Rain Day???

This week, much to our surprise, has been very rainy. We never thought we would see this much rain here, especially after the first 5 months we saw hardly a drop, with constant blue skies. The local newspaper said "The deluge that has waterlogged Dubai is the largest amount of rainfall ever recorded in the city - 108.8mm of rainfall was recorded since last Friday beating the old monthly total record rainfall of 89.5mm." Well, needless to say in a city that is pretty much one big slab of concrete with a poorly planned drainage system (c'mon, it's the desert, right?) major flooding occurred. The city shut down, the second time in one week after our unexpected president's day. The roads and parking lots turned into ponds. It was so bad, that schools in Dubai and the northern emirates were shut down for 2 days. When I picked up the kids from school on Tuesday, we had to trek through about 8 inches of water in the parking lot to and from our car. The kids were excited about their day and a half school week, while I feel like the kids haven't been to school in ages. Last week they only had a 4 day week due to the Islamic new year, and that was their first week back after the long winter break. Can't a mom get a break around here?

The kids and our next door neighbor Hugo using umbrellas for the first time here

The road outside our neighborhood. I took this while I was driving (unsafe) which explains the glare off my windshield.

The water on this road was about 2 1/2 ft deep and cars were stalled all over the place. We drive an Explorer, like the one in the picture, and the water came up to it's tail pipe. The day before this, I was driving under an overpass and came to some water and my car stalled for a split second. You know the rule about how if you don't know how deep the water is you shouldn't drive through it, well I kind of ignored it - not smart.

The kids and some friends at the park on one of the rain days.

Beach - not bad for January.

Kids and neighbors enjoying the day off fighting as Jedis.