My First Wedding - Part I

by Cindy

I got invited to my first local wedding and I am so excited!  It is actually the wedding of one of my students with whom I have stayed in touch since her class ended.  She's traveled quite a bit to America so we often touch base about American things and after the wedding, she'll be moving to Boston where her finace is in graduate school.  There is even a possibility that I will get to see her this summer in Boston.

As for the wedding, I got the invitation on February 23rd for a March 3rd wedding at the Atlantis Hotel.  The short timeline is very typical.  The "maid of honor" hand delivered the invitation to my office. 

Once I had the invitation in hand, I had a million questions to ask and had to start planning.  First order of business - text another student of mine and have her meet me at Starbucks so I can ask all of my questions and get the inside scoop.  This young lady is my "go to girl."  I ask her all kinds of things and she's great with helping me bridge the gap between my American culture and the local culture.  I wish I could have recorded the conversation because it really would be worth listening to but here are the highlights.  Anything in quotes is literal (I swear!)

• The invitation says to show up at 8:30, that's what they all say. "I should show up at 10 or 10:30 that would be best."
• I need to wear a gown - full length, red carpet kind of gown.  "If Beyonce or Angelina Jolie wore it on the red carpet, you would be fine wearing it to the wedding."
• I need to wear diamonds (her assumption here is that I obviously own diamonds).  However, I need to "be sure that they are of good quality, particularly clear.  If they are not clear, someone might say something."  My student usually wears her necklace to weddings - it is 16 carats.  [At this point our converstaion digressed as to whether cars or diamonds are a better gift to give and which is a better investment.]
• I do not need to bring a gift, only the close friends of the bride will get her a gift.  "I especially do not need to bring her a gift of housewares like we give in America."  [By this time two other ladies had joined us and one of them thinks that housewares is a nice idea.]
• I need to wear my hair in a nice way.  One of the girls looks me over and says, "not like it is today."  Up or down is fine but it needs to be nice.  They verified that I had made a hair appointment (I had).
• I need to wear a lot of makeup.  Again, I got a look over and she reiterated "A LOT of makeup."  I need to wear eyeliner (I usually don't) and they all agreed that "cat eyes" would look good on me.  I should make an appointment at the salon on campus and they can put my makeup on in an appropriate way.  The current style for the local women is less makeup but still A LOT more than what a Westerner would normally wear.

Some of my questions were around what "must" I do, what "should" I do and what must I "not" do:

• Once at the wedding, I must go up on the stage and greet the bride.  The bride will not come off of the stage so if I don't greet her, she won't know I am there. 
• I probably should stay to eat if but I don't have to.  The food is usually pretty good so it is worth staying.
• I can stay until the men come (the men and women have separate parties) if I want, either way is fine.  I will know when they are coming becasue all of the women will put on their abaya.  I was told I should probably get an abaya, too.  If I stay until the men come, not only will I stick out because I am a Westerner but I will also not be covered so I will stick out even more.  [One of my Western friends advised me that unless I have an abaya, I should leave.  She said she stayed and felt totally naked.]
• I should take a friend with me (this is very common) because I will get bored just sitting there.  While I might be excited for this wedding becasue it is my first, the ladies all agreed that local weddings are really boring and that American weddings are much more fun.
• I should not sit close to the speaker or else I will not be able to hear for two days after the party.  The music is that loud.

So, the wedding is this Thursday night - I will let you know how it goes!

Water

by Cindy

Our water is cheap! I often forget this when I travel and gasp when I have to buy water that is $4/bottle. Even in Tanzania, it was somewhat expensive.

Today I bought this water, about 1.5 liters and it was 1.50 AED or $0.40. That seems reasonable to me! (I tried to give the bottle some perspective by placing it next to my grande mocha.)

The Westminster Connection

by Cindy

While Jeff and I were in Lubbock, we had the privilege of befriending many wonderful college students.  One of the students that we met during that time was Kim Taylor (now Kim Taylor-Gontier).  We have been fortunate to keep in touch with Kim since her graduation; including her moves to Dubai, London, Malaysia and now back to the UK.  Kim was visiting Dubai with her husband, Regis, this past week so we were able to meet Regis and catch up with Kim over a "Friday Brunch."  Even though Kim has lived in Dubai in the past, she had never been to a Friday Brunch so we had a good time sharing the Friday culinary tradition in this part of the world.

We look forward to many more culinary adventures on their future trips to Dubai!

Dubai Jazz Festival

by Cindy

We were fortunate to be able to attend one night of the Dubai Jazz Festival to see Macy Gray and Lifehouse.  Both were really good although quite different.  We ended up with seats on the 13th row so that made the shows even better.

Kilimanjaro - Part II

by Cindy

Earlier Jeff posted some of the facts about our trip to Tanzania so I thought I would take the time to add some commentary. Our team theme was "clear and copious." Our leader always wanted to know if we were clear and copious. There were 13 of us in our group, half female, with Jeff being the youngest and the oldest being 73! The best part about it is that the 73 year old made it to the top before anyone else. The trip was great. Definitely a once in a lifetime experience. We met some great people and had a great team.

First night of camping with the summit in the background.

