Ok, I just wrote a blog about 6 hours ago, but let me just say that those six hours have been among the craziest and most stressful of my life, but DEFINITELY during the time I've been here. We had our group meeting at 10 before our manager goes on leave. I was able to finish some work before my taxi came at noon. He was right on time and we headed to my apartment so I could meet the Du installation tech at 1:00. It is a long drive that I've made a million times before, so I sat back and started reading my kindle. I looked up and Whoa! There is a car about 6 inches from my face to my left. He was apparently trying to get in our lane between our taxi ... read more

PAIT = Praise Allah It's Thursday (the middle eastern version of TGIF). This will be rather short as my life has been work, commute, grocery shopping. Last night was a good night at soccer. I seriously love the girls that we play with. Some of them can be a little whiny, which makes wonder how anyone can coach high school girls! But they're all fun and they've learned a lot since I started playing with them about a month ago. Our season starts in September and we are close to ready. We've had the assistant coach us the last two weeks while our regular coach is on holiday. Yesterday, he had us doing passing drills and play a scrimmage which focused on passing, and everyone has obviously improved. Each time he has us do this competitive ... read more

Sunday is the day to return to work. Of course, I am back into the groove of not wanting to go back to work after a nice weekend. But there it was. At least there was no real pressure at work right? Well, I had to make sure that a test was being done that should have been done weeks ago. I trained an intern and a young engineer in how to log a borehole with mostly sand samples. I was tasked with taking care of an intern (and later, two interns) and was planning to take them to a job site in the heat of the summer to observe drilling operations. And last, but not least, I heard AGAIN from a project that I thought was complete weeks ago. I wound up talking to my ... read more

I apologize for lack of pictures, but since I do not have internet yet at my new place, it is not as easy. I will take some good pictures for you this weekend and upload them Sunday. Yesterday was another slow day at work, so I actually left early with my Muslim coworker to go to the mall. I wanted to transfer some money, start my internet/cable service and get some more necessary supplies. First, I grabbed a ticket from Du, where you get your internet/cable/phone set up. My ticket said H383 and the board indicated they were only on H343, so I decided to walk across to the UAE exchange to send some of my cash to my home bank account, since I still do not have a bank account here and I wanted to ... read more

I was kind of checked out of work today. I finished the pile analysis (yay!!! Actually doing engineering!!!!), set up some lab tests and worked a little on some report corrections. Then I had to go to DEWA to get the electric and water turned on and switched to my name at my new apartment. The taxi came to pick me up and took me to the metro near where it was supposed to be - he had no clue where it was. So, I went inside the metro terminal and asked a few people; fortunately the ticket seller knew that it was directly across the street (Sheikh Zayed Road). And very fortunately, each metro has an indoor pedestrian bridge across the highway and the outlet to DEWA was right next to the building. I walked ... read more