The Delcambres in Abu Dhabi

Today was a good and preductive day. I love those kinds of days.

Now that I have my residency papers, the last step is a medical check. I guess to make sure I am not bringing any infectious diseases into their country. Well imagine a medical facility packed with middle easterns. Crazy crazy crazy. In this country money talks, esp for things like this. Instead of waiting in the lines, I paid extra money to have a "fast track". Basically that means I go to the front of the line while everyone else waits. It only cost 100 AED which is about $27 US. Thank goodness I paid, because I had Camille with me as well and she certainly would not have wanted to wait. I was through in no longer than 30 minutes..that is an exam (she asked me three questions), blood work, and a chest xray. Tomorrow I can pick up my results and send everything in to get my official residency stamp on my passport. So I hold an US passport, but on one of the pages it is completly dedicated to my UAE residency. The page has a picture of me and all of my residency info. Lance already went through this process and thank goodness the girls do not have to do a medical exam.

Well after my medical screening, I headed to the Marina mall for some shoptherapy. ha ha. One thing I don't think I have mentioned is that the grocery store is in the mall. Well the supermarket called Carrefour which is the French version of Walmart. Too funny, we live in the UAE, the supermarket if from France so all of the labels are in French. The UAE has added an additional sticker on items explaining what the item is in arabic and english. So you can basically get everything and anything at the mall...the appliance store, furniture store, grocery store, restaurants, clothes of course, you can pay your utility bill, phone bill, hardware store, etc. It is too hot and crowded to have seperate stores so they put them all together in a mall. That is why Abu Dhabi has like 8+ malls on this small island. Island? Yes, Abu dhabi is an island.

Another interesting thing here is you have to pay for you buggy (trolly as they would call it)at the grocery store. All of the buggies are connected together by chain and you have to put a coin into your buggy and it will release the chain. When you return the buggy after your shopping you get the coin back. Most of the time there is a guy hanging around the parking lot that will gladly take your buggy back for you because he wants your coin (about a quarters worth). Poor things, I gladly let them take my buggy, that durhaim means more to them than it does to me. Plus who wants to walk their buggy back in the heat?