Listen to the Music

I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing, In Perfect Harmony" - The New Seekers

Birthday Excitement Pt.2

“Let 'em cry, let 'em giggle, Let them sleep in the middle, Oh, but let them be little.” – Billy Dean

I mentioned that our kids like birthdays, right?  Well, they also like animals.  And, they really like juice boxes and chips.  Recently, they got the chance to put all those things together for the super-fun birthday party of their good friend Mia.  We got to go to the Dubai Animal Sanctuary for the party.  There were party hats, horse rides, ducks to feed, all kinds of rabbits, turtles, birds, and all the chips they could eat.  Even Talon was so excited he was saying “Meeeeeaaaah, Meeeaaaah” all morning before we left.
Check out a few photos and some video of all the fun.

 

Birthday Excitement!

“Youth is like diamonds in the sun, and diamonds are forever…

… so many dreams are swinging out of the blue, we let them come true” – Alphaville

There is not much that can compare to the excitement of birthdays for twin girls about to turn 3 years old. Abigail and Saylor have been excited for their birthday since… well, since their birthday last year. They have been excited at every single birthday for the last year. Partly for the person whose birthday it was, but mostly just for birthdays in general and because it meant they were one day closer to their own.

At the end of January their birthday finally came… and Yvonne and I were not even in town. Fortunately, even though they have been excited for quite some time and know what a birthday means (presents, cake, candles, songs, etc), they still don’t really have a good understanding of dates and calendars. So, we got away with some selective truths and were able to celebrate their birthday only a couple of days late after we got back from our trip to Jordan/Israel.

I think one of the best presents the girls got was to be able to celebrate with Grandma & Grandpa Anderson. They don’t really realize that they were able to see the tallest building in the world or visit the largest mall in the world on their birthday, but they did know that Grandma & Grandpa came a long way to be there. Plus, they got to make their own birthday cakes!

Here are a few pics of their big day.

Here a short video clip of some sweet birthday dancing…. if you can call it that ;)

Duty Free

“Well I'm just people watching, The other people watching me” – Jack Johnson

A while back some good friends treated us to a night out on the town.  We got to go see a few matches at the Dubai Duty Fee Tennis Championship.

OK, so the name doesn’t sound as good as Wimbledon, or the US Open… and I don’t really get the whole “duty free” thing, but this was some world-class tennis.  It included 4 of the top 10 ranked players in the world.  We got a to see a match with Tomas Berdych, the 7th ranked player in the world from the Czech Republic.  The second match we saw had the 16th ranked Ivan Ljubicic… yeah, try pronouncing that last name :)

It was a cool experience and a lot of fun.  The tennis was amazing and exciting, but I really was more fascinated by the whole culture of the event.  I’ve played enough tennis to know what was going on, and even watched a fair amount on TV back in the Agassi/Sampras days, but I never realized the almost ceremonial nature the sport.  From the precise routines and posture of the ball boys/girls and the uniformed performances of the line judges, to the orderly, quietness of the spectators, this was definitely not the same crowd you would find at a football or hockey game.  A few times the I had to chuckle to myself at how seriously everyone oohed an aaahhed after a good volley.

Overall, it was fascinating and fun.  We had a great time watching tennis, the supporting cast, and the other spectators.  We just might have to go back next year.

Here is a photo of Yvonne and me at center court about 1/2 hour before the action really got started.

Surrounded by Protests

"Well this is the world we live in, And these are the hands we're given
Use them and let's start trying, To make it a place worth living in" - Genesis

A couple of weeks ago Yvonne and I went to Jordan. The day after we got back, we read in the news that the King of Jordan had just "fired" his entire government to start over. This was right at the same time as the ongoing protests in Egypt. It was a strange feeling to see some of the political upheaval that was going on relatively close to where we live. The feelings were even stronger since we had just a day before been in a country that was now making drastic changes.

Earlier this week, I saw the map below showing counties that are facing protests, unrest, and revolutions. I decided that it is as good a time as any to fire this blog back up and share some of our experiences.

As you can see, the UAE is practially surrounded by countries that are in different stages of unrest. It is fascinating, sad, exciting, and confusing all at the same time. The media, politicians, and others all seem to offer differnt reasons for the unrest, and different possible outcomes. At times things are portrayed as black/white or good/bad, but I don't think that is the case. It is very complicated, and I would guess that each country/region would be difficult to really compare to the others.

One thing I feel comfortable about is that we are relatively safe in the UAE. This is an Arab country much like many of the others, BUT, the unique mixture of government, infrastructure, wealth, culture, and freedoms here make me believe that there is little chance of the type of protests that are happening around us. So, friends and family, do not worry. Athough we are surrounded by protests (see map below), we feel safe.

