Finishing the Work Week

I've settled into something of a routine while Craig is at work. I go to the pool in the morning. The pool is in the shade and the water is just a few degrees cooler than the air. I typically have the pool to myself when I get there. Before I'm finished, there will be a couple people sitting by the pool. But I haven't seen the same people twice, so I guess I'm the only one with a pool habit in the morning.

I spend the morning working on various things in the apartment - writing this blog, reading a book, or working on the class I teach at Allen. In the afternoon, I've started sewing.

Wednesday night, we went out to dinner with the team. This time, the request was for "a burger and a beer" so we went to a burger place in the souk just beyond the mall. Because the souk is attached to a hotel, we thought we would be able to get drinks there. But the burger place hadn't gotten a liquor license yet, so we moved to a British pub instead.

When several people in our party ordered burgers, we were informed that our meals would take 35-40 minutes due to the burgers. It's less clear why burgers take so long to cook, though we came up with several theories during our wait. Those who ordered the burgers reported that the burger was particularly dense and the meat had been finely ground, giving it an odd texture.

Craig and I shared a Scotch egg:

And I got a steak and mushroom pie that was very tasty:

On Thursday, I pulled a muscle in my neck during my morning swim. I had a rather lazy day as a result. Thursday being the end of the work week here, we were planning to go out for a nice dinner with the team. Craig had gotten a recommendation for a place that wasn't within walking distance. So we got dressed up to go out:

If I look funny, it's because I can't move my head.

We had a bit of a wait for a cab that would fit all seven of us. But the cab ride was a special adventure. In addition to the already harrowing traffic, our cab driver seemed to make a sport of driving opposite the speed you would expect. When traffic was nothing but brake lights ahead, our driver would speed up just to come to a body-jolting stop behind the stopped cars. When the road was empty, he inexplicably drove at half the legal limit. When slowing down for a stop light, he would "pump" the brakes - not like anti-lock brakes, but with a full to-the-floor motion that made the cab ride into some demented dark ride.

When we encountered traffic on the off-ramp from the highway, he made an illegal U-turn (which involved driving off the paved road on the sand) and got back on the highway going miles past our destination. Getting off the freeway again, he didn't get in the left lane to make a proper U-turn to get on the highway. Instead, he rolled down his window, flagged down a delivery person on a motorcycle, and convinced that man to cut off the van in the left lane (with his delivery motorcycle, mind you) so that we could also cut in front of the van.

Laughing manically, our driver got back on the highway and took us back to the mall we where we were planning to have dinner. Our front seat passenger reported later that our driver had also been scratching frantically at his legs and arms during the drive. I had been too busy trying to stay in my seat to notice such crystal meth induced behavior.

Craig took this picture of the open air, but air conditioned, restaurant:

And this picture of the appetizers our group shared:

This is what he ordered me for dinner (there was a piece of chicken buried under the vegetables and a pile of couscous under everything):

And this is what Craig had for dinner:

I was underwhelmed with dinner, though the appetizers were very good. I always love hummus and fresh bread, though.

For the cab ride home, we split into two groups and took cars back to the hotel. Not only was our driver far less adventurous, the trip home cost 2/5 of what the trip out had cost.

Hump Day - Tuesday

As Craig got ready for work Tuesday morning, he told me it was "hump day" - the middle of the work week. I think we're both finding the altered schedule amusing for different reasons. Of course, for me, being 12 hours ahead of Los Angeles makes a bigger difference in my day.

I went swimming again after Craig headed to work. I worked on my blog. And I read for a bit. I was reading a novel called Endgame - but it was horrible and I've given up on it. I got hungry early and decided to try cooking again. As it turns out, I consumed most of the morning attempting to make an edible lunch.

I started with instant noodles again. This time, I tried a new flavor - cheese. From reading the ingredients, however, I can assure you that no actual cheese was harmed in the making of this dish. In fact, no dairy products at all were included. And it tasted rather like that was the case:

I wouldn't say it was bad, necessarily. It just wasn't good. At all. Instead of a bad aftertaste, it had a bad...pretaste? first taste? I don't know how to describe it. The smell was off-putting, which isn't a good way to start. And the initial taste was somewhat chemical. Then the cheese / nutritional yeast flavor kicked in. It wasn't terrible, but it was difficult to get it into my mouth. After a few bites of that, I gave it up.

