System of a Down... or Up in this Case

I used to love that band. But that’s not what this post is about. I want to talk about systems here in Abu Dhabi. So awesomely different. When you go to the bank, for example, they have the take a number queueing system, right? You take a number, and then you wait for them to ring your number. Makes sense enough. So you sit maybe, or stand while you wait. But then 2 seconds after you’ve grabbed your number and sit next to the massive group of people who are also waiting, a bank employee comes out of nowhere, makes eye contact, smiles at you and gestures you over to his desk. You look around to first see if he’s looking at you or if it’s the person behind you he’s motioning to…no, it’s you indeed. Then you look around to see if anyone going to give you the stank eye because you just inadvertently jumped the queue of all these people. “Yes mam, come on over. How can I help you?” So what if you just walked in the door 18 seconds ago and there’s a massive queue in front of you. Come on over. ??????? Huh? It’s so random.

At the Dubai souks, (markets) you weave in and out of these miniscule, heat filled shops with plastic hanging sheets for doors and pretend air-conditioning. Now when I say miniscule, whatever you’re picturing, think smaller. My bathroom at the hotel is bigger. The shop owners are kind of pushy, but also flirty, but also rude, but also seducing…. So basically, I think they flirt you into buying something. The heat exhaustion, the sweaty smell of sun-baked bodies, fried lunch, and incense permeates your sesnses, and the low murmur of the pretend AC unit work together against your decision making processes. Before you know it, you've bought two genuine fake Chanel watches that you convinced yourself your mother might love. You might get something nice, you might get garbage, but you won’t fully be ready or able to decide which until you’ve gotten back into air-conditioning. I try to use my broken down, sub-par, never used or needed before American haggling skills… No dice. They’ve spotted my real Gucci sunglasses and hand sanitizing gel, and they know in an instant that I'm an American and I have zero haggling skills what-so-ever and that I like to part with my money. So not only do I purchase one scarf at what I’m sure was way too many dirham, but I somehow got hoodwinked into buying another random item that I’ll never use…. It’s the heat. But lo! Two seconds later, your friend buys the EXACT same item at 5 dirham cheaper! “What happened?” I ask the Iranian man behind the counter in a half protest as sweat weighs my eyelids downwards. No comment. Arrrgh.

I grab a taxi after lunch to go home. I tell the driver my destination. He doesn’t speak and barely acknowledges that I breathe air. He drives like a bat out of hell and talks on his cell phone the entire way. He takes two wrong turns and racks up my fare. Not to mention he smells like a goat on a farm. A farm with no water. Or soap. Or deodorant. We finally scrape into my hotel on two wheels, and I pay him the fare on the meter. He keeps his hand held out and looks into my eyes indignantly, wondering where his tip is. Seriously?

Later on, I drop my clothes off at the dry cleaners where they will dry clean them at the same price as they will launder them.  They deliver them to my hotel door the next morning with a smile. I offer this guy a tip, and he shakes his head and refuses…… Why can’t I get it right?? I’ve only been here for two weeks…So, hold on to your yellow teeth, more madness ahead. 

The guy on the left thought he was too cool for school and refused to smile. Everytime the flash went off and the picture was taken, he cracked up laughing. Really dude?

Tiny Emirati Fit

Kids here are well spoiled. It's insanity, I'm telling you. I walk through the mall and I've never seen so many tantrums! The legs of small children turn to jello when they can't have something they want, so you see them splayed out flat on the ground kicking, screaming, and refusing to walk. They also run through public places at break neck speed, climb on top of whatever furniture they can find, and hit their nannies. I'm not exaggerating in the least. Because the conniptions are so bad, and I almost think people won't believe me when I tell them about it, I just really want to secretly video one of the episodes which I've nicknamed "The Tiny Emirati Fit." I can't video them for my ever present fear of getting arrested in this country. Oh, really quick. Sidebar. Segue. Or whatever they're called. Seriously that is honestly my biggest fear that I'll get arrested here. I don't know why, but it's all I think about. I wanted to spit out a piece of gum on the street last week because that's what I'd do in my country, but I didn't because I was sure that some cop watching a hidden camera on the street would come and arrest me and it would be like that one show "Locked Up Abroad, Middle East Edition." 

