November and December 2014 (in a nutshell)!

I'll be honest, this isn't going to be a long post because November and December were decidedly slow and relatively unexciting months for me. A while back on the blog I posted that we were booking a trip to Thailand for Christmas, which was in fact our plan - this being my first real Christmas FAR away from home, I really didn't want to spend it in Abu Dhabi, and we had a nice long winter break in which to take a trip. So we booked my dream Thailand trip - Chiang Mai and Bangkok, a whole week's worth of travel and touring.

Only that never actually happened. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

November was a quiet month, and I was going back through my pictures trying to remember if there was really anything of note to post about other than our tiny Thanksgiving when I realized that something very, very important and life changing actually DID happen in November.

The very first picture of Lord Petyr Baelish (Rogers)

Early November, a post was put on our community Facebook group about a kitten in need of a serious home. He'd been found by another faculty member on campus, and nursed back to health, but she couldn't keep him because he was a very active kitten and needed someone who was home more than just in the evening after work. I put on my best Puss in Boots eyes and showed the post to Jon.

Firstly, I should explain. We both have cats back home in the States that we absolutely love to pieces. They are our furry children, and we wept when we realized that it was not financially viable to bring them with us. We tried. We researched so many different methods and costs and companies in an effort to bring them here. Yet eventually, Khan and Titan were re-homed with our relatives back in the U.S. so that we could embark on our adventure knowing they were in good hands. Technically, our babies are just in foster care until we return, and we can reunite and have one big happy (albeit furry) family.

Jon and I talked about it at length, once we got here, knowing that Abu Dhabi was crawling with cats needing homes, and we even considered fostering for a while. We eventually decided against it, realizing that it would be absolutely impossible for us to foster a cat because we'd just fall in love with it and be heartbroken when the time came to say goodbye. So the discussion was quietly closed and we moved on with our terribly quiet, catless lives.

And then came this post about the kitten needing help. I couldn't stand it. How could I say no to a kitten needing help?! It was perfect, because I, unable to find work, was home most days anyway. He'd have a near constant companion to keep watch on him. So I showed Jon the post, and the minute I did, I realized he'd been struggling with our decision too. There wasn't much discussion after that. We took the kitten in, named him Baelish, and never looked back. Today, after some struggles getting fully well (he was incredibly sick, near death, when his first mom found him), he's a happy, healthy, absolute terror of a best friend to both of us. I'm going to struggle not to turn this into a "pictures of my cat being adorable" blog.

Just look at that lordly face.

The rest of November passed fairly quietly. Jon and I celebrated Thanksgiving in a big way by ourselves in our apartment, making loads and loads of the delicious food we were so craving from the celebrations that were happening at home. I just realized, writing this post, that I don't have any pictures of our spread, for some reason. I'm not sure how that happened. Suffice to say that it was delicious: we had a turkey, homemade stuffing (my first time making it!), sweet potato casserole, dinner rolls, gravy, mashed potatoes, etc, etc. We had leftovers for weeks. Turkey coming out of our ears.

December was an absolute roller coaster of a month, and in the end, not in a good way. This is the part where I explained what happened to our Thailand trip that I was so, so looking forward to.

We'd booked the trip with a travel agency admittedly a little late in the game (we kept putting off finding a trip and then once we started it took forever to finally get what we wanted out of one), but the minute we'd gotten confirmation that we were in fact booked, I sent the payment through wire transfer to the travel agency. Apparently this was more mind-boggling technology than they could handle, even though the gave me account numbers specifically meant for wiring money. To make a long and aggravating story short, they told me they wouldn't officially book our tickets until they received our payment, and then claimed for a good week and a half that they never received it, waiting until pretty much the day before we were supposed to have flown out to say they had it. Needless to say, by that point I had, after several back and forth emails, phone calls, and generally unpleasant exchanges, already told them where they could stuff the trip that we would not be taking (keep in mind they were telling us that they wouldn't issue us tickets until they received the money, so in their eyes we weren't taking it either - I just eventually made the decision to avoid the frustration and cancel the whole thing so we didn't lose money/get slammed with late fees/miss a flight).

So we spent Christmas in Abu Dhabi. It really wasn't that bad.

