A Good End to the Week

After a short 4-day work week with relatively brief meetings each day, the weekend came very quickly.

Wednesday after work, my friend Audrey called me up to see if I wanted to ice skating. We ended up going with some other people I hadn't really met yet (Hector, Antonio, Margarite, and Serica) to a place called Zayed Sports City at the other end of town. The ice skating rink was really big, and everything was really fancy and nice (pretty much like everything in Abu Dhabi is). I wasn't expecting the locals to be very good at ice skating, considering that we are in a desert, but almost everybody there was really good! There were a bunch of guys zooming around, doing jumps and twists and all sorts of other crazy stuff. I had a good time meeting new teacher friends from near and far. Antonio actually was from St. Louis, so I finally met somebody else from the midwest. Hector is actually from Colombia, South America, and Serica is from Ireland.

After ice skating, we went back to our hotel to eat dinner together. I was in charge of making the appetizer so I cooked up some pita fajitas (basically a grilled steak, tomatoes, lettuce, green peppers and onions on rolled up into a piece of flat bread. Everybody thought they were really good, so I was pretty proud of myself. Hector (with a little assistance from me) made the main dish, which was a type of spaghetti dish that had beef, olives, and mushrooms in it. It was very delicious!

On Wednesday night, we (being the same people from above) went to a club called the Oceans Club at one of the hotels in town. Since it was ladies night, the place was pretty much packed from wall to wall with people (and this place wasn't small either). We pushed our way through everybody and met up with Jeff and Graeme. I also met a guy named John, who is from southern England, and he was hilarious. He and I decided that we are going to take turns hosting a weekly guys poker night. After chatting for a while as well as a bit of dancing, we called it a night.

On Thursday, we had a short seminar about the holy month of Ramadan. It was pretty interesting, and I think I am going to try to fast during the month as the Muslims do, both out of respect for their tradition as well as for the cultural experience. Then some of us went to the beach for a bit and I ended up just taking a nap there for most of the time.

On Thursday night, one of the teachers staying at my hotel hosted a little party, so some of us went to get to meet some of the other teachers. Everybody I've met here so far has been really cool and I am excited to have the chance to work (and practically live) with them for the next 2 years!

Today, I slept in, then went to watch a movie with a friend. I met up with Jeff and Danielle to go eat dinner at an Egyptian restaurant, where I got this really spicy sausage dish called Khoshkhash (and of course hummus and flat bread).

Right now, I'm actually a few minutes late for a movie night so I better get going!

Goodnight from Abu Dhabi,

Matt