You may be asking yourself, where exactly is this place called Al Ain and what in the world is there to do there? I probably won’t answer either of these questions, but I’ll tell you a bit about my daily life here and show you some of what I see every day.
Let’s start with home here, also known as Villa 1 (there are also Villas 2 and 3, but I don’t live there and they look EXACTLY the same as mine). As you can see, quite a swank looking exterior…but wait until you get inside! The place is cavernous…absolutely EVERYTHING echoes given the 12 foot ceilings and marble everything else (floors, staircases, etc…), so when you eat something spicy and, ah, Nature calls loudly to you, crank up our IPod, or everyone will be listeninto a whole other kind of melody! Not exactly private, if you get my meaning! 
You could comfortably park a car inside my bedroom, which has its own echo-chamber with a toilet, but you couldn’t have a comfortable hot bath because for the last two months I’ve been unable to coax more than 30 seconds of hot water from the pygmy-sized hot water tank in my bathroom. Nice invigorating cold bath or freezing cold shower, the choices are both lame.
Oh yeah: a word about the electricity here. The plugs here are evil. Totally evil. Everything here has European plug ends, and yet not a single jack n the wall will take them! So you get to go out and buy a bunch of freaky-looking boxy adapters and pray that they don’t get fried too quickly.
At last count, 2 hair driers, 1 iron and an mp3 player have all been consumed by the evilness of our wall jacks. And we’re not home yet!
Another note: toilet paper is NOT supposed to be flushed down the crapper in your echo chamber. This bit of wisdom was shared with us by the Villa’s lease company boss. In week 4 of our stay. After 3 B.C forest’s worth of TP had been sent south already. Great timing.
The Pioneers!
The reason this guy was here was to TRY to get our internet connection hooked up. That’s right, in week five we were still working on “getting this done”. The phone company here, Etisalat, must have a killer union because as near as any of us can tell, they never actually DO any work. Sure, work order signs are posted on doors and technicians magically appear and then vanish with nary a word…but I STILL don’t have an Internet connection in my Villa.
In all fairness the other two villas do. Most of the time it even works for a while before dumping you offline. I know I should be thankful for what I do have, like my health, but it’s hard. I mean C’MON! Even Shaw cable moves faster than that!
Hey, that reminds me! Did you know that we get sandstorms here? Well we do! Big ones –they last for days at a time. Did you know that for some reason, all the doors in all our villas have half-inch cracks at the bottom? And that this really fine sand blows in quite nicely through those gaping cracks? And that fine sand + marble floors = a really bad version of Icecapades with strained groin muscles thrown in for good measure? Well it does! I just about died the day I came home in the storm and an up the front steps (also marble) and raced into the house to get out of the driving sand. Wasn’t pretty. The Russian judge didn’t even give me a score –just pointed and laughed. Jerk.
One last thing about the Villas: My housemate Grant had his bathroom window closed during the sandstorm...and the whole thing fell out of the wall and crushed his purple bar of soap like a big smooshy purple bug. Luckily Grant wasn’t using the soap at the time and the next day his window got replaced (shocked us all - the next day! This is a big deal people! NOTHING happens the next day here!)
That’s enough of my “home”; On to my school.
My Classroom, Good ol' G32
Da (big) Boys and Wee Little Me
The program’s called the Tawteen Program and is run by Abu Dhabi University here in Al Ain. Now, I don’t have the most students if you count heads, but if you count by kilos I win hands down for the most students! My boys are big. I’m 180cm and not exactly elfin in my measurements, but these guys make me feel positively petite!
The Wee Little Desks
These boys are so big that they cannot physically fit into the standard university desks in my classroom. We had to get big chairs brought in! These guys just spin the desks around and write on the top of them. Like I said, BIG boys! They are a fantastic group to teach and it has really been an honour to get to know them. They have all worked so hard and most of them haven’t been inside a school for over a decade, so it is HARD work for them. My boys. My crew. My very large posse! My herd? Anyways, good guys all around!
Ebony and Ivory
This school is segregated…men on one side and ladies on the other and never the two shall exchange conversation. Abaya’s and one side, Dishdasha’s on the other. Ebony and Ivory… except for the perfect harmony part…there shall be no chords being played here thank you very much! Check out the bathroom sign above - it’ll give you a clearer picture of what I mean.
The Spices The Olives
I’ve chucked in some pics of the bulk section at Carrefour, the UAE’s answer to Walmart and Superstore under one roof. So many bulk spices! I’m deeply impressed and I actually have no idea what half of them are used for! Imagine if you actually knew!? Crazy.
Yep...It's Everywhere!
There’s also the gratuitous McD’s picture…Ronald rocks on in the UAE and the menu is almost the same. Except that here I can get the McArabia and you can’t! Nyah Nyah! It’s yummy. Hard to describe though…kinda looks like meat jammed in a pita shell with lettuce, tomato and spicy sauce. Sounds nasty, tastes divine, although NOTHING beats a good Lebanese kebab for your carnivorous cravings! Wish I had a picture of it…but that’d be odd. It’s not THAT good..this is McD’s we’re talking about here!
Outside the Labyrinth of the Oasis Inside...it all looked like this!
Finally, some pics of the Al Ain oasis. It was a hot, hot, hot day when I ventured in here…and got a wee bit lost! I didn’t bring enough water with me because my LP guide told me there was a good restaurant in the middle of the oasis. Should have been called “The Mirage”. First hour I walked, I managed to NOT find it and stumbled out the other side of the oasis wondering where I was…and out of water. Headed back in like some kind of resolute explorer (the dumb kind that usually gets eaten) and FINALLY found the restaurant in question.
"The Oasis" Restaurant - A very cruel joke
It was closed. It had been closed for quite some time. I honestly felt like throwing things and screaming. Actually, I may have screamed. And then I sucked it up, sweated quietly and staggered out to find a cab. This honestly took almost another hour. I got the cab to take me to the nearest restaurant and once there I sucked back several bottles of water and slooowly rehydrated. I will NEVER go into an oasis without lots of water and my GPS again! This was ridiculous! Didn’t help that there are NO signs marked EXIT once you get inside and one palm tree bears a striking resemblance to another after the first two! Grr.
Sunrise from Villa 1 in Al Ain
Anyways, that’s wee taste of Al Ain. I haven’t touched on the traffic circles or the psycho cabbies that use them…I’ll save that for another time!
THE END!