Travels during Eid: Al Mirfa

So, after our epic day in Abu Dhabi we decided that we needed a rest.  The next day we went to the beach at Al Mirfa!  The lady who has been watching our dog works in Al Mirfa, so we asked her about the beach and she told us that it was near the Mirfa Hotel.  So we went to the Mirfa Hotel and asked them about the beach and they ushered us out to their private beach.  Apparently it is still "under construction" so there was no one else there, but Bobbi and me, but there was water and sand and wooden umbrella things and lounge chairs.  I think the "under construction" thing referred to the two-foot drop-off running along the middle of the beach.  That made it a little weird to navigate, and every once in a while a worker would come along and take a shovelful of sand off the top and spread it out on the bottom.

The Mirfa Hotel

Cool stained glass skylight in the hotel lobby

The beach

The Persian Gulf!

When we got hungry we went into the hotel to have lunch.  The menu had camel burgers on it!  Bobbi decided to order one, but I was really hungry and I didn't want to take a chance on getting something I didn't like, so I ordered something safe.  I got a Coke and she got a Sprite, I love the Arabic scripts of familiar things, it's fun for me to see how they transliterate things into Arabic, because I'm a big ol' dork.

Camel Burger!

Excited to try something new!

First Taste!

It's a camel burger....

But...but...camels are cute....

She couldn't finish the burger after having thought too much about the cute camels we've seen all over the place here.

After lunch we went back out to swim, but this time decided to try out the hotel's pool.  I don't know if the people there assumed that we were guests, or if they are just really accommodating, but they gave us towels and let us swim in the pool free of charge!

When we left the hotel and began our trip home we saw the public beach that the other teacher was probably telling us about.  It looked nice!  I think we're going to try it next time instead of accidentally sneaking onto a private beach!

Travels during Eid: Abu Dhabi

The first place we went during our Eid break was Abu Dhabi.  There was some confusion about place names when I first explained our placement to people, so just so everyone's clear about how the geography is set up here please permit me this brief aside.

The United Arab Emirates is a grouping of seven emirates, kind of like states in the U.S.  The largest emirate is Abu Dhabi.  The capital of of the UAE and of the emirate of Abu Dhabi is the city of Abu Dhabi.  So, it's kind of like Kansas.  There's the state of Kansas that also has Kansas City in it.  We live in the emirate of Abu Dhabi, but not in the city of Abu Dhabi.  Keeping with the Kansas analogy, we live next to Dorothy and Auntie Em.

So we went to the city of Abu Dhabi.  We'd been there several times since I arrived, but never as a tourist.  We always went there on some kind of errand/mission to tick as much off of our to-do list as we could then come home.  This time was going to be different, this time we were going to see the sights and drink in the culture, this time we were going to be tourists and take pictures.  This time we started at Ikea.  Again.  Then went to Ace Hardware.  Again.  But that was fine!  Our next few shops were local souqs one of which had been a trading hub for nearly a thousand years!  So we headed for Abu Dhabi's Central Souq.

It is located right downtown in a rat's nest of one-way streets and construction.  It took us several U-turns and trips around the same roundabout to get to it, but we finally did.  We made it to the underground parking and took the elevator up to the souq itself.  I thought to myself, "Ok, so they've renovated it a bit, I'm sure the original traders didn't park their camel caravans underground and take an elevator to the trading stalls, but this'll still be good!"  And, at first, I wasn't wrong.

The "souq" (which I have come to think of as having quotation marks around it because it's not what I think of as a souq, as a matter of fact I've seen French marchés that look more like what I picture a souq to be) was air-conditioned.  The architecture was very interesting, though, and reminiscent of a more traditional souq.  The stores on the ground floor sold an interesting mix of kitschy gifts and gorgeous high-end products.  Bobbi bought a dress kind of like a caftan from one of the stores, and we bought a little "Aladdin's lamp" from another store.  They had shirts with pictures of camel crossing signs and hand etched and painted tea sets, decks of cards with the Burj Khalifa pictured on the back and gilded framed janbiya daggers.  It was a very interesting mix.  There were also stores selling spices from huge canvas sacks all over the place.

After leaving the Central Souq we went to get a birthday present for my mom.  We knew what we wanted to get her, a Pandora bead that is only sold in two places in the world, one store in Abu Dhabi and one store in Dubai.  It's a little silver camel that is kneeling.  We thought that would be a unique gift from our adventure here!  We also got her some camel milk chocolate in a decorative wooden box.  Here's a picture of her camel charm on her bracelet!

After all that shopping we decided to get some food, we were starving!  Oddly enough, there weren't many choices in the huge mall we were in, so we opted for........