I decided to try this Basmati rice with mushrooms that I'd found at the grocery store. The package looked nice. And it cooked in the microwave. What could possibly go wrong?

It was sweet. I don't know what kind of mushrooms were used, but they tasted like raisins. I detest cooked raisins in cakes and cookies, but in no circumstance do I want them in my rice. According to the ingredients, they weren't raisins, but sugar was the third ingredient which might have caused the sweet flavor.

In the middle of my lunch-making fiasco, a repair man turned up to look at the oven. He played with it for a long time before calling me in. Then he showed me that you just have to have the oven door open when igniting the flame and you have to hold down the lighter for about 5 seconds. The door had just closed when I got the expected phone call: "Miss Hanna? Did someone come to fix your oven? Is it working now?" Goodness.

I gave up on prepackaged foods and returned to my classic - mayo, tuna, and green onions. This time I made noodles to go with it, because my stale bread can only be more stale now.

After lunch I attempted to nap again. This was a terrible idea and I'm done trying it. It's difficult to fall asleep despite my exhaustion, because it's light outside. But once I'm asleep, my body is back on L.A. time and refuses to wake up in the early morning hours after a single hour of sleep.

I finally pried myself out of bed, got dressed, and walked over to the mall. I was wearing perfectly "respectful" clothing - jeans and a long-sleeved, button-up SPF shirt (buttoned all the way up). But for some reason, walking to the mall I attracted a number of stares. This continued in the mall as well. I can only guess it was because I was by myself? Or because I have red hair. I can't say I've seen another person with red hair here.

I was on a coffee-focused mission. First, I needed coffee because of the ill-fated nap. But more importantly, Craig was nearly out of his Starbucks Via (an instant coffee he likes to take when he travels). I started at Starbucks, where I got my usual iced vanilla soy latte. The Starbucks experience is very similar to being at home. Except that my name is so unusual that they asked me to spell it for them. And they didn't call it out when my drink was finished. My drink was good, but the store didn't carry Via.

No problem, I thought. The Dubai Mall has four Starbucks shops on the directory. Unfortunately, I was only able to find three of them. And none of them carried Via.

I decided that a good alternative would be a pour-over device, like my brother uses to make coffee. I never found any of those, but I did find several french press options. Starbucks, Eataly, and Waitrose all had a french press. Surprisingly, Starbucks was the least expensive option. I also looked at Nesspresso, ThinkKitchen, and several other stores without finding any coffee making options.

Just as I was entering Waitrose, Craig texted to say that he was back and we were meeting everyone to go to dinner at 5:30. This was about 20 minutes away when I saw the text. The Dubai Mall has free wifi, so I'm able to get texts while I'm there, but my phone was in my purse so I didn't hear the text when it came in. We were going to eat in the mall, so we decided it would be easier for me to stay and meet them at the restaurant.

On my coffee search, I saw a Claire's. I needed a new hairband because mine had lost all its elastic from swimming. I picked out a couple options and went to the counter. For some reason, they wanted my mobile number. I gave it to them, which caused some confusion because it doesn't have the right number of digits. The lady asked me what country my number was from.

"U.S." I replied.

*blank stare*

"United States?"

*blank stare*

"America?"

"Oh. U. S." She finally said, writing down "U.S." on her form.

I don't think she had a clue where I was from. Then she asked for my "good name", which caused such continued confusion that she finally just looked at my credit card (I had already handed it to her) and wrote it down from there.

I met Craig and the team at Yo! Sushi. The girls decided to go someplace else, so only four of us at Yo! Sushi. Of course I got my favorite thing - all of the salmon:

By the time we finished, Craig and I had collected a few plates (to be fair, you can also see Brad's plates in this picture):

We had tickets to go up the the viewing level of the Berj Khalifa. This picture was taken in the queue.

Craig had gotten us special tickets that allowed us to go to a higher floor. This ticket also included traditional coffee:

And dates:

There were also snacks upstairs on the special floor, but I didn't take a picture of those. I had a stuffed date up there. But we had just eaten, so I didn't take anything else. They also served juice upstairs. I had orange juice and Craig had something green. I took a short video of the view from the 148th floor.

