Another round of......

They have these really great juices here!  I'm addicted.  They have all kinds, but my favorite is the 3 layer.  It's avocado, mango and strawberry.  On the way home from Dubai and the airport, we stop and get these EVERY time.  I can't drive by without getting one. I think each layer has sugar in it and I can't guarantee that they are really "that" good for us, but still they are tasty and I imagine better than some other treats.

So if you come to visit, we'll enjoy some good juice together.  We had a long day Saturday picking out furniture for our house so Trey was really excited by the time we got to the juice "hole-in-a-wall".

We're halfway there.....

We went over to check out our house the other day...to see how the updates were coming along. Here is the old kitchen outside. 

They tore out the wall in between the kitchen the eating area.

Here is another view.  

They are putting in new bath tubs since the old ones were a little rusty and nasty.  

I love white things in a bathroom. 
They tile the full walls here....I guess it makes it easy for cleaning. 

I can just wash down the walls, too!

I'll continue to update you as things progress. 

Keep em' coming....

I love to read signs here. I've posted some things in the past that amuse me...here's another.

We went to a place called Leisure one night with friends.  

It has nice outdoor seating and a good atmosphere.  

This sign was posted in the bathroom for the staff.  

Enjoy:)

Feel free to interpret!  I'm not sure that I understand it exactly right.

We're off....

I originally wrote this post below to post on Friday automatically....BUT we got rejected!  Our visas were denied to Syria.  Sooooo sad!  I was interested in this conference and in Syria.  All the other Americans got to go.....but our past 3 years was worth it....but still someday I'm going there!  Maybe after a couple years we'll be able to apply again and go.

On Thursday morning we left for a trip to Damascus, Syria. We're really excited about the conference and getting to explore Damascus a bit. 

We'll update you when we get back next week!

Look how excited I was......it's sad.  Oh well, we found out that we are going to Kenya in January for CURE's annual meeting.  That's pretty cool, huh?! Safari, friends, CURE staff...should be good.  And I think we're going to try to go on a 4 day weekend trip somewhere in October or November.  We're so close to new places to visit and we can usually find some pretty cheap tickets!  We'll see and we have no idea where...but we'll find something.  I've heard Sri Lanka is pretty neat and then someday we'll get to East Asia.

Heart Stop Beating.....

My co-worker found this great American information.  So proud to be an American!  Check out this website...did you know about this restaurant in Chandler, AZ?

Here is a news article about it from CBS news

Does it make you want to go to the Heart Attack Cafe?

What's your opinion?

So we're trying to pick out some inexpensive cabinets, flooring and countertops to freshen up the kitchen a bit. They demolished it yesterday and I meant to get over there to take pictures.  Anyway, the cabinet man came to measure. I think we found someone that has reasonably priced cabinets --they won't last forever nor does he have a huge selection but I'm not going to get picky here.

So our options were white, cherry (but it's not real wood so it doesn't exactly look like cherry) or a fake wood grain looking color.  Mmmmm...didn't like it. So I thought white might be okay.  He gave me a sample to take so that we could look for tile.

There were lots of tiles I loved but they were of course the really expensive granite tiles...and the other tiles are about 1/3 of the prices so we're going with those.  So see the pictures and see what you think.

I think we're going to go with the white wood looking cabinet....some with glass windows and some with solid doors.  Then the clay looking floor.  The red speckel one is too much and the white would be really white with white tile and white cabinets.....do you agree?!  The hardwood floor looking tiles in the cheaper tile (not granite) were too fake looking so I moved away from those. 

So looking at this...what color can I paint?  You think like a light blue/gray or green or something?   I love that slate blue color but not sure. I will do 1 bedroom that color.

Take me to another place, take to another land....

On Friday, we took a trip to Oman.  Oman is very close and only about a 10 minute drive to the border post...but really Al Ain and Oman are just divided by a fence.  Anyway, we went to a village about an hour away to visit this man. Let's call him Mr. A.  Trey met him at the hospital when he was having a baby about 2 months ago.  It was nice to visit. They were extremely welcoming and we had a great visit.

This cool thing was covering our breakfast so that the flies wouldn't get at it. 

Also, this is Dr. Shirley.  She is from Canada but did medical school in the States and is now a doctor here in our clinics.

This was part of our breakfast.  It was these little pancake/crepe like things with 

honey that they made on their own land.

We couldn't figure out if Trey looked like he was from Mexico 

or supposed to be out in the rice fields in Japan.

This boy Salah was awesome!  He knew a lot about life at his young age of 11. Guess what?  He is the uncle of Mr. A!  That's what happens when your dad marries 4 wives.  Salah and Mr. A's dad are brothers.  Now his dad has died.   Salah knew the whole process of how to make and sell honey.  He does the work to clear out the bee boxes, etc.  I asked him he gets stung a lot. He said yes and knew exactly how many he had in 2010 so far and how many he got in 2009.  I'm excited to see this kid again. 

The family has their own Oasis of date palms.  We took a little trip in the car to go visit the Oasis and the original village. Only about a 5 minute drive in the car. This is where Mr. A's grandfather and Salah's dad grew up with his parents. 

The dates are coming along nicely!  Look at how cool looking they are.  People pick them now and eat them half brown and half yellow. Personally I like them fully ripe and brown.  The yellow part is rather dry when you eat it but some really love it!

They also had a garden on the Oasis property. 

This is one of the old houses on the family property in the Oasis area. 

This is Mohammed. He was our tour guide in the old area where the family used to live back in the day. He must play in this area with Salah a lot. Even Mr. A doesn't go back there very often so didn't know where to go.  Mohammed was very quiet and sort of seemed sad.  He is also Mr. A's uncle.  He is the youngest of all the children of the 4 wives.  His dad died while his mom was still pregnant with hi.  It's funny to hear Mr. A call him and Salah uncle. In arabic you don't have to say your uncle's name, you can just call them "uncle".  It makes me laugh.  Pretty strange for us unless you're like my friend Joanna who is 1 of 16 kids.

I just thought this door was cool looking on the farm. They went through here to grab mangoes before we left.  There are a few mango trees straight ahead.  Salah climbed the tree barefooted as if he lived in the jungle.  Trey asked him if he needed help and he said he does it all the time and he climbed right to the top.  It's not a tree that has helpful branches to boost you up at the bottom.   You have to wrap your legs around it and pull yourself up.  They gave us about 40 mangoes that are green...we'll wait until they become good and yellow to eat them....but they eat them green with salt.

Mr. A has very good english and loved to use big words!  Any word he didn't know that we said, he'd ask Trey to write it down.  We had some great conversation with him and really enjoyed our day.