OLIVE GARDEN!

Crazy, huh!?  I had the endless soup, salad and breadsticks and Bobbi had the Chicken Alfredo and it tasted just like back home!  We'd been doing a lot of adventurous eating, trying Arabic restaurants all the time, it was nice to have something familiar.

After dinner we went to the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque.  I've already posted the pictures on Facebook and Flickr, so I'll just link them here.  The mosque was mind-blowingly beautiful, though.  I know that a lot of people have been impressed with the pictures I posted of it, but I really am not sure if the pictures do it justice.  It's so hard to capture the scale of the place in photos.  It's absolutely massive!  And every square inch is ornately gorgeous!  

After the mosque we headed back home.  It had been a full, wonderful, exhausting day!

Eid al Adha

I wanted to start off with some information about what Eid al Adha is before I posted blogs about what Bobbi and I did during our time off.

Eid al Adha commemorates Abraham's trust in and dedication to God by recalling the story where God ordered Abraham to sacrifice his son Ishmael to Him and right before committing the act God saved Ishmael and rewarded Abraham's faith by providing him with a lamb to sacrifice instead.  

This eid is a very big holiday in Islam, kids get a week off of school, people give gifts, spend time with family, share meals, etc.  At Bobbi's school there was a huge assembly the last day of school before the break and it sounded to me like not much else got done that day.  Hearing her tell it reminded me a bit of the last day of elementary school before Christmas break where, at my school at least, we all sat in the auditorium and sang carols and watched a student play and had a blast.  In my public school in the U.S. we weren't really supposed to dwell too heavily on the religious aspect of Christmas, so we sang seasonal carols like Jingle Bells and songs of Santa Claus, our plays starred elves instead of three wise men.  The school here, though, didn't shy away from the idea that Eid al Adha commemorates a blood sacrifice to God, but other than that the celebrations are very similar.  

The scripture on this tower is a passage from the Holy Qur'an that all believers must recite.  It says, "There is no lord but God and Muhammed is the prophet of God." 

The school is small enough that all the students (around 100) were able to participate in the assembly.  From what I understand there were different stations set up and the school went from station to station and circled around it singing in Arabic, presumably about what that station represented regarding the sacrifice Abraham made.

Eid al Adha marks the end of the Hajj pilgrimage to the Islamic holy city of Mecca and the celebrations begin after the descent of the pilgrims from Mount Arafat into the city.  This sculpture represents Mount Arafat.

Another ritual act of the pilgrimage is the stoning of three pillars in the city of Mina just east of Mecca.  These pillars are meant to represent the devil and the stoning is a symbolic act of casting the devil out of the lives of believers.  The students at Bobbi's school built their own three pillars in the gym.

Apparently this whole thing culminated with a "sacrifice" of a "lamb" where the girl performing the sacrifice actually stuck red tape to herself to represent the blood of the lamb.  

To some people that might sound disturbing, but Christianity has the exact same story of Abraham's sacrifice in it in Genesis 22:1-18.  There's even a song that asks if you've been "washed in the blood of the lamb" and therefore saved.  All these similarities are fascinating to me!  And I absolutely can not understand how, with so many similarities, people are so moved to fight over the differences in their faiths.  

Arabica

I didn't have too much trouble with jet-lag, really.  I arrived on a Thursday night, and after picking up the dogs, Bobbi and I both came home and crashed into bed around 2 am.  The next day we got up relatively early because we had errands to run.  We had things to do every weekend day for the first two weekends I was here, and I had a list of things to accomplish during the day that kept me busy and productive.  Every night I would go to bed at a reasonable time and sleep through the night, maybe waking up here and there, but nothing big.

The really amazing thing for me is that I did that without the benefit of having coffee!  Back in the States, during the school year, I would bring a huge thermos of coffee with me to school every day and drink most of it.  Between my initial cup and my thermos I would drink almost a pot of coffee a day.  I would drink it black and I loved dark roast, I wanted to peer into my cup and feel the gravity of the coffee preventing light from escaping.  When I took a sip I wanted to taste the bite and smoke of beans that had been nearly burned and pulled from the roaster seconds before bursting into flame.  Over the summer the amount of coffee I consumed dwindled, both because it was hot and drinking hot coffee wasn't as pleasant as it is in winter, but also because my schedule loosened up and I didn't need to be up and at 'em at 5:30 anymore, but I still loved the taste and idea of the occasional coffee.