So last night I witnessed the most awful hysterical outburst that I've seen since I arrived. (You can easily see 2 or 3 a day).
I'm walking back up to my room from the hotel lobby and I see this kid of about 7 years screaming at the tip top of his lungs and tearing at the bottom of his mother's abaya so hard I literally think he will rip it to shreds. He is pulling so hard that it halts her walking and she can't really ward him off because she's holding two arms-full of shopping bags. He starts punching and kicking at her legs and screaming something in Arabic. The family maid is a few paces behind and she's also carrying a few shopping bags as well as a baby of about 8 or 9 months who is also wailing. The maid attempts to pull the 7 year old out of the grip he has on the abaya and away from his mother. So he gets raging mad that the maid is tugging at him that he spins around and swings at her with a full fist but he hits the face of the baby in her arms instead! The piercing scream of the small child is what makes me realize that I've actually stopped walking and I'm frozen in my steps. After I check that my mouth is closed, I start to slowly walk toward the elevator. Did that just happen?? I don't know what the boy wanted. I will never know.

It's not that children don't have fits back home. They most certainly do. Some of them are right on par with this one. It's the frequency and the intensity here that's bothersome. I've never witnessed SO MANY. It could be specially loathesome to anyone who witnesses it, anyone who has to hear it, or anyone who doesn't have any children of their own so as to be more sympathetic. And even though this mother seemed pretty calm and not aggravated or embarrassed by the primate behavior her child was displaying, I'm sure underneath her cool countenance she was a bit peeved as well. However, I must say, it's particularly disturbing to me because this child, and 30 other children just like him with surly and irascible dispositions, will be in my classroom in 2 weeks.....Bring it on....

Making Friends and Taking Names

Making Friends and Taking Names

I’ve met some really banging people here in the last week. Most of them are teachers. I’ve been spending most of my days with Khaleel, Cathy, aka Cat D, and Krista, aka Kris P. These ladies are really cool. We get along easily, don’t have to work too hard at hanging out, (you need people like that in your life) and they are really funny all three of them. Khaleel is a Jamaican-New Yorkan. She’s got this great accent that I mimic all the time but should probably stop. I can’t. She’s pretty awesome, kind of sweet but always tells you exactly the truth…cold and harsh as it may come out of her New York state of mouth. Then there’s Cathy. Cat D is half Chinese, half Vietnamese, 100% kick ass British, and completely ridiculous. Every time she talks I laugh. I mimic her British accent too. Partly because it’s cool and partly because mimicking accents is kind of my thing. This girl loves to eat and is well serious about her food. Her family owns a restaurant in London called The New Golden Duck, which by way of her promotions has been pushed to the tip top of my bucket list of places to eat at. She has promised me that we will eat like kings when we go there! When do you ever get that offer in life? Her mom makes Singapore noodles. Yes please. Then there’s Kris P, who is Texan. Um,….enough said. She’s so just like me… except that she doesn’t care too much for fashion, ethnic food or country music…. Ok, she’s not like me at all, but she’s Texan. So, enough said. What I love about Krista, is that she’s really pragmatic. She’s usually the voice of reason for one of my nonsensical rants about whatever at all. Now that I think about it, her unwavering pragmatism actually serves to make me look a bit ludicrous and random…..:)  She’s also hella funny, and she doesn’t take herself too seriously which is brilliant.  I just like hanging out with all of them. They like to have fun, but they’re really laid back. You don’t feel this intense pressure to shop away your last dirham, or drink your liver out of commission. It works because these ladies live in the complex I’ll be moving to in Khalifa City. So I’ve got connections. What kind of connections you say? Support networks. Work out buddies. Can I borrow 2 eggs? Hook me up with the cute, French, military guy on your floor. Can I borrow 5 dirham for the taxi outside because I’m short and the cabbie is giving me the stank eye. Hey girl I’m coming into the building late at night, watch-me-from-your-window-till-I-get-into-my-flat type of connections. You know the kind I mean. I see these ladies everyday. We eat breakfast and chat, share cabs and laughs, and rag on each other all day. Good times. Pretty sure I’ll hang on to these.

Also, I met this Emirati girl last week named Fadaah. She did my henna at Eid Festival, we chatted long, connected, and exchanged numbers. That’s literally how it happened. She’s kind of awesome I would say. She’s beautiful so everywhere we go men open their mouths…Some actually manage to get words out, most do not. They just follow along with their eyes and never actually look away. Since I’ve arrived here, I’ve been flattering myself since because most of the men here are quite stare-ish, always staring and smiling at me. Even if you give them a look that says, “Back off,” they don’t avert their eyes. One even asked me if I wanted to go to Palm Jumeirah with him for the weekend. As if I’m interested in getting bludgeoned and possibly buried alive. Turns out, my few flirtatious encounters are child’s play compared to the number of men Fadaah turned into little boys today. I can’t help but to wonder though what the state of play is here in the realm of dating. Before I came, and even once I got here I kept hearing, “Dating….just don’t do it.”  I was well prepared for that. Because of the cultural norms and local customs, dating publicly in Abu Dhabi is frowned upon especially dating that would include any public display of affection. People allegedly just get married here…and as far as courting goes, well the marriage itself is the beginning and the end…. There’s no first, second, or third date..  Allegedly will be my operative word here so indulge me. I don’t know how these marriages are being arranged though. Are they just that, arranged? Are men walking up to random women and proposing? Are they using match.com? What IS the state of play? I don’t know. However, even as that is indeed the story, picture, and caption of the whole scene, men in this city are obviously flirtatious and wanting to date…. It’s just really, really, scary to think about actually doing it. So for now and possibly later, I’m choosing NOT to think about it. It’s ironic because I’m actually free to date now, no boyfriend at the moment as of 4 days ago, but I’m still restricted by my own fears as well as real or imagined local taboo… That’s all I have to say about that. 

Fadaah owns some tailoring, slash dress making, slash custom abaya shops in the city called Prestige Style. Today on our outing together, we visited her shops and we custom made an abaya for me. I’ll be sure to post some pictures of that as as soon as it’s finished. It’s really elegant and looks beautiful on. When I add the shayla, (head covering) I can almost pass for a local girl! That’s IF and only IF I add some 5 or 6-inch heels, which is what ALL the women here wear. They are quite fancy ladies and the higher the heels, and the longer the eyelashes, and the bigger the designer sunglasses, the better! I’m going to have to practice my heel walking. Right now I am just not cutting it. At all. I mean, it’s ridiculous. 

After the shops, we went to a cafe called Hardwalls, where we smoked shisha and chatted. So, this was my first time smoking shisha and I have to say I enjoyed it. The flavor was mild, like a soft gentle flavored tobacco. When you are pulling the smoke into your mouth, it’s very sweet and mellow. You feel it tighten up your chest if you inhale it too hard or fast, but “if you are gentle with shisha pipe, shisha pipe is gentle with you,” so says Fadaah. I got into it. It was relaxing and the smell is sweet like an extremely mild, fruit-flavored incense. NOTHING like cigarette smoke. It’s really nice to smoke some shisha over good conversation with a new friend.  There’s nothing that feels rushed about the whole scene. The shisha boy comes over periodically to put more hot coals onto the top of your bowl.. Fadaah got very specific with him about which coals to place and just where to put them, and he couldn’t seem to get it right…(she was very irritated with him) Poor dude.  And you just carry on the evening like that. 

You’d think my new friend and I would have tired of each other by then, but she asked me when I could hang again. I said probably Friday. She said she wants to island hop on Friday. So, she invited me to go to the islands of Lulu and Al Maya, also known as Bahraini Island.  I accepted and so to show me how we’d travel on Friday, we jumped in her car and drove to the pier, (which is really just a rocky piece of land that looks like a desert parking lot,) where she showed me that you can either take a jetski or a boat out to the island.  Boat, please…thanks. So, island hopping with Fadaah is happening on Friday. By then we were both yawning, so she swung me back to my hotel. By the way, Fadaah is, like everyone else else on this island, a horrible driver.  She drives much too fast…is far too impatient, and she switches lanes and blows her horn incessantly without any apparent reason. I swear I just pray for my life every time I get into any vehicle here, be it a taxi, bus, or car. The only difference here was that Fadaah blares a random melee of old American tunes and sings, dances, and snaps non-rhythmically along as she races down the streets…… She knows about 5% of the words of each song, loves all of them, and is crazy for Phil Collins….Random I know. She flipped the radio and Sususudio was on and she almost lost it. With huge, overly excited eyes, she says, “Do you know this song?!!”  as if the song came out last week and she was lucky enough to be in the recording studio with Collins as he laid down the track. Laugh out loud, for real this time. Really, I just can’t get enough of this city.