We took an elevator down to the 125th floor. We took the stairs to the 124th floor. The view was actually better from the lower floors. I think Craig took some pictures, but I didn't.

After we finished looking around, we headed back to the hotel. We made a quick stop at the grocery store to replenish my (attempted) lunch foods. Hopefully I have better luck with what I bought this time. Luckily, the nap didn't cause me any trouble getting to sleep or sleeping through the night.

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.

Strange Sunday

We had an alarm set for 7 a.m. on Sunday. That means I woke up around 6:20, of course. Sunday is the first day of the work week in Dubai, which has confused us in recent discussions. It's so ingrained to think of mid-week as Wednesday and to consider Friday the end of the work week. But here, Thursday is "Friday", at least in terms of the work week.

But confusing things further, we are twelve hours ahead of Los Angeles. So we woke up Sunday morning, Craig got ready for work, and we had pictures of all our friends and family heading out to trick-or-treat for Halloween. It's disconcerting, to say the least.

Craig set out to meet the team to walk to work and I headed for the "lap pool" in our building. The changing room had lockers, so I asked the person working in the gym where I found the key. He told me that I got the key to the locker outside, from the guy working at the pool. I went outside to be told that I got the locker key inside. I gave up on that as a lost cause and decided to keep my clothes with me at the pool. I went back inside to get towels. When I set those towels with my clothes on a chair, the pool guy came over and took those towels away. He did, at least, give me different towels.

I showered, put in my ear plugs, tucked my hair up in my swim cap, and put on my goggles. I got into the pool and started swimming toward the other end. Mind you, this is a small lap pool to begin with, perhaps half the length of a standard lap. Halfway to the other end, I saw that it got shallower. Then my hand hit the bottom. Before I could take another stroke, my elbow was nearly touching the bottom. I turned over and sat up, looking back at the length of the pool.

The pool guy came over and started talking. I had to roll up my swim cap and take out my ear plug to hear him. I think he told me that I didn't want to swim here. I should try the hotel pool.

The problem with this is that to walk over to the hotel pool, I would have to get completely dressed. It's not really acceptable to walk around in public in a swimsuit, even in a one-piece. I decided I would stay the course and try the hotel pool the following day. I switched to swimming the width of the pool, which was about four strokes and turn. That didn't last terribly long before I was incredibly bored. I did some exercises in the pool and went in to the locker room.

I actually enjoyed the shower in the locker room, because I could stand up completely and not worry about hitting my head. The shower in our apartment leaves something to be desired. I got dressed and headed back to our apartment.

I started laundry - sure to be an adventure with the tiny machine that poses as both washing machine and dryer. And I continued unpacking, using the hangers that had been delivered the previous day. I found I needed more hangers, so I called housekeeping for more hangers and for extra towels. I hate not being able to change towels when I want. I asked for five more hangers and two more pant hangers.

Some time later, a man showed up at the door with three pant hangers. He asked what size towels I wanted and I told him I wanted bath towels. I asked him about getting another chair for our dining room table - the one they found for us had a single chair. He asked if it was alright if he came back at 1 or 2. I agreed, as much because I didn't know what time it was as because I didn't have any plans for the day.

Just after he left, I got a call from housekeeping asking if I had gotten the hangers and towels. He was back with the towels while I was still on the phone. This was around 11 o'clock in the morning.

I continued unpacking and settling into the apartment. I sorted out where I wanted to sew, at least to start. I picked the corner of the bedroom with the best light and moved another light into the space. Here's a picture of the space, including the box for my machine and the suitcase full of my sewing supplies:

By this point, I was too groggy to try using an unfamiliar sewing machine. All I wanted to do was go to sleep, but I was determined to stay awake. I managed to stay awake, but I can't say that I did much more that was productive.

I ran the washing machine several more times, attempting to get it to dry our clothes. It refused, regardless of the cycle I selected. Even "intense drying" didn't actually dry the clothes. So I hung everything up around the bathtub.

Housecleaning showed up and asked if they could clean the room. I agreed and two men set about cleaning the room. Just after they left, the phone rang. The lady who had called earlier to check on the hangers and towels called again to ask me if housekeeping had come and if everything was satisfactory. I said that it was.

