The Delcambres in Abu Dhabi

Fun Fun day today. On the way to Dubai we saw even more wild Camels on the side of the road. We stopped this time to take pictures. Dad, I was thinking about you. You wouldn't believe how big they are, and they are not all that camel color, some are darker brownish. Something about the sight of camels just cracks me up.

We had a wonderful time at the water park named Wild Wadi. It is part of the Jumeriah Beach Hotel. Some of you may recognize it, it is the hotel that looks like a sail. The water park was very nice. The girls really enjoyed the wave pool and kiddy part. Evelyn had a great time going down all of the kid slides. I put Camille in a bathing suit that has a life jacket built in. She just bobbed everywhere. She did not stop all day and needless to say they both were exhausted by the end of the day. We all rode the lazy river and we took turns watching kids or riding tube hides. There was also a very high, fast, and steep slide that Lance and Dennis went to ride, but only Lance rode it after they both climbed up the millions of steps. According to Dennis, they wouldn't let him ride the slide with a shirt on so he just didn't ride it. HA HA I think he chickened out. Well at least I can tease him about it. Melinda was worried about what was appropriate to wear at the pool, but I told her don't worry, you will see people dressed from one extreme to another. Of course the Europeans were in the skimpiest things you could imagine. Some should not have worn the small piece of fabric they called a bathing suit. As we would say, they had no business wearing that. Even some men were sporting speedos. OH yes...Then you have the local emirate women in fully covered suits. Imagine swimsuit material...long sleeve shirt that hangs to your knees, pants, and head cover that you only see their faces. It is very weird to see that, but I know that I am settling in when I don't even realize all of the differences. I think today's experience made it hard to believe that we were in the Middle East.

My Emirate neighbor's maid came over this afternoon to invite me for coffee tomorrow morning. As she said it, "My Madame would like to invite you Madame over for coffee tomorrow morning." Since Melinda and Dennis are here, they can watch Camille and I can go over. It is going to be an interesting experience. I'll let you know how it goes.

WHAT IS DIFFERENT IN ABU DHABI: It is pretty standard to have a maid's room in a house. We would consider this space a storage closet because of its size. In some bigger and nicer homes, the maid's room is outside of the house, so they have a separate entrance. Some homes even have another servants room designated for the driver. Yes, people have maids and drivers. It is not uncommon to see women (not just emirate) in the grocery store with their maid pushing the cart behind them. Drivers are not as common, but widely used here compared to other parts of the world. Hired help is considerably affordable here compared to elsewhere. No I do not have a live-in maid nor do I have a driver. I do have someone that comes to clean house for me, which is what I had in Katy as well. You can imagine how hard it is to keep up with cleaning a house with all of the sand.