En Medias Res

I didn’t want to start my blog in the middle of things. I had this whole thing worked out six months ago when I first started preparing myself to come here. I would blog a bit every day about the processes leading up to my actual flight out of my hometown and into the U.A.E. I would include lots of anecdotes and helpful tips to others who might come down this road later… I would add pictures and little nuggets of info and tell about the roadblocks that happened along the way. When I was in University, the night before they were due to turn in, I would write 20 page essays on books that I had also cracked open for the first time that same night. I always got A’s on those. The ones I fussed over and took weeks to write always came up short. I’ve always been a bit of a procrastinator in life really, which would explain why I’m 30, virtually single, not sure if teaching is my career of choice, not sure if I’m in love or hate, staring at loads of unwashed laundry, in a five star hotel room in Abu Dhabi. None of it makes a lot of sense. But if my life turns out to be an A+ like those papers I wrote with shaking hands, a palpitating heart, and bloodshot eyes over mugs of steaming espresso, then I might be winning. We’ll see.

So here we are then, in the middle of things. I’ve come to the Middle East to be a teacher. I’m in Abu Dhabi specifically, the capital of the United Arab Emirates. I’ve been here for about a week now, and I’m almost scared to say I love it. Why am I scared?  Well, because you know how when you say you have fallen in love with something or someone new, people immediately question you as if you’re extremely foolhardy and a bit too eager? Well, I may be feeling that way about my own feelings. But the truth is, for the 8 whole days that I’ve been here, I am in love. I’m in 100% in love with this country. I know it’s early. I know it’s too soon. I hope I don’t get my heart broken. 

I went to Dubai yesterday. It was like nothing else I’ve ever experienced. Splendor, beauty, poverty, and desperation all together in one steamy hot melting pot of culture that smells like expensive and exotic perfume, burning asphalt, incense, and grilled meat. Towering over the entire city is the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building and the tallest free standing structure in the world. I honestly don’t want to use the word breathtaking too many times, so I apologize in advance. There’s just no other word that will work. It’s not only tall and massive enough to dwarf anything within a nearby radius, it’s also beautiful. It has a three lobed Y-shaped bottom which apparently adds to its architectural stability, and the building is helix-y in shape as it propels upward. It also gets thinner as it gets taller and the top floors are actually occupied. Sickening….Breathtaking. I was in complete awe. 

Right now, it’s 12:25 in the afternoon here. I can hear the afternoon call to prayer because my patio door is slid open a bit to dry some clothes I’ve washed in my hotel bathroom and slung over an armchair. If you’ve not heard the Islamic call of prayer it will move you, whether you happen to be religious or not. The first time you hear it, you will stop what you’re doing and your head will inadvertently tilt to one side…and you will be moved in some way. The first one I heard was for Fajr, the morning prayer. It was 8 days ago, the first night I arrived in the U.A.E.  My plane had touched down at midnight. I was exhausted from sitting straight up in my coach class chair for 17 hours. We were shuffled to our hotel on an air-conditioned bus. The temperature difference between the inside of the bus and the Abu Dhabi atmosphere was so great that the entire vehicle was encased in a thick layer of condensation and you couldn’t see outside the windows. Well, do me a solid. Just try to imagine being on a bus in a foreign country and driving for what seems like forever in the middle of the night, and not being able to see outside of the bus that is carrying you to an unknown destination…. just try to imagine it. All I could think about were the stories from back home that people told me with their widened eyes and disapproving faces when I had first mentioned to them that I was coming to live in a Middle Eastern country to teach English. (Those stories are going to make up a completely different blog entry.) We arrived at a gorgeous and golden-hued hotel at around 2 am.  I don’t remember too much about that night, I was too knackered to even notice the exquisiteness of the 5 star digs. I got my keys from the concierge and went directly to my room. The porter brought up my bags and I gave him what I hoped was a sufficient tip…which turned out to be completely insufficient…again, a different blog entry. After a shower, I tried to lay my head down but I couldn’t sleep. Tired as I was, I couldn’t close my eyes. Was I really here? Did I really agree to do this? Am I dreaming? Am I stupid? The time passed and I turned over and over on the plush whiteness underneath me. Then just as sleep began to wrap its arms around me, it happened. It was around 4:45am. A singing. A luring. A calling. Rhythmic, patient, slow, compelling, and haunting. Allahu akbar. Allahu akbar. I heard my father's voice whispering, "Prayer is better than sleep, Prayer is better than sleep." I opened the patio door and stood outside. Stifling and scalding as the heat is, the ground does not burn your feet. I’m not exactly sure why. Perhaps it was the humidity.  It was the prettiest sound. Compelling is the best word for it; forcing you to reflect. It really is beautiful. I’m not being dramatic. It’s not just me this time.