To Turkey and Back

It took us a lot longer than we had planned to make the online video of our trip to Turkey. You can also watch it on a bigger screen at our video blog (http://darcyandmichael.blip.tv). Images from the video doesn't do justice but hopefully it captures a bit of what we saw. We bought a few things with the more expensive items being a carpet (of course), drum, ceramic plates, and silk. We didn't know that apple tea was so popular in Turkey. More so than Turkish coffee, to Darcy's surprise. ;) Trip highlights for me were the Hagia Sophia and the Green Mosque. But we saw many wonderful places.

The big drawback during the trip was that poor Darcy got very sick with the flu the night we departed Abu Dhabi. She had no appetite and was very weak and tired for most of the trip. It was also frustrating for her as she wanted to do a lot of exploring but she didn't feel well. But we did see the important things that we had wanted. We do want to go back and see more. Ideally we'd like to take a trip every spring, summer and fall/winter.

The weather has heated up here daytime highs are approaching the mid 40s centigrade. I got into our car last weekend and took off the windshield visor and the car's temp inside read 51 celcius or about 130 farenheit. The humidity is still quite low - like being in Arizona. But it will get miserable here when the humidity comes. The windows will start crying as the high humidity causes condensation to stream down the windows outside and obscure your view. A small price to pay I guess for living in this part of the world.

We let our Gulf News newspaper subscription lapse a couple of months ago but Darcy signed up on a couple of its news feeds. One municipal story is about our fair city improving its infrastructure. Abu Dhabi will apparently open its newest public beach on Canada Day (July 1). But things that open here seldom mean that they are even partially operational. We've been tracking progress on this beach from our apartment bedroom window and there is a lot of work to be done! Work began in earnst last October with several bulldozers digging up the sand one night. But work soon slowed to a crawl. The photos in the article are showing the most developed beach areas. They show the flatest stretches of "beach" with several unwrapped palm trees. I don't see how it can pass health and safety regulations in seven weeks.

The housing prices continue to escalate in Abu Dhabi. It looks like we arrived here on the cusp of the escalation. A table in this article suggests that we should be paying upwards of 100,000 AED per year for our three bedroom place. The situation seems desperate for many people with lower incomes. There is a sad story about the living conditions for bachelors. Check out photo number 4 from these shots that we submitted by the public. Not much rain fell in Abu Dhabi but it was cloudy last week. We learned that this was the result of cloud seeding!

I'm still taking the Arabic language classes at work. The class has dwindled in size but it is interesting. I hope that I can retain some of what I've learned as the class ends in a month. Ma'Salamaa...