September 5, 2008 – The Break Fast Club

Obviously the blog has improved my correspondence vastly.  It’s been, what, 3 months since my last post?  Sorry to say life among the dunes has been busy lately.  I’ll skip the boring details and focus on the really fun stuff.

And there’s nothing more fun than…not eating or drinking during daylight hours for a month.  That’s right, Ramadan began this week, and I’ve decided to give fasting a whirl.  No, I’m not changing my name to Kareem Abdul Cavagnuolo, nor am I in the habit of asking which direction Mecca is these days, but I figure if my student and his family are doing it, I should at least try to experience what they’re going through to some degree – minus all the praying, of course.  So far I’ve found it helpful to some extent.  While my student and I still have our occasional moments of disharmony, it’s much easier for me to empathize with him when he’s tired and grumpy since I’m often feeling the same way.  Of course, those occasional moments of disharmony may be exacerbated or even caused by the fact that we’re both tired and grumpy.  But then the empathy kicks in again – it’s sort of a weird chicken and egg thing.

Plus, fasting gains me some credibility with my student’s father, uncles, and the rest of the men at Iftar dinner, the nightly breaking of the fast that takes place at the men’s villa at his home.  As far as credibility goes, it also doesn’t hurt that by donning a kandoura and sufra (traditional Emirati garment and headwrap), I pretty much blend in; my first night at Iftar, I was mistaken for an Arab…until I spoke.  But whatever “Arab cred” I lose as a result of my complete incompetence with the language I seem to regain as a result of voluntarily eschewing vital nutrients between sunrise and sunset.

As for Iftar itself, I have to give credit where it’s due – it’s a nice reintroduction to sustinence after being deprived of it for a while.  Honestly my favorite part of the whole affair is immediately after the adhan (call to prayer) when they pass around dates, laban (yogurt drink), and, most importantly, water.  After that, everyone goes to pray, and when they return, we commence the feast.  Tons of food, ranging from traditional Emirati dishes (mostly rice and meat – don’t be surprised to find the head of a sheep or goat or some other ruminant nestled within a bed of rice) to Indian fare like pakoras and samosas to spaghetti, chicken tenders, and french fries.  All of it is great and very little of it eaten; in ironic fashion, it turns out that a side effect of fasting for 14 hours is loss of appetite.  Or, more accurately, deferral of appetite to unusual and often inopportune times.  I’ll elaborate with a description of my typical day this month:

4:15 AM – Wake up, eat a small meal, and drink a crapload of water until the sunrise adhan; back to sleep.

Anytime between 9 AM and 1 PM – Wake up feeling hungry, thirsty, and without energy; try with little avail to concentrate on simple tasks and be productive; end up watching TV.

2-8 PM – Work with my student and then attend Iftar; feel hungry but still not able to eat very much; drink a crapload of water; retire to the men’s villa for tea, coffee, and very strange Arabic television programs.

8:30 PM – Go to the gym and hit the treadmill as hard as my energy level will allow; drink a crapload of water.

10 PM-12/1 AM – Shower; get really hungry and eat whatever I can find lying around my apartment; drink a crapload of water; back to sleep; lather, rinse, and repeat.

It’s a different life, for sure.  From talking to folks here, it seems that most people who observe Ramadan end up pretty much reversing their schedules, staying up til sunrise eating, drinking, and being merry, then sleeping for a few hours, waking up and putting in a short day at work, then sleeping again until shortly before the sunset prayer.  Because of my work schedule, I can’t go to those extremes, but close enough.  As I write this, it’s 3:30 AM, and I haven’t slept yet…

