An update and our move....(again!)

Can anyone explain to me where September has gone, in fact, where has this year gone!

So it has been a while since I updated you with the going ons in Dubai so here we go...get a cup of tea/coffee this could be long update!

We sadly left all our family and friends in Cape Town after a lovely, long holiday (well, for the boys and I anyway!) and arrived back in Dubai on 28 August at 05h45, a tired husband and two boys in tow and not the best of flights but that is another story to be told! We headed off home to wait for the movers who arrived at 09h00 to move our stuff to the new villa. Luckily they did most of the packing besides the boxes I packed before I left for Cape Town! It was an extremely long day for all of us and this is how Logan and Peter coped (sleeping on the lounge floor in amongst the packers!).

We left the old villa at 15h00 and the movers left at around 18h30 and I was left to the job of unpacking boxes, etc. I would recommend this way of moving anytime. The packers packed and unpacked the heavy stuff and put it all in the relative rooms and all I really had to do was unpack our boxes and personal stuff. So the move went relatively smoothly and we are now all very happy in our new house. It didn't take me long to unpack all the boxes (the advantage of not accummulating years of stuff but it is amazing what you can accumulate in months too!). It probably took about 4 days to unpack everything but we are sorely lacking cupboard space! So we need cupboards for the boys bedrooms and new curtaining as we have 4 windows in the lounge/dining room area, compared to only 1 in old place! So here are the pics of the villa:

1st pic - Front of the villa

2nd pic - Front courtyard with swimming pool (front door)

3rd pic - Dining room/lounge area

4th pic - Logan's room

5th pic - Bryce's room

6th pic - Bathroom

7th pic - Our bedroom

8th pic - En-suite bathroom

The villa is lovely and large and very bright which I love! The boys have their own bedrooms now, which are also very big, our room is the only one with cupboards which Peter and I have to share (another advantage - can't buy more clothes because I can't fit them into the cupboard!). We have a huge kitchen (and I mean huge!), three bathrooms, a lovely garden with grass and we have just put up a portable pool for the boys in the front patio area which they are loving!

Bryce and Logan have also settled in really well at school and seem to love it, which I am very grateful for! Last week I spent time in the school library volunteering my services of covering their library books! So far I think I have covered over 250 books! I am going to help them out every now and then as they are so desparate for help! The boys are on school holidays again! They start school on Sunday because of Eid and Ramadan. Eid starts today (hip, hip hooray!) life is back to some normality! The month of September is Ramadan which has made life really interesting in Dubai. We cannot eat or drink in public at all, no smoking or chewing gum for those that do those habits and life really only begins after "iftar" when the sun goes down! The shops open late and close at around 12h00/01h00 in the morning but it really is something to get used to as you cannot even take a sip of water in public. If you do and offend someone you could be heavily fined or put in jail.

I am gearing up to teach card making classes in October. Just hope that I can get a couple of ladies interested so that I can get started and make some money but we will see how that goes! Peter's Dad and Cassandra arrive on Friday which we are all looking forward to so we will probably be doing some sightseeing with them. Friday night we are having a spit braai to celebrate the end of Ramadan (yeah! another party!) so I am looking forward to that.

I am still missing SA but seemed to be settled back in the way of Dubai life a little easier than when we first arrived. I think it is because I can drive the boys to school, the villa is a lot more spacious and my brothers are nearby. Only disadvantage is that we are almost on the flight path so we have planes flying over every couple of minutes, somtimes I am aware of it and sometimes it is that "white noise" in the background! I now say we don't need an excuse to drink anymore as there is always a boeing flying over!

What else is news - oh yes, I had my first fender bender in Dubai! I was going around a traffic circle and some dose of a cop stopped me as I was going around to let the flow of traffic come in and the guy behind me never stopped in time. Interesting experience! In Dubai you have to wait for a policeman to come so that they can give you slips so that you can get the cars fixed and no one arrived! The stupid police guy who stopped me headed off without coming to check, probably thought he would get fired, he just shrugged his shoulders when it happened! %&$@%!!!! Anyway, no damage to my car because the guy hit the bumper but his fender and bonnet was damaged! A nice guy from the UK who has only been here since April and his car was brand spanking new. My 1998 jallopy with all its scratches seemed to have survived. Although the clutch is going and because it is manual Peter decided to buy another car so we are getting a 2003 Nissan Pathfinder with a 3.5 litre engine which will probably suck the juice but being in Dubai it only takes about R 200.00 to fill the tank so I suppose we should enjoy the big 4x4 cars while it lasts!

So I think that is all the updates for now. Will add some more soon...hopefully I can be more disciplined and add updates on a weekly basis, saves you having to take the time to read such a long story but thanks for reading it anyway! Hope you didn't get too bored?!

So until next time...sooner than you think...