A few minutes later, the guy who had brought the hangers came back and asked if he could look at the wallpaper. Ordinarily, I would have trouble recognizing someone I had seen just once before, but he had introduced himself. The way he said his name didn't connect with the letters on his name tag in any way, so I had looked at him more than I might usually, trying to figure out where he was from. Dubai is incredibly diverse.

For whatever reason, he walked through the apartment with a clipboard. He did, as far as I could tell, look at the wallpaper and record the patched spots. I'm less clear about why they would choose now to do this sort of inspection. But he left and I got another call asking if someone had "checked the wallpaper".

Some time later, I was lounging on the sofa reading Buzzfeed and Slate and trying to stay awake when I heard water dripping. I wandered around in search of this water before I found it coming from a panel just inside the front door. I called housekeeping again.

Shortly thereafter, a man came up with a ladder and poked about in the ceiling. He concluded that it was condensation from the air conditioning unit. At least, he told me, "It's okay. Water from the AC condensing up there and falling down here." He had barely left when the phone rang. Now the lady wanted to know if the leak had been fixed. I told her that someone came up, looked at it, and decided it was condensation.

A bit after that, a man came up with the addition chair for the dining room table. As I was coming to expect, just after the door closed behind him the phone rang. I'm not sure if it's standard practice to call every time someone is sent to a room. Maybe it's because I'm in the room? Surely they wouldn't call every time the cleaning crew goes into a room. Maybe it's because I'm a woman alone in the room? It seems very strange. I'm not sure what they are checking up on or why.

I passed the rest of the afternoon playing Sims. I was too tired to do anything productive, but determined to stay awake. Craig was scheduled to have a business dinner, but that ended up just being a meeting. He was home in time to have dinner together. We decided to just walk to the hotel, because it doesn't involve crossing that crazy street like going to the mall would. Craig picked the Lebanese restaurant.

It was just after 7 p.m. and the place was completely empty. They assured us that they were open, it was just early for dinner. The live entertainment starts at 11:30, so that's when people come to have dinner. We ordered a chef's selection, which was an enormous amount of food. Dinner started with all this:

And this was the main course - there is chicken, steak, and lamb under the slices that look like pizza:

And it finished with this enormous fruit platter:

Needless to say, we didn't eat everything we were served. Just tasting everything left me nearly full. But the papaya in the fruit platter was amazing! I've never really liked papaya, but this was so good. I can almost understand why people eat it now.

After dinner, we returned to our apartment to try to stay awake until 10 p.m. Just as we are crashing from a long first day of the work week, our family and friends were waking up to their Sunday morning. Such a very strange Sunday.

National Pastime

Despite the fact that we'd gone to bed around 4 a.m. on Saturday, we set an alarm for 9 a.m. to make our adjustment to local time. Naturally, that means I woke up at 8:15. Still too late to catch most of my Kansas family awake.

We met the other early arriving Thinkwellian for breakfast. We walked over to the hotel, which does not seem to be connected to our building, and tried the buffet. We walked around the property a bit, finding the pool, the ladies changing room (which is about four stories under the pool), the gym (similarly located), and several restaurants. We returned to our building to get directions to the mall across the street.

The Dubai Mall is just across the street from our apartment. The street in question, however, involves twenty lanes of traffic passing in front of our hotel. Eight of those lanes are raised, with five going in one direction and another three going the other direction. These twenty lanes intersect with another [at least] eleven lanes. The mall is on the other side of this intersection of thirty-some lanes. That's what I can see from my window. I'll count next time I walk over.

There is a pedestrian crosswalk, which mostly involves waiting for the lights to change and carefully crossing the street. There are a few sketchy places where you have to cross unmarked places and a couple spots where the "sidewalk" is a paved path barely wide enough for a single person and within arms reach of speeding cars.

The Dubai Mall, however, is the largest mall in the world. At least by total area, Wikipedia informs me that it is only the fourth largest by gross leaseable area, whatever that means. Suffice it to say that the place is enormous. In fact, by the time we left the mall around 3 p.m., we had walked 6.9 miles. And remember, this mall is just across the street.