As for effects of the fasting, other than those described above, I can definitely detect major changes in my mood, at least when I’m not at work.  I’d say my temper is a bit shorter and my patience a bit thinner, but it’s not only that.  Rather, it seems that my emotions have been just a little closer to the surface lately, like I’m quicker to react to something, regardless if it makes me happy, sad, angry, etc, or I’m less willing or able to fully control an emotional response.  I’m not snapping at people or being rude or anything, but I’m also not really making much of an effort to hide what I’m feeling at any moment.  I’ve read that part of the aim of fasting is to focus less on the physical and more on the spiritual/emotional part of the body, so perhaps I’m simply getting in touch with feelings I’ve kept guarded or been too busy to notice.  Perhaps I just don’t have the energy to keep them guarded now.  Perhaps I’m just really, really hungry… 

In keeping with the spirit of generosity that characterizes Ramadan, I’ll leave those dedicated souls among you who’ve read this far with a long overdue and hopefully exciting treat.  I recently went on vacation with Andrea to Turkey, which was awesome and which I’ll write about soon.  The effects of our time in Turkey can be described as nothing less than life-changing, not so much because of the many incredible sights we saw or places we visited, but moreso because we entered the country as boyfriend and girlfriend but emerged from it engaged.  To one another, in case you weren’t able to infer that.  So yeah, all in all, not a bad vacation, I’d say.  All understatement aside, it goes without saying that we’re both extremely happy, as are our families.  Andrea and I have been together for so long that we’ve both felt at times like we were already married, as if the engagement itself were a foregone conclusion, but that hasn’t at all tempered the excitement, joy, and above all comfort that I feel now that we’ve actually made this commitment to one another.  I’m sure some of you will want to know the details of the proposal, but you’ll just have to wait until a future post for those.  You’ll forgive me for whetting your appetites nearly to the point of cruelty, but as someone who’s had some recent experience with hunger, I can assure you, you will all survive.  I promise it won’t be another 3 months before my next entry.  I should have more time to write over the coming weeks.  After all, I need to pass the many food- and water-less hours somehow.  Til then, Ramadan Kareem everyone!

May 22, 2008 – What this country REALLY needs is…

 

During Andrea’s last visit in April, I came to the conclusion that despite the many amazing technological advances that the UAE has made in the 36 years that it’s actually been a country, there are still a few minor details that the founding fathers and captains of industry neglected.  

 

While traveling from Abu Dhabi to the Musandam Peninsula (the northernmost tip of Oman, which, parenthetically, happens to be separated from the rest of that nation by Fujairah, a particularly pushy section of the UAE whose ambition to touch the waters of the Indian Ocean came at the expense of a contiguous Oman), we had an extremely difficult time locating and remaining on the highway.  The source of this difficulty soon became apparent: this country has no highway. 

 

 

 

Or, to be more accurate, it has no road that would warrant the appellation of highway for more than 75 miles at a time.  In a feat of brilliant engineering that epitomizes this nation’s unique take on functional infrastructure, 5 lane thoroughfares seem to haphazardly and without warning dematerialize into the central arteries of major metropolitan areas.  So after hurtling happily between emirates at 80 mph, we suddenly found ourselves stuck at not one, but a whole series of traffic signals amid a plodding, cacophonous ocean of automobiles.  To make matters even more enjoyable, the way out of these vehicular quagmires was somehow never along the same road as the way into them.  You would think that the highway leading into the heart of town, upon emerging from the urban nightmare in which it found itself ensnared, would logically continue on in the same direction as it had been going prior to its unceremonious demotion to the status of a city street.  Or, if the main road did head off in a different direction, you’d obviously expect there to be signs indicating as such and pointing motorists toward their desired destinations.  But you would be sadly mistaken were you make either of the above assumptions.  As a result, we ended up getting lost in no fewer than 3 of the 7 emirates and having to navigate our way out with nothing more than an assortment of out-of-date, poorly-detailed road maps and our collective wits. 

