Consistency is key!

That's what I keep telling myself about writing this blog, anyway, and then I never really get around to doing it. To be fair, the last week has been surprisingly busy for me (us), but if I had written sooner I might not have needed to write a marathon post in which I can barely remember all the things I probably would've talked about anyway.

Within the past two weeks (what I'm figuring for time lapsed here, even though it's probably been longer, I've attended two coffees, four Arabic lessons, made a trip to Dubai, had a girl's night party, crashed a Literature department reception, and been actively looking for jobs. It's been exhausting, compared to the pace I had been running, which was pretty much nothing at all.

One of the coffees I went to was a newcomer coffee for women in the AWN, or American Women's Network. I had a pretty nice time, and as it was at the home of one of the senior board members who lives in Sama tower, I had an excellent view of Abu Dhabi from the 43rd floor. I didn't manage to snap pics. AWN seems like a great network resource for expat women living in the city, despite the fact that I was by a large margin the youngest person there and some women even made the offhand comment that they were definitely old enough to have been my mother. AWN has several events, committees, and something called an Explorer's club that takes local trips, so there's always something to get into.

Cappuccino.

The other coffee was just our weekly jaunt sponsored by NYUAD's community life department, which is pretty much always a welcome socialization hour overwhelmingly dominated by "trailing wives" - those of us who are here with our husbands who have jobs. There are a couple of reasons why you never really see anyone else in the mix, despite the fact that it's open to everyone, chief among them that it's at 10am on a Tuesday morning when most of campus is working or teaching. This week's event was at a Afghani-American fusion cafe on Al Raha Beach, and breakfast was pretty delicious. We even got to sit outside (!!!!!) because the weather was beautiful and the place was on the water and there was a lovely breeze (at least until noon rolled around).

My new obsession: Lemon Mint. It's pretty much lemonade muddled with fresh mint, and it's delicious.

 This past weekend Jon and I also got to take a trip to Dubai to see the Mall of the Emirates, what was once the largest mall that was outdone by Dubai Mall that will soon be outdone by Yas Mall which will be on the next island over from where we're living (and should open soon), and there are rumors that Saadiyat is getting its own mall that will outsize Yas...but that's probably an undertaking 10 years in the future. Seriously, keeping up with all the malls around here is exhausting.

I'll take to another post to write about our Dubai trip, in order to keep this one from becoming the longest post known to man, and I'll try to write a separate post on job searching so things don't get muddled. I'm also actively trying to campaign for Eid holiday destinations, which requires more research.