Even before/alongside/after all of the trip drama, December was an okay sort of month. We bought a live Christmas tree and had it imported all the way from Canada, and it gave our apartment a lovely Christmas pine fresh smell for weeks and weeks and weeks. We bought new (cat safe, which was suddenly very important) ornaments to start our collection together and decorated it. It was huge and gorgeous. So full. Probably one of the prettiest, freshest live trees I've ever had, and that is a totally weird thing to say because we live in ABU DHABI. It also provided our newest household member with endless hours of entertainment, as he would climb it in the middle of the night and knock off ornaments that he would then hide under the couch.

Our first tree as the Rogers. See all the pine needles?
Turns out the tree wasn't dying, it was just being attacked by the cat.

Photo proof that the attacks were happening. And a Dalek.

HELLO HUSBAND, HAVE A CAMEL SELFIE.

Jon did his best to make sure that we had an awesome Christmas despite everything, and he really came through. He was gone to Australia on a conference trip the first weekend in December, so I took myself to the Swiss Christmas Market and had a ball hanging out with our friends Laura and Jeff and their two girls. I also bought him a present that he found when he arrived back home at 4 am while I was still sleeping.

I bought him the majestic piece of wall art you see above. I mean, I'd been looking at bare white walls since the end of July. It was driving me nuts. (Okay, this purchase was probably more for me.)

He also graciously took me to see a production of the Nutcracker by the Moscow City Ballet. It was gorgeous. The Nutcracker is pretty much a Christmas tradition for me, because growing up Oma would take us every year to see it put on in Lake City. I hadn't seen it in years, so when I saw it was coming to Abu Dhabi I was super excited. Bored as he was, Jon stuck it out for me. I have the best husband. He even decorated a gingerbread house and helped me bake Christmas cookies.

Yea, we're nerds.

Still not as good as Oma's.

When Christmas Eve came, we had our tiny Christmas feast. After learning our lesson at Thanksgiving, this time we scaled things back a bit. We did absolutely have a ham. Jon knows how much I love ham, and insisted that we would get one. I made a corn casserole and he made yeast rolls. We compromised and had some peas, too. You know, vegetables being part of a square meal and all. Also, we had Opa's Pineapple Punch. While not as delicious, it was definitely as potent.

Dinner complete with Santa hat.

Christmas Day came with an unexpected gift - a planned but unannounced power/water outage! What were we to do, stuck at home on Christmas with no utilities?

Bump that. We went to the beach. And that, folks, is the end of 2014.

The beach property management made this inspired creation.

Santa's little helper.

Christmas, Abu Dhabi style.

October 2014 in a Nutshell

Seeing as how it's November, rather than writing all of the separate posts that I was planning on writing in October, I'm just going to lump them all into one big summary. Summaries are exciting, you guys!

October was kind of a blitz month for me, which was a nice change from my usual/current speed of not working and not doing much else besides weekly coffee morning outings and relentless job hunting (which has become nothing short of a nightmare. I've now been out of work since May, and unemployment doesn't really agree with me).

The start of October was our Sri Lanka trip, which I've talked about over the past few posts, but in probably the best turn of events ever, we actually got to turn our mini Sri Lankan vacation into an extended one. At the time, the majority of campus was still running on generator power, having not been hooked up to the city grid, and administration chose the holiday weekend/week to make the switchover. Jon and I knew we were coming back the day of the changeover, and somewhat planned it that way - because the power was going to be out in our apartment for a potential 48 hours, residents were being moved to a hotel for the transition period. So after 3 days in Sri Lanka, Jon and I got to stay nearly 3 more days in a hotel when we got back to Abu Dhabi.

But not just ANY hotel, mind you - we were being put up in the RITZ CARLTON in Abu Dhabi. A proper five star hotel, after our "five-star" hotel experience in Sri Lanka. We landed back in Abu Dhabi about an hour before the buses departed campus, so we headed back, changed out our suitcases, and hopped a bus to the hotel. The Ritz lived up to its reputation from the very start - extravagance, to a T. We were speedily checked in and shown to our rooms, and then invited to the lunch buffet that had been specifically catered for our group, since the normal lunch buffet was closed by the time we checked in.