Here in the UAE, tea is a much more common beverage than coffee.  You can find whole aisles in the grocery stores dedicated to it, then at the end they'll have a couple little bags of coffee to choose from.  I learned the hard way that half of those little bags of coffee have cardamom in them, which I find to be terribly distasteful.  Picture a 4-year-old girl tasting whiskey for the first time and that will approximate the facial reaction I had to drinking cardamom coffee.

So, I went back to the store and bought a bag of the same brand of coffee, since I do tend to like Arabicas and it was either Najjar or Foldgers instant.  This time, though, I made sure to get one without cardamom.  This coffee is very tasty.  It is a relatively dark roast, doesn't taste like hair will spontaneously begin sprouting on your chest and tongue, but still darkish, and it's very smooth.  It is extremely finely ground, and when I'm using my French press I still get a fair amount of remnants in my mug when I'm done that look like the sludge left over from having a Turkish coffee.  

The problem is, I can't sleep anymore.  I don't know if it's because we're starting to get settled in and there are fewer and fewer things that need done, so I don't feel like I'm running all day and until I collapse into bed, or if it's this coffee!  I drink one French press, which yields two cups, between 9 and 10 am and when I go to bed at night I end up getting back up and playing around on my computer because my mind zips along at warp speed and I can't shut it off.  It seems crazy to think that, after being so inundated with caffeine for so long, having two cups of this stuff would keep me awake for over 14 hours.  I just can't believe that!

I've got a car now, so I'm going to try to find a job after this coming week.  Hopefully I'll be teaching soon.  If not I'm going to start focusing more on my art.  I packed my paints and some canvas boards, my sketch pad and pencils and a few books.  I also want to drive around and take pictures because the landscape here is completely amazing!  And I want to totally rewrite the draft of the novel I wrote a few years ago, give it some more punch and some more structure.  Plus, Bobbi and I are going to start walking every evening around the complex a few times, and the fitness center and pool for our villas is finished now, so I have plenty to keep me busy, really!  I might just need to keep the coffee flowing once I get all this started!

The Wedding

I've been thinking about how I want to address this, and if I want to address this in a blog post for the past few days.  I've decided that if I didn't talk about it here I wouldn't be being truthful, open, and honest about my time here and I would just be trying to cherry-pick experiences to give people some rosy view of what it's like.

I've been processing the incidents and I'm kind of torn about how to feel about them.  First I will lay out the events as I perceive them to have happened, then I'll dissect them and talk about them and why I'm ambivalent.

Bobbi was invited to a wedding by one of her students.  The student's sister was getting married and, apparently in such a small town as Liwa weddings are big community events and everyone gets invited.  The girl even posted an invitation on the message board of her school.  Bobbi asked if I would be allowed to come as well, since we know that the sexes are often segregated and we don't know how a traditional, rural, Muslim wedding works.  She was told that I could come to the wedding, but that I would have to go on the men's side and Bobbi would have to go on the women's side.  When Bobbi told me about this I was both excited and nervous.  I was excited to get to see a part of the culture that I presume most visiting westerners do not get to see, but I was nervous because I knew that I would be in a room with a bunch of men whom I did not know and I knew that I was completely unaware of the wedding protocol.  I've been to enough American weddings, both Christian and secular to have a pretty good feel for how things are going to go, I even went to a Catholic wedding once and I was able to muddle my way through the standing, sitting and kneeling, but I have never been to a Muslim wedding.

Bobbi's student told her that the festivities would begin at 8 pm, so we arrived a little early to scope things out.  We found out that there weren't really men's and women's sides, it was actually a men's building and a women's building separated by a wall, each with their own parking lot.  I dropped Bobbi off at the women's building and continued on to the men's.  When I parked and began walking in I saw a small group of men standing by the entrance and I did my best smile and nod while I was practicing saying "my wife is a teacher at Khanoor school" in Arabic and wishing that I could remember her student's name so they didn't think that I was a random weirdo who just showed up at weddings for no good reason.  When I got to the door I looked in and the hall was empty.  A few chairs lined up on the far end and a security guard standing by the door and a man seemingly giving directions to the men outside.  I asked the director if this is where the wedding was and he said that it was, but that the men's part was over.

I walked back to my car and texted Bobbi that the men's part was over and asked if she knew where they were going to wait for the women to finish.  I was hoping they were going to a cafe or a shisha place and that I could still meet up with them there and have something to do for the next few hours since the bride wasn't supposed to show up until at least 10.  Eventually Bobbi was able to ask someone and was told that the men were done and had gone home.  I was very disappointed to have missed it and a little frustrated, but I didn't want Bobbi to miss out on the experience and I knew that her only source of information was a 17-year-old girl who was just learning English, so there were bound to be miscommunications.  I sent Bobbi a text telling her to have fun, dance, enjoy the wedding, that I could wait for her.

