Fantastic February

Hello again People,
Yes another month has flown by and its Blog time!! It is incredible how quick time is flying for us our here in the Desert, and that is with me not having a job……..but guess what, I finally got one!!! :) After about 6 interviews and psychometric testing, I finally got the contract from Pepsi, so I am now an employed woman! I will be working for PepsiCo International as an assistant for the Regional Planning Director of Finance. All the paperwork and visa processing is now going through and I officially start work on March 18! So unfortunately on St. Patty’s day I will have to stay away from the green beer. I’m really looking forward to my job and the start of my career. So as I mentioned last month, the spiraling economy has now hit here. Lots of people are departing Dubai, mostly due to redundancies (laid off), but now that I have a secure job we are a little less on edge.

Mark has also been put on another project, so we feel quite secure with what he is doing as well. It all changes here very fast, but as for now we are ok. Of course with this extra project mark is now doing, he is working a lot and lots of over time. I don’t think he’s had one Saturday off this year yet.

It definitely feels like home here now. We see the beautiful sun, the burj al arab, the burj, the busy roads, the beach, a few sandstorms, etc every day and now have got used to the fact that this is our home and that we aren’t just on holiday. It is a good feeling, for we feel comfortable and used to Dubai now!! And our apartment is coming together as well into a nice home! We even have our own plant, we call him Chesney. I wanted a doggie, so this was a compromise.

We went to this insane place called dragon mart – which is this huge shopping complex with loads of retailers selling everything and anything you could possibly think of, but at the just imported from china value! They have everything from bath tubs, to electronics, to plants, to restaurant size fryers, and even fork lift trucks. Mark and I were very overwhelmed, but we managed to find a few nice lamps for our house there (courtesy of Mr & Mrs G Foden)

We celebrated our first valentines day – actually together! Made tons of sushi from scratch and tempura! It was lots of fun learning a new type of cooking! We will defo be making sushi rolls again in the near future – they are easier than we expected! Mark has decided he is going to take up golfing again. So he got a very nice full set of Taylor made irons – well they were supposedly from me for v-day! Hehe So he’s been heading to the driving range, and considering taking some professional taught lessons.

Marky Wakeboarding

We drove out to Umm Al Quwain (another emirate) to this marine club. And relaxed in the sun by the ocean and pool all day. Mark then had wakeboarding lessons from a professional wakeboarder (ex world champion, Emma Jones)! This was a gift from me from Christmas. He managed to get up right away and was riding the wake and loved being on top of the water. He now wants to take up wakeboarding, and get a boat, etc! Sounds good to me, I could drive or ride in a boat on the weekends!! :)

We still don’t have our residency….but it literally should be through in the next week! We had to go through the treacherous process of getting a medical…imagine going to a clinic with 100s of Indian men waiting to get their medical as well! Just not a fun part of the process!

The girls at the shower!

Our friends Dan & Gemma are pregnant and due in a few more months, so I decided to throw a surprise baby shower for them. There were about 10 of us, with lots of food, drinks, cake and balloons! Some of the brits/guys don’t really understand baby showers, so it was more just a party, instead of a pressie and game event. (as I don’t think many traditionally baby showers finish at 4.30am with all the guests wasted)! But was lots of fun and they were happily surprised!

My parents and Amber are heading out here in a few more days, so we’ve been busily planning a schedule for when they are here! Really really looking forward to seeing them, for haven’t seen them since September! Mark has off work while they are here and I start after they have gone! It’s gonna be a blast! Can’t wait!

Well I’ve blabbed on for way to long once again…hope you managed to get through it!

Hope this finds you all well, happy and healthy!

Send us an email of what you’ve been up to and what is happening in your lives!!!

We love and miss you all!

Love,

Erin & Mark

Xxxx

P.S. we finally have an address here in Dubai, so if you would like to post anything to us (copies of Viz, Nuts and Zoo for Mark) please send it to:

Erin & Marky

PO Box 487029

Discovery Gardens

Dubai, United Arab Emirates

For those of you who don’t have facebook or haven’t seen our albums, here are some links to picture albums from the last few months:

A fine start to 2009:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2228158&id=6402232&l=f3d87

Dubai desert classic & Al Ain air show:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2233096&id=6402232&l=79a91

Chinese state circus, global village, home additions, valentines day:http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2235516&id=6402232&l=297ce

Mark is a pro wakeboarder:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2236685&id=6402232&l=bde4a

Gemma & Dan’s Baby shower:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2237450&id=6402232&l=cc60b