 

If the prospect of encountering this scenario sounds frustrating, try enduring it at least 6 times over the course of a 6 hour drive.  I believe the moment that the proverbial straw broke my personal camel’s back and my gradually escalating distemper blossomed into a white-hot bolt of rage flashing just behind my left temple came somewhere in the outskirts of Ras Al Khaimah.  Here, a particularly infuriating stretch of “highway,” punctuated every 2 minutes by needlessly long traffic lights, was diverted by construction into a single lane of traffic puttering along what basically amounted to the interconnected parking lots of several strip malls while an abandoned backhoe sat in mocking indolence among the dirt and gravel piles where the main road once was and where it may be again some day in the indeterminate future.  It was enough to make me seriously contemplate testing out the off-road capabilities of our rental Toyota Yaris, heading into the desert, and bypassing the streets entirely; as illustrated above, half the roads have been reduced to dirt, so would driving on the sand really be that much of a downgrade?

 

 

Now I realize that much of the frustration expressed in this post is the result of viewing things through American eyes and allowing my opinion of certain aspects of life here to be clouded by the arrogance that can easily derive from having been born and raised in the land of plenty – something that I generally try to avoid.  But the truth of the matter is, this is not a third world country.  This is one of the wealthiest nations in the world, a nation that routinely makes headlines for erecting some magnificent (and wholly unnecessary) icon of luxury and splendour, a nation that hopes to supplement if not equal its oil-based revenue with that provided by its aspirations to be a new Xanadu for foreign businesspeople and tourists.  My point: they can build a damn highway if they want to.  Hell, they can build hundreds of them, plus a light rail or two, and still have enough cash left over to build an underwater hotel and the world’s tallest building.  They have just chosen not to. 

 

 

 

One of the most irritating (and simultaneously comical) things about this country is that it strives for the extravagant without dwelling on the pragmatic.  As a result, they have indoor skiing in the desert but no interstate.  They can reclaim land from the sea to build palm- and globe-shaped islands, but a viable public transportation system eludes them.  Five-star hotels are a dime a dozen, but reliable internet access is hard to come by.  What good is building replicas of the Seven Wonders of the World if there aren’t clear road signs – not to mention clear roads - leading to them? 

 

 

 

The explanation for this state of affairs is obvious: palm islands, indoor skiing, five-star hotels, and reconstructed monuments make money; roads and street signs don’t.  The architects of the new UAE are in business to make money, and they have succeeded.  Their unlikely dream of going from the rigors of Bedu life to the pinnacle of opulence in less than 50 years has worked, but only too well.  The “Ready.  Fire!  Aim” philosophy behind transforming empty desert into world-class metropolis without first laying down the infrastructure necessary for such an upheaval is starting to have its cost.  So many tourists and businesses were attracted here that the cities cannot grow fast enough to accommodate them all.  Streets are overcrowded with cars because they were not designed to handle the influx of people that the astounding development here has created, and constant construction of new architectural wonders only chokes them up further.  As a result, businesses are starting to pull out of Dubai, and Abu Dhabi is moving its entire financial sector outside of the main city because employees are spending up to 4 hours a day (on the clock) in traffic.  A public transportation system sounds pretty good right about now, doesn’t it?  Well, maybe in a few years.  Better late than never, I suppose, but it turns out it’s hard to build a city of the future without first having a functional city of the present. 

 

 

 

On that note, it’ll certainly be interesting to see what happens here over the next 5, 10, 20 years.  There seems to be no end to the number of projects due for completion in that period, not that deadlines and projections really mean anything within the culture of insh’allah.  Perhaps in that time the visionaries will sweat the small stuff a bit more and realize that mundane details like highways and street signs go a long way.  Then again, perhaps not.  After all, the current situation proves that these folk have a knack for putting the cart so far in front of the horse that not even Secretariat could catch up. 

March 9, 2008 – Where in the World is Jared Cavagnuolo?

Sorry, Carmen. I don’t mean to infringe upon copyright law, but the syllabication was just too perfect to resist.

 

So I think every email from me should automatically come with an implicit apology for not writing sooner; this would save me the trouble of having to always say sorry for being out of touch for so long and would therefore reduce (if only slightly) the amount of reading that you lovely people would have to do: an elegant and mutually beneficial solution, I would say.  That said, this is a long one, so get comfortable.

