It seemed that this weekend was particularly “arabic” for us. It started on Thursday night when Paul came with me to Madinat Zayed which is a more “traditional” mall in the heart of Abu Dhabi. It is probably most known for its gold souk but it also has a fish & vegetable souk as well as many “textile” shops which is where I do my fabric shopping here in the UAE. Last weekend I worked on a few small sewing projects that went really well, so I was eager to find some more fabric so I could start on a few new projects.
When we parked, Paul wanted to check out the fish & vegetable market to see what that was like. We walked through, snapping a few photos… we definitely stuck out compared to everyone else that was in there.
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| Paul actually blended in a bit better than I did... I think I was the only woman there :) |
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| Just Paul and his veggies |
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| Not sure why these were at the "Fish & Vegetable Market".... |
From there we walked across the parking lot to the main mall area. I did lots of looking at fabric and Paul was a good trooper and entertained himself with the camera. I think I went into every fabric store there (over 20) and I ended up only buying one fabric. It is a little ironic to me to be spending so much time trying to find a fabric I like where in the US I can spend hours in Joann’s trying to limit myself to the number of fabrics I’ll allow myself to buy because there are just so many fun/pretty ones. The style of most of the fabrics here are not quite to my liking. I had to laugh when I walked into one shop and described that I was looking for a cotton print without flowers… the guy responded with “well that eliminates about 90% of our store.” And then I finally found a pretty paisley print that I liked, but the guy refused to sell me less than 4yds when all I needed was 1/2yd. How weird is that?
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| Madinat Zayed Mall |
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| The renowned photographer |
After checking out all of the interior mall stores, I checked out the shops that are on the perimeter of the mall while Paul waited in the car. This is where I found the navy jersey fabric for my maxi skirt. Before heading back to the car, I grabbed us a couple of shwarmas from a corner store which seemed like an appropriate way to end our trip.
Now as much as Paul loves to go fabric shopping with me, it wasn’t exactly his original Thursday night plan, but he ended up coming because our apartment’s power was out. Apparently the distribution board that is in the guard shack next to our apartment fell off the wall earlier in the day… the craziest part of it was that we really weren’t surprised at all. That’s just how poorly things are constructed around here. The power was still out when we got back home from our errands, so we decided to walk around and see what was going on.
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| It's back on the wall... |
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| This is only about one third of the workers that were hanging around... you could easily have made one of those "lightbulb jokes" |
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| Not too often do you see maintenance workers wearing sandals in the US, but that's just standard here |
On Friday we went to Dubai so that I could meet a jeweler that I had commissioned to make me a necklace with name in arabic. I found out about this guy and his shop which is in Sharjah from a couple of my Bible study girls. I just emailed him what I wanted and then he met us at the Mall of the Emirates for the hand off.
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| My necklace! |
After that we caught a movie (Hunger Games) during which Paul enjoyed his standard order of half-cheese-half-carmel popcorn and I had a nutella crepe. They really do know how to do movie food here in the UAE :)
From the mall we met up with F&C who took us to a Yemini restaurant for dinner. It’s a very traditional place where you sit in a “tent” on the floor with cushions and the food is served on the floor in front of you. The food was delicious and the company was even better. We’ll definitely be taking any visitors that we have for a meal there.
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| F with our first round of food |
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| From the left: Veggies, tomoato sauce (like a really mild salsa), moutabel, lentil soup, cucumber yogurt, and pita.... talk about some delicious appetizers :) |
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| Digging into our Mundi (traditional meat over rice) (Paul had fish, I had chicken, and F&C each had lamb) |
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