Hello again to all our family and friends!
We hope you are all doing well in the New Year and surviving this horrible economic crisis. It has finally hit Dubai and there is nervousness in the air! There are no new building projects starting and a lot of redundancies/lay offs going on, no one is safe and looks like Dubai's "Untouchable" bubble has burst!
But even with this downward economy Mark and I are still keeping ourselves very busy and attending all the fun events that are still happing in Dubai.
We had tickets for the exhibition match AC Milan v Hamburg (football/soccer) We got to see Mr Beckham again along with 40,000 others who the majority of fans were there just to see him! The game was at the Dubai Rugby7s stadium and produced a great atmosphere – we are really looking forward to how messy and crazy the rugby 7's gets when the same 40,000 people have been drinking in the sun from 9am till 9pm – This event happens next month.
We managed to get ourselves to the 24 hour race at the local Race track (77 sports cars racing) – we were able to get on the track and do the pre-race grid walk and were stood next to Jonny Herbert. We just watched the first few hours for I got bored of watching them go around and around.
We happily discovered another very cool place in Dubai, Global village, which is kind of a theme park and Epcot center combined. It has different 'tents' that are different countries with lots of traditional food and nick-knacks for each country. It was something different to do on a Friday night but we really enjoyed it and all the sri lanken, Pakistan, Indian, Thailand, Afghanistan food we tried!
Mark did a 10k run along Jumeirah Beach Road….so to prep we were been doing lots of running and attempting to get into shape….Mark had an outstanding time of 48:23!!!! I was very proud! There was also a marathon and Haile Gebrselassie was flown over from Ethiopia so he could attempt to beat his own world record, he ended up being just a minute outside of his record, but it was great to see all the Ethiopians supporting and cheering him on (basically going wild with lots of bright colours)! This is the marathon/10k website: http://www.dubaimarathon.org/ (and if you click on photos, runners, click marathon photos.com icon, a new window will pop up and then type 5986 or Foden in the search box and some pictures of mark in his special outfit will come up).
We have been hanging out with Dan and Gemma, one of the couples who also lives in Discovery Gardens, quite a bit. We had them over for dinner and drinks, and mark and dan decided they are going to take up golfing again and have been heading to the driving range together. Now mark wants a set of irons. We also attended the Dubai Desert Classic (http://www.dubaidesertclassic.com/) with them. We somehow managed to sneak into the club house and have a Full English Breakfast sat next to Colin Montgomerie, Sergio Garcia and the eventual winner, Rory McIlroy. We tried to ignore the heat and followed various players around the course, stopping off for a drink or 2 at the beer tents around the greens. We also met Rob McCaffrey off Sky Sports (who now presents all Premier League matches over in Dubai).
Mark's company finally has done the first part of processing his visa…..we were both flown to Doha, Qatar and mark re-entered the UAE with an employment visa!! We were literally in Qatar for 15 minutes and the re-boarded the same plane. It is a bit odd how they do things here in regards to visas but never the ones to miss out on an opportunity, we were able to stock up on duty free booze and brought back to Dubai our full allowance!
The Dubai Shopping Festival has been going on From Jan 15-Feb 15th. It is basically an excuse for all the shops to put sales on and get rid of a lot of their stock. I have made my way around quite a few shops getting some stuff for the house and a few work outfits!! There are also events put on at all the shopping centers in the evenings with ribbon dancing, Chinese circus, Indian drummers, to name a few.
I still have not found a job :( but I have a really good prospect lined up….so don't wanna talk about it and jinx it, so will keep you all updated if it goes through!!
Mark and I drove to Al Ain, which is about an hour away and went to the Al Ain Aerobatics (http://www.alainaerobaticshow.com/en/default.aspx) we saw wingwalkers, the Saudi Hawks (like Red Arrows and Blue Angels) and also the final part of the Redbull GP stunt planes.
I have joined a softball team, so have games once a week and practice once a week! It is a slow pitch womens league with 4 teams, but it has been lots of fun and is good exercise!
Our 6 month wedding anniversary was 2nd of February, so we thought we would treat ourselves to a new restaurant that opened in the Dubai Mall…….California Pizza Kitchen! It taste so good and reminds us of home! hehe
Tomorrow evening we are heading to a Thursday night brunch with a group of 10 friends!! We thought we would head out for some drinks for we haven't seen many friends in the new year yet. This normally means Friday will be a right off as Mark makes sure he gets value for money on the "All you can drink" deals
So that is what has been keeping us very busy in the past month!! We'd love to hear what you have been up to with school, work, holidays, and your life! We miss you all!!
All our love,
Mark and Erin
xxxxxxxx

some piccies: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2228158&l=59729&id=6402232

Few links for Sarah

Sky Travel link to Dubai!!

http://travel.sky.com/inspiration/hotTipCityBreaks/1223306539662_221

Hope this is good for you Sarah!

xxx

January 15th to February 15th is the Huge Dubai Shopping Festival - Basically January sales with lots of discounts, raffles and special events throughout the month!