 

Things have been good since my last update. The 5 days of non-stop rain are now but a memory and the weather seems to be deciding if it wants to be spring yet – 80 degree days and 50 degree nights are par for the course now.  Other meteorological oddities have included a week of gale-force winds that I swore were going to tear my open bedroom window right off my building and a recurring phenomenon during which the air simply seems to be full of sand.

 

Then there was the strange night of fog (which the good people of Scotland must have lent us because it seemed like something right off the moors) that delayed my girlfriend Andrea’s visit by a day a couple weeks ago.  Thankfully that was really the only glitch in her visit, and while it caused me to throw a tantrum and kick a trash can at 1 AM at Abu Dhabi airport, it did not keep us from having an absolutely wonderful week together.  We went on a desert safari on which we rode camels, scaled dunes, and were treated to a performance by a belly dancer.  Andrea was as captivated by the desert as I was the first time I was introduced to it, but she’s such a beach-lover that I would have expected such a reaction from her when encountering any large expanse of sand (with or without an ocean accompanying it).  Speaking of beaches, we then took a weekend trip to a lovely one just across the Oman border where we lounged in the sun, went for many a clichéd but nonetheless enjoyable long walk, and introduced ourselves to the local fish and coral while snorkeling.  All in all we had a fabulous time, and we’re both counting down the days until she’s out here again.

Anyway, I know you’re all eagerly awaiting my next batch of observations and anecdotes so I’ll keep you waiting no longer.

 

Those of you who know me well will recall that I’m a lover of all things publicly misprinted; maybe it’s the latent English-major-mind reawakened or the product of a severely grammatically strict upbringing at the hands of two educators, but whatever the cause, spelling errors, improper use of apostrophes, and mistranslations simply tickle my funny bone.  Well, I seem to have stumbled into the land of milk and honey for the typo-phile – or a copywriter’s version of purgatory – on the streets of Abu Dhabi .  Many establishments proudly display signs that leave the perplexed American wondering what exactly goes on just beyond their neon incoherence.  If you’ve looked at my photos on Facebook, you may have noticed one of a shop front with the curious name Butt Sweet House.  I believe it’s a bakery (and I’ve heard they have the best buns in town).  I think that’s my favorite so far, but running a close second are the vast majority of the city’s hair salons which, through the slightest of errors in transliteration, boast the name saloon instead.  A favorite of the NECC crew is the Handsome Gentlemen Saloon, which sounds like a hangout for pretty-boy cowhands, but whose wares none of us has been brave enough to test out.  Even road signs are different than those back home.  I’m routinely warned that the roads are monitored by “radars” (I suppose the pluralization makes the technology even more effective), and construction areas are clearly announced with deceptively enticing “Diversion Ahead” placards that leave me expecting to see a carnival or at the very least the world’s largest ball of twine (“Ooh, what an entertaining diversion that was!”) but yield nothing more than an even more convoluted traffic pattern than what passes for normal around here.

 

Speaking of driving, I had my first experience behind the wheel when Andrea and I took our trip to Oman, and I must say it was far less harrowing than I had expected, though the fact that we rented a car at the airport, which is half an hour out of town, limited the amount of city driving we had to do and kept us away from most of the automotive lunatic fringe I mentioned in my last email.  What I did find interesting about the trip was the border crossing.  In order to get to our hotel, we had to enter Oman , but we didn’t cross a legitimate border checkpoint and as a result did not have to have our passports stamped or show any form of identification.  Instead what we got was a dude in camo gear with a machine gun standing in the middle of the road and basically waving as motorists immigrated and emigrated in front of him.  I don’t think he would have even stopped me had I not rolled my window down in the expectation that he would demand some sort of ID from me.  Quite to the contrary, we had a short and pleasant conversation that tested the limits of my current mastery of Arabic (“Hi, how are you? I’m good”) and then he asked me (in English) where I was from and told me how to get to the hotel.  Apparently the Omanis are not very discriminating about who they let into their country.  The experience reminded me of my stint in south Texas when I would frequently cross over into Mexico and back.  Upon returning to the states, I was always subjected to the most thorough of inquisitions by the border patrol: “Are you an American citizen?  Yes?  Well then, go right ahead!  We don’t need to see your ID; you’re white, so we trust you implicitly. Would you like to upgrade your crossing today to our Contraband Special by helping yourself to some illegal fireworks and non-native flora and fauna?”  Thank god for the Homeland Security Act: your tax dollars hard at work. 

