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Monday-ish listicle: if I had a thousand dollars I would…

A thousand dollars.  That’s what Stasha is giving us to play with this week. Having just been told that my life choices were less than fantastic by my eleven-year-old son, I decided to cut him out of this listicle (HA! that’ll show him, right?) and asked the seven-year-old, instead.

Caleb: $1000! wow. Okay. I’d buy – wait, how much does a mansion cost?

Me: More than $1000, sorry.

Caleb, rallying: That’s okay. So number one, I’d buy an apartment like Thiery Henry’s apartment in New York, with three floors. Three attached floors.

(Thiery, for those of you who are not soccer-crazed second-graders, is a European footballer who now plays for the Red Bulls, in New Jersey. He lives in a triplex apartment in the same building where one of Caleb’s best friends in New York lives. The friend, needless to say, does not live in a triplex, or even a duplex. The friend lives in a one-plex, but the friend has, in fact, been in the Henry apartment. Caleb lives in hope that somehow, someday, he too will wrangle an invitation)

Caleb: Number two…all new legos. Especially the Lord of the Rings Legos. I’d go to the Lego Store and just buy everything. Number three…I’d buy some books. And number four, new cleats. I’d buy as many different pairs as I could. And that’s all I can think of.

Me: Just four things? An apartment, legos, books, cleats?

Caleb: Yeah. No, wait, I think I would give money to hobos. Why do they call them hobos, anyway?

Me: I don’t know.

Caleb: Do they come from Hoboken?

Me: Seriously? I have no idea.

A thousand bucks, in Caleb-land, goes a long way.

In my life, a thousand dollars doesn’t go quite so far, I have to say, but usually I could put together a pretty nifty list of Stuff.  My appetite for Stuff, however, has taken a hit since I finished Half the Sky, which talks about oppression and opportunity for women in developing countries. So my thousand-dollar list now looks more like this:

Sponsor kids’ soccer teams in Africa, the way this organization does: Grassroots Soccer

Donate to one of the hospitals that’s working to repair fistulas and other catastrophic injuries incurred during childbirth: Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital

Or maybe I’d donate one of the Abu Dhabi safe houses, where women (usually domestic workers) can go for help, shelter, and advice if their workplace has become unsafe. There aren’t websites available for these safe houses, but they rely primarily on donations and volunteer efforts.

And then because…well…I do have a weakness for shiny things (in another life I was probably a crow or a magpie: oooh! shiny! who cares if it’s tinfoil!), maybe I’d get myself one of these here rings, from BLGK Goldsmiths, in Amsterdam. I’ve never actually been to this shop, but ooh, pretty pretty pretty!

 

a note about the charities listed here: I’ve not researched these thoroughly, so other than the Half the Sky Foundation, listing these organizations here is not an endorsement or a recommendation, just a thought about what it would be nice to do if a gal had an extra grand burning a hole in her pocket.

 

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Read full story · Comments { 7 } on June 19, 2012 in Abu Dhabi, Kids, Monday Listicle

wherein my son starts to ponder the lyrics

This happened two days ago, but in honor of the Grammys, it seems appropriate to post it now. As far as Liam and I are concerned, Adele should win all the prizes. I would also like someone to explain to me why Chris Brown can be all “Mr. Comeback” on the Grammys despite his habit of beating women, but Ellen Degeneres is a “bad role model” and shouldn’t be a spokesperson for JCPenneys.

Liam and I are driving home from soccer. I spend most of my life here driving to or from soccer, it seems, and yes, there is more than a smidge of irony in the fact that I had to move to the Middle East to become a true soccer mom.

So we’re driving and Liam asks me to play his new favorite Adele song, “Set Fire to the Rain.” He loves the entire album but this track is his new favorite.

“What do you think that means,” I ask, “set fire to the rain?”  I’m clutching at conversational straws with him a bit these days because contrary to my hopes from last week, he’s not swerved from his insistence that by switching schools we’ve destroyed any possible shot he has at happiness.

So maybe he’ll talk to me about Adele and we can avoid the gnashing of teeth and rending of garments has become his new way of ending the weekend.

“It’s like a paradox,” he says through a mouthful of cashews.

“Yes, but why? I mean, what’s she trying to say?”

Chewing sounds from the back seat. I persist. I wax nostalgic. “When I was your age, we had record albums. And they’d have the lyrics on them, maybe on the back, maybe on the inside sleeve, and we would read them and try to figure out what the songs meant.”

From the back seat: “What’s an album?”

I almost plow into the car ahead of me. “You’ve never seen a record?”

Long silence. “Um…in the movies, I think. Maybe.”

I explain the concept of “record album” to my child, although I leave out the part about how albums were incredibly useful when it came time to make those wacky cigarettes that mommy and her friends liked to share during intense debates about the meaning of this or that lyric on a Police album. (Hey. It was the early 80s. You want me maybe to be listening to Rush?)

We listen to Adele singing about her hands being strong but her knees being weak and Liam says “wait! pause it! I think I get it. She’s saying that she really loves him but he’s not very nice to her.” I push play and the song goes on to tell us about betrayal and anger and good-love-gone-bad. In the rearview mirror, I see Liam, listening intently.

“I see what she’s saying now — ” then there is what can only be described as a professorial pause. “It’s as Lady Gaga would say. It’s a bad romance.  Yep, that’s it. It’s Lady Gaga’s bad romance.”

My son has discovered intertextuality.  Maybe I should get him a record player.

me, Adele, and Lady Gaga are linking up with yeah write this week…I’ll bet there are some grammy-worthy posts up over there, so you should just sing along, click along, and come read!

