August Update

We are finally furnishing our new apartment, the view is awesome and it still sounds kind of hollow, but we are making progress. Chairs, sofas, a TV (no hookup yet), A sound system that is pretty nice. Art took these pictures at night, the "Big dig" next door, a 90 storey hotel, like we need another hotel in this city..we hope the restaurants are good, it is just a hole in the ground now

So i have a furniture allowance, so I spent it, all new living room set, a used dining room table and side cabinet

The set really does match the rug and chair we bought. So far NO pictures or paintings on the wall as they are concrete and u need a drill to bore into the walls. We did splurge and bought a car load of houseplants and some herbs. Mint for Arts Mojitos and chives and rosemary for cookiing

And of course we have this outside our windows, it is magnificent. It cost 1 billion us dollars to build about 3 years ago. It is the 7 star Emerates Palace Hotel, rooms in the high season go from 1000 us to 16,000 per night..We have been to a concert there, actually 2 of them, our friends ate dinner there, it cost for 2, nothing special 300 us dollars with no alcohol. We had drinks there one night; $45 for 2 drinks....Yikes...the Dome on top is blue, in this picture, it changes about every 30 seconds to green, white, purple, blue, then just the moons shine some times...Art likes to watch the cars come and go. We can't wait until winter so we can sit outside, right now it is 115 degrees...it has been hotter, up to 131 the hottest so far this summer. We start Ramadan in 2 weeks and no eating during daylight hours in public. We will try to honor the culture..the good thing is the evening feast after sundown, tents are set up all over town to feast after dark and Art has had several invitations from his employees to go to their houses at night and feast.

All for now...too tired and busy at night to do much blogging