.  The fish course was salmon but it was farmed so none us were too impressed with the taste or texture...I guess the desert has some limitations.  After cleansing our pallets with a green apple sorbet, the main course of rack of lamb with gnocchi and a carrot salsa was served. 

Desert was a white chocolate and milk chocolate mouse with a tart fruit compote.  Then....they brought out a plate of chocolate creations in the shape of the Dubai landscape.

I was seated with my friends Sharon and Serge as well as some really other people that I had met at the previous dinner.

Sharon is in the red and her husband, Serge, is between us.  Richard is on my left,
Linda and Rob and Mr. Ahmed made up our table.  There was a really good
Cuban band playing in the background all night.