Muslim for a day

Not really, had to wear the traditional abaya to cover myself when we went to visit the Mosque in Abu Dhabi. I have to admit I don't know how Muslim women do it wearing black in this heat plus the head cover was constantly falling off.

Fun facts about the UAE

Here are some things that I have learned in my 3 months here about the UAE.

1) The UAE has the highest car accident death rate per capita in the world! (Yup it is freaking scary to be driving around here, that's why I don't mind polluting in a ginormous truck we bought, at least I feel safe!)

2) The UAE is the second highest polluter in the word right after the USA. (I don' t see how they can not be since they don't have a recycling system and they created land where there was no land before)

3) The UAE is 10th on the WHO list for having an obese population

4) The UAE has the most palm trees in the world and not because they originated from here.

5) About 85% of the population in the UAE are Expats.

6) The UAE does not have a Red Cross here, they instead have the Red Crescent

7) The UAE is the 3rd largest buyer of arms in the world...I don't know if that should make us feel safe or real uncomfortable.


A cell phone is a mobile here and without one you are a no body. You receive everything here via text message even Police tickets!
An apartment is called a flat. Parking is free and people park any where they want.
There is only one Internet company and it's government owned so go figure.

That's it for now if I come up with anything else I'll keep you updated.

Lea is 6 months old today!

Boy does time fly...

Lea can sit on her own now!

And she's very proud of it.

I had my first cereal!

Beach Time!

Dubai

We went to Dubai last Saturday just for the day. It's about an hour and a half drive from Abu Dhabi. The city itself is very nice, but so, so Western. Very different from Abu Dhabi and everything has to be big, grand and over the top. The city is nice, but I can't say I liked it. We went to the Dubai Mall and I swear you can be there for days and never see the same store twice. We also went to see the Atlantis hotel, that was a site to see. Here are some pics from that day.

The tallest building in the world

A ginormous fish tank inside of Dubai Mall

Waterfall inside of the Dubai Mall

Driving towards the Atlantis hotel

The Atlantis hotel from the side

The Atlantis hotel

On The Walk kids playing...this is at around 9pm and it was real hot.

Every Friday

I think we moved right next to the busiest Mosque in Abu Dhabi. The picture below is what we see every Friday (it's the Muslim Sunday). No other Mosque around us has this many followers as far as we have seen.

Lea & her tub

Lea got a new bathtub and she loves it because it came with toys that she can put in her mouth!

Daddy taking Lea to take her bath. It's hard to get that toy out of her hand when we're trying to take her out of the bath.

She puts anything and everything in her mouth.

Good Friday at our Church

Here are some pictures we took on Good Friday just to show you how many people attended mass. There were about 4 Masses happening at the same time on the hour ever hour for about 12 hours that day. They were done in all kind of different languages. We attended the French Walk of the Cross and Passion of the Christ, but that did not stop other people who do not speak the language to attend as well. People came where ever there was space.
We have never seen anything like this before, we believe there was about 10 000 people there that day.

Happy Easter!

We're back!

So we were back in Montreal, Steve for about 10 days and Lea and I for a full month, and I didn't have the time to update our blog. When I came back to Abu Dhabi we did not have an Internet connection, we finally got Internet yesterday so I'm back!!!
We are almost done with the apartment so once that's done I will keep up the blog full time.
Until next time...