I sat in the car in the parking lot of the men's building for a while, checking Facebook and playing games on my phone, then I heard them closing the gate to that building, so I left.  I drove around for a while, since I had never been to that area I wanted to check it out, but it was dark, so I couldn't see much and decided to head back.  Right next to the wedding hall there was a gas station with a car wash, so I decided to wash the sand off the car and get myself some snacks and something to drink.  I drove back to the wedding hall after all that and parked outside the women's building to wait for Bobbi.  I sat there for a long while eating my snacks and playing on my phone.  There was a group of boys playing around outside the building, running in and out of it, running around the parking lot, sword fighting each other with sticks, etc.  Apparently they didn't know I was there until one of them came to the car and decided to check out his keffiyeh in my passenger side view mirror.  When he did that he noticed me sitting there and was startled.  The group of boys came around to the driver's side and one of them motioned me to roll down my window, then leaned his forearm along my door and said something to me in Arabic that I didn't understand, so I told him, "I'm sorry, but I don't understand."  Watching the shock spread across his face was almost comical, his eyes widened and he backed away slowly.  That moment another of the kids in the group leaned over in front of my window and yelled, "Fuck you!"

I can only imagine that I must have made the same kind of shocked face as the original kid, and I rolled the window back up.  The kids ran around to the other side of the car and beat on my passenger side window, the same kid yelled through the window, "Fuck you!  I fuck your mother!"  I tried to just ignore them as this one kept yelling and flipping me off, gesturing for me to leave, telling me "get out."  They were still swarming around my car, though, and one kid in the group reached over and pulled open my car door, so I got out and they ran back into the women's building.  I walked around to the back of my car and leaned up against the bumper and crossed my arms across my chest.  Then the boys began peeking out of the building, sometimes coming out onto the little terrace in front of the building and yelling and flipping me off some more.  I just stood there and looked at them and didn't say anything.  Then they began throwing things at me.  I don't know if they were actually trying to hit me or not; it may just be that they come from a culture where children don't play baseball, so their throwing skills were horrible.  Nothing actually hit me, but they threw what looked like a cut off broomstick, a shard of wood about the size of my palm, a few rocks and a broken light socket.  The one young kid who kept showing off his vulgar English skills came out of the door by himself once and hiked up his kandura, showing his whitie-tighties and began humping the air.  That was totally ridiculous!  It reminded me of this YouTube video, but it did answer a question for me, though, Bobbi and I had both been wondering what the guys wear under the kanduras, but that's not really something that you can ask someone you don't know.

After the second round of throwing stuff at me I walked over to the door of the hall and was stopped by a slightly older boy who, very politely, actually, told me, "You can't go in, it's only for girls."  I told him to make sure the kids stay inside and he asked why.  I gave him a rough outline of what had happened and he said he was the older brother and would take care of it.  I texted Bobbi and told her what was going on and that we needed to leave.  It was 10:15 and the bride still hadn't showed up, and I told her that we couldn't wait.  I was feeling offended and, frankly pissed off, and was reaching my breaking point.  I put up with it as long as I could, and I had reached my limit.  Bobbi came out and we left, and that was the end of that.

So, here's my two cents.  On one hand I feel indignantly offended at having been treated like that, no one should be treated with such a dearth of human respect.  There is no excuse for that kind of behavior.  On the other hand, I understand that these kids were probably just mimicking their fathers' attitudes toward foreigners.  This country began to modernize less than 50 years ago and they have grown a huge amount in the past few decades.  This has led to a backlash where people who still remember how their country used to be are doing what they can to preserve their national heritage and their history because they see the western influence taking over.  There has been a shift where more and more women are beginning to wear the full-coverage hijab, so not even their eyes show, trying to go to the opposite extreme of the western influence.  Another factor is that one way the government has been able to build and modernize their country so quickly is by bringing in cheap labor from other countries like India, Bangladesh and Pakistan, and bringing in skilled labor from European countries, America and Australia.  This had lead to Emiratis being a minority in their own country by a huge margin.  I have seen enough racism in my own country based on the perception that foreign nationals are "taking over" to recognize this feeling.  So, I'm feeling pretty sure that for these kids I was just a representation of the frustration their fathers feel about the difficulties native Emiratis have about getting work and supporting their families.

