Things are very well here, it's nearly 6 months since I arrived to Abu Dhabi. Its near three months for Carmen and the kids and I think they are pretty settled in now.
Carmen continues to go to Fujairah for a couple of days a week to finish off her Master's program. It will finally be finished by mid April. She is starting the job hunt process and although she has only been looking for a few weeks she is starting to get a little panicked. I keep telling her things take time but you know Carmen she is self admittly a type A. Her boss in Fujairah HCT is putting in a good word with the Abu Dhabi campus so hopefully that works out.
Kids are fully integrated into school and after school life. They seem to have made lots of friends and we have them involved in many after school/weekend activities. In fact it's probably overboard but so far they are not complaining about attending any of the things.
We have booked our first holiday away from UAE. To celebrate Carmen's graduation from her Masters were are taking a 11 day trip to Malaysia and Singapore. Most of our time in Malaysia is on the east coast of the main island at a nice all inclusive club med resort. We also will spend 1.5 days in Kuala Lumpur. Next we fly to Singapore for 3 days.
A friend that we've met here is moving back to Singapore so we'll have someone to show us around when we get there. We are very excited to take our first big trip as a family which I'm sure will be a cool adventure. We would have liked to try a few more of the remote areas of Malaysia but with the kids its kinda tough.
Work is work for me. Most days I'm busy enough to keep from getting bored but it's definitely not the same as when I was at APS. The big difference is that I have very few meetings so I actually have 8 hours of work time to get my work done. No complaining here!
Other than that we've kept busy each weekend with different little excursions. Last weekend we were invited to join a family from the kids school class on a picnic in the desert. We all had a great time and were full of sand after the day was over. Normally neither of us would enjoy eating food with sand in it or being covered with sand as the wind blew, but for some reason it didn't seem to bother us.
Something about these new adventures.
Carmen and I went to the semifinal matches of the Dubai men's championship the previous weekend. We watched three of the top four players in the world battle it out and we were in the third row. One thing about the UAE is they definitely attract the best players in the world (at least in tennis and golf) yet getting access to them seems so easy. Anyway, Carmen was in her glory as she got to watch federer win his match and then ended up winning the tournament (although we didn't see the final).
This weekend I am in Dubai for a going away brunch for the friend that I mentioned is leaving to Singapore. Carmen and the kids are staying in abu dhabi as its more of a drinking day :)