View Protests across the Middle East in a larger map

A few quesetions...

• When is it ok to rebel?
• When is it ok to fight against a rebellion?
• When is violence (killing) justified?
• What would I risk for my freedoms?
• Is it worth the risk to fight for more freedoms when the result might be chaos or loss of freedoms?
• It is ok to work with "bad" people who have "evil" intentions to accomplish what you feel is "good"?
• Is it possible to have long-lasting freedom(s) without democracy?
• Would I have courage to stand up?

A little Q&A

“I'll show you a place, High on a desert plain, Where the streets have no name” – U2

As you can imagine, friends and family have been asking us a lot of questions since we’ve been in the UAE. We haven't always been great at keeping in touch and responding to people’s questions. So, I decided to compile a list of a bunch of the questions that have been answered and post them all together here in one place.

These are just some random questions mixed with some comments and are not in any particular order or organized in any way. They do, however, help paint a picture of some of our experiences and a little bit of what life is like over here.

So a few things here that are against the law:

• Public displays of affections - you can actually go to jail for kissing
• Swearing, profanities, insults and all kinds of vulgar language
• Spreading false news, statements or rumors
• Taking photos of people - especially photos of women and families - without their permission
• Spitting
• Public drunkenness
• No carrying or doing drugs - punishable by death
• Begging
• We were also told never greet anyone or hand somebody something using your left hand - I think that is a cultural thing and not law

Are you comfortable going swimming in your swimming suit?

We can wear our regular swimming clothes in our swimming pool. No one except for the three other families that live in our fourplex can see the pool. If it offends any of them, no one has told us. I've seen three of the other six kids that live here swim in the pool. One little girl always comes out and gets in the pool with us when we are out there. She is always wearing a bikini (from a Muslim family) and we are more modest than that so I'm not really worried about it. Now, we definitely couldn't go for a stroll down the street in our swimming suits or there would be trouble. We have yet to go to a beach but there are many that allow western style swimwear - by the water only of course. You must be covered up walking to and from your car.

Are there restrictions for what you can wear?

As we enter the Mall it feels a little bit like we have stepped onto a BYU campus. There are big TV screens that have signs like "please dress respectfully" and then show pictures of "respectful" clothing. Although, we have seen several people in the malls around here wearing tank tops or short shorts. The mannequins in the store windows could also use some modesty. We have actually been a little bit surprised by some of the skimpy clothing being worn by them.

I’ve heard that PDA’s are outlawed… is that true?

We have seen several couples holding hands - I am guessing we could get away with it in the malls (if we did that kind of thing, right? SMILE). But, kissing would be out of the question.

Do you have church on Sunday?

We have church here on Fridays because that is the Muslims "Holy Day" (not sure what they call it). I don't really know what they do differently on that day from other days. Maybe there is greater attendance at the Mosques for praying on Fridays. We'll have to ask. We actually hear the "call to prayer" during every sacrament meeting. We hear it a lot during the day but for some reason it seems cooler to me to hear it then.

What is your address so we can send you something?

Well, we will not be sharing our address on the blog. But, even if there were not concerns about privacy issues, we still would not be able to. It is strange, but there really are not addresses here like in the U.S. We were wondering about it, and asked…. the response was that if we wanted to receive some type of mail or package, we would need to have it sent to my work, or we would have to go get a PO Box. It makes telling people where you live a little difficult. The streets have numbers, BUT, your street may not be the only one with that number, and there is no organization or reasoning (that I can tell anyway) to the numbering system. Basically we live in villa #3, Mirdif. Good luck with that ;)

So, tell us more about your trip to Oman?

As was mentioned, we had to take a road trip out of the country to Oman to renew our visitor visas (Thank you Hawaii and Idaho for being so difficult to get "official" documents from). We don't have a car yet so we rode with an Iraqi family from Matt's work that also had to renew their visitor visas. They kindly offered to let us ride with them when they found out we needed to go to. We squeezed nine bodies into their seven passenger vehicle and left at 4:30am so that we could get there and back before it got way too hot with that many bodies in the car. It was a fun little adventure for us and we appreciated having Arabic speakers with us even though the guards at the checkpoints could speak some English. Matt and I were laughing later about how we never would have thought we would be traveling through the deserts of the Middle East with an Iraqi man and his children that we don't even know when our country his waging war in his country. They were incredibly nice. I got a big kick out of his five year old girl when I was passing marshmallows all around and before she ate them she stopped and said in her darling British accent "wait, have these got any pig in them? We aren't allowed to eat pig you know."

For those "Lost" fans out there - It was like the full Republican guard manning the Sultanate building...I was even helped by a very large man named Sayid. It was a little intimidating. I was worried if I didn't produce the proper paperwork I might end up being tortured.