Honestly, I'm still a little conflicted about how to feel about it.  I knew when I was preparing to come here that there might be some negative sentiments from some of the Emiratis toward me as a foreigner in their already over-run country, but knowing that and experiencing that are two very different things.  I feel like Bobbi and I are some of the few foreigners here who actually came to learn more about the country and the language and the culture, but even with that desire, it's hard.  The default language of commerce here is English now, but not because it's the native language of the majority.  I'd say that only a small minority of people here are native English speakers.  I have tried to speak Arabic to several people who have stopped me and in heavily accented English told me they don't speak Arabic.  Out of the few people who I've had the opportunity to speak to in Arabic most of them see a white westerner and expect English, so when I start in Arabic they just assume that they're not understanding my English and get really confused.  It is kind of funny to watch it dawn on them that I'm addressing them in Arabic, though!  They get an almost shocked look on their face and a huge smile!

But getting back to my original point, being an American I can't even imagine what kind of virulent and violent repercussions would occur if our national heritage was so compromised that even our language was no longer being used in most places.  America is a nation of immigrants, but they come there to become American, because they believe in the American dream to a degree most natural-born Americans don't anymore.  The overwhelmingly vast majority of them learn English at the very least.  We may have Spanish labels on products, but there is no way to compare that to how much English has affected the culture here.  So, even though I think that Bobbi and I are a couple of the "good guys" who are here for reasons that go well beyond an awesome paycheck and travel opportunities, and even though I still am a little disgruntled with the treatment I received, I can kind of understand it.  It was probably kids who have not yet developed adult rationality reacting to their parents' frustration in a way that the parents themselves most likely never would have, because as frustrating as the situation may be I have found most of the people I encounter here to be very friendly and helpful and kind.  I have let this bad experience negatively impact my time here for a few days, and I'm making a choice to get over it and spend my energy connecting with the local people and discovering their culture instead of ruminating over some children's foolishness.

The Trip: Part II

I headed through security at Chicago O'Hare's international terminal.  I took off my shoes and my belt, emptied my pockets into the bin provided and took my laptop out and put it in another bin.  My stuff went through the x-ray machine and I went through a metal detector and that was it.  No gropings or sigmoidoscopies, nothing.  At the time I thought it was pretty lax for airport security and several days after I got here I realized just how right I was when I discovered two boxes full of replacement blades hanging out in a side pocket of my backpack for the utility knife I very conscientiously put into my checked bag.  Now I remember putting them in there during the last mad rush to pack all our stuff from our place and move it to Casey and Natasha's house and thinking, "Man, I really have got to remember to take those out before I try to go through airport security and get in big trouble!"

At the gate my flight was delayed for about an hour due to weather.  There was a huge thunder storm that had just rolled in.  It didn't look very big on the radar, but was extremely noisy with a lot of lightening.  I kept thinking about poor Gizmo in his crate, possibly already on the plane and how scared he must be because he is always terribly jumpy when it comes to loud noises, thunder and fireworks in particular, and now he's in an unfamiliar environment alone with all hell breaking loose around him.  I felt like a horrible human being, but kept telling myself that he was on his way to see his mom and we would all be together again as a little family like normal.  I just couldn't shake the gnawing voice in the back of my mind that kept saying, "what if one of them dies on the plane?" or "what if this experience drives them crazy and they're not ever the same?"  I tried to breathe and shake these thoughts and remain calm.  Shaking the thoughts was easy, there were several crying babies waiting at the gate with me that made it impossible to think about anything at all, so that was nice.

When we finally boarded the plane and I got to my seat I was very pleased.  When Bobbi reserved my ticket she paid for me to have the extra leg room and I had a whole lot of it!

When I sat down, however,  I noticed that my tray was in the arm of the seat, which meant that the seat was a bit narrower than the rest of the seats on the plane and the armrest didn't go up, so I couldn't spread out at all.  The stewardess noticed that I was shifting around trying to get comfortable and told me that there was an entire empty row of four seats in the back of the plane and if I wanted to move there I could.  I decided to take her up on that and, my god, am I glad I did!  Not only did I have a TV screen and a bunch of cool charging options for my phone, but I also had the opportunity to put up all the arm rests and lie down across the four seats and sleep!

When the flight started I waited until they served dinner, then took some of the ZQuil I bought and stretched out across the seats, covered myself with two of those little blankets they give you, piled up all four of the pillows from my row and conked right out!  I got up after a while and went back to the galley area to ask for something to drink and the stewardess said something that sounded like ice cream, and when I acted surprised she said, "Oh, you must have been sleeping, we served ice cream.  I'll get you one!"  So she handed me a Klondike bar while she poured me a Pepsi!  I ate that, then browsed the entertainment options, watched some info shows on the UAE and a few episodes of Big Bang Theory.  I started watching a movie, but got interrupted several times and wasn't terribly interested in it anyway, so I just turned it off and laid back down and went to sleep!  All in all it was an awesome plane ride, hardly felt like the 13 hours it took!

