Our First Look at Dubai (From Afar)

So Daddy has been away for almost an entire month now, setting up the house in Dubai and beginning the long and arduous process of establishing our residence in the U.A.E.  He reminds me on a daily basis that, while it is certainly no picnic for me being home with the 3 kids, the challenges he is facing are equally, if not more, aggravating (i.e., delays in getting visa paperwork, difficulty finding items in stores as opposed to catalogs, finding out the hard way that it can take over an hour to get a taxi, etc.).  He has also warned me that I will have trouble understanding many of the people who work in the stores there as English is not their first language, and that I will have to lower my expectations for our future nanny, since the caregivers in Dubai are apparently unassuming women from poor countries who need specific guidance regarding all of their duties.  (Detaching ourselves from our current spectacular, gifted, funny, loving, member-of-the-family Supernanny is going to be a trauma unto itself, for all of us.)

But there is some good news in his reports: he has moved into the house and had some furniture delivered (these are the photos he has sent so far); he has found a wonderful driver who has also, apparently, served as a friend and sidekick; and somehow he managed to get the kids enrolled in our first choice nursery school (his theory-- based on the way the administrators patted his hand and told him, "Fill out as much of the form as you know, dear"-- is that the women took him for a helpless single father and charitably moved him to the top of the wait list).

And so PopPop, the kids, and I hurry up and wait.  We wait for the waiting to be over, knowing that our growing anxiety is not rational but realizing that the only way to quiet it is to get off that plane and see Dubai with our own eyes.  Hopefully we will like-- no, love-- what we see.