I've been missin' you....

In my last post I told you how they moved our crates over to the new house.  We put it all in one room and cranked the air conditioning so that it wouldn't get musty in there. 

It was so fun to open up our boxes and see the things that we haven't used for 3 years.....it's really like Christmas. 

There was paper wrapped around most things so we unwrapped, unwrapped and unwrapped.  It was pretty therapeutic!

Hey, that's the good stuff.....

We got to see what we packed in our crates.

They wanted to get our stuff out of storage on campus and move it into our new house.  So on Thursday, they opened up our crates and they moved them over to our new house.

I've already forgotten what was inside some of the boxes. Trey and I went over with our friend Shiny last night and we looked through. It was pretty fun to see our things again....I'm so excited to have my cooking stuff back after 3 years.  Woo hoo.

They will start working on some of the changes for our apartment in a couple weeks....I'm pretty excited.  I have pictures of the before but am nervous to show them to you without the after.  The pictures look worse than it actually does in real life so I think I'll hold off.

Our new place has great potential and I'm trying to come up with room colors....any suggestions for our spare bedrooms.  I think for one I'll get a white bed from Ikea.  The other room will be an office/guest bedroom.  My desk is black and has a glass top.  Do you think the bed needs to be black, too?  Ikea has a black daybed that could be like a couch in there but also a nice bed.  What do you think?  What color would be good for painting that room to help it look bright and not all black?




I'll get you some pictures of all our things packed into one of the bedrooms.  We wanted it all in one place so that we could keep the air conditioning on.  I had a candle in one of the boxes.  Mmm.....that day I must have had a few less brain cells.  Of course it melted!  Anyway, that box smells like Yankee Candle Christmas Tree scent!  Actually I love that smell.

This is Trey and John.  John is the head of maintenance and has been wonderful in helping us deal with our stuff and will be working with the men to get our house fixed up a bit.

Happy Birthday

It seems that there are a lot of birthdays in our family right around now. I didn't get my act together to send cards....there's always next year!

My grandfather turned 92 last week

My sister Jenny's birthday is today and my mom on June 10

Trey's sister, Min also on June 10 and his granny on June 9

And there are more and more coming in June and July

HAPPY BIRTHDAY POP-POP, JENNY, GRANNY, MIN AND MOM!

Work it out....

IT'S WORKING!

I think I emailed some of you are US phone number...as long as our computer is one, the magic jack will be plugged in and you can call us.  We finally got a good VPN and we're in business!

So if you want our number and don't have it, it's a Pennsylvania number which shouldn't really matter as most phones are unlimited long distance now....so just email me for it!

There is voicemail but we're having a hard time getting it set up for some odd reason.

It's still amazing to me that we plug our phone into this little box thingy that plugs into the USB port, goes through our wireless internet to America and there was NO delay today when talking to our families.   All this for $20 a year.  Not bad.

I think in about 20 years, we're going to be able to beam ourselves from one country to the next.  Watch out.

If I posted a status on my facebook page for today it would say: Jessica Hulsey wishes there was something else to do in Al Ain besides go to the mall.  Really.  I'm thankful that we have some good friends to hang out with and I'm really thankful for the weekend but I can't wait to get into our house so that we have projects to do!  Like painting or our garden or decorating our new place. 

We could go to the pool but my husband informed me today that he's sort of like a cat and doesn't really like to get wet....hmm.....where the heck did this come from......wish I knew that 6 years ago:)  Really, to be honest with you, this might sound dumb, but it's too hot to swim in the middle of the day....so 5:00pm seems about the right time to go...but my bathing suit is still in storage.  We enjoyed the gym, though and it's usually pretty quiet on weekend afternoons (I am so sure that everyone is home sleeping because that is what the weather makes you want to do.)

Can you tell that we're getting sick of temporary housing and not having our stuff yet. It's coming. We got to go look at tile and cabinets for our kitchen this week...we're doing a small overhaul...not a complete one but some necessary changes. We're looking for cheap things to replace them, though since the hospital is only renting this place and we don't want to stick too much money into something that we are renting, obviously....but still if Trey wants a happy wife, a few things are necessary to make this place livable.   I heard about these cabinets that actually look really nice but are just pressed wood or something stuff with compacted newspaper.  They actually look great and seem to be the right price.  Anyway, my new goal is to be in our new apartment before we go for vacation in August...seems reasonable, right!?

I forgot it's Memorial Day weekend. Hope you all have a great 3-day weekend and enjoy a good b-b-q and parade somewhere.

So working in a multicultural setting can be all sorts of things....funny, frustrating, a learning experience, etc.   I think I get more laughs than anything.......

Last week, at my first daycare meeting with parents, I was sitting with a Filipino co-worker.  We got onto the subject of how cute the kids in the daycare are.   I said something like  "They are such little peanuts and I want to eat them."

She looked at me with a face that said "I've never heard anyone say that before." So I go on to explain how you can say that about little kids and it just essentially means that the kids are really cute.

She says "Can I say that to Mr. XXX" (I will protect his name).  Mr. XXX is our co-worker and about 42 years old.  He happens to be  a shorter Filipino man.

Me:  "No, don't ever say that to him." and then I just started dying laughing with another woman who is from Canada and was sitting there listening to our conversation.

Could you imagine.....my young Filipino co-worker says to our older Filipino co-worker "You're a peanut and I want to eat you."  Nope, doesn't work!

Is it even funny to you?  It still makes me laugh really hard but maybe it's one of those situations where you had to be there.

I put a spell on you.....

Last week, Trey and I noticed a few things spelled in interesting ways while visiting the East Coast of the UAE.

Terry Hulfey, we're glad that you are staying with us for the night.

(At a local Lebanese Restaurant)

Hi, I'd like to order some Dried Meat.....

Oh wait, you said that you wanted Homes with meat......

We don't have that this evening, but instead we could offer you Bar BQu Lamp.  

Oh, you'd rather have the Lamp Chops.

One order comin' up!