 

All hyperbole aside, the concept of borders, geographical and otherwise, has come to fascinate me since I arrived here.  In a country in which some boundaries, such as those governing interactions between men and women, are so clearly delineated, others, such as where one country ends and another begins, are remarkably fluid.  What I find most interesting is that the very same boundary can be both rigid and dynamic depending on where and when you cross it.  So as not to delve too deeply into the philosophical, I’ll illustrate with some examples. 

 

In my short time here, I’ve been to Oman four times, each time entering it at a different place; only half those times have I needed to even present a passport and only once has it actually been stamped.  Sometimes the border is demarcated by nothing more than the aforementioned dude with the machine gun; other times there are a whole series of toll-booth like gatehouses at which you must present, in a particular order, various legal documents that you may or may not have.  And regardless of the type of border post (or lack thereof), it’s not always clear exactly when you have exited one nation and entered another.  When going to Muscat , my friends and I first had to stop at the UAE side of the border, get exit visas stamped in our passports, and fill out some other forms.  Then we got to the Oman side of the border where we had to get entry visas.  Perfectly normal…except that the Oman side of the border is 25 miles away from the UAE side.  Where exactly we were in those intervening 25 miles remains a mystery.  Though we had officially left the UAE, we had not officially entered Oman .  Even better, during one of my rock climbing trips with my boss and a co-worker, we were driving down a road between two fences.  On the far side of one fence was the UAE; on the far side of the other, Oman .  The road itself, however, was technically not in either country and apparently exists in some sort of liminal zone between the two nations, terra firma’s version of international waters, I suppose – I was tempted to open a casino or rebroadcast football games without the express written consent of the NFL just to see if I could get away with it. 

 

Now contrast the ease of these crossings with what my friends and I had to endure when returning to the UAE from Muscat . We passed the Oman checkpoint with no issues and drove the 25 miles through geographical limbo to the UAE checkpoint.  Upon arriving at the first of three gatehouses that are about 20 yards apart from one another, we have our passports taken from us and are directed to weave our way across three lanes of two-way border traffic (most of which are full of very large trucks hauling what looks like dirt) and park next to the same counter at which we had stopped earlier that day when leaving the UAE.  Thinking we have to fill out even more forms, we then wait for a few minutes without further instructions until the guy who had taken our passports walks from his gatehouse across the truck-laden lanes of traffic, hands our passports back to us, and proceeds to walk back to his gatehouse.  Still not entirely sure why we were asked to park and exit the vehicle, we pile back into it and travel back past the dirt trucks, back to and past the first gatehouse with its exercise-enthusiast operator, and on to a second one, where we show its occupant our car insurance.  Everything checks out; on to the third and final gate at which we are asked for “the paper.”  Nothing more specific that that: just “the paper.”  We once again show the insurance paper but are told that this paper is not “the paper” we need and that “the paper” should have been given to us at the second gatehouse.  Throw the car into reverse, back up to gatehouse 2, where we get out, explain the situation, and are told to wait a moment while the all-important paper is painstakingly prepared.  While we are waiting and light-heartedly chuckling about the situation, a young man, who up to this point has been engaged in idle conversation with the penultimate gatehouse’s guardian (and who was likewise occupied when we first passed by him mere minutes before), walks over to us and asks if he can search our car’s trunk.  Obviously aware that his only recently aborted chit-chatting has not endowed him with any modicum of authority, the young man strives to rectify this misunderstanding and offer an irrefutable display of his official nature by taking from his pocket and attaching to his neck the universal symbol of professionalism: a clip-on tie.  A cursory glance of the trunk leads Sergeant Clip-On to the conclusion that his original instincts to not take a moment’s pause from his sewing circle and to allow this car full of potential terrorists to pass unhindered in front of him were indeed correct and that his perfunctory examination and corresponding wardrobe change were unnecessary.  Meanwhile, “the paper” has been readied, we get back in the car, arrive once more at the last gatehouse, brandishing our newly and not easily acquired ticket to freedom from the bureaucratic nonsense to which we’ve just been subjected, which the final gatekeeper accepts cheerfully and waves us on our way.  All in all, the experience nicely illustrates one of my recently coined phrases about the infrastructure of this country: the right hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing.