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Read full story · Comments { 25 } on February 12, 2012 in Abu Dhabi, Children, Kids, pop culture

a saturday morning view

So the boys started this morning at a soccer–dammit, football–school about 20 minutes drive from our apartment.  As I sat there staring into the morning sun, I realized I was looking at my new life in a nutshell:

a football field (okay, that’s a holdover from my old life); a construction site (sometimes it seems as if the entire city is under construction, one way or another); sunshine; and Islam, in this case the Grand Mosque, built in honor of Sheikh Zayed, the founder of the UAE.

I live in a Muslim country–the call to prayer sounds five times a day, women walk around swathed in black, the grocery store has a specially designated “pork room” for non-Muslims. So on the one hand, the influence of Islam seems inescapable.

But like this image of the mosque that hovers only in the background, it’s possible, as a non-Muslim to go about daily life as if you lived in, say, Santa Barbara or something (but with fewer women in tank tops).  I can buy liquor; I don’t have to cover myself in black to go outside (although frankly, with all the holiday eating, an abaya may soon be my only sartorial choice); I don’t have to be escorted everywhere by my husband (something for which we are both grateful).

In fact, it feels a little strange, this ability to float along the surface of life here without having to learn more about local culture–but then again, even “local” raises a question: in a country where about 85% of the population is non-native, what exactly constitutes “local culture?”  Drinking camel milk and eating dates can’t be the extent of “local-ness,” can it?

At the moment–probably because I’m still so new here–I’m more intrigued than frustrated by what I don’t know; I like thinking about the complicated collisions that happen between ancient worlds and modern. I don’t know if I will ever understand this part of the world–maybe I’m doomed always to look at it from afar. The Grand Mosque, in my photograph, looks like it’s just on the other side of the construction site, but in fact, it’s at least a few miles down the road.

There’s a great writer in Canada whose blog is schumtzie.com.  Last month she wrote about her guiding word for 2012. Her word is “shift.” I like that word a lot–shifting paradigms, shifting perspectives, shifting attitudes, tectonic shift…it’s a good word.

If she hadn’t chosen “shift,” I might choose it for myself.  But instead, thinking about the mosque, thinking about this odd place where I find myself these days, I think 2012′s guiding word will be: discover.

Look underneath, look within, explore, reveal…all of those are embedded in “discover.” That’s what I’m going to do in 2012.

What would your word be?

 

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Read full story · Comments { 2 } on January 7, 2012 in Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi Discoveries, environment, expat, me my own personal self, religion, Travel, UAE

we know what’s best for you…(we think)

My kids are angry at me. Angry at me and Husband both. (That they’re angry at both is refreshing. Usually it’s just me.)

We told them yesterday that after the winter break they’re going to switch schools.

Husband and I are calling it a “mid-term correction” but the boys don’t appreciate the humor.

Here’s the thing: the boys are at a school here in Abu Dhabi that to the eyes of jaded New York public-school veterans like us looks like paradise: lots of patios and terraces, lovely playing fields, shaded areas where kids can sit outside and study.  Classes are small (no more than 20), elementary school teachers have classroom assistants five days a week, there are computer labs, and a swimming pool.  Amazing, right? Even more amazing? The school has virtually no poverty–it’s a private school and many people have the tuition paid by their employers. No one gets free lunch because no one needs it; there are no kids bouncing around in foster care programs; no kids come to school without having had breakfast; there are almost no students with IEPs. From my perspective as a former high school teacher, teaching at this place looks like a pretty good gig, like teaching at Patio Central.

The school organized a sixth-grade week-long trip to Turkey (the 7th grade went to Capodocia, the 8th grade to Thailand)–parents had to pay for this adventure, but what an amazing experience, right?

When we started the school, our hopes were high. We knew going in that the school was not perhaps as crazy-rigorous as the Tiger Mom Academy that they went to in New York (and let me be clear: they went to TMA because we couldn’t be sure of getting a variance for Caleb to his brother’s school; Liam was enrolled at this school for 6th grade because the school goes through high school and he would be guaranteed a spot. In other words, public school pragmatism drove our decisions, not a belief that eight thousand hours of homework is a badge of distinction.)

Anyway. Off they went on the first day of school, a bit nervous with the newness of it all and…it was fine.

Fine.

Now, sometimes fine is…fine. And sometimes fine is not fine. Continue Reading →

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Read full story · Comments { 22 } on December 6, 2011 in Abu Dhabi, Children, Education, expat, family, NYC, Parenting

Grace in Small Things #4: In Praise of Grandma


1. Not a small grace note but a BIG grace note: my mother has been visiting us for the past week and having her here makes living so far away suddenly seem manageable.   It’s both extraordinary that she’s here and…completely ordinary. Of  course she’s here; Grandma always comes to visit in the fall.  The fact that she flew fifteen hours to do so…well, that’s just logistics.

2. Grandma brought candy corn. The genuine original high-fructose orange-and-white pyramidical “corn.” Bags of it. Five bags, to be precise.  Which should be just about enough—for me.  If my children are very, very nice to me, I may share a few kernels with them. Maybe.

3. Henna. We got henna tattoos, even though we weren’t guests at a Mumbai wedding. My very blue mother, who lives in a very red state, joked that now her neighbors (who were aghast when she voted for Obama) will be certain that Barack has converted her to Islam:

4. The team uniforms of the soccer club that organizes the teams Liam and Caleb play for: they look like human candy corn. Or McDonald’s workers. Or escapees from a Where’s Waldo book:


5. The fact that an actual reader of my blog (a reader! I have an actual reader who is not my mother, is not a relative, and who found this blog through…well, I have no idea how she found me, but I’m glad she did) saw fit to email me with the name of the woman here in town who cooks and delivers real Mexican food.  Muchas gracias, Tracy!

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Read full story · Comments { 5 } on October 30, 2011 in Abu Dhabi, Children, family, grace in small things