I'm not going to lie - I took full advantage of the glorious lazy rest the stay at the Ritz offered us, not to mention spending the majority of our time at the pool (since the pool here JUST opened about a week ago). The first night we were there happened to be French night in the buffet restaurant, which was a crazy experience because in addition to the traditional buffet style it normally offered, they were also offering a sort of fresh market experience, with little stalls of seafood, meats, etc that you could pick out and then they would cook to order and bring to your table. I indulged in some duck and a particularly expensive cut of steak, and the numerous and glorious sides and desserts that came along with the offer. Did I mention, as part of being put up in this hotel for the transition, that all our meals in the buffet restaurant were included? We simply had to pay extra for alcohol/food outside of the buffet if we wanted it, the entire stay.

Jon and I enjoyed a very good night's sleep after being thoroughly worn out from Sri Lanka, and then as I've said before, spent the next couple of days by the pool. Highlights below:

Our room came with plush Ritz robes for "use at the hotel".

The large, luxurious spa tub

The LEAST romantic part of our room - we wound up with two twin beds you couldn't push together. Alas, I could not squish Jon in his sleep.

And Ritz slippers, which were not just for hotel use
and I promptly liberated upon leaving.

However, our room came with an EXCELLENT view of the Grand Mosque.

The pool, i.e. my home for two days

Ahhhh, REAL luxury.

After our glorious stay at the Ritz, October pretty much got back to business as usual, until an offer came up to volunteer at the Abu Dhabi Film Festival. Looking for something to occupy myself with, I applied to be a volunteer, and then after digging a bit on their website, noticed that they were also looking for interns. As I've said, I've been looking for work since I got here, and was not above spending some free labor time to get in good with some people. Plus, a film festival sounded exciting. I sent in my CV and basically forgot about it for a while, writing it off as another failed attempt at work. To my surprise, I was emailed back by the volunteer coordinator, asking if she could call me and discuss the open options. After our chat, I was told that there were two departments still looking for a intern - Guest Relations and Industry, though both were pretty much the same job - which sounded like basic customer service/guest babysitting. I told her to forward my CV on to both teams, and to my surprise, got a call the next day from the Industry Guest Coordinator. Long story short, he needed an intern to help him during the festival because he had to handle 90 something guests all on his own.

I enjoyed working for ADFF so much that I'm most likely going to do it again this year. I got to meet lots of interesting people and industry big wigs (including comedian Ronnie Khalil and Cheryl Boone Isaacs, president of the Academy. THE ACADEMY). I got to see lots of great films for free (job perks!), all of which probably deserve their own blog post reviews, but instead will settle for honorable mention here: Art and Craft, Difret, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, and, as a special bonus, Big Hero 6. We were actually the first audience to see the film in 3D in the world. Pretty prestigious. The premiere also happened to be Jon's birthday, and since I had to work that day and the week leading up to it, I got us both tickets to the movie that night and the fancy film festival awards show before. I like to think it was a pretty cool birthday gift.

ADFF ended and so did October, which pushed us forward into Festive Season in the UAE. But that's a story for another post.

The Great Blogging Failure of 2014

So, I totally understand if no one reads this blog anymore. I sort of abandoned it like a red-headed stepchild. Seriously, I'm worse than Cinderella's stepmother over here with this blog. I didn't even give it anything to do like cleaning. I even found a half written post I'd started mid-November recapping my experiences in October. I'm going to post that later, so that everyone still has a chance to read the last fully written thing I wrote here, but I wanted to post this first.

There should be a lot more blog posts here, I know. There aren't. Chalk it up to any number of factors - I'm a major procrastinator. I'm lazy. I didn't want to do it. I don't usually think my life is interesting enough to blog about. I didn't really have anything to blog about because the last few months I've kinda been in a sedentary funk due to another number of combining factors. I could give you a lot of excuses, none of them good enough, really. I have nothing BUT time in which to write.

I also am not going to sit here and promise that I've made some sort of resolution that 2015 is going to be better. That it's going to be the year I blog regularly and timely about all of my experiences. I CAN promise to TRY to be better about it, going forward. The latter half of January going into February has really picked up around here, and I'm slowly coming out of the holiday/winter funk, so I've got things to blog about again.

So, look forward to a slew of posts coming in the next couple of days. I'm going to finish the October recap and put it out first, and then I will probably bundle Nov & Dec into one post and January into another, instead of writing about every single experience separately, just to catch up. Also... those probably wouldn't fill their own blog posts anyway.

So, my 2015 commitment is to this blog. Resolutions are silly. They have like a 90% failure rate. I will, however, set reasonable,  healthy goals going forward - one of which is to blog a little more (regularly).