O Man

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 about.

We are getting used to most of the things (although I still don't know how to operate the oven), even driving in a big city, although Gru's rules apply when Mom is driving or we are trying to find a location.
At least I hardly ever swear behind the wheel any more.

And another thing about driving here. Google maps navigating has been my lifesaver to get us out of the hotel because for that week before I had a data plan I never got up the courage to try and figure out the metro with 4 kids and no helpful apps.  But basically Google doesn't know the names of half the streets and neither do I. And while our hotel is pretty centrally located, we also have to traverse this spaghetti junction of a major highway exchange to get anywhere:

I have no idea how most of that works.

They do love U-turns and giant round-abouts here -- which are another thing I haven't figured out. Three lanes going into a giant round about: which one am i supposed to be in? How do I exit? I must do it wrong because I get honked at every time. It's just another thing that is slightly or hugely different that I can't just do automatically, it needs to be thought about and figured out.

Which brings us to today's adventure. We entered the UAE 28 days ago on 30 day tourist visas. Jason just got his residency permit and Emerites ID card last week. Yay!  Now we can rent an apartment and buy a vehicle and start getting settled in. BUT the kids and I are under his sponsorship which will take another few days? weeks? months? to complete. Which means we need to extend our tourist visas. We could just hop down to the Bureau of Expatriates and Stuff and pay lots of money. OR the cheaper route is to drive to the nearest border (which is Oman), cross the border, and on reentery, the new UAE visa stamp is effective for another 30 days.

You know that feeling when you have to do a thing and have no idea how to go about it? Well this "visa run" process gets talked about a little on facebook groups and I even read a few blogs about it. But after driving 2.5 hours through the desert (saw hundreds of camels!), as we approached the border, I still really had no idea. Even though I should be used to it after nearly a month, I just hate that clueless feeling so much. So many things are new and we never really know what to expect.

There are like 8 gates to drive through and we had to exit the vehicle three times for three different bureaucrats.  The first stop was the UAE exit visa which I missed the parking for, and had to turn around in the desert by the barbed wire fence and then I went the wrong way and had to drive backwards through the entry gate and cut the wrong direction over to get to the parking. But no one fired a single shot at us. Actually, I didn't see a single gun, and really, people are so laid back here maybe they didn't even notice. 175 dirham later and 5 Kautzes were cleared to leave the country. Half a kilometer down the road was our next stop, Oman entry visa/exit visa.They just do it all at the same time because it's so common for expatriates to come for this visa run. After figuring out where we needed to go, we drove through a gate, went into the immigration building, and1000 dirham later and a little awkward mostly English conversation with the border patrol while our paperwork was being processed and we had our double stamp passport proof of spending 1 hour in Oman.  Then back to the border for the point of this whole trip.  We got our passports stamped with our new tourist visas (and Ben's even got a stamp with the wrong date -- glad that was caught and fixed!) and our 30 days are reset. REALLY hoping the residency permits come through so our next visit to Oman is for something fun like hiking their mountains and not for confusing bureaucracy.

It took 8 hours and I was nervous the whole time about the driving and the what-the-heck-do-I-do. It wouldn't be a big deal if it was just me, but I'm doing everything with these 4 kiddos and that means 5 passports to check and 5 visa charges to cover and finding potties of both genders (which are not always in the same general location). Every screw up is x5. Honestly, when I get nervous I can't sleep and I get crabby and I take that out on these 4 little troopers. And they're bored without their piano and legos and mostly stuck in a hotel unless Mom gets a crazy idea to try and go grocery shopping in which case they are sworn to silence until the driving is over and so they just provoke each other in the back seat until someone cries and then mom yells and then there is no talking or touching or whining or thinking out loud until the vehicle is parked and we have thanked Jesus to have made it back alive again.

We are ready to get out of the hotel and get settled in to a place and a routine. Hopefully that will start tomorrow as we are supposed to sign an apartment lease in Abu Dhabi. But we're learning to hold everything loosely. We did the visa run 2 days early to give ourselves a buffer in case I forgot some vital official piece of paper or it was closed or who knows what could go wrong. We are supposed to meet the real estate agent tomorrow at 10. Maybe it will be 11, who knows?  There is just a different way of living here. Maybe it is the impact of living half the year where it is too hot to breathe, much less actually move anywhere, but people here are very laid back. And we are catching on. Recently, as we were finishing up a skillet dinner (because I can't figure out the oven, right?) Jason asked the kids, "Isn't this great? Just a lazy evening, nothing pressing, nothing we have to pick up and run off to."  It is a forced step back that we have been greatly needing. We are even running the marina regularly and reading through the Bible together and having breakfast discussions together. Just two months ago we had four different kids getting on buses and drop offs at staggered times all through the morning and spent dinnertime coordinating driving schedules for soccer practices.

It has required us all to disconnect from our old ways of thinking and adapt new ones, which was one of the reasons we wanted to come here. We're leaving the crazy busy way of living and adjusting to the crazy laid back confusing way of life. It's just a different kind of hard, and thankfully, in doing all these unknown weird things we are seeing real growth and learning and maturing (and lots of forgiveness) that usually comes too gradually to notice. Today was my turn. Tomorrow, Jason gets an Abu Dhabi drivers licence.  Next week: new apartment (hoping!). Two weeks from now, Ramadan starts. We might even get this place figured out in three years.