Heartstrings 31.0: Dubai lovin'

Howdy, howdy, howdy, ho!

Hope everyone is enjoying their weekend back home. I had to work today (blah!) and I went full steam ahead with no food allll day... guess that's what you get when you go to Dubai for a day and then come back and meet friends for dinner. So it was totally my own doing... still not fun.

Last Tuesday, I got in touch with a fella off of dubizzle (kind of like a craigslist) and he was selling a ticket for the ladies semi-finals match on Friday. I was a little worried about meeting some random person and was hoping it was a legit ticket... I ended up meeting him in the Dubai Mall and turns out, he had an all expense paid work thing to Egypt that came up and apparently it was a lot more important then tennis. Can't argue with that. I got there a little early and wondered around the mall for a bit doing little "touristy" things on accident after taking a wrong turn in the mall.

The Burj Khalifia on a beautiful night

The Dubai fountain... right outside the Dubai Mall/Burj Khalifia. Beautiful.

Little MJ fountain show while waiting to meet up for dinner.

After collecting the ticket, I met up with someone for dinner at Roadhouse (I needed a little bitta home after my observation and longish week.) We had a nice dinner and I got home suuuuper late for my standards--no thanks to some idiot who almost clipped the back end of my car going an easy 160 km/h. Definitely woke me up a little more for the last 30 minutes of my drive. The people here are insanely bad drivers... makes Texans look like world class drivers.

On Friday, I met my friend Andrea at our hotel we were going to be staying in called the Media Rotana (I am a big fan of a Rotana hotel as that is the place where I lived for a month when I first got to Abu Dhabi). We checked in and headed straight out with the intention of taking the Metro to the Tennis Center... good thing we asked where the stop was because it was Friday morning and the metro doesn't start operating until 1:00 (or was it 2:00? I can't remember now.. hmm...) So we hailed a taxi and headed for the Irish Village (which is a nice little place outside the center with a really great atmosphere--if anyone is ever in the market for something to do whilst in Dubai on holiday!) We ate a quick bite at a local restaurant there... walked around for about 30 minutes waiting on the gates to open (I bought a RAFA HAT! yesss!) and then we be-lined for some really fantastic seats. Andrea met a German dude the day before and he joined us for the day. We settled in for a nice afternoon in the sun full of tennis! I'm not gonna lie, I wasn't too terribly excited about attending a women's tennis match (I'd MUCH rather see the men play; but seeing as I couldn't even register to purchase tickets before they were sold out... I figured the women were better then nothing.) It's a different pace and atmosphere, but it was still fun nonetheless. The women are a lot smaller than they look on TV... quite interesting. I'm currently trying to find some tickets to the mens match now. We'll see how that goes. I'd love to see Roger and Novak in person!!

I hope everyone has a lovely week this coming week! Won't be too much longer before spring break is here! I'm praying my granny gets over her shingles that she's had for a bit... it sounds incredibly awful! And my mama... she's been in the ER with some mini-strokes. Praying the doctors can figure out what's going on so she can get to feeling better!