Rosy's first week observations

So we’ve been in Dubai for a week now and so far, so good. Here are a few observations about this crazy place that we thought you might like to know:

1) Did we arrive in Mumbai or Dubai? There are so many Indians in this place. When we drive around all we see is busload after busload (and sometimes 10 of them crammed into a little sedan, seriously!) returning home to their labor camps after a full days work of building this city.

Which leads #2). This whole area is under construction. We’ve never seen anything like it.

3)The malls here are out of control. There are sooooo many. And the scariest part is that Nick knows his way around all of them. It was a long six weeks.

4) What is more sad, the fact that Bret left his “gigi” on the airplane and will probably never get it back, or the fact that he doesn’t miss it :-(

5) There are these switches in every bathroom where you can turn the water heater off or on. This is because some people use the cold for hot and the hot for cold water in the summer. The water heaters are indoors and can cool the water when off better than the pipes for the cold water which run underground out in the hot desert summer. In fact, when I bathe the kids, I only use the “cold” water. This is a good thing, also, because my washer only uses the “cold” water. Crazy, huh.

6) My house is great, except for the fact that it has six toilets and nine sinks that I have to clean. Not to mention the WHITE tile that runs throughout the house. Nick will just have to get me a maid ;-)

7)Milk, which by the way I can’t stand, has only about a 3 day period from when you buy it until it expires. So we have gone to boxed milk, which many people buy as opposed to “fresh” milk.

The kids love it, especially with spoonfuls of the great chocolate milk mix that is made in Europe, so you know it’s good.

8) No matter how hot it is, the kids love to go swimming. No matter how hot it is, I still find some way to get cold.

9) Driving here scares me. I hope I get used to 4 lane roundabouts. Also, many drivers ( I won’t mention which nationality) view lane markers as mere suggestions. I can’t drive here in Dubai until I have a UAE driver license. This is because if you get in an accident and it’s your fault, you have to pay for the whole thing. If you kill someone in the accident, you have to pay 2,000,000 dirhams (about $550,000) in blood money. Once you have your license, you can get insured. There have been cases of poor laborers throwing themselves in front of cars so their families can collect the blood money. Whoa!

10) I am so lucky just because of where I was born.