You gotta take the good with the bad

From looking at my blog, it might seem like my life is a bit of a party over here. On the weekends, it is...but there is a good reason for that. During the week we all work extremely hard for our students and deal with a LOT of frustrations related to our jobs and daily living. I can't write too much about these frustrations here, especially having to do with work, because I would really like them to keep me here and keep paying me :) Just believe me when I say that weekends are my saving grace. They feel like a mini vacation at the end of every week and they allow me to keep being myself, instead of a crazy, frustrated, yelling, banshee.

This weekend I went to see Janet Jackson with some friends from work. I have never been a huge Janet fan but I figured I knew enough songs for it to be fun. She put on a good show, but she is definitely showing her age. She went off stage multiple times and at one point for 20 minutes...to "chill" I guess? I have to hand it to her though, she was dancing and singing and jumping around. All this while it was hella hot. She did a lot better that I would have done in the same situation (aka: me, just falling down). She did a nice tribute to Michael as well, which got some people pretty emotional.

Before the show we went to a restaurant called the Lebanese Flower. It has often been recommended to me by friends for great, cheap food. Since the concert was in Abu Dhabi, we decided to hire someone to drive us there and back. My friends have a great taxi driver who drives them to and from work every day and he was nice enough to rent a car and drive us down. He joined us for dinner at the restaurant and unfortunately, a member of the wait staff at the restaurant decided to treat us like shit because of this. The man who joined us is from Sri Lanka. As I have explained briefly before, this country is based on a class system where Nationals are at the top, Gulf expats are next, Westerners come third and everyone else below. People are treated according to how important (or, in their eyes unimportant) they are. The waiter repeatedly teased the man we were with, began dropping things behind our table, snapping bill folds behind us to make loud noises and bumping into the man's chair. This was all because he felt that he was better than our dinner guest and that perhaps this man should not be eating in the restaurant. Myself and another teacher did speak to the waiter (his name was Franco...for anyone who goes there) and asked him to stop twice. He continued his childish, racist behaviour and we all left angry. The saddest part of all this is, it didn't seem to overly bother our dinner guest, as he is probably used to being treated like this in the UAE. He has been here for 10 years (much longer than most expats) and was far nicer than many people I have met here. It upsets me to experience these kinds of things and not be able to change them.

On a more positive note, people often appreciate when you are trying to embrace and be a part of their culture here. I have 2 abayas which I occasionally wear to work. When I do, the Arab teachers stop me to tell me how beautiful I look and how they love my abaya. They also appreciate my sad, hilarious attempts at speaking Arabic. This is what I've got down by memory so far:

Marhaban! (Hello) or As Salam Alaykum (Peace be upon you)

Isme Karen (My name is Karen)

Ma asmuk? (What is your name?)

Kaifal Hal? (How are you)

Jayyed. Hamdulillah. (I'm fine. Praise be to God).

Min ayna anti (Where are you from?)

Ana min Canada (I'm from Canada)

I also have some basic Arabic commands down...

Banat! Halas! (Girls! Enough!)- I say this one about 100 times a day at work.

La (No)

Insha'Allah (If God/Allah wills it)

Shukran (Thank you)

Afwan (You're welcome)

To finish off my weekend, I went to Dubai yesterday with my friend Cheryl. We hit up the beautiful Jumeriah beach again and then went to the mall. Unfortunately we failed to realize that Kim Kardashian was going to be at the mall at the exact same time doing a plug for her new milkshake store...and it was CRAZY trying to park. 8 levels of 250 parking spots each level and they were all full! We drove around for like an hour trying to park. Luckily, once we go into the mall everyone was crowded around the stage waiting for Kim to come out, so we took advantage of it by shopping while no one was in the stores. By the end of the night I ended up with some lotion, some candy and one Christmas present for someone. It's easy to just window shop and take pictures in the mall for entertainment. Driving to Dubai which is an hour and a half away, driving to the beach, around downtown (including getting lost) and then back home (and also getting lost then) was only $12.19 in gas. Ha!