Enjoying the last long weekend of the academic year

Marhaba!

That's the secular Arabic greeting for hello. I've seldom heard it spoken so I guess Muslims prefer the religious salamalikom greeting. I've started taking Arabic classes at work. After two sessions I can say a few greetings like good morning and good afternoon/evening. There are two classes a week for two hours in total that will run through early June. I don't know how much information I'll retain but it's fun to be learning a new language.

Yesterday was the Prophet Mohammud's birthday so we got the day off. It flew by as we relaxed and then did some household chores. I treated myself to a Chinese massage, accupuncture and cupping treatment. I've only had two this year due to being busy at work and getting chiropractic treatments. My MRI that I had done last week stated that the spondolethesis had vanished and my L4 disk showed improvement. But the L5 disk is still degenerating. I continue to do my daily morning stretches so this is the best that I've felt in almost two years.

I was sick with a cold for two weeks that was likel due to people being sick from the sudden change in weather. We had some foggy days (see Darcy's last post) due to the weather warming up. But I'm back to normal and working out again although my left elbow is still feeling the effects of being hyperextended.

Darcy is doing well. We finished watching the BBC's Planet Earth series. It was spectacular! Now we're watching Absolutely Fabulous. It's got some funny moments and I think this is the most British comedy that I've ever watched. We still have a ton of dvds to watch so it will my turn next to pick a series. We watch them at night as we enjoy our tea and dark chocolate.

Abu Dhabi's Zayed Mosque officially opened late last year and I took a tour of it through my work. Darcy had attended a women's spa that day. This article has some facts about the third largest mosque in the world. It was spectacular.

Here's an article about plans to develop Lulu Island which is very close to us. This story is about a fort that is also in our neighborhood. Our apartment is behind the set of buildings in the middle of the photo.

It's now halfway through the semester and in less than one month we fly to Istanbul. So time continues to pass very quickly for us. Before we know it we'll be getting ready to fly home for our summer vacation. Happy Easter to everyone....

Wrapped in Fog

The above photo is a reader-submitted picture published in the Gulf News showing current UAE foggy conditions, which are expected to last a few more days at least. I could hardly see more than a block ahead of me on parts of my drive to work this morning, and when I got out of the car I could feel the fog like rain on my face! I think it's lovely, although I'm sure many people are now grumbling about the "cold".

Success at last!

So, booking our hotels in Turkey has been more "interesting" than we anticipated. Our first choice hotel in Istanbul, the Empress Zoe, was already full by the time we tried to get a room there (our travel guide advised to "book well ahead"...with 2 months to go we thought we had enough time but apparently not!). We chose another Istanbul hotel, plus a hotel on the islands and a hotel on the Asian side of the water, and tried to book through their online reservation forms. No confirmation, no reply. We tried calling to follow up, but couldn't get through. We tried emailing the email addresses posted on their websites. No reply. Michael got referrals and information about a travel agent here in Abu Dhabi and one in Turkey, but even they would not respond to our calls and emails!

This afternoon, however, we learned that to dial into Turkey you need not just the country code, area code and phone number, but also an "international dialling code" unique to the country you are calling out of. We've never called a country that required one before, so we hadn't realized we needed it. After looking up that code the phone numbers for all our hotels suddenly worked like magic, so we were finally able to talk to live people and reserve our rooms.

In Istanbul, we will be staying at Turkoman Hotel. This hotel is close to our first-choice location and close to the big attractions like the bazaar, the blue mosque, and Topkapi. Then we will move to the islands for one night, and stay at the Halke Palace Hotel. After that we will ferry over to the Asian side and spend two nights in Bursa at the Efehan Hotel.

We are greatly relieved to have our rooms booked after 2 weeks of trying. We will be in in Turkey over ANZAC day, so even though the main focus is Galipoli we assume it is a high -demand season all over. We were starting to wonder if we were going to have to sleep on the street!

As for the rest of life...we attended a presentation on the ABC's of Carpet Buying hosted by the American Womens' Network this past week. We now have a better idea of some of the things we should be looking for--and watching out for!--when carpet shopping. We also went over to Pat's Antiques Exhibition this week. The woman who owns this business shows her wares a couple of times a year; some are small touristy things that you can find many other places, but many of her things come direct from Oman. We decided to splurge a bit and buy an Omani Mandoos (marriage chest). Pat said she believes this chest is between 80-100 years old. The decoration is done with hammered metal and metal studs and is quite beautiful: