Blog Stew

4 story high waterfall art at the mother of all malls

These are random things I've been thinking about or noticing or experiencing. I don't have pictures to go with most of them so I'll just post a few unrelated pictures from adventures I haven't had the mental energy to blog about. A mishmash or conglomerate or post stew...

The young women at Zayed largely wear abayas (plural may be abayet). These are black robes, usually paired with a headscarf of one kind or another. From a distance, they look remarkably similar but walking the halls with the students, I can't get over how different and beautiful the abayas are.  Some are floaty chiffon, some are shimmery rayons, some have ruffles, pleats, beads, cut outs, lace, small explosions of colored embroidery, block panels in silver, and other adornments and stylistic flares I don't even know how to describe. They are gorgeous and unique.

for a fee you can scuba at the aquarium in the mall

I have a guy who drives me to and from work every day while I'm waiting to get all the paperwork together to be able to get my driver's license. I've never had a driver before. It's a bit of a let down. Mr. Lui is super punctual and is constantly wiping non-existant dust off his cute little Nissan Juke but I got hooked up with him through the Chinese woman in my building and his English is only marginally better than my Chinese. We gesture at the giant orange ball of the sun setting behind Burj Khalifa on the ride home and pantomime taking pictures to show that we think it's remarkably pretty. We say "Hello." We say "See you later." We drive in silence a lot.

choco bars at the giant candy store by the aquarium for Doris

We drive past Ras Al Khor Wildlife Sanctuary every day and I stare longingly at the big flocks of flamingos and the bird blinds they've built ("they" being the city, not the birds) so you can get out into the marshy bits. I don't have a way to communicate that: I'd really love to detour over there for a look-see and how much extra would that cost and is it a matter of you can't get there easily from here because I see them from the highway and I can tell you have to exit a ways back in order to wind up at the blinds...

Those three kings of Orient in the Christmas song? One of them brought Frankincense- probably from or through the Arabian peninsula. It's been part of the trade routes here for 5000 years.

Zayed U's Abu Dhabi campus

Perfume, strong and to me, ancient smelling (and no, I can't describe what makes me think of it as ancient smelling, I just do), is a really big deal here. Perfume bottles are beautiful handblown glass affairs with delicate curlicues, and both men and women are not afraid to douse themselves in scent. One scent in particular, I think it's frankincense, sometimes travels in a cloud around a woman in a store or on campus. I kind of like it and it makes my eyes water at the same time.