HO HO HO MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!

HO HO HO MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!! Sending you all our best wishes and lots of love over the holiday season! We hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and enjoy lots of good food and holiday cheer!

We cannot believe we have been here in Dubai for 8 weeks now! Time has flown!! I suppose that is because we are keeping very busy and keeping ourselves entertained from nights out to more exploring of Dubai and the UAE!

One of Mark’s mates who he met while living in Whistler, Luke / ‘Weeman’, was here in Dubai deciding if he wants to move over here as well. We met up with him and did another ‘Brunch,’ but this time it was on a Monday night. It was again all you can eat and drink…..so we consumed lots of Italian food and our drink of choice was margaritas and tequila. Our rounds consisted of 6 margaritas and 6 shots….well that was until I had to wave my white flag and switch to some wine. Luckily Mark had Tuesday off work (for one of the public holidays), it was a major duvet day, which was a given after all that tequila.

We decided to have a low key weekend and had a nice dinner date to a very very good Sushi restaurant that Mark found. They have the proper California/American style rolls that we have missed dearly! On the Friday we spent a long day at the beach and just relaxed and soaked up the sun and listened to the peaceful waves. That evening we went to a BBQ at one of mark’s co-workers villa. They had 2 huge bbq pits with 1000s of chicken satay kebabs….they were so delicious and I think mark and I ate half of them.

I decided it was time to no longer rely on the unreliable taxi service here and get a car!!! We rented a car for a month, and we may extend it from there depending on my job situation. I got a wonderful Chevy Aveo…..yeah you probably have never heard of it, cause it is so spectacular! Actually, it is just a 4 door Honda civic size car, and it isn’t that bad at all. It gets me from point A to point B!

Since I got the car I spent the week driving around to all the hospitals and clinics to turn in my CV/resume, hoping for a lab tech job in one of the hospital labs. This driving around allowed me to see lots of different areas of Dubai and realize how confusing the road system is here, especially cause the half the roads aren’t finished yet. The area we live and the marina area are all brand new and very nice, but once you get to the older parts it is weird to see how different they are. Some apartments and hotel-apartments are quite run down and look very very crowded. Mark compared one of the areas called Deira, to streets in Hong Kong, the way they were all lit up with neon signs and tons of small shops next to each other. All that was missing was Bulldogs Bar (For those that know it)!!!

I have also been consistently applying to jobs I find in the classifieds and on other job websites, and have actually been hearing back from some companies now. I declined one job off that I was given, for it just didn’t seem right and there was no room for growth. I also have met with 2 recruiting companies, which are going to assist me in finding a job! It is a very hard time to find job, because of the holidays and because the economic downfall has begun to hit here, but we are staying positive and something will come up very soon! :)

After doing lots of driving around I had to fill up my tank of gas…..it is so ace here because they fill up your car for you and they wash your windows while you sit in the car, and gas is SOOO cheap. It cost me 50 Dirhams, which is about $13.00 or 9 pounds, for a full tank!!!

This past weekend, Mark’s company had a big Holiday Party for all the Senior staff members. It was at this huge mansion that is one of the Sheik’s weekend homes. It was amazing, the garden was as big as a football field, if not bigger, and the part of the house we went in was a side game room type house which had a sunken dance floor and a DJ. This particular Sheik also owns a few hotels in the Jebel Ali area of Dubai, so he just hired his hotel staff to bring out a huge buffet of every sort of food you could imagine. It was like being at another Friday Brunch, and you know what that means….free flowing drinks as well. I think mark and I stuck to the bubbly, since we haven’t had it since the wedding and we missed it dearly. Well that was until the next day, where Mark had another Duvet day, I think there is a pattern here with Mark and the free booze and the next day. lol

One night this week we decided to make the drive to Abu Dhabi, which is one of the emirates next to Dubai and is the capital of the UAE. There was the annual Motor Show Exhibition (a bit like the one at the NEC in Birmingham) in the convention center. I fell in love with the latest Range Rover Sport and Mark saw himself driving a Nice Big Hummer down the crazy roads in Dubai!. I think we both picked out at least 5 cars that we are getting next….after our sexy Nissan Tiida and Chevy Aveo! :) There was also lots of concept cars designs for the future!

Watch Sky Travel's Video about Abu Dhabi here:http://travel.sky.com/inspiration/hotTipCityBreaks/1219046506860_316

To get into the holiday spirit even more we have been doing our Christmas shopping, and have been doing lots of running to hope it will help with all the food and drinks we have in the next week. We also purchased our 10 pound turkey for Christmas dinner and all the rest! We are looking forward to cooking the big meal for the 2 of us for our first married Christmas together! We are quite confident everything will go well, but if not we have pizza delivery on speed dial.

We have all the plans set for when the Foden’s arrive on the 27th. We are so very excited and are going to have a fun and busy week with them. We’ll tell you all about what we are doing in the next update.

We hope you all have a very very merry Christmas and holiday season! We miss you all, especially during the holiday time! We will definitely not be seeing a white Christmas here, Thursday is going to be 82*F (26* C).




I made a Christmas wish for you:

For a holiday full of pleasure,
Friends and family all around,
And memories to treasure.
We wish for you a Christmas filled

With joyous holiday cheer;
We wish you a Merry Christmas,
And a very Happy New Year!

All our Love Always,
Erin & Mark
xxxxx