 

Well if you’ve read this far (or even scrolled down to view the extent of my pontificating), you certainly deserve at the very least a small reward, so I’m attaching some new photo albums (they’re up on Facebook if you have an account there). If for some reason you can’t see them through these links and would like to, please let me know and I’ll find some other way of getting them to you.  For those of you who can see them, enjoy. 

 

Rock climbing: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=29248&l=7df0c&id=538315779

 

Desert safari: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=29251&l=ed772&id=538315779

 

Andrea’s visit: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=29252&l=10215&id=538315779

 

I’ll try not to take so long in between responses next time, but then again, I’ve left you with plenty of material to peruse in the interim. As always, I hope you all are well and would love to hear from each and every one of you when you get a chance.  Til then…

 

Maxa salaama,

Jared

January 16, 2008 – The continuing saga of Jared of Arabia

Well not quite Arabia, but close enough.

 

Hello all,

 

To those of you for whom this is the first email you’ve received from me, I apologize both for not having had you on my contact list earlier and for having been out of touch with you for anywhere between a couple months and 5 years. Better late than never, I suppose.

 

To the rest of you who have received previous updates (all 1 of them), I apologize for taking so long to send out this installment. Hope you enjoyed the pictures I sent in the interim.

 

So I figured the best way to give you all an impression of my life in Abu Dhabi would be to just hit you with a smattering of observations and anecdotes that I’ve accumulated in my short time here. Here’s the first round. Get comfortabe; it’s a long one.

 

I’ll begin with words I never thought I’d utter during my time here: I went for a run in the rain last night. That’s right; believe it or not, in the middle of a country whose average annual precipitation is just slightly less than that on the moon, it rained pretty much for three days straight, and not just drizzle either – real, honest to Allah rain. It seems that our good ol’ prez decided to bring that black cloud that’s been hanging over the U.S. for the last 8 years with him when he visited here, and the cloud just decided to extend its stay after Bush left (I suppose, given the choice, I’ll take the cloud). 

 

And, go figure, but a city in the middle of the desert has no idea how to handle this kind of weather. I actually lost power for a while yesterday, and the streets are a mess b/c there’s no drainage, so veritable lakes have collected in certain places, such as the driveway to my apartment complex, which is so flooded that the police had to call in Moses to deal with the problem. What’s more, my student and all his classmates are fascinated by the rain since they so rarely get to see it. It’s analagous to what the concept of snow was like to my students in south Texas. My kid is especially obsessed; during a torrential downpour yesterday, he asked me about 8 times if I noticed that it was raining. I responded by calling him Captain Obvious and remarking that despite what he may have thought, I did still retain my powers of sensory perception.

 

Speaking of my student, he is still a blast to work with, and his sense of humor continues to amuse me to no end. It even manifests itself in his behavior problems. When I upset him by telling him to do a math problem without a calculator, he complained “This is not the prehistoric age. Why can’t I use a calculator?” I somehow resisted the urge to laugh and even felt a little bad for following through with his programmed consequence for talking back, but consistency is the cornerstone of a good behavior intervention program, after all.

