It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas

Here's our sweet Christmas tree this year! It's a 6-foot artificial tree from Ikea, with red garland, red globe ornaments, and lots of old Christmas cards made into ornaments. I've yet to craft a tree topper, but it's on the list. We opted to put the tree on a table to make it seem less scrawny. My Mom sent the Christmas cards, which I trimmed and glittered, then hung with red yard. I think the next 3 "ornaments" are quite fitting for our overseas adventure.

I bought 3 cheap wreaths at Geant, pulled them apart, and added some garland on one to make a centerpiece for the table. I'd like to do the same for the other 2 and hang them above the stockings.

Our Lillian Vernon WELCOME sign lacks anything Christmasy, so I hung a stocking instead.

Since we don't have a fireplace, I decided to hang the stockings up over the opening to the kitchen. The gold bows came from the Geant wreaths. The stockings were only 11 dirhams each at Ikea. If I can find some embroidery thread in this country, I will embroider our names (or at least first initial!) on them.

I'm currently on the lookout for a Santa Claus photo-op for Colin. Fingers crossed....

ugly

Bathrooms, Dubai style

We have 2 1/2 bathrooms in our 2 bedroom apartment. There are no light switches inside of the bathrooms...they are all outside of the door. This takes some getting used to, particularly early in the morning when I'm fumbling around. The light switches in the apartment look like this:

Which also takes some getting used to! The switch on the left is in the "on" position, and the other two are "off". There are tiny lights that you can see if it's dark and the light switch is off.

And look! I found the sprayer!

Right next to the toilet! According to numerous Internet articles, in particular A Girl's Guide to Being Muslim, cleaning after using the toilet is a religious expectation in the Islamic faith. It must only be done with the left hand, and using a water sprayer is necessary to be "clean." Being physically clean is the same as being spiritually clean in this case. We just sort of ignore the sprayer and hope that we don't find Colin playing with it.

We also keep a lock on the toilet since his little frog Buddy has a tendency to jump in there to swim.

There are no outlets in the bathrooms, either, except for this low voltage socket for electric razors. I have to drag a surge protector into the bathroom to blow dry my hair since there are no other mirrors in the apartment.

Here's the tub...pretty standard, really, and littered with Colin's bath toys. All of the tile in the apartment has these nice brownish-orange accent tiles.

Our bathroom is pretty much the same as Colin's except we have a navy blue shower curtain and less cabinet space. The third 1/2 bathroom has been converted into a storage room :)

Our Kitchen

Not sure if you heard the news, but we finally got a dishwasher! I have gained back 2 hours per day that I was spending washing dishes. Most apartments here don't come with any appliances, so you have to buy your own.

Here is a view of our kitchen when you walk in the door. You can see in this picture that the sink is one-sided, and doesn't have a sprayer. I found the sprayer, but it wasn't in the kitchen. You'll have to read my next post...

Anyway, the dishwasher is beside the sink, and the washer/dryer is on the left. Having it in the kitchen is strange...and loud. The dishwasher is smaller than your average-sized machine. I can only put 4 full-sized plates in the bottom rack and I have to put them around the perimeter so the rinsing arm can turn. To the left side of the kitchen is the opening into the living room, and the shelves where we store our food.

We have a little collection of office supplies there in the corner. On the opposite side is a surge protector/converter. There are no plugs in the kitchen except the ones behind the appliances, so we have to use that for everything.

This is what you see if you look in from the living room. We have a gas range. There is a thick glass pane on hinges that covers the eyes when we're not using it. I believe it's there to keep dust from settling near the flame. Then, when you cook, you just lift it up and it acts as a splatter guard. The oven is sort of a pain. I can't ever get it to turn on! As I said in the post about Joe's birthday cake, there are no temperature settings on the oven, just the numbers 1-6. We have a little thermometer that hangs from the oven rack which helps. The oven and refrigerator are also quite small, but they work just fine for us.

This is our kitchen table in the living room

And the long awaited water cooler. You can't drink from the tap here, so having this is a life-saver.