When we landed I got off the plane and walked for what felt like the whole length of the airport and then some before I got to Immigration.  When I did I saw that there were two lines, one said "Visas" the other said "Gulf Coast Countries, Emeratis, and Other Nationalities."  The "Visas" line was huge, but the other windows only had one or two people there, so I wanted to go there, and I thought, "I don't have a visa yet and I don't need to try to get one here because I'll be covered under Bobbi's, so I should be good."  When I went to go into the customs area there were two men standing there, one was a short guy in a suit with airport credentials, the other one was taller in traditional Arab dress, a kandura and a keffiyeh.  The guy in the suit greeted me and I handed him my passport.

"Where's your visa?"

"I don't have one, my wife's an ADEC teacher and I will be covered under her visa."  This seemed to really confuse him, he furrowed his brow and shook his head.

"You need a visa, you can not come without a visa," he said as he handed my passport to the guy in the kandura and said something in Arabic.  The taller guy shook his head and said something in an exasperated tone that I can only imagine was along the lines of, "He doesn't need a visa with an American passport."  The shorted guy handed me my visa and with a very wide, seemingly genuine smile, directed me to the "Other Nationalities" line.  And that's how I had my first arabian heart attack.

So I went through line and the customs guy stamped my passport, then I went to the baggage claim and I must have been one of the very few people who were not catching a connecting flight, because my luggage came out very quickly.  I loaded it onto one of those luggage trolley things and wheeled it over to Customs.  I was sure, with my two full-sized/over-sized suitcases and my bodybag of a duffel bag and my two carry-on bags traveling by myself, that I would be stopped and searched, but I went into the "Nothing to Declare" line and walked right through!  

A huge smile plastered itself on my face because I knew that my next step was looking for Bobbi at the terminal and reuniting with my wife!  At the end of the last hallway I looked through the doors and instantly recognized the sweet face with brown hair and glasses bobbing in the crowd.  She directed me to meet her off to the side and when I got there I pushed my trolley away and wrapped my arms around my wife for the first time in over a month, and it was amazing.  I held her tight and kissed her cheek and she squeezed me right back.  When we left the airport and got into the parking garage the heat and humidity slapped me in the face, hard.  Her glasses fogged up the way they usually do when you come in from the winter cold into a warm house, and she took them off, polished them and explained that that happens every time she leaves an air conditioned building.

We loaded my bags into her car and went to the cargo area to get the dogs.  That process actually went pretty smoothly, except for the vet that was on duty was nowhere to be found, so we had to have someone call him.  Over an hour later he finally showed up to tell us that his shift is ending and we need to call his colleague who has the next shift, and he gave us his number and left.  When his colleague got there he was very upset at first at having to do work that the other vet should have done, but once he calmed down he was a huge help and very kind.  The process still took a long time, but there were no more major hiccups, and at the end of it we loaded their crates along with my luggage and the dogs and us into Bobbi's rented Toyota Camry and began our two hour ride home.  When we got there I showered, then we all four climbed into the bed and went to sleep.

The Trip: Part I

Just a quick re-cap of the previous post, getting all the ducks in a row for me and the dogs to fly to Abu Dhabi to join Bobbi was frustrating and confusing and stressful.  Then, the day of my departure, the big day, I overslept by an hour.

So, I got up, brushed my teeth, threw my clothes and shoes on, tossed all my last minute toiletries in a bag, finished loading the car and took off.  I had Mom and Bobbi both texting me wildly asking me if I'd remembered my passport and the dogs and all their papers, etc.  I stopped and picked Mom up and we began our drive to Chicago with this beautiful sunrise to enjoy on the way.

I felt pretty good about the whole affair.  I had mapped the drop off location for the dogs and we had plenty of time to get there by two, and then, since our flights didn't leave until 8:30 we had plenty of time to return the car and get food and chill.  So we took our leisurely time getting up there.  We stopped a couple times and walked the dogs so that when they were cooped up in their crates forever they would at least have had some exercise.  When Google Maps said we were just a few minutes away from the cargo area where we needed to drop the dogs off we stopped and found a nice park right on Lake Michigan to let the dogs run around and go to the bathroom.  

After they had a chance to run around and play and potty we loaded them up and headed over to the cargo area.  When Google Maps said we had arrived, though, there was no cargo area there, only a weird brick building with a huge wrought iron gate.  We called to ask where, exactly, they were located and were informed that we were no where near them.  We were still an hour away.  So they gave us a location to map on our GPS and then directions from there to their location.  Now we were feeling pressed for time.  We hustled over to them and negotiated the traffic and the construction at the airport and made it with just a little time to spare.  