 

His classmates at the British School prove to be just as entertaining. Now, I’m convinced that 8th graders are equally goofballish on one side of the globe as the other, but this is my first exposure to the unique humor, attitude, and vernacular that is representative of the British culture. Teachers routinely demonstrate effective classroom management through expressions such as ”Do shut up” or the always-eloquent “Oy!”, kids use words like “hell” in class regularly w/o batting an eyelash, and everytime I hear a student ask another to borrow a “rubber”, I have the fleeting impression that I’m in a sex education video before I remember that all they want is an eraser. What’s worse, it seems that Brit-speak is contagious: while chastising a boy for stealing a girl’s purse at lunch break, I meant to say ”Luke, I see you like women’s things,” but it came out “Fancy women’s things, do we Luke?” Honestly, I wanted to hit myself.  

 

The Emirati culture is an entirely different but equally perplexing enigma wrapped in a conundrum wrapped in a kandoora. Let me first say that with very few exceptions, everyone I’ve met here has been amazingly friendly, helpful, and generous in a way that we isolationist Americans might find odd. And much as I hate to make generalizations about an entire people (except Americans), there are a few common traits that seem to underlie all walks of life here.

 

First is the concept of “insh’allah.” The literal translation of this word is, I believe, “God willing,” but it has come to take on all manner of meanings, often dependent on the tone and inflection of the person using it at the time, ranging from “hopefully” to “maybe” to “don’t hold your breath” and everything in between. Furthermore, this expression is as perfectly acceptable a response to “So I’ll see you later?” as it is to “So you’ll have that project upon which the entire fate of this corporation and all its employees rests done by tomorrow, right?” While the concepts of time, deadlines, and schedules aren’t nearly as rigid here as they are in the West, it’s not that people just don’t care about breaking plans or promises; it’s that for Muslims, and not just the most devout among them, EVERYTHING, from the mundane to the monumental, is subject to Allah’s will. Assuming that any future event is certain or written in stone is tantamount to ignoring Allah’s power to influence human events. While I am not and probably never will be religious or spiritual, I do find the depth of these people’s faith and the degree to which they acknowledge and accept that much in our lives is beyond our control to be both interesting and inspirational. At the very least, it’s lead me to avoid getting overly-frustrated when things don’t work out as planned.

 

Yet another and just slightly less significant hallmark of Emirati life is an obsession with pretty much any type of motorized vehicle, coupled with a complete disregard for any laws, suggestions, or common sense designed to encourage operating said vehicles with anything less than reckless and life-threatening abandon. Nowhere does this trait manifest itself more clearly than on the city streets of Abu Dhabi. Taxis and luxury cars alike dart in and out of gaps so small that you wonder how the streets aren’t littered with front and rear bumpers, every lane is “the passing lane,” and drivers have about as much regard for pedestrians as they do for their own turn signals. It’s as if a bunch of NYC cabbies, Hollywood stunt drivers, and Formula One racers somehow cross-bred and produced an unholy brood of speed-crazed children who were nursed on a cocktail of Red Bull and crystal meth. Well those kids grew up, and now they all have licenses.  

 

Then there’s the passion for quad biking, which I do not share but which has nonetheless affected my experience here. As the desert camping trip with my student and his brothers proved, it seems to be the goal of the Emiratis to turn any bare patch of sand into a playground for these cacophonous vehicles. In my opinion, hearing their incessant drone kind of spoils the natural beauty of the desert, by which I was more captivated than I had anticipated and which is impossible to describe in words – even my pictures don’t do it justice. Also, the area where we camped, though miles into the desert from the nearest town, is a major staging area for quad bike races, so between people riding into all hours of the night and the giant floodlights they’ve set up to allow such recreation, the night sky, while still better than anything I’ve seen in while, wasn’t as brilliant and star-filled as it should have been. Luckily I got to see a better star-gazing sky this past weekend when I went camping and rock climbing in Oman – we were in a pretty remote area and were only disturbed by a few quad bikers once or twice, and those times only during the day.