Given the weather in Dubai (hot and hotter), I can understand the attraction of indoor, well, attractions. The Dubai Mall includes an aquarium, an ice skating rink, a lift to the viewing platform of the Burj Khalifa, and a remarkable THREE daycares. Why does a mall need three daycares? I suppose because it is the largest mall in the world. We still saw plenty of children in the mall.

The Dubai Mall also has one of the largest fountain shows in the world (possibly the largest). We weren't able to see the show during the afternoon because it only runs a couple times during the heat of the day and we didn't manage our time and location well enough to see it. Did I mention that the mall is enormous?

We walked around the mall for a couple hours, but I honestly think that we saw less than half of the place. We stopped in one of the two food courts for lunch. We used the app (this mall has an app! But moreover, it *needs* an app to find anything) to find one of the four Starbucks. The Starbucks had some very odd square doughnuts. We'd just eaten lunch, so we didn't try any of the food.

And like Starbucks everywhere, they couldn't figure out Craig's name. But they did draw a nice face for us... Do you suppose they knew that was my drink?

Then Craig and I split off to stop at LUSH for a few things I hadn't bothered to pack. And we went to the supermarket for a few things we thought we might not find at the supermarket on our side of the street.

After a quick stop at our apartment to drop things off, we headed to yet another mall. This time we were headed for a "local" mall on Jumeira Beach Road. My research suggested that Craft Land, located here, is the best one-stop-shopping store for sewing supplies in Dubai. After a discussion with my brother about the local power, I had decided to leave my sewing machine at home and purchase on locally for use here. This mall was only a five minute cab ride away, but I'm glad Craig was able to go with me.

We found the mall and quickly found the shop. This mall was normal sized, perhaps the size of Westridge in Topeka. But after the Dubai Mall, this place felt more like an indoor strip mall. We were able to find the store and I quickly settled on the cheapest machine for sale. We purchased the sewing machine and headed out to find a taxi.

There were tons of taxis driving down the street, but all of them had passengers. After ten minutes or so, Craig gave up and used Uber to call a car. This made me doubly glad that I hadn't gone by myself, because I don't have data on my phone and wouldn't have had this option. Not to mention lugging around a sewing machine!

After stopping at the apartment once again, we headed out to the nearby supermarket. There's a 24-hour supermarket just around the corner from our apartment, which we had been told offered free delivery. We made our selections from a well stocked store. One thing we noticed here is the proliferation of power adaptors. Finding them in the States can be a challenge, but many stores here carry a wide selection of power adaptors, including some types I've never seen before.

As we made our purchase, we told the cashier that we wanted delivery to our apartment. It soon became evident that the person who would have been a bagger in the U.S. was simply going to follow us home with the shopping cart. This was a little awkward because we were planning to stop next door at the pharmacy.

We did that while he walked on ahead with our groceries. We caught up with him a few buildings down. I'm not sure if he didn't know where he was going or if he didn't want us to think he'd stolen our groceries, but it was a bit odd. When we got to the apartment, he got a luggage cart and asked our suite number. He showed up a few minutes after we got to our apartment. We felt bad because he probably didn't expect to have to take a flight of stairs to deliver our groceries, so Craig tipped him even though this isn't a tipping country.

I unpacked while Craig worked on his work email. Then we walked back to the Dubai Mall with Kathryn to see the fountain show and get dinner. I didn't take pictures of dinner, because it was pretty normal. The most remarkable thing about the Dubai Mall is that, other than the sheer size, it really isn't that remarkable. The stores are the same ones you would see in malls in Los Angeles or London. It's just that this mall has all of them - ranging from Forever 21, to TopShop, to Gap, and including too many designers to name. Seriously, just take a look at the list here. It's the same thing with restaurants - Red Lobster, Texas Roadhouse, TGI Fridays, The Cheesecake Factory, P.F. Changs, Rainforest Cafe, Five Guys, the list goes on. (If you're really interested, you can see the restaurants here.) We ate at Social House, which isn't someplace we are familiar with, but the food was relatively ordinary.

When we got back to the hotel, we met the rest of the team from Los Angeles in the pub. They were just arriving from a sixteen hour flight, so we didn't stay long. We just stayed up late enough to avoid waking up early the next day.