Mark is looking for some Golf clubs and Erin is filling up the wardrobe (Closet) with clothes and shoes!!! hehe!

Shopping in Dubai:
http://travel.sky.com/inspiration/hotTipCityBreaks/1208181228165_691

crazily busy

Short Story:

"So I was at work today sending an email to the Director, just on something trivial about a meeting we had on the Bridges, and i got an auto email response which was basically telling me he was 'out of office'.

Once i actually read the out of office email it stated: "I am far too busy to look at my emails, it will have to wait"

That basically sums up, working in Dubai!! People are crazily busy working on the huge projects, very little seems to be in any sort of organised state! And meetings are called 1 minute before they then start! This usually happens once a day!

All fun and all crazy, just wanted to give you an insight to life in the Construction Industry in Dubai!"

o and we just figured out how to put pics on the blog as well....so we will start putting some of them as well. haha

Christmas in the Desert!

So, first of all apologies for the lack of blogging, it’s been a very fun and busy 3 weeks over the festive period and into the New Year!

Secondly, Happy New Year to you all! Hope you had lots of fun over Christmas and the Holidays!

We had a very nice 1st Married Christmas day, lots of presents, and wine, and we cooked a full Christmas dinner with a 5 kilo (11 pound) turkey, mashed potatoes, roast potatoes, veggies, stuffing, bacon, sausages, basically a HUGE feast!….just for the two of us! :) It was a great success, we missed having all our friends and family around us but had the strange experience of opening our presents in the 90 degrees heat! No chance of a White Christmas in the Desert!

I was off work for the Christmas period and we planned lots of things to do whilst The Foden’s were here. However, before they arrived and due to the fact that Andy, Stuart, Karen and Caroline in Tignes were making me very jealous with all their photos of the season in the snow, I managed to convince Erin to brave the cold and head to the world’s biggest indoor ski slope: Ski Dubai! I loved been back on a board, and managed a few jumps and Erin even enjoyed the skiing (which is a huge deal for anyone that has skied with her before)!

Anyway, The Family arrived on 27th December……………………………………….

……………………..With 18 bottles of smuggled booze! (We have Tequila, Vodka, Port, Sambuca, Gin, Jager and 9 bottles of wine!

Yes, they brought us a year’s supply of alcohol so in case we are desperate for a drink we have a big variety of choice now. It was great to have the family here with us, showing them the amazing city that we are living and working in. It also allowed us to act like tourists as well and see lots more of Dubai! We crammed sooo much into the 6 days they were here. The highlights being:

The Big Bus Tour of Dubai
A fun day at The Atlantis Hotel and WaterPark on The Palm.
An excellent Desert Safari trip including Dune Bashing, Camel Riding and Belly Dancing!
NYE celebrations were cancelled as an act of Solidarity for the people in Gaza, we however were able to have a fun night, with the smuggled booze, games and some very noisy kazoos!
We went to Abu Dhabi to watch the First Capitala World Tennis Tournament, where we watched Andy Murray, Andy Roddick & Roger Federer amongst others – and saw Murray beat James Blake en route to winning the event
An up close and personal visit to the Burj Dubai, as I managed to sneak us all on to the Building Site!

Sarah & Erin’s obvious highlight was when we went to the AC Milan training ground and a certain Mr. David Beckham, winked, smiled and waved at them both! They are still smiling about it now!!

We were sad to see them leave, but know they will be back and we also are now very excited as we have Mom & Dad Durica along with Amber heading over to see us at the beginning of March! So the planning and spreadsheets have already started being produced! It will again be sooo much fun! (Lets see if they can beat the 18 bottles)! Hehe!

Well I think this is long enough update to talk about the December activities, I will let Erin write the January (so far) update later this week!

It will be great to hear from you and tell us all about your Christmas and New Year fun!

We love and Miss you loads!!

Mark & Erin
Xxxxxxxxxxx


Facebook Photos of Christmas

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2221735&l=d1955&id=6402232


The Family Holiday:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2223901&l=99ae2&id=6402232

Sarah's link:

http://travel.sky.com/inspiration/attractions/1216725292390_61