Burj Al Arab

We can see the Burj Al Arab from our villa (the 7 star hotel). It is very cool to watch at night. It changes colors.

A little bit of info about it
The Burj Al Arab (Arabic: برج العرب, literally, Tower of the Arabs) is a luxury hotel located in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. At 321 metres (1,053 ft), it is the tallest building used exclusively as a hotel.^[2] However, the Rose Tower, also in Dubai, which has already topped Burj Al Arab's height at 333 m (1,090 ft), will take away this title upon its opening.^[3][4][5] The Burj Al Arab stands on an artificial island 280 metres (919 ft) out from Jumeirah beach, and is connected to the mainland by a private curving bridge. It is an iconic structure, designed to symbolize Dubai's urban transformation and to mimic the sail of a boat.

This photo was taking from our villa. We need to take some photos at night time.






























This photo was taking from the beach at night.



















This photo was taken at Wild Wadi World.

Elle

There is a store named Elle here. Kinda cute. :)

Slow boat to China

We were expecting our container to arrive to port here in Dubai this week. But we found out yesterday that our container will not arrive until August 30. Ramadan starts on September 1 which also puts a big damper on the arrival of our things. Ramadan is a 30 day Muslim holiday in which pretty much no work gets done. Work and school hours are shortened during this time. For instance Larry's office will work 8am to 2pm. More about this holiday later, its interesting and deserves its own post... back to our container. We've been given 2 stories - the captain of the ship changed the departure date without notice and there was an oil spill that delayed departure. In any case we can't make the ship sail faster so again we are leaning patience.

I suppose this isn't that big of a deal, but... its hard leaving in an echoy villa with 2 girls with nothing for them to do. Yesterday I broke down and bought them a couple of things to play with - some art supplies and a stuffed animal. Its also hard wearing the same clothes over and over again. Had we known that our stuff would take so long we would have packed more.

We have 2 tortoises

Larry works with someone who rescues and raises tortoises. She was gracious enough to give the girls each a tortoise. Elle named hers Baba and Dani named hers Tagzumi or Tagz for short. The girls feed them fruit and lettuce every morning. Each have their own personality too.

Swim Lessons

There must be something about the hot weather and sand - the girls are interested in swim lessons from Larry! Just in case you didn't know, Larry spent his teen and early twenty years managing pools and teaching swim lessons. The girls have never wanted Larry to teach them anything about swimming, but all of a sudden every night they want swim lessons.

Electrical outlets

Britsh 3 prong outlets are used in the walls here, however almost all appliances and electrical items are sold with European 2 prong plugs. So an adapter is needed to plug EVERYTHING in. I just don't get that. Why not make the plugs on appliances match or change the outlets? I need to do some research to better understand.

Sand Storm

Our first sand storm.... ick! The girls and I were at the mall (like every day!) and we left a little too late. It was after 5pm when we left, there was a big accident on the freeway plus the sand storm. Traffic was a nightmare. It took us 45 minutes to go the distance that we usually travel in 5 minutes. Anyhow, back to the sand... it's like it is foggy outside, only its dirt. Mix sand flying through the air with high humidity and you get a dirty mess that sticks to everything. You walk outside and you can feel the dirt sticking to your skin, you can taste and feel it in your nose. I wish that I would have taken a picture. I will have to take one next time.

Here are a few pictures of other sand storms here in Dubai to give you and idea of what it is like.