Wednesday 9/7/2011

Hi all, I have now had two people respond to the posts and the responses are not showing up. If their is anyone out there in blogger and that can assist with this I would greatly appreciate it!

Today we spent the day in the car. We took Anders to school for his first day in kindergarten, stopped at Starbucks,
all the comforts of home, and headed to Dubai to get Charlotte's birth certificate. Sounds easy right. First off Dubai is an hour and a half away. And we had to stop and feed Charlotte twice. Then we arrived in Dubai and went to the mall. It was about 10:30 and the
gift card place wasn't open. They said they would be open in a half hour. So we looked around, found a thermos for lunch and then
got the gift card for the midwife. This is a peculiar thing about their malls. You have to take a ticket to park like they are going to charge
for parking. However, parking is free on weekends and holidays. It is free for the first four hours you are at the mall and if you buy something
you can have your ticket validated so you don't have to pay. So basically it's free to park, no one pays, yet they have a person manning exits and you are still required to get a ticket. It's a puzzle.

There is one exit out of the parking garage that will put you directly on Sheik Zayed highway. The first time around we missed
the exit and had to go back into the parking garage and around again to get to this highway to take us to the City Medical center.
We finally made it to the hospital, got the first step of paperwork for the birth certificate and stopped and fed Charlotte. Boy was
Se glad to get out of her car seat and stretch out a little. Then we needed tong buy jennifer's Dr.'s office for some cream and we got a little bit lost. And we also had to eat ourselves. Bottom line is we didn't really have time to do all of the errands that were planned.
New momma called daddy and asked him to pick up Anders from school. Didn't think it would be such a good idea to be late picking up
on the first day of school.

So if babies are anything like puppies Charlotte is going to be tall. Her feet are very long. I measured them today. They are
as long as my fingers; from her heel to the end of the big toe is the length of my finger from the knuckle to the end of my finger.
That might be 3 ".

I just got some good news. Last year I took in person and online classes to get a school teaching position. I just received an
Email from the company and they have added a way to get the certificate. Originally, you had to be hired to teach and teach for a year. Now they have a program that you can student teach for 12 weeks and get your certificate. Yeah. I have heard about some firms that place
art teachers in other countries. I think that might be interesting. My first choice would be to teach in a colllege setting, but
would definitely consider being in a foreign country. And apparently, there are openings for art teachers.

The baby loves being outside in the evening heat. It's cooled off a little yet still warm. The boys rode their bicycles and scooters again this evening.

I learned something new today about all the different calls to prayer. I had thought that the praying was done at the same time on a daily basis, like every 4 hours. Apparently the prayer times fluctuate according to the phase of the moon and that is why they are calling the people to prayer over the loud speaker.

They provide lots of places for prayer. There are prayer rooms in the malls, at filling stations, in the hospital, in the air port and probably lots of other places I haven't seen. I suppose even in the USA there are prayer rooms in hospitals and at the air port. But in don't think I have ever seen one at Northpark or at a gas station.



T
a lot of men were coming out of the on site mosque from their prayers.