 

I guess my idea of desert camping is just different than that of the locals, which is understandable: if my ancestors had spent thousands of years wandering the desert with nothing but their camels to keep them company, I’d probably want more than an endless expanse of sand and stars too. And I really can’t complain; aside from the quad bikes and floodlights and the tragic fact that people here treat the desert like a giant trash can, the trip was wonderful, and I guess I got a healthy dose of the Emirati experience. I ate Bedouin style – sitting on the carpeted ground inside the kaimah (which is Arabic for “needlessly complex miniature circus tent comprised of far too many individual sections that takes 14 people 2 hours to set up in the dark”), taking food, most of which consists of rice and meat dishes, from communal plates and eating it with the right hand only; I convinced the kids to abandon their quad bikes for an hour or so to hike up (and roll or jump down) the dunes; and I took in the view from the tallest dune in the world. All in all, not a bad way to spend a weekend.

 

Ok, that was more than enough for one email. I congratulate those of you who read the whole thing in one sitting (or at all), especially since I didn’t write it all in one sitting. I’ll pass along a few more stories and hopefully more pictures in another email soon. Til then, hope all of you are well, and as always, I’d love to hear from each and every one of you. Take care.

 

Maxa salaama,

Jared

December 6, 2007 – Greetings from the other side of the world

Hello all, 

 

   So it’s been a while since you’ve all heard from me (for a few of you, a very long while, as is not atypical for me), but I wanted to let you all know that I have arrived safely in Abu Dhabi and am beginning to settle in here nicely. 

 

   I got in last Thursday night but was without reliable internet access until tonight, so my apologies for not writing sooner.  My flights were uneventful except for the fact that due to our late departure from Boston, I had to rush a bit to catch my connecting flight in London and one of my bags accidentally went to Dubai.  I can understand its desire to do so – from what I’ve seen and heard of it, Dubai is a cool place.  Luckily it made its way back to me the next day. 

 

   So this place is pretty amazing. The city is at once both incredibly familiar and completely foreign due to an interesting combination of western/expatriate influence and traditional Islamic customs.  Pretty much any item you’d find in the states is available here in some form, and there are times when I feel I could be back home.  But then the call to prayer rings out, or I walk down a street and hear nothing but Arabic, and I’m reminded of how far away I really am.  I certainly can’t describe it all, but I can say that the magnitude of the move has either not sunk in yet or hasn’t hit me the way I expected it to – as different as it is here and as much as I’ve already had to adjust, I just don’t feel like I picked up and moved halfway around the world.  I guess never having done something like this before, it’s hard to know what to expect. 

 

   It certainly helps to have 6 or 7 NECC colleagues from back home here – there always seems to be someone to hang out with.  Also, in just a week I’ve already met some very interesting people, both expat and local, and so far everyone has been really nice and helpful. 

 

   The job is also going well.  My student is pretty cool – very high functioning and he has a great sense of humor.  The first day I worked with him (which incidentally involved going skiing in Dubai - the “slope” is actually in a mall of all places), he told me a joke with a play-on-words punchline (my favorite kind, surprise surprise) and then proceeded to explain to me exactly why it was funny.  He might not make it as a stand-up, but he’s quite entertaining nonetheless.  He was also very caring and showed a great deal of concern for me as I repeatedly fell down the “mountain” (my skiing leaves something to be desired, though by the end of the day I had the hang of it…sorta).  I’ll be sure to tell more about him and the British school he goes to (which is quite interesting), but if you want a snapshot of his academic ability, I started teaching him to solve simultaneous equations yesterday.  Don’t feel bad if you don’t know what that means – I didn’t either.

 

   At the risk of going on and on, I’ll cut this short and promise to write more soon.  I really hate mass emails, though I suppose they are the most convenient mode of communication in cases like this.  That said, I would love to hear from all of you and will certainly do my best to respond individually in addition to the occasional update-en-masse (with pictures, of course, once I’ve snapped a few more and become technologically literate enough to actually figure out how to send them).  Also, if there are alternate email addresses you’d like me to use, please let me know.  I hope that all of you are well and although I am having a good time here, I do miss you all and hope to hear from you soon.

 

Maxa salaama (literally “go with peace”),

Jared