Thanksgiving Part II

by Cindy

We were fortunate to get to attend two Thanksgiving Dinners over this past weekend. This particular dinner was mostly people from church but we had a fair amount of people who were non-American and experiencing their first Thanksgiving ever. It was fun, and sometimes harder than you think, to explain our food and why we like it all so much.

Race to Dubai

by Cindy

The last stop on the European Golf Tour is here in Dubai. Dubai has marketed the tournament as the "Race To Dubai" since the top 50 money years of the year get to play in the tournament. The tourney also has the largest purse on the tour. Fortunately for us, really only the expats follow golf so you can go out the course and get right up on the tee boxes or the practice green to see everything. I would assume it is a great place to get autographs, too, if you wanted to. Here are some pics from our time out at the tournament.

World's #1 golfer - Lee Westwood

Westwood and Kaymer. Neither won the Tournament, but Kaymer won the money title for Europe. Westwood is currently ranked #1 in the world.

Sergio Garcia teeing off at the first hole.

All of the European trophies.

Sergio Garcia (white shirt) and Rory McIlroy on the practice green.

Friends in our back yard

by Cindy

Our house backs up to one of the many play grounds on campus. Today Jeff went out to chip a few balls and made a few friends. They all wanted to swing the golf club but they swung it like a baseball bat. Jeff was able to get them to help him out in other ways.

Notice how he's lining up the balls after Jeff chips them into the bucket.

She's lining up the balls and giving them to Jeff one by one so he can hit them.

Thanksgiving Part I

by Cindy

We got to share our first of two Thanksgiving meals this afternoon/evening on the AUS campus. Since the weather is so nice, we are outside as much as possible. We had all of the usual fixins' along with great company. Our hosts cooked three or four Turkeys and they were amazing!

Apparently all bald men like to eat together.

Soccer - or as they say here Football

by Cindy

I think we have mentioned before that sometimes the hardest people to understand are others that speak English as their native language. I got this email today from one of the Wellness Coaches, who is from the UK, and even though I played soccer as a kid and speak English as my native language, some of this sounds foreign to me!

Tuesday night AUS U16’s played against Uptown and won 10-4.

The boys showed great character to come back from 1 goal down to win the game in emphatic form. It was a great team performance with a man of the match winning performance from Mutez who came on as a substitute for the second half and scored with his first touch and then went on to score an additional 2 goals in quick succession.

A big thanks from both the teams to the referee Mujo Mesanovic for volunteering his time, also a big thank you to everyone who came out to show their support.

We hope to see you all out there for the next fixture in the coming weeks against Victoria English School.


Well done to all the players.

Dishdashas

by Cindy

We just loved this headline. The problem is that most of the world probably doesn't get it. A dishdasha is the traditional dress the men wear here in the Emirates. The long, white robe - that's a dishdasha.

http://www.economist.com/node/10229471

In case you are not familiar with ADIA, I would suggest reading the first three paragraphs of this Wikipedia article. The US Government could take a page from ADIA's book!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Dhabi_Investment_Authority

Turkeys

by Cindy

It's two weeks before Thanksgiving - and we wanted to let all of our readers back in the US know that we will be able to celebrate. We turkeys for sale here but they are not cheap. The cost us $1.96 / lb.

The Changing Face of Racism

by cindy

This political cartoon recently accompanied an opinion piece in our local paper. We're not sure if our readers in America realize this, but many people perceive that America doesn't want immigrants from the Muslim world. In spite of all the rhetoric in America about being a "melting pot" and a "nation of immigrants", a place where "equality" exists, people outside of America perceive that America is still a place where some people are "insiders" and some are definitely on the "outside."

[And from Jeff: If you'd like to consider what "America" is all about, you should consider watching the movie, "The Good Shepherd" with Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie, Robert DeNiro, and Alec Baldwin. It's about the creation of the CIA. I'm not endorsing everything in the film, or saying that it's the last word on anything, but it provides some thought-provoking material.]