Making Minor Adjustments

I am adjusting well here. A lot of things are exactly like home. In fact, this was in the mall.

The hotel feels just like a hotel in the states. I love my hotel and how the staff cleans your room in the morning and then does a turn-down service at night. They always put Kingpin on my pillow waiting for me. My family knows the significance of having Kingpin over here with me.

 The hotel pool is much like those at home. I love the swim-up bar ours has.

 After getting out from the hotels and malls you hit a gray area. By this I mean you don't feel like you are at home anymore, but you are still within a comfort zone. Places like the Central Market Souk. I saw this on an episode of Build It Bigger (which you can download from itunes if you are interested). On the episode, they showed how each panel of wood was placed by hand, and how each tile of the mosaic floor was handmade. I saw it in person and it is beautiful.. The pictures definitely don't do it justice. However beautiful, you still are in your comfort zone of feeling like you are in a mall or a flea market. In fact, this place had very few Emirati people, mostly Westerners, so we felt as though it was a little touristy. Here you can buy jewelry, spices, knick-knacks, and some rugs and furniture.

  

As I said before, the woodwork is amazing and intricate. I am so glad I had seen the episode of Build It Bigger to truly appreciate what went into making this building!

 Also, within the category of "gray area", I would classify the views and skylines. I know I am definitely not in Illinois, Indiana, or Atlanta, but I still don't feel that 'foreign' looking at it. The weirdest part of they city skylines is that when I researched Abu Dhabi at home, all the pictures made it look like a huge mishmash of buildings in one location, but being here, you see skyscrapers in clusters everywhere. You might think you are looking at "downtown" but then you look miles in another direction and you see another cluster that could be "downtown". This is the area I see from the hotel stairwell.

For now, I can move on to the "big adjustments" section of this post. These are some things that I find to be quite different from the United States. 

First - If one more person says "Oh, it's the desert, it must be a dry heat", I might just choke them out. There is NO DRY ANYTHING here!! The moment you walk outside, you are wet from condensation from having been in air conditioning. Once the condensation subsides, you are soaking wet from your own sweat because it is around 115 degrees here daily, even hotter in the sun. You instantly have a river running down your front and your back. The minute you walk outside you get a lesson in glaucoma (aka severely fogged glasses). For many minutes your iphone or ipad is unusable due to having a wet screen. Many people have opted to leave their ipads indoors for fear of moisture damage. Here is an example. If you crack your door open to your balcony for just one minute, here is what your mirror looks like.

Obviously with all this heat you try your best to jump from building to cab to building BUT here is where comes the next major difference between Abu Dhabi and the United States. In Abu Dhabi, they have yet to adopt a formal address system. For instance, in the States you might hop in the cab and say "Please take me to 555 Georgia Avenue". The cab takes off, pulls up, you hop out, and walk inside.

Here: You have to tell them "We want to go to XYZ Business, on Al Falah Street behind the DHL building". If they can get you there, they will drop you off there behind the DHL building, but you might wander the streets for 20-30 minutes trying to find XYZ Business.. all while sweating. You must have patience here. 

Today we attempted to find a hair salon (or as they label them here, Hair Saloon), and wandered the streets for 45 minutes in the heat and never did find it. Not only that, my friend Candle bought a small beautiful cheesecake for her friend's birthday. We were going to quickly find the salon so she could make an appointment, then she was going to deliver the cake to her friend at another hotel. Clearly, from the picture below, you can tell the cake did not make it. If you can't tell, the cake is a blob of cream cheese at the bottom of the box. I still think it was a cute gesture. 

Another big difference here is the service industry. People here often wait on you, not just adequately, but above and beyond. When you go in a furniture store, they RUN to the back of the store to bring you a drink and a "sweet" (use of quotations to be discussed shortly). If you have a question they don't know the answer to, many will tell you what you WANT to hear, but many will RUN to go find the answer. If your size shoe is not in stock, they RUN to find you something else. We also noticed how meticulous the service workers are. We were actually debating whether or not they were actually meticulous, or were American standards just mediocre. For example. The middle of the mall had a huge Ramadan display. When Ramadan ended, the display was taken down, and we saw numerous workers cleaning the area, with supervisors pointing out every tiny imperfection or gunk on the floor for the workers to clean. In the states, I think generally they would have mopped it down with some dirty water and called it a day. Also, on the service side of things, every place delivers here, even KFC.

Now I will explain the "sweets". They call them sweets, but they are definitely not sweet. Most are dates, or nuts, or dates rolled in nuts. Most are not palatable (not to me anyway).  I kindly took a bite of mine, and when the owner of the store wasn't looking, wrapped the rest and stashed it in my purse. Apparently he thought I enjoyed it, as he later offered my friend and I the whole box to take home. Of course we pulled out the old standby excuse - "Oh no.. It was so good, but we cannot eat too much because we are watching our weight".

Another difference is the love and admiration of Sheikh Zayed, who is known as the father of this country. He is remembered for his kindness and generosity. There are billboards and posters everywhere with his picture on them.

Also among the things that are very different here is the driving. Basically anything goes. A lot of speeding, honking, swerving, and tailgating at high speeds. Pedestrians do NOT have the right of way, which makes crossing any street potentially dangerous. I will be getting a car here soon. Driving here makes Atlanta feel like Amish Country. Luckily once you get out of the inner-city, it is a lot of straight highway driving, which helps me to feel more at ease. 

Here are just a few more pictures to share in this addition of my blog:

My moving/birthday gift to myself. From the Ramadan/Eid Shopping Festival.

At the souk we ate at a rooftop Lebanese Cafe. They have air conditioning units they pull up to your table. I had Kofta Egyptian. Kofta means they use ground meat that they form around the skewer before cooking. Egyptian was the style of spices added to the meat. It came with a dipping sauce that was good. It was about the closest thing here to ranch dressing. NOTE TO FRIENDS AND FAMILY: If you ever feel the need to send me a care package, send me some HIDDEN VALLEY RANCH!!!!  Sidenote: We have noticed that when people see we are American, they bring ketchup. Even at the Indian restaurants.. Still haven't figured out what they think I want to dip in ketchup, but funny nonetheless!

After dinner they brought us free dessert. The waitress, who spoke very little English, told us it was milk and rice. The consistency was very similar to rice pudding. I could tell it also had honey on the top. The flavor tasted like one of those gelatinous air fresheners from dollar tree (flower scented).