K6 UAE

While Greta and Ben were at their Kidzania thing, me and Eliza took the course of AWESOME and went to an indoor amusement park. The only picture I have. Mom and the peanut gallery in the picture were gone almost all of the time. The game pictured was a tank-style shoot the other player game.  So, since I have no pictures, I will actually WRITE about what it was like. After dropping Greta and Bennett off at the Kidzan-a-whats-it place, me and Eliza went to the Sega Republic theme park, which was conveniently situated about 20 feet away from Kidzania. After checking in and receiving Game Pass cards, we went with our homeschool group friends and did rides like the Sonic Hopper (a tower drop thing) SpinGear, (a rollercoaster) and Robotnik, (a spinning throw up hard on your everywhere ride). There were also arcade games like the tank shooter above, racing games, bumper cars, VR rides (like a non-moving rollercoaster), and some crazy thing where you get in a real ca...

                                                                    Today we took the metro to the Dubai Mall (the world's largest mall. Mom figured out how to get us there and when we went home Eliza figured out how to get us back to the hotel. We went because we went to Kidzania, which is a fake city where kids can pretend to do all sorts of jobs. Ben and I pretend to be firefighters putting out a fire at the "hotel". Lots and Lots of smoke!!! so fun!!! Ben and I made our own lunch at McDonalds!!! You know how there is only one pickle in a mc Donald's burger happy meal? That's because it's a nose! Under every bun, there is a ketchup, pickle and onion face!!! Ben on the race track first place!!! Making clay pots!!!     The pots take 24 hours to d...

You know what it is like to have to do a thing and not have any idea how to go about it? That's been pretty much our daily existence here. When we landed we didn't know where anything is or how anything works. And while many things are similar (they drive on the same side of the road here) everything is just a little or completely different and so we cannot operate on "automatic" and instead have had to constantly think about where and how to do anything. I remember when we first got here, every day we just listed one thing we learned. Like where the pool is. How the grocery store produce section does all the weighing and pricing, not the check-out. How to change the setting on the tv that turns itself on every night at 6 p.m. The high importance of sunscreen. I remember being really excited the first time I drove our rental suv because it is a Toyota and the cruise control settings were exactly the same as our old van and it was one thing I didn't have to think a...

REAL camel milk When we found real camel milk, Dad thought that we should all try it. We thought it would be disgusting like the yogurtated version. Turns out, it tastes like the cream in milk. Not very different. Dad pouring camel milk. This is camel milk. So, it didn't end up being too disgusting, but still. Go cow milk. Camels are out to get cows.   Beef burgers for the win. And Beef Bacon.

Wow, today was so much fun! We did a lot, so I'll use the picture+caption technique again: I don't know how well you can see it, but this truck we saw has the license plate number Z 5. This is picture worthy because the lower the license plate number in the UAE, the richer or more important the owner of the car is.  Last year somebody bought the D 5    (<-- link to article) license plate for 33 million dirhams!  This is the sign, with beautiful Arabic on it, for the place around which we went sight seeing: Al Fahidi historical neighborhood.  All the buildings are the old traditional stone and wood with high air towers and narrow alleys. It even has part of the original Dubai city wall. Hardly anyone was outside, so I kinda imagined it like a ghost town! This is the obviously awesome sign for the coffee museum we toured. Next, you'll see some pictures from inside. Dad and his espresso from the upstairs. A bunch of really ...

By Henry Yesterday was a LOT of work.  But fun work. A.K.A Gym sessions with the homeschool group here! It was fun, tiring, and extremely cool at the same time. Rewind: In the morning we had to leave early because the fitness center was a one and a half hour drive from our house. When we (finally) got there, we loaded water bottles and sack lunches and headed inside. YES! It was indoors!! Switching briefly to picture technique: The sign that greeted us bold-faced-lettered-style at the entrance.  The thought that ran through my head: (reference to Star Wars) "That's no gym... That's a torture chamber!!" The above thought was wrong. This place was AWESOME! The coaches here were nice, the activities were really cool (kickboxing, wrestling, and track), and the facility was modern too!      The first activity was kickboxing. What didn't make sense to me was that you used your fists as your main attack. This part may have been my favorite...

Saturday was Dad's birthday! (His fortieth!) We spent almost all day around the city! Since our day was filled up so much, I will mostly use the picture+caption technique where I can, so buckle up! Here we go! Right off the bat, Mom and Dad got up to go down to the exercise room of our hotel while I and Henry made pancakes and beef bacon for breakfast. Sooooo good. After that, we lounged around the hotel for most of the morning, while Henry accidentally bought movie tickets for the wrong day, and Mom helped him fix it. Here we are eating ice cream from Baskin Robbins (which I highly recommend) because we got to the movie theater early. After we finished, us kids stayed at a Lego store while Mom and Dad went to a Home Furnishings store. This is what we created while we waited for the Parental Units to come back from the Land of the Boring. I give you the new rulers of the world; The Comical Conquerers. From left to right, Mine, Henry's, Greta's, and Ben'...

In Which We Find Treasure  By Henry Today was AWESOME , both money-wise, fun-wise, and food-wise. Let me explain. We awoke and began our day with going to church (again, they go to church on Friday), and the church we tried out was pretty nice. It reminded me a little of our church at home, Northbrook. The church apparently periodically lets its youth group run the service! (They did a great job)     Anyway, after the service came to a close because it was Cinco de Mayo, we drove to a Mexican restaurant, where I got to try an authentic Mexican soda named Jarritos! It had the taste of lemon-lime, and it was super  fizzy. We had wanted to go to the beach in this area for a while, and now that we had the opportunity, we threw down our burrito platters and headed down the road 10 minutes to reach the Arabian Gulf. This beach \, Saadiyat Public Beach, was amazing. Words don't do justice so I will use Eliza's picture-caption technique to retell this to you. ...