It has been a long time since I last updated you. There are 2 reasons for this, it has been busy and we haven't had any new exciting adventures.

I have been quite busy at work and so we have spent the weekends just relaxing at home. And the summer heat is already here, so daytime activities need to be indoors.

Since we are spending so much time at home, let me tell you about home life in Dubai...

Each of our 3 bathrooms has it's own water heater. The water for the building is stored in huge tanks on the roof, so in the summer it is actually as hot as if it went through the water heater. We turn off the heaters and use the "cold" water. Since the water heaters are in the ceiling, the water in them is cooler than the "cold" water. No matter how many showers we have in a row, even if we are washing laundry and dishes, we never run out of hot water.

We have no means of heating the apartment. They do sell space heaters for the cool winter days, but we have never found a need for one. In fact this winter was so warm, we used the air conditioner every day. We use a fan at night all winter long - partially to cool the room and partially to mask the sound of the nearby mosque. The call to prayer occurs sometime between 4 and 6, depending on sunrise and wakes us up (as it is meant to do).

Laundry is another adjustment that we needed to make. I have recently consented to having the ironing done at the local laundry. It cost about $3.00 to have 2 weeks worth of shirts ironed - and they deliver them when the are ready! We still do our own wash. We splurged on the expensive washer. It is also a full dryer. Since the dryer function is really just a cold air spin and it takes about 4 hours to complete a load which then comes out quite wrinkled, we rarely use it. FYI, the other version takes 9 hours and the clothes are 80% dry, and wrinkled. Generally, we do our part for the environment and dry everything on a clothes rack. We used to keep it on the deck and the clothes would dry in less than an hour in the summer. There is no option for cold water washing, unless we turn off the water heater in the kitchen where the washer is. The clothes do come out amazingly clean.

We wear summer clothes all year round. Since the kids are growing taller and not wider, they haven't grown out of many things. And, they wear school uniforms each day so the clothes don't wear out either. It is probably also because of the school uniforms that we have been able to avoid the "everyone is wearing them" syndrome.