Can you read your scriptures in public?

Nobody has told us that we can't. I asked a lady from church and she said that she read her Book of Mormon at the Dentist's Office just the other day as she sat next to a Muslim woman. No one said anything to her

How many children are in the ward?

There are actually more children than we thought there would be. The nursery has about 4 or 5 other kids. The primary probably has 15-20 and the YM/YW probably have about 10-12 total

What kind of currency do they use?

They use the Dirham (bills) Fil (coins). It reminds us a little bit of play money. It doesn't always feel like we are spending actual money when we buy things. That can be a very bad thing.......

How expensive is it to live?

The cost of living seems very similar to Hawaii. Some things are more, some are less. Overall more expensive than the Mainland but about what we were use to in Hawaii. Although everything seems more expensive if you look at the price tags because our brains are thinking in dollars and the price is listed in Dirhams. The exchange rate is 3.67. Matt just bought some hair clippers and they were about 145. It's hard to not think, "Man $145, that's a lot for hair clippers, We are NOT buying those!" In reality they're only about $39.50. I am sure after awhile our brains with automatically think in Dirhams instead
What about groceries, etc?… Depends on what you are buying. Again, most things are similar to Hawaii - although meat, American cheddar cheese and the good kind of ice-cream are much more. A lot depends on the brand and if it is packaged in the UAE or shipped in.

Is your stove gas?

We don't have a stove yet. When we get one it will be gas (I am not excited...NOT a fan of gas stoves). They have two sizes here. Small and big. We will get a big one 90x60 because that is the space allotted in our kitchen (ed: We now have a stove, it is gas, and Yvonne is adjusting very well to it…. from the opinion of my taste buds ;)

Do they have dryers there?

Dryers are not the norm. We don't have one. Most people don't. In our back area we have a clothesline strung up and we also bought a dryer stand. The clothes come off the line as hot as if they had just come out of the dryer. Our washer only has a hookup in the kitchen...that's annoying

Can you get most everything at the grocery store or is it limited?

We can get fresh fruits and vegetables, Flour tortillas are very expensive and only sold in some stores. We haven't tried to buy a lot of things yet seeing that we don't have an oven. But everything we've wanted we've been able to buy. With the exception of applesauce...that is rare. I think eggs can be bought in 12 and 24. I've seen packages but haven't paid attention. We have yet to buy any. I am sure when we do real shopping, we might have a difficult time finding things we are use to. We have a shelf full of Cream of Chicken soup just waiting to be used...I guess we are lucky on that front. Everything is labeled in English and Arabic so we are lucky in that regard to. Cheese is super duper expensive if we buy the good ole cheddar that we are use to but we found a white cheddar from New Zealand that is reasonable and tastes nearly the same.
We've mostly been living off of oatmeal, cereal and sandwiches. We have discovered Arabic bread that is cheap and good. (basically a pita bread)… (ed: we now have a stove and have purchased a lot more, including eggs. As mentioned, we can find about anything we need with the exception of pork products. Things taste a little different and some cost more, but it hasn’t been a problem)

Is church in English?

Yes, church is in English. Every sacrament meeting is actually webcast for the members of our ward that live in other countries like Yemen, Oman etc. We'll have to pass along the link for those of you who can't sleep on a Friday night and our interested in what our church meetings are like. Matt and I were the sacrament speakers this past Friday.

What other languages if any do your ward members speak?

Our ward is about 75% Filipino. So most people speak Tagolog as their native tongue, We also have French speakers, Arabic speakers, Spanish, Portuguese, Some African languages, Urdu etc.

How often do you see your neighbors and do they speak English?

All of our neighbors speak at least some English (In our fourplex, I mean). The kids speak English very well. We see two of the neighbor girls just about everyday when they knock on the door to see if the our girls can play. We see the others as we are coming and going but don't really have a lot of interaction with them other than saying hello. I was just thinking this morning that we should invite each family over after we get some furniture so that we can get to know them.

How do they react to the twins beautiful blondness?

Our girls get a lot of stares and people here have no qualms about coming up and touching your kids - even picking them up. I have had it happen more than once. They don't ask, they don't say anything to me or Matt, they just pick them up . I personally don't like it one bit.

Baby Steps

"He got the action, he got the motion, Oh Yeah the boy can play..." - Dire Straits

Time flies… I’ve been meaning to post a few videos of the kids as they experience new things.  The girls “kind of” understand they are experiencing a new country/culture/place.  Talon has no idea, but he is learning new things everyday.  Right as we moved here, he was learning how to stand, pull himself up, and then walk.  It is amazing how fast he has been learning.  These videos were taken around a month ago and already they seem old because he can walk so much better now.  They really don’t need much explaining.  So, here goes…