New Places...New Food...

Well apparently we were all worn out from our first few days here in Abu Dhabi!  When we got back from police checks (which was just fingerprinting really) we went to bed – it was probably 3 am.  We all slept until 11:45am. And the only reason we actually woke up was because the housekeeping staff knocking on the door.  Well not really knocked – rang the bell.  We actually have door bells here at our hotel apartments. 

Once we realized we totally missed Wednesday morning we decided to go and do something relatively productive.  We headed to a new store – Carrefour.  This store been said to be the equivalent of Wal-Mart.  So we took our taxi drive to Marina Mall.  We were amazed at the drive and all the sights!  This mall is off the coast (hence the name – Marina Mall!).  Amazing buildings and a 7 star hotel – Emirates Palace Hotel.  And we were lucky enough to have a taxi driver that was like a mini-tour guide and pointed out a few places.  It took us quite a while to understand that when he said “pi-liss” that he actually was saying palace.  But you reach a point of realizing that asking for clarification doesn’t help so you just nod and keep going on like you understand.  We get the gist of it most of the time!  We found this place - Fun City - which is like a Chuck-E-Cheese on steroids!  The kids loved it so much they didn't want to leave!

Here are several photos:

Church's Chicken?

Punch Buggie!

@ Fun City

The President/King?

The current President/King's father. He's desceased.

Foyer (or whatever it is) of Marina Mall

For dinner we tried something new: chicken tika.  It’s just chicken seasoned with coriander and lemon. It was really good.  The kids even liked it.  So we had the chicken and pasta and felt like we were having American food.  We just spent the evening at home.  Then a new friend, Tameka, came over to let us know we were going to see our housing on Thursday.  The bus would be here to pick us up at 7 am.  So much for sleeping in.  So we were so excited to find out that we were being placed in the Village housing!  These are villas – whatever an “official” villa is.  But from previous LT’s I’d been in touch with they posted pics and videos of this rather large two-story what we call a town-home.  So that will be exciting! 

Shukran - Thank You in arabic!