As someone who has now lived outside the United States for almost eight years, I’ve (almost) gotten used to living with a different holiday calendar. The UAE just celebrated the Prophet’s Birthday, for instance, but Veteran’s Day, Columbus Day, and President’s Day? Pretty much non-starters here. The UAE has the additional wrinkle of operating its holidays on a lunar calendar (with the exception of National Day), and that means that …
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shopping
Saturday’s Snapshot (surat al-sabat): لقطة السبت
It’s hard to avoid “service” in Abu Dhabi. Labor is (disturbingly) cheap and it seems sometimes that there is always someone offering to wash your car, clean your apartment, carry your bags. But the other day in Lulu (a big grocery store chain here), I saw “service” taken to a new level: a worker unloading a shopper’s grocery cart at the check-out line. She was on the phone, he was …
Hot…It’s All in How You Look At It
The other night after dinner, Caleb waved me into the kitchen. “I have to talk to you in private,” he whispered. We went into the kitchen and he pulled me down to whisper. “Today at school, E. told me I was hot,” he said, cheeks pink. “She said she liked me like this,” and he waggled his hand back and forth. “Wow.” That was all I could say. I mean, …
50 is now a lot closer than it was yesterday
So today I’m 47. Yesterday I was a spritely 46. Today I’m only three years away from 50, my back aches and I slept funny on my neck so now it hurts to turn my head. What will I do today to celebrate, other than put a heating pad on my neck? Gosh, let’s see the list of fun things lined up for me: we started the morning with a …