To Dubai

Our adventure to Dubai began Wednesday night with a hectic night of packing. I had class until 5 that day, but I stayed even later at school. Despite this month-long adventure, I decided that I would try to keep up with one of my classes long distance. In that class, we are currently working on a children's wear project. I needed to finish the dress so I could mail it to my brother before we left the country. He's (or more likely, my wonderful sister-in-law is) going to take pictures of my niece wearing my dress for my project. In the rush to mail the dress before we left, I didn't even take a picture of the thing!

When it comes to packing, we had done little more than set out the items purchased specifically for the trip - a supply of prescriptions, vitamins, a few things from the office, and a collection of sewing supplies I thought I would want. Not all my sewing supplies, of course, as I was still taking them to school and using them at home. We had talked only in the broadest outlines of what clothing I would need to pack - it's hot, but a certain (rather high) level of modesty is required in public. And we planned to do some shopping locally after we arrived.

Wednesday night was a blur of laying out clothing and organizing it into different suitcases to ensure that no bag would incur an over-weight charge. Craig picked up sushi on his way home from the office, so we didn't have to cook dinner. He took my package to the post office to mail to my brother. We dashed around the house to prepare for our absence - emptying the fridge, taking out the trash, and accomplishing other such chores. At least we have a little practice for that, what with our "vacation" home in Kansas.

We went to bed way too late to get up at 4 a.m. on Thursday. But we rolled out of bed, checked the house one last time, and schlepped our bags out to the waiting car. We had five suitcases to be checked, plus two backpacks and one laptop case to be carried on. We brought three laptops. I have my mac for my school work and my PC for...yes, Sims 4. That's right, I lug around a heavy gaming laptop just for one game that my gaming friends don't even recognize. Don't judge, I love it.

Our first flight was scheduled to be 5 hours and 30 minutes from LAX to JFK. Craig was upgraded, so I had to sit by myself. But one of Craig's previous assistants had the brilliant idea to book me in the aisle seat and put Craig in the center seat, so that when he's upgraded, I'm not stuck in a middle seat. Since learning that trick, I've come to expect an aisle seat.

Boarding was a bit of an adventure, at least for other people. One lady got two rows past me (to row 27) before realizing that her seat was in row 20. Because people were packed in the aisle all the way to the door, she had to convince some random guy to lift her roll-along bag over his head and help her get it back to her row. Before we finished boarding, another 8 people had to pull a similar maneuver because they had missed the memo that the overheads were full. They had to work their way back to the front with their huge bags to check them, through the people crowded in the aisle who had heard the announcement.

I had a Luvo wrap on the flight, because that's what is served in Delta Comfort+, but I forgot to take a picture of it. I slept for about an hour. And we landed in NYC fifty minutes early due to tailwinds.

We had slightly more than three hours in NYC, so we stopped at Buffalo Wild Wings to get something to eat. Air travel, I've decided, is actually about eating. You eat the food served on the plane (or at least the tolerable bits) because you're bored, trapped, and you might get hungry. You eat at every opportunity during layovers because the food on the plane was so unsatisfying. And you eat when you get to your destination, because your body has no idea what time it is.

Craig gave me his business class seat from NYC to Amsterdam. This should have been a 7 hour, 21 minute flight. I took pictures of the food served on the flight (mostly for mom). Enjoy with me.

Dinner began with this appetizer:

I cannot even begin to describe how disgusting this was. There was no description of this item, so I don't know what it was supposed to be. But the stuff in the bowl tasted like rotten tuna fish that had been smoked, then infused with artificial smoke flavor, and mixed with pickle relish. I hate the taste of fake smoke. And I hate anything pickled or vinegary. So this was bad. And did I mention that the fish tasted rotten? So I ate one of the saltines and saved the other packet for a snack later.

The actual meal started with a tasty mushroom soup (I love soup on a plane, there's something rich and decadent about hot soup in that setting.). The salad was a pile of lettuce with tomatoes and pumpkin seeds. I ate the soup.

Then this..."smoked short ribs, cornbread, and greens." In the description of the "smoked short ribs" they forgot to mention that the meat (which had the consistency of poorly cooked brisket, for whatever that's worth) was coated with black pepper. I took two bites and gave up on this dinner as a lost cause. In fact, I got the packet of saltines I'd set aside earlier and spread them with butter and called it dinner.