Mom began walking the dogs and I went in to begin the processing.  The ladies inside were very helpful, but this was their first time shipping dogs for Etihad, so they were confused about the process and reading and re-reading the paperwork provided to them.  While they were looking over my paperwork and their own paperwork I went back outside and Mom and I gave the dogs their "special" calming treats, which are an all natural mix of things like chamomile and tryptophan, and got their crates ready.  Both our dogs are special little guys with nervous dispositions, so we wanted to make sure that this crazy ordeal in the plane was as calm as possible for them.  In the crates we put their blankies which I sprayed with a calming spray that supposedly contains pheromones that a mother dog emits that is supposed to calm her puppies, we put one of Bobbi's slippers in each crate so that they would have her scent and I put a dirty sock in each crate so that they would have my scent.  I know that sounds weird to put dirty slippers and socks in there, but when they're at home both of our dogs are obsessed with our shoes and will regularly grab one of Bobbi's flip flops or one of my sandals and curl up with it and sleep.  We also put in two small bowls of food that hooked to the door of the crate and a bottle of water like what hamsters drink out of, only bigger which we have been teaching the boys to use for a while now.  

 We backed into a loading dock area and they brought out a pallet with a fork lift and we put the crates on there, then put the dogs in the crates and they wheeled them inside.  I was so sad to see them go and I had no clue what kind of shape they would be in on the other side.  I was completely beside myself, but had to try to keep it together to finish the process and not look like a raving lunatic.  I went back inside to finalize the paperwork after they had weighed the boys and, instead of keeping me waiting at the counter, this time they called me back into their office and asked me to sit down.  Two ladies were pouring over an instruction sheet and they told me that their understanding was that the crates had to have bowls in them, but that there shouldn't be food in the bowls, instead the food should be strapped to the tops of the crates in case they needed fed during the flight.  I asked who was going to feed them during the flight and they told me that no one was allowed in the cargo area during the flight, so they guess they food was there in the case of a layover.  

"So, what you're telling me is that they can't eat on the plane?" I asked.

"Yes."

"But that's a twenty-four hour ordeal for them, and I don't know about you, but I'm planning on eating sometime in the next twenty-four hours."

This was met with a moment of silence before one lady suggested calling a colleague of theirs who used to work with Etihad to get her take on the situation.  After that conversation they decided that the food could stay in the bowls, but if I had any extra they wanted to attach that to the top just so they would be within the regulations.  After having gone to attach the food to the crates they called me back into the room where they were housing the dogs, which was much nicer than I expected, I thought they'd be on a warehouse shelf or something, but they were in an empty room that looked like it could be someone's office if it were furnished.  They only reason they called me back there was to show me that Gizmo had already knocked one of his food bowls loose and his food spilled out into his crate, kind of like a "see, you shouldn't have put the food in there."  I reattached the bowl and petted Gizmo's nose, but he was wild-eyed with panic, the poor little guy!  I told the lady that I'd rather clean up kibble than not give him the opportunity to eat and I left.  God, I felt horrible leaving them there, especially after I had seen the fear in their little faces, but I knew I had to, and I knew that they were coming to be with their mom and dad.  

So after being assured that everything would be fine and that they would arrive with me since we would be riding in the same plane, I left.  I got back in the rented Yukon and headed to the airport.  Mom and I were both starving, so we wanted to get something to eat, but on our maps the best options were actually inside the airport, so we decided to check in and then eat.  We dropped the car off and I lugged my body bag of a duffel bag and my gym bag carry on while Mom wheeled my suitcase and carried my backpack.  When we caught the shuttle from the rental area to the terminal the driver helped us load our luggage and asked me who I had in my duffel bag.  I told him I had two of my "friends" in there and he laughed uneasily.  Maybe I should work on my affable sarcasm.  Anyway, Mom and I re-ladened ourselves and trudged into the terminal, luckily the driver had been able to park right in front of the Etihad desk, so we really only had to make it through both sets of automatic doors, then we were golden.  The Etihad desk was totally empty.  There was no one in sight at any of the desks, actually.  I saw a man walking around in a royal blue vest and I asked him where we checked in for Etihad.

"Right there," he said pointing to the empty counter, "but we don't open until four."

It was 3:30.  A half-an-hour wait until we can check in and begin waiting for our flight, but more importantly it was a half-an-hour wait until we could eat!  I looked around for a place to sit, and that was the first time I realized that there were dozens of people taking up all the seats, waiting for Etihad to open so they could check in for their flights!  I was so focused on being able to put my heavy bag down and seeing that there was no line and no one behind the counter that I hadn't even noticed the huge mass of people already waiting!