One of my favorite features in the kitchen is the DOOR! It's great to keep it closed so little hands don't accidently stop the washing machine in mid-cycle, start the dishwasher, or ignite a flame on the stove.

What's Outside

I thought I'd show you some of the sights we see outside our apartment. This is the exit you'll take to get there (the Dubai Marina exit). You can see our building just behind the left side of the exit structure. It's the building with the 2 horns on the top. Here's a closer look at the building. There is a small section of green glass to the upper right side. We are less than halfway up. Here's a view from behind the building. The smaller building on the right is also part of the Dream Tower.

We're fortunate enough to have a 24/7 market and a pharmacy on the bottom floor of our building. They also deliver!

This is a view of the buildings on the other side of Sheikh Zayed Road.

A close up of the detail on the building. This is the ramp we take to the parking garage.

The front entrance. The Almaya market is just to the right of this picture. You can see the pergola over the pool, also.

The front lobby. Marble is everywhere!

Looking out of our apartment door, down the hallway. The elevators are on the left. Thankfully, there are 6 elevators so it's easy to get one in a timely manner.

This is the best view from our balcony. You can see the marina.

The same view at night.

Shopping!!

On Sunday, all 3 of us slept until 2pm. Oops! After "breakfast" we packed up Colin and headed to Ikea in the Festival City area of Dubai. I was so excited because, well, who doesn't love Ikea?!? Everyone in Dubai appears to love Ikea. The sheer volume of people in that place was quite impressive. Now I understand why Joe would be so stressed out every time he shopped there.


Moving around inside of a store is really tricky here in the Middle East. Their method of crowd control is quite different than it is in the US. As a generalization, people at home will let you pass by, then go back to what they were doing. Here, people seem kind of oblivious to their fellow shoppers. I got stuck in the middle of a family speaking Arabic and showing each other placemats. I was seriously right in the middle of them and no one would let me out! I had to accidentally undo the velco of my pop-up hamper that was accidentally aimed in their direction and then apologize profusely while I shuffled between two startled women.

The good thing is that we bought a wardrobe, changing table, toy shelf, chair covers, and some other small things, so it was well worth the trip. Colin thought so, too, since I bribed him with ice cream.

Then we came home and had a nice KFC dinner with Pete & Simone, the couple that Joe met when he moved here in March. They are a lovely pair. We won't get to see them for the next two weeks because they are headed to New Zealand to visit with Pete's family.




This morning the Ikea delivery people brought our furniture and put it together for us. Everyone delivers here, it's grand! Colin's room is now pretty much finished, so I thought I'd post some pictures. My cousins (the Haviland Jacksons) sent some great Thomas the Train appliques for the wall so I put those up this morning. I think they turned out pretty great.


This is the other side of the room, with a cheap but efficient changing station, a panda-themed trash bin that I bought by accident at Geant, and the black-out curtains that help Colin sleep 'til 2pm.

Of note, the closets here are really awesome.

For lunch today, we went down to The Walk at Jumeirah Beach Residence in the Marina which is about a block from our apartment. Pete & Simone live in JBR which is oceanfront. We had lunch at El Chico. Who would have thought that you can get sensational Mexican food in the Middle East? (If you look closely, you can see our reflections in the doors) The Walk is really beautiful, and is full of great restaurants and stores.
Tonight we went shopping at Carrefour, another French hypermarket. This one is better than Geant, but a little further away. It's inside the Mall of the Emirates. Having a grocery store inside the mall means that you walk through the mall with your cart full of food. Strange concept, right? You put a dirham into the cart when you pick it up, and when you put it back, you get your dirham back. It's the same concept as Aldi. We stood in line for at least 20-30 minutes to check out, so Colin needed a snack.

While in line I spotted this display of dates, any way you want them. Very popular here, and used to break your fast for Ramadan each night.I'm not sure if this picture does it justice, but the checkout lines here are a serious bottleneck. People pack in like sardines.

I was super happy to find a Carter's in the Emirates mall! AND they are having a sale! Wonder if they take American coupons?!?