2 weeks has come and gone. I went to church again today. Every 3rd Friday we have a pot luck after church. Our records are officially moved into the Al Ain Branch of the Abu Dhabi Stake.
As you saw before, our meetinghouse is a big villa. Judging by what I know about the neighborhood, the monthly rent is probably between $3500 and $4000. Anyway, I was thinking this morning that when I was walking around last week that I never noticed a kitchen. As I was looking around before church started, I walked out back on the patio. I walked out the door into the blazing heat, and a door to my left had "kitchen" on it. Yes, you have to go outside to get into the kitchen. Kitchens here are not anything spectacular. In the US, you build a nice big house, the kitchen is a show piece, right? Here, no. Kitchens are not meant for the family, they're meant for the maid or the cook. No reason for the family to have access to it.
Everything about housing takes some getting used to. Everything is very hard (tile or concrete or marble or granite). Nothing soft and homey like I'm used to. The mentality has to be drastically shifted when thinking about housing. So I looked at a nice place that I'm interested in, small kitchen of course, but nice big rooms. Centrally located within the shopping areas for Allison and the girls, and right by the Al Ain Hilton.
The Hilton has an amazing pool, gym, and everything else that they offer memberships for people not staying there. Some of our friends have a membership and go there often. Very reasonably priced, so you'll probably find us there quite a bit during the 10 hot months of the year :)
Work is going well. I flew my first students yesterday. The team leader that has been training me sat in the back seat while I flew one student. He said he was impressed and jumped out while I took the second student by myself. We're doing instrument training right now, so we go out in the middle of the desert and practice instrument maneuvers. Landed to use the restroom (a small bush) and watched a few camels wandering around, looking at this funny contraption that just came out of the sky.
The flight went well, but the problem came when I got on the computer to do the grading. I went to look up my student, Mohammad, and of the 13 students in the group, 7 had the name Mohammad. Hmmm... Fortunately there were pictures with each one :)
Pictures in no particular order:
A couple of nice villas
The pool at the Hilton
Flying
PF Changs is coming to one of our malls :)
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