KTMusings

Nothing like getting Christmas cards out just as I'm leaving town for a week :) I posted my letter here (click on it to get a bigger view), along with some of the pictures that correspond with my news. And check out my Dubai adventures below. Here's wishing you a very merry Christmas and a blessed 2009!! January - I volunteered with Big Brothers/Big Sisters and was matched with my 9 year old "sister" Talaisha: March - Quinton Daniel Rude arrived on 3/24. I got to spend a weekend with him and got in some quality nap time: May - girls' weekend in Phoenix: May - Dana and Ryan's wedding in Minneapolis: July - 5 year reunion weekend in Milwaukee: August - fun in the Dells with Meg, Dan, and Quinn: October - visiting the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville: October - Sister (plus Quinn!) weekend at Dana's in Minneapolis: November - Thanksgiving at Dana's: December - fun at a Marquette game:

Atlantis had it's grand opening the night we left Dubai. We missed the fireworks, unfortunately, but apparently they had such an outrageous show that you could see them from space! Article here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27829151

The 16 hour flight wasn't much fun, but I managed to sleep for 5 hours or so at the beginning, so that helped the time go by a little more quickly. I had a middle seat this time around, which was a pain. After getting through customs and immigration, and a short layover in Atlanta, we were in Detriot with a very short layover before heading to Madison. No delays anywhere, which was great! The only problem was that my bag decided to stay in Detriot for a while. I got home and was all set to take a shower (after being up for 38 hours or so (I kind of lost count!) it sounded great) ... and then realized I turned off my water heater while I was gone. So I had to postpone the shower a few hours. And my bag still isn't here, but I did get a call that it made it to Madison. So hopefully in the next few hours I'll have it dropped off.

We wrapped up our last day onsite (Thursday) a little early so we had the evening to explore some more before we went to the airport. We realized how quick of a walk it was from our hotel to DHCC - it seemed so much further when we drove every morning. Here's a shot of one of the buildings there. On the far left through the archway is their new data center. I got a tour on Thursday and it was really impressive. DHCC sign and logo ... and more construction: I felt like I was in London when I saw this bus! We spent the evening at Wafi mall - it's not nearly the size of the Mall of the Emirates, but there was a huge Emirati population, which was nice to see. They had lots of high end stores and then in the basement was a really elaborate layout of souks (markets). We did some shopping down there and then had dinner. I had the Egyptian equivalent of a casserole - rice, lentils, pasta, tomato sauce, and fried onions - it was fantastic!!! And we had a great view - the resta...

This morning we got a tour of City Hospital in DHCC. It just opened 3 weeks ago and only has an inpatient census of about 12-20 patients currently. They are targeting a high end market and you would not believe how gorgeous the place is! They have a VIP floor ... which actually just means, if you can afford to pay out-of-pocket (anywhere from 7500-20,000dh ($3k-8k) per night!) you can stay in an elaborate suite. The first two tiers of suites were like 5 star hotel rooms with a living room connected to the patient's room. The royal suite was incredible - the patient's room, office, huge living room, 2 bathrooms, and another living/dining room with chandeliers and a dining room table that seated 10. And you get a private chef available 24x7. They also had a spa / work out room / sauna / pool available to the VIP guests. Crazy. I did get some more pictures of the construction in DHCC and a nice shot of downtown. Here's the view of the University Hospital (aka the big hole) an...

Some of the UH team took us out for dinner tonight. We went to a restaurant right on the river and had a great view of downtown. The weather here actually was a little cool tonight (I was glad I had my suit jacket with me), but I keep reminding myself I'm flying home to snow tomorrow! The bright lights you see on the left are at a soccer field - there's a big soccer tournament going on over here. The UAE U-19 team won the other day and the Sheikh gave each of them 500,000 dh (~$130K) and a house! The team from Iran is staying at our hotel and are quite noisy. This is my only decent shot of the skyline from tonight:

We had to watch the Staff Meeting Monday night in our hotel. They had a streaming video feed for us ... which never actually came through enough for us to see anything. And the sound continuously cut out. The internet latency over here is horrible, so it was a torturous two hours. Anyway, we did get excited when we gathered that they were showing UH's intro video - here's the group gathered around the laptop (even though we couldn't really see anything, for some reason we all huddled up :) and cheered!):