One Month Living in the Dhab

Busy-I can honestly say that these past couple months have been some of the busiest of my life. While "busy" may lead to thinking "bad", that is not the case. With flying over - getting settled in – starting work - continuing to get more settled in - dealing with maintenance issues at our flat - having rental car issues - having our air shipment from the US "lost for a month" - I have felt stresses and pressures that I have not experienced before. The experience has made me fee like I have truly been alive. (Not to say that going to law school classes, studying, preparing for tests and golfing once a week - if lucky - isn't living/being alive....it is; but this has been a different feeling altogether).

Falling asleep/passing out at night from being exhausted from daily “adventures” (like getting groceries or filling up with gas) is not something I was not necessarily prepared for when we moved over here. But in that experience, I have learned to appreciate the simple things in life, that if not for this experience - I would merely take for granted.

Sports - This past week I joined a basketball league in Abu Dhabi.
There are 8 teams in the league. Since I didn't know anyone, I signed up as a free agent - it turns out there were about 10 other guys who did the same, and the league coordinator ended up just making us free agents a team - "Demolition Team." We had our first tow games this week (and this is when we all met each other for the first time). What a diverse team. 2 Americans, 3 Canadians, 2 New Zealanders, 1 French guy (pretty tall - wish he would stay down low more), and 2 more....can't think of their nationality. If I was filing out a Standardized test, I guess I would just check the box "other" for them. That being said - we are a surprisingly pretty good team. We won our game last night 75 - 40, the team we beat was all Asian, and we had a pretty big height/skill advantage over them. We are 2-0 overall, but there look to be some other decent teams in the league, so I’m looking forward to those match-ups. I will try and keep the blog updated with how "Demolition Team" fairs in the league.

Car Situation - we finally have both the cars we wanted. Our two cars - Jeep Cherokee, and Nissan 350Z - I will let you guess who drives what :) Getting insurance for the 350Z.... was quite the ordeal. Josclyn has her residency Visa, local drivers license, and Emirates ID (I'm still waiting for my paperwork to be processed) so the vehicles and insurance both had to be registered in her name. Insurance wise, we had three big this against us that made our insurance rates super high, and half the insurance companies deemed her "un-insurable" - (1) J is 24, (2) The 350Z is a sports car, (3) She is a woman. These three criteria added together with this culture made it really tough for us to find any provider who would insure us. We finally found a local company that gave a us a reasonable rate...after he quoted J a price, he then found out she was 24 yrs old....he said "oh wow, I should have quoted you a much higher rate...oh well" - VERY nice. In talking with a couple insurance agents, they said people under the age of 25 and driving "sports" cars have an 80% claims rate - that is insane. So, I can see why in this culture it was tough for us to find insurance.