From the get go, I was skeptical about even taking the trip. I knew it was a lifelong dream of Jeff's and I admit, after seeing first hand from Kenya just how beautiful the mountain is, it was kind-of tempting. But, it cost a lot of money, the packing list was four pages long and we didn't have a thing on the list! What we did have was in storage in Texas so we were starting from scratch. My real (unvoiced until now) fear was that Jeff would love the trip so much that every vacation would become a climbing vacation and there would be no more R&R vacations and cooking schools (my kind of trips!). I was afraid that we would be climbing Mt. Everest or K2 next! Fortunately, we are both on the same page in that we enjoyed the trip but eight days was a bit long for us. We prefer a night or two out and shower every few days.

The trip was not too hard physically. Jeff and I work out for 30-60 minutes six days a week and we were in good enough shape to climb. Most of the "climbing" is walking a path up the mountain. There was one section on one day that we were climbing over rocks and using our hands but otherwise, it really is more of a hike than a climb. As one of our team members put it, you are more challenged by the amount of air your lungs can take in than you are challenged by the hiking. We took six days to get up the mountain and some of those days we were to our camp site by lunch so we had the whole afternoon to rest and adjust to the altitude.

The hard part of the trip was the combination of the "other" elements that you don't necessarily consider and for which you can't really train. For instance, sleeping on the ground (or trying to sleep), the cold weather, having to get up multiple times a night to go to the bathroom and having to bundle up each time (remember - clear and copious), drinking filtered water from Africa and all of the intestinal issues that come with that, altitude sickness and not taking a shower for eight days. I admit it, not showering was the part that scared me the most! I took a plethora of wet wipes and took every chance I had to wipe down and clean up in any way I could. The upside was that the weather was cold so we didn't have to worry about sweating too much. I also wore a hat full time after the first day. I cannot express to you how nasty my hair was. I would wear it in a pony tail during the day, take the elastic holder out at night and the next morning, it would still be in the form of a pony tail, even though I had slept on it! GROSS! It helped that every other woman on the trip was in the same boat but it was still gross.

We were fortunate to have amazing weather for the whole trip. It rained twice, both times while we were in the tent eating lunch. We had fog a couple of times but the next day it was clear so we were able to see the things we had missed. My favorite part was that we were above the clouds! It really was a cool feeling and a great accomplishment.

Overall the trip was a success and I am tankful that we took the time to do it. It was only a four hour flight for us and a one hour time difference. Would I recommend it? Only if you are already considering doing it. If you are thinking about it - go for it! It will be easier than you think. Jeff and I were both thankful that we already have our next trip planned so on the tough days, we were taking and daydreaming about cooking school in Seville and the sweet villa in the Southern Spain countryside that awaits us in April!

Above the clouds.

We made it up the Western Breach - above the clouds!

Camping in the clouds.

Porters and campers hiking into the clouds.

Before we got started.

Valentines Day

by Cindy

Much to Jeff's credit, he tried to make our Valentines day evening special. We talked about it a few times before we left for Kilimanjaro and I was non-committal about what I wanted to do. Valentines day was our first full day back after the climb and the first night of real sleep in our own bed so I was not sure that I would be up for a nice evening on the town. Also, because of prophet Mohammed's birthday, no one in the country was able to sell alcohol on Valentines day.

We decided on a low key evening, a taste of home and an early to bed option. For us, sometimes the taste of home is "just what the Dr. ordered." We are fortunate that we can get just about any food here, including Tex-Mex, but this time we settled on deep dish pizza - and we each had our own!

Kilimanjaro - Part 1

We're back from the Roof of Africa. We'll have several posts about our trip in the coming days, but I'll stick with a few simple details for now (since we just arrived back in Dubai a few hours ago).

Mountain: Kilimanjaro (5,895 meters, 19,341 feet), highest in Africa
Ascent Route: Machame/Western Breach
Descent Route: Mweka
Days: 8 (6 days up, 2 days down)
Elevation Gain: 4,157 m, or 13,632 feet
Camps: Machme, Shira, Barranco, Arrow Glacier (2 days), Crater, and Mweka
Group Size: 13 climbers (plus 77 porters!)
Guide Service: Mountain Travel Sobek (yes, we liked them)

The all-important summit photo is below.

The Prophet's Birthday

by Cindy

The Prophet's birthday is coming up, and it will be celebrated on Tuesday, February 15 – the 12th of Rabea’ al Awwal on the Muslim calendar. The public holiday when his birth is observed, however, was recently moved from Tuesday to Thursday so that the holiday could coincide with a weekend.

This is all a little odd to us, though, that the holiday was only recently officially moved. I realize that in America, we have holidays that are set up to give three-day weekends, but it's still funny that they only officially "move" the holidays to coincide with the weekend a few days or weeks before the occur.

Here is the article from the local paper: Public Holiday for Prophet's Birthday Moved

The Roof of Africa

by Cindy

If you are reading this around the time it was posted, Jeff and I are on our way to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Africa. Last year when we went on Safari in Kenya we were tempted by the mountain every place we looked. We couldn't resist but try and climb it. Let's hope we make the 5,895 meter / 19,341 ft summit!

Here is a picture of Mt. Kilimanjaro from an airplane.