So, not being able to find a seat, we stood for the half hour, which wasn't bad, really, we'd just gotten off a six-hour car ride, and it had the added benefit that, as zero-hour approached, people began to line up behind us, so we were first in line, even though we weren't first to arrive!  I was feeling like things were taking a positive turn, like we'd zip right through check-in and get a nice meal at a sit-down restaurant and have a little drinky-drink before our flights and just while away the time with light chit-chat.  Holy cow was I wrong.

We were the very first people to be helped at the counter and we were ushered forward to a short lady sporting a navy hijab that matched her Etihad uniform and colored contact lenses that made her eyes match everything else.  She was all smiles and perfectly-applied lipstick until I began putting my bags on the scale, then it all fell apart.  It turns out that my rolling suitcase was right at the maximum weight they would accept on the plane and I would have to pay an additional $50 overweight bag charge for it, my duffel bag was so heavy they wouldn't even put it on the plane until I took stuff out of it, my gym bag was three kilos overweight and would need to be checked unless I fixed that, and would need to fit into their sizing apparatus.  

The little woman with navy blue eyes simply looked at us and said, "You need to take things out."

I was exasperated at this point, so I replied with, "And put it where?!" probably using a tone that didn't make her feel like helping me out.

"You can take things home."

"No, I drove here from Columbus, Ohio and I'm flying to Abu Dhabi, I can't run back home."

"You can go downstairs and buy another bag," she said.

So we decided that we would buy another bag and try to balance out the weight.  I stood and waited and Mom went off looking for the suitcase store.   While she was gone Ms. Navy Blue Everything shooed me over and began helping another guest.  A minute later the desk clerk from AeroMexico was asking me if I was next in line and I explained that I was waiting on the Etihad clerk and after a short, hushed conversation with Ms. NBE, AeroMexico told me I would have to move down so she could help customers, so I picked up my three extremely heavy bags and gave my roller bag a push with my foot.  When it stopped rolling I looked AeroMexico in the eye, straining under the weight of my luggage, and asked, "Far enough?"  She said yes.

Mom was able to find a pretty good deal on a soft-sided roller bag, and we were finally able to get my luggage jockeyed around to one overweight bag and one extra bag, but my gym bag carry on still needed to be put in the sizer and tagged that it fit.  While I was finishing up at the counter, Mom went to the gentleman running the sizer and they began trying to squeeze it in.  I was pretty concerned, because that particular bag had been packed with delicate things, like my $900 DSLR camera and the BluRay player that was a Christmas present and that would be the only real entertainment we would have abroad as we aren't planning on paying for a cable plan.  My stomach sank a little as I watched something in the bag give way and it finally slide right down into the sizer.  There was a little cheer on the part of the Etihad guy working the sizer when it finally fit, but Mom didn't look convinced and I had visions of my camera smashed and my BluRay player snapped in half.  

Mom came back up to the counter and breathlessly informed me that she thinks the family-size bag of cheesy poofs I brought as a gift for Bobbi had popped.  That was a bit of a relief, but then I began picturing my entire gym bag filled with sticky yellow powder and the relief was fleeting.  Once we were within our weight restrictions, and well on our way to being out of her hijab-covered hair, Ms. NBE was much more pleasant.  She told us that the only good restaurants were inside the terminal past security and since my flight was leaving from Terminal 5 and Mom's was leaving from Terminal 1 we either couldn't eat together because you need a ticket for a flight leaving from that terminal to enter it, or we would have to eat at the only restaurant that was outside security, McDonald's.  

The McDonald's was downstairs and was just a counter, no seating area, so we had to get our food and sit in an area that looked like a gross bus station to eat.  No comfy table and certainly no drinky-drinks, but we did have a very nice time chatting and relaxing until I saw a mouse running back and forth under the seats across from us.  Mom hadn't seen it and she's very mouse-phobic, whatever the clinical name for that is, so I very calmly said, "We need to leave here now.  Let's go sit closer to my gate."

She looked at her watch and saw that we still had plenty of time, "Why?"

"C'mon.  Let's just go," I said and once we got out of the immediate area I put my arm around her shoulders and whispered that I had seen a mouse and didn't want her to have a screaming fit when she saw it, so I thought it best that we left.

We found a couple pretty nice seats right outside the security area for my terminal and sat there and chatted some more until it was time to leave.  We said our goodbyes and each made our way to our separate gates, and that is how this adventure began.

To see more pictures of our trip to Chicago click here!

To be continued....