We are the world.....

Last night at the hospital, we held an International Dinner for our staff.  Everyone had a lot of fun getting dressed up in their traditional dress, watching performances and eating food from all around the world.  Oasis Hospital is very much a family-like atmosphere so we always have a good time when you get us together. 

3 Americans.  I probably could have done a better job of dressing "American" but a white polo and jeans seems pretty American to me.

PJ and Ruel.  2 fun guys from Oasis Hospital.

The crew in their "wear".

This was a traditional Filipino Dance.  All of the performers did a great job and it was so fun to see some traditional dance from the Philippines and India.

Back to life, back to reality.....

So we're back in Al Ain and getting back into a normal pattern again.  Jet lag takes so long to get over--at least for me.  I'm not one of those people that can just slip back into a normal sleep pattern.  It always takes me about a week and I loved getting to sleep in yesterday and today.  The first few days back to work always feel like someone drugged you or you got run over by a truck. Seriously.  

Home was TOO good and so fun.   I spent a week at my parents, then went to Massachusetts to Trey's family, my sisters and saw friends.  Then back to my parents for the end.  I didn't really take many pictures....I was horrible about it this time so I don't really have any to post, but it was a great trip.  I have some fun pictures of my sister-in-laws baby shower and our trip to the Red Sox game....those are coming. 

We saw our Gordon friends.  We get together for a weekend every summer but this year we just did a day-thing.  So fun as more kids come each year and we catch up on life with one another.  One of these times, we're ditching the kids so we have grown up conversations without chaos around the room.  (Cleary, I'm the one without kids!  Promise, their kids are cute, but you only get to have 1/3 of a conversation usually and then something happens.)

I left beautiful 80 degree beautiful weather and came back to 115.  Not nice.  Not very welcoming.  Makes you want to hop back on a plane.  But it's where we live for now, so we try to cope with by having lots of parties and making the indoors fun! I brought back all sorts of things so that we could host fun parties this summer and make the heat go by quickly.

America, America.....

Oh man, I love being in America.  We're having fun!  It's been a great 2 weeks so far.  I leave in 8 days.  The weather has been good overall, warmer than normal but sunny and we've been outside a lot which has been nice. 

Last week I was in PA seeing my family and some friends.  Then this week we're in Massachusetts with Trey's family and to see some friends and my sister.  Trey's bro Jared, graduated from high school last night which was great. 

We've been b-b-q'ing every night.  Riding bike. Taking long walks. Shopping...and more shopping!  Maybe we should move home for every summer......whatya say?!

 

It's so hard to say goodbye....

Our sweet friends Fazila and Saleem are moving to the US.  They leave while I'm home for vacation.  They'll be moving to California and I"m excited for them but sad to see them go. They have been our friends since we first arrived and we love doing "nothing" with them. It's good to have friends like that.  Fazila is also my office mate so she is always just "there".  I can just turn around and say whatever I want to her.   Fazila is an amazing cook and Saleem is hilarious with his funny sayings.  They are both Afghani but Fazila moved to the US when she was in her early teenage years and then grew up in California.  Today when I said goodbye to Saleem, he hugged me which might not happen that often with an Afghani man. He said "You are like our family.  We'll miss seeing your face."  But we know we'll see them again back in the US....at least we hope!  They better come to Boston to visit next summer.

Here are some pictures from their party this past weekend. 

I see trees of green......

We had some plants on our patio that were getting too big for their pots.  We have a brick patio, so we thought it wouldn't be too easy to pick up any of the bricks. Pots just seemed easier.  Then the plants started getting bigger and bigger....so a couple weekends ago, Trey picked up some bricks and planted the bushes in the ground. I'm excited to see if they grow a bunch.   We'll keep you posted.  We were both dripping sweat when trying to pick up the bricks with a few tools.....dripping.  It's like working inside a sauna.

It's gettin' hot in here......

I could post about this EVERY DAY!!!  The heat will never feel normal to me....NEVER.  Bring me back to the northeast.  We had record breaking temperatures for May on the weekend....ringing in at a nice 122 degrees.  It was gross.  I'm not telling you this so that you can think "Oh, man, that's hot. They're suffering."  Nope, we chose this. I know.  But I just need to whine and complain.

But even today at like 115 with a bit of humidity just didn't feel nice.  It just drains you.  You want to go to sleep.  I actually just want to be crabby about it.  I thought Trey would have a much harder time with this than I do...but I was wrong....he wins on this one!  He's out playing soccer tonight.  It doesn't cool down much at night so he has to fill up on water and gatorade before and after the game.

I think we all just need to become a bit southern.  Min has said the past few days that we just need to realize that we can't do as much as we did before.  So if we thought we could get 4 things done before, 2 is doing well!  Tonight we came home from kick boxing and Min said to me, "Sit down, don't even try to be productive right now." 

Anyway, you'll hear about 7 or 107 more posts about this between now and September because I have a feeling I might not make it through the summer without moaning. 

America--HERE I COME!  It's hard to pack for a trip when it's 120.  All I'm packing is skirts and sun dresses-things we don't get to wear here.  Then I just looked on weather.com.  All temperatures for the next 10 days are below 80 and rainy, which I'm THRILLED for, but just not sure how to pack.  I forgot what that feels like. 

Pizza Pie.....

Last week for Trey's Birthday we made pizza.  Min's friend Kendra gave us a great and easy recipe for pizza dough.  You can find it below. 

Once you made the dough and par-bake it, you can make many kinds.  Our favorites are:

1. B-B-Q Pizza -- use b-b-q sauce as the actual sauce, then put chicken and red onion and cheese.  
2. Buffalo Chicken Pizza -- use a mix of blue cheese and buffalo sauce as the actual sauce, then put chicken, celery and onion and cheese.

Kendra's Pizza Dough

2 packages yeast (2 TBSP)

1 tsp salt

2 TBSP sugar

3 cups of luke warm water

2 tsp oil

61/2-7 cups flour

mix salt, sugar and yeast in a large bowl

add the water... make sure water is not hot or cold. if too hot or cold it will kill the yeast. 

whisk the above together (should look a little funny)

add the oil 

add flour

mix the flour into the liquids by folding the mixture into its self. (i start with a spoon, but as it gets thicker I switch to my hands and kneed it with my hands). The more you kneed the better. Knead for 5 to 10 minutes. add flour as you need. depending on the weather you will need between 6 1/2 to 8 cups - should not be too sticky. 

after you knead leave in the bowl to rise for a 1/2 hour. put a slightly wet towel over the bowl. 

the dough should have doubled in size. pound the dough down to get the air out and cut into thirds. 

take one third of the dough and roll out onto pizza pan. may need extra flour.

put cornmeal on the pan so dough does not stick

heat oven to 450 and bake crust for 4 minutes--I do longer than 4 minutes.

take out, put on toppings, sauce and cheese and put back into oven until cheese is melted and slightly brown.