But dessert is always a winner - cheese, fruit, and port. Even if only one of the cheeses was worth eating, I enjoyed every bite of that cheese! It's little wonder I'm always hungry when I travel. Looking back at these photos I realized that I basically ate 3 saltines, 2 table crackers, a small wedge of blue cheese, a strawberry, and a handful of grapes.

After meal service, I went back to say goodnight to Craig (because he always comes back to visit me when we aren't flying together). Then I curled up and slept until they started breakfast service. Which was this:

It looks decent in the picture, but cooking eggs on a plane is just a terrible idea. No matter what, the eggs are always rubbery. The hashbrown cake was pretty tasty. And the orange juice was good.

We arrived in Amsterdam nearly an hour early. Again, the tailwinds had pushed us on our way. We expected to have a two hour layover, because that's what TripIt told us. In addition to that extra hour due to arriving early, we learned that we actually had a nine hour layover.

We decided to try Yotel. We booked a room for six hours. We showered and went right to sleep, stretched out on a cozy double bed. The room itself was little larger than the bed, but it was exactly what we needed. I took a short video of the room.

We woke up an hour before our rental of the room had concluded. But we were both so hungry and thirsty that we decided to leave early. We walked the length of the airport trying to decide what to eat before we settled on starting with Starbucks. After our caffeine fix and two large bottles of water, we were able to decide on a place to get a meal. I got tomato soup (in the blue crock) and croquettes with brown bread. Soup isn't the same when you aren't on a plane, I guess, but the croquettes were a nice change. You can see the remains of our Starbucks run in this picture as well. Craig got a burger, I believe, which you can barely see.

We boarded for Dubai. For this 6 hour, 34 minute flight, I was supposed to be in Economy Comfort while Craig was in Business. I was in economy and I wasn't even on the aisle. This didn't turn out as bad for me as it might have been, but I do feel a little bad for asking the man on the aisle to let me get up three different times during this flight. I cannot stand feeling trapped and always end up getting up more frequently when I do feel that way.

For dinner, I choose the chicken and rice. Suffice it to say that it wasn't good. And I didn't try the custard dessert item, because I didn't want to get sick and it didn't have ingredients listed. The blue box held a block of cheese, two crackers, and a chocolate. I ate about half the rice, a few bites of chicken, and the contents of the box.

Having already spent over ten hours in the air, I did something unusual on this flight - I watched a movie. In fact, I watched three movies - Pitch Perfect, Pitch Perfect 2, and Boychoir. I've seen the two Pitch Perfect movies before, but watching them back to back was nice. Boychoir was a really good movie, but a tearjerker. Actually, I cried at various times during all three movies. This is why I don't watch movies!

We arrived in Dubai shortly after midnight, local time. It took a long time to collect our bags, but passport control and customs didn't take too long. We were met by a driver who brought us to our hotel / apartment. He dropped us off at the hotel part of the property, and we took a golf cart ride to the apartment building.

Our apartment is on the 11th (top) floor of the building. The elevator only goes up to the 10th floor. So we have to get off the elevator and take the stairs to our floor. I have a video of our apartment (note that it has two sets of interior stairs - four steps to the kitchen on one side and four steps to the bathroom on the other side):

The video is really dark because I took it around 2 a.m. and we hadn't found all the light switches yet. I have another picture that shows the view out our window a little better:

Super Bowl Snacks

We started with nachos. Craig grilled steak and I made fresh nacho cheese. After one disasterous attempt from Pinterest, I adjusted the recipe and came up with the best organic cheese dip yet. 

You'll need:

1.5 cups whole milk

1/2 cup + 2T heavy cream

1/4 cup butter

2T corn starch

2 cups cheese 

In a sauce pan, heat milk and cream over medium heat until frothy. In another saucepan, melt the butter. Pour the hot milk into the melted butter (slowly, everything is hot). 

Whisk together 2T cream (or milk) and 2T corn starch. Add to the hot milk and butter. Cook over heat until it has reduced and thickened (5-10 minutes, the longer you can wait, the better it is). Sprinkle in the cheese and whisk until creamy and smooth. Enjoy!