K6 UAE

It's the Abu Dhabi Festival, a month or so of cultural and artistic events around the capital. We are part of a homeschool group here called HENA (home educators something Abu Dhabi) that was able to get free tickets to several of the events. Last Friday we joined in the first of these, a piano duet and computer graphics show called Pianographique. It was held at the Emirates Palace Hotel, and was Jason's first experience going there. The Palace itself is pretty impressive, huge and lots of gold and massive carpets and jewelry displays. Just all around fancy. We got dressed up. look familiar? Basically the same getups we wore to the ballet in Oman Pianographique was ... interesting. The first piece set a disappointing mood because it was 20 minutes of mostly just repeating the same chords or keys. The computer graphics projected on the big screen behind added a lot. I hate to appear all ignorantly cultured, but that piece was almost unbearable without the added graphics.

SO... like a month ago (extreme procrastination strikes again) our youth group went on a 2-night camping trip. We went along and here are some pictures! Most of these are by Eliza so I'm in like one and that's it :P  So after a long bus ride we got to the campsite and spent our first night. The next morning we were doing a bible study and this camel walked up to us and hung out for like 5 minutes...  The tent in the desert, doing bible studies. We did about 4 studies during the camp. They focused on salvation and what it should mean. We also sang a lot of songs.  Apparently, Pepsi is going retro! Card games A dog adopted by one of the camp management guys. Her name is Lilly and she's trying and failing to get up onto the couch. She likes Frisbees and ear scratches  Giant Uno tournament Henna tattoos pre-drying Post drying Pre-drying Pre-drying... etc etc Horses that are available to ride Campsite

One of the biggest changes we've dealt with here in Abu Dhabi is the lack of a postal system like we were used to. Specifically, free delivery to our home, every day, 6-days-per-week. We have successfully mailed postcards from here a couple of times and I think they have all made it to their destination in the US. But we've never attempted to send anything bigger than a postcard.  Receiving mail is tricky too. Because you need to rent a post office box, which costs between 250 and 1250 AED annually. So far this has been an expense we have avoided. I haven't even figured out the closest post office to our apartment. We get around using the post office whenever we buy something online, for instance, by relying on courier delivery. That works 100% of the time for packages originating here in the UAE. But we never did receive that giant shipment of homeschool books I attempted to have shipped here from the US last fall. And the grandparents have been less than pleased to be