Day Three

After seeing Craig off to work, I headed to the pool at the hotel. It isn't far, but my current swimsuit "cover up" is a pair of PINK sweats and the "Define Normal" hoodie Jada gave me - way too warm for this climate. At 8 a.m. the hotel pool is blissfully empty. Like the lap pool in my building, nearly half the hotel pool is a shallow 0.5 meters deep. But the hotel pool is much larger and the remaining half of the pool is 1.5 meters deep. Perfect for laps and exercises.

After swimming, I had to change so that I could return to the apartment. I went down several flights of stairs (I counted 40 steps going down and 39 coming up, which suggests something is wrong with my counting because I doubt the number of stairs changed) to the women's changing room. Once again, I enjoyed a shower where I could stand up. Now I've just got to decide if it's worth dragging my toiletries over with me, because the shower is much nicer than the one in our apartment.

I came back to the apartment and worked on the blog for a bit. I had a couple days to catch up on, so that took me quite awhile. I had made a tuna fish sandwich for lunch the previous day - it tasted just like one made at home despite the different brands of tuna and mayo. So I decided to continue my cooking adventure by making Ramen, or instant noodles as they are labeled here. I had picked up a few different flavors to try. I started with this chicken flavor:

This brand tasted exactly like you'd expect a wet paper sack to taste. So I tossed that and tried a different brand, also chicken flavor:

This one had basically no flavor. If you're familiar with the bland sorts of food I enjoy, you know this means it would taste like plain noodles in hot water to most people. But I was starving by this point and little flavor is, at least, an inoffensive flavor, so I ate it. I'd eat it again if I took the time to doctor it up with garlic and green onions, which is what I would do to Top Ramen at home.

After lunch, I decided to take a nap. Craig thought an hour long nap wouldn't disrupt my night, so I set an alarm for an hour. At first, I had a hard time getting to sleep because we keep the apartment so cold. I've been warm enough at night, but I was way too cold by myself. Too tired to get up and turn down the AC, I pulled the comforter off Craig's side of the bed and doubled it up over mine. I snuggled up way under the covers and fell asleep.

Two hours after I curled up in bed, I woke up. I picked up my phone. It looked like the alarm was going off, but my phone wasn't making any noise. I turned up the volume and set another alarm, just in case. This was a good thing, because I fell asleep twice more before I managed to get out of bed.

I decided to have a snack of crumpets and honey. This is one of my favorite treats when we go to London and there's a Waitrose in the Dubai Mall (remember, this mall has everything). We'd done some of our grocery shopping at Waitrose, so I had the supplies on hand. What I didn't have is a toaster. I attempted to turn on the oven to heat my crumpets, but nothing I did made it heat up. I'm not sure if the oven is broken or I just don't know how to use it. I ate my snack cold. I have to look into the oven situation.

Craig texted that he was on his way home. So I got dressed to go out to dinner. With the entire team, we walked over to the Dubai Mall. We crossed 22 lanes of traffic to get to the mall, not including any lanes of traffic on the mall property. (The way we went to the mall, we went up one of those sketchy one person sidewalks on property, then crossed 7 active lanes of traffic coming into the mall.)

We went through the mall, past the fountain show, and into a nearby property attached to a hotel. This is significant because only restaurants "attached to a hotel" are allowed to serve alcohol. One member of the team had expressed a desire to get a drink with dinner, which at least served to narrow our options somewhat. There is nothing like seven people who all say "I don't care, what do you want?" and the functionally limitless options located in "Downtown Dubai" (the kilometer wide development surrounding the Burj Khalifa). We still had half a dozen places to choose from in that property alone. We looked at a few menus before settling on an Indian place. I got butter chicken:

Craig and I also shared steamed rice, garlic naan, and mixed samosas.

Everything was good, but my butter chicken had cilantro in it even though we had asked about both cilantro and coriander. So by the time dinner was over, many parts of my mouth were numb and tingling like I had been to the dentist. When I tell people I don't like cilantro, they always ask if it tastes like soap. The taste is not the problem. My mouth reacts with numbness, tingling, and itching. If I eat a great deal of it, my lips swell a little and the skin around my mouth gets red and itches terribly. Now I say I'm allergic to cilantro, which I think happens to be true. I also don't like the taste, but more because I anticipate a horrible reaction than because of the particular flavor.

On our way back, Craig and I stopped at Waitrose again to pick up a few things. When you don't have a car, you have to adjust your purchasing habits. Why walk back empty handed? We walked a different way home. On this route, we crossed 11 lanes of traffic on the mall property - 8 of them just outside the mall and controlled by crosswalk monitors; 3 of them unmarked and unsignaled. At the intersection, we took a different route and crossed 24 lanes of traffic (all but two of these had a light).

Despite my unexpectedly long nap, I didn't have any trouble getting to sleep. And I only woke up twice during the night, but I was able to go back to sleep both times.