We’ve been off the blog radar for a couple of months now – I do better when sitting in front of a real computer with a real keyboard – no offense to my iPad which quite honestly has saved my sanity early and often over the summer
The short answer of what we did is spend time in Europe – mostly Belgium and England. I got a day with friends in Paris – sounds bourgeois, but it is only an hour by train from Brussels, so not really.
The longer answer is we kept Sarah company as she had her first internship/office job with the Brussels office of Richard’s firm, saw friends and visited favorite restaurants. Richard and I went to England twice seeing friends, museums, performances at the Globe Theater and had a “slap up binge” with friends at a lovely restaurant. We also had a grand day out of family fun at Pairi Daiza, an animal park near Mons BE. Most importantly, we stayed out of the heat and humidity of the U.A.E. I grew up in an area (Yakima Valley of south central Washington State) where the temperatures do get to be over 100F degrees, but it is dry heat, which makes all of the difference to me. Worse yet, here it doesn’t cool off at night. I don’t know if it is due to the water holding the heat, but there is very little difference between the temperature of late afternoon and the night. During our absence we missed Ramadan and the end of Ramadan Eid celebrations. We will no doubt be around for these at least once before we leave. Anyway, no first-hand information for this year on this topic.
This past month, Sarah, has been here for her first visit to the U.A.E. She was quite determined to dislike the weather and wondered what she would be doing for four weeks with her parental units and no friends. The wonders of the internet and getting one of her wisdom teeth out took care of part of this “down time” and much to her surprise, she found she liked the place (despite the building’s AC system malfunctioning for about ten days – not a lot of fun for any of us)! She left last night for a semester in Osaka. She has some trepidation about the placement test at the school, but hopefully that will go well. It will be a great experience anyway and we will join her at the end of December for about nine days. I haven’t been to Japan since I was twenty-seven years old – so definitely time for another visit! We did get used to having her with us, so the nest is feeling a bit empty today and the coming four months will be the longest we will have spent without seeing her. It had to happen sometime!
The next couple of entries will be catching up on what we did during August. Richard has been working most of the summer and I’m about to delve into “really living in Dubai” – I’ve physically been here, but with all of the travel outside the U.A.E. since the move, a “normal schedule” has been established yet. Stay tuned! We’ll be back!
Judy and Richard - 1001 Arabian Nights 
Glad to hear all is well! Another year without Errollynne has begun for Mr. Most Senior in the District.
We look forward to your posts.