Dubai

I was recently reviewing the most recent posts we've made since we've lived in Saudi Arabia and I thought back to our experiences in Ecuador, and the posts from that time. I thought to myself how most of my posts since arriving in Saudi have been mostly about going to other places. I regret that and I feel that this fact is a bit reductive. In reality, our lives are full and complex. They are more than our vacations and our travels. But honestly, so many of the things that make up our day to day lives do not focus on adventures that I would state as particularly noteworthy to readers of this blog. The truth of the matter is that we work for a very high performing school, with very high standards in terms of our efforts professionally. Accordingly, nearly every night, after the baby is bathed, fed, and put to sleep, we both stay up and work. Every weekend, we both work. We have not had the opportunities to enjoy the fruits of "free time." This is not exclusively due to the demands of our job, as we did have a baby by choice and that was the best choice we've ever made. However, this does explain the absence of stories feature llama pugilism, volcano hikes, trips to the Amazon, and local villages and markets. We have explored Riyadh and Saudi as a whole a bit, and we hope do to so more in the coming months. In the meantime, awareness of that fact, and stories of the limited time we do have to do things of note will have to suffice, and posts about various trips will probably serve as the only stories of note; unless a groundswell of support for teething, diaper, and nap time stories comes flooding in.

All of that being said and acknowledged, I did get to take a pretty cool trip recently, for work. There was a leadership conference in Dubai last week that I was told about and recommended to attend. Given that we are provided with a generous professional development fund yearly, and that I had never been to Dubai, I talked it over with Shannon and booked it. We are at a point with the baby that we are really trying to figure out some routines and habits that will help facilitate his sleeping through the night. It is a team effort every evening, so I certainly felt bad leaving for a weekend without reinforcements available to Shannon. But she thought it would be a great idea for me to go, so I did.

I left straight from school on a Thursday afternoon and arrived at the airport rather quickly. I sped through the security line and immigration and found myself in the lounge at the Riyadh airport with a quickness. This being the first time I have traveled alone and without a baby since, well having a baby, I was kind of surprised by how quick this all took. I guess the days of breezing through airports are gone for me for a while. But I enjoyed it last week nonetheless. After a smooth flight, we landed in Dubai around 9:00pm. By the time I got to my hotel, got dinner, and unpacked, it was getting rather late. I took all of the room service, laundry, and spa service pamphlets off the bed, and I turned off the lights to go to sleep. My thumb caught on something that I presumed was another pamphlet or something but it felt peculiar. I turned on a light to find a woman's bra locked around my hand. I quickly threw it to the floor and called the hotel front desk. While the presence of a piece of clothing is no problem, the implication this sparked, that the bed had not been cleaned, was clear in my mind. I told them I was fine for the night but that I'd like to have the room cleaned the next day.

When that next day came, I went to my courses and classes all day. We started at 7 and went until 5. I stopped by the front desk during lunch and was given a new key and a promise that my things would be moved from one room to a new room for my inconvenience. After my classes, I asked where my room was, and I was told that I would have to go to the other tower where the Royal Executive Suite was, which was my new room. Upon entering my new room, I found a sprawling space, with jacuzzi tubs, tvs in the mirrors, and a massage chair the size of a dentist's, or of a cockpit in an F-16. It was glorious. I sent Shannon some photos of my new digs (which in hindsight was probably a bad idea since the previous night's sleep was awful due to a sick baby).

After that, I fought my greatest urge to sit in the dentist chair of luxury and go to bed early, and I shared an Uber to a local spot where a colleague and I stopped to see the Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building. It was amazing to stare up at it from the foot. I couldn't shake the story of Jack and the Beanstalk as the building climbed higher and higher beyond clouds, birds, and seemingly possibility. Feeling sufficiently satisfied at my adventuring, we went back to the hotel where I had dinner and an early bedtime.

The next day we attended courses all day until 4. At that point, I left from the hotel and went to the airport where I killed some time until my flight. I was eager and anxious to get home to Shannon and the baby. I was graced with the luck of an empty row and eager to try to sneak in an hour of sleep on the two hour flight. But after boarding and rolling out to the runway, our captain told us that someone in the front of the plane had been behaving badly and was violating plane safety regulations. I still have no idea what happened, but I like to imagine he was vigorously dancing and could not be convinced to sit. We went back to the gate and for some inexplicable reason, we stayed there for about two hours. We eventually left and after our flight landed, our two hour flight had turned into a four hour journey.

After clearing customs, I called my ride I had arranged only to be informed he decided to leave and didn't want to pick me up. I ordered an Uber and when he called me and found out I didn't speak Arabic, he hung up on me, and then started doing laps around the pickup area, refusing to cancel the pickup. So I had to cancel the pickup and get another ride, eat the cancellation charge, and I was in a mood. After getting in a new ride, a guy tried to charge me double the rate, so I told him to pull over. He slowed down and as I opened the door he sped up again. We went back and forth arguing until he agreed to the original rate. I was not a guy to be messed with on that way home. I eventually had him drop me off at the front of the compound, not wanting him to come in, and walked myself the last ten minutes home at 1:30am. It was a crazy trip home, but a good trip to a new place nonetheless.