Saturday, February 19, 2011

we are not in egypt

warning: this blog is boring and may put you to sleep.


i've had a few people ask me recently if we're safe here in the uae. egypt is further away than it might seem. the new issue of 'unrest' in bahrain is a bit closer, but truly, we're fine here. i don't think there's any danger in abu dhabi for the time being. here's a recent article on cnn which kind of explains who is feeling what:
http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/meast/02/14/arab.region.unrest/index.html?hpt=Sbin.

on a less serious note, the coque au vin (sans mushrooms - jeff doesn't like funghi) turned out really good (if i may pat myself on the back). look out cooking show queens!

since this is a 3 day weekend because of the prophet's birthday, wednesday was jeff's friday and we went out for a VERY lengthy happy hour with his co-workers (retta (love her), stew, tim, kent, suzanne and a few other people i can't remember). we started at 'cho gao' in the crown plaza, where drinks for ladies are half price (score!!!). after consuming quite a lot of aged grape juice, we wandered over to 'cristal' at the millenium hotel where we watched the sweet dance of love between a 20 year old asian prostitute and a man that could have been her grandfather. retta tried (unsuccessfully) to pick up men for two of her teacher friends - channin and stephanie (my new uae best buds). cocktails at 'cristal' were way over-priced, so we went back to the crowne plaza sports bar - 'heroes'. heroes was packed, smoky, full of rabid soccer fans and in hindsight, a mistake. the last stella of the evening made for a queasy thursday.

despite the hangover, the next day we went on a desert safari (i've been wanting to get up close and personal with a camel for a while and this did not disappoint). 'cyclone tours' picked us up at our apartment and we drove about an hour out of abu dhabi. the beginning of the trip started with a stop at the camel farm where we met about a dozen pissed off looking creatures. there was also a 15 day old baby who tried to nurse on jeff's fingers.



after many, many camel pics (see them on fb shortly), we hopped back into our jeep (thankfully with roll bars) and did a little 'wadi bashing', which is just a term for insane driving on the sand dunes (not something that should be done while hungover). i had a death grip on the roll bar and almost wet my pants when our driver came close to rolling the car several times. we arrived at the bedouin village where jeff rode a dune buggy (i was still recovering from the drive in the 4x4) and i rode a camel, who grunted when i climbed upon his back.




also got a henna tattoo (which kind of looks like a bad birthmark).



we had a lovely arabic dinner (with weiners - weird) under the stars and finished the evening with entertainment from a rather fetching belly dancer. all in all, a terrific way to get over the after-effects of the evil grape.

i'm late in getting this posted and have to run out again. more later from the airport!!

love and camel toes,

tricia


 

1 comment:

Unknown said...

You are such a keeper. Love you.