Yara's Last Days (in Lebanon)

November news: A few weeks ago we had our first trip to the ER as a married couple. It was lovely. Jad, who kindly was doing the dishes after lunch, gave himself a deep cut in his thumb when a glass broke. He got 3 stitches as a souvenir and was told by one of his (many) female classmates, "Well, I hope you learned your lesson. You shouldn't be doing dishes anyway." Hmmph.

In other news, we went to the beach again on November 6. Swam and everything. We love Mediterranean autumn! Jad is continuing to do well in his classes and is enjoying his profs and classmates. I am getting a lot busier with my work for HOME and have also started volunteering at St. Jude's children's cancer center near our house.

Sadly, we had to bid farewell to Yara this past week. She has headed to NY to start her grown-up job and while we are so proud of her, we are very sad to see her go. So, in typical Lebanese fashion, we decided to live up her last week as much as humanly possible. And we did. A few highlights of the week were hosting our first family dinner party, a late night out at MusicHall, and several consecutive dinners ending around 2am.

This past week marked Eid al Adha and Jad enjoyed 4 days of vacation. On one afternoon, we traveled to Dlebta (Nina's cousins' hometown) to enjoy the gorgeous weather, beautiful views, and old style Lebanese architecture.

As a side note, Lebanon has been making some CNN headlines not only for Ahmadinejad's visit last month, but also for this. We are so proud.

Weekend in Dubai

Palm Jumeirah

We celebrated Halloween weekend with a little family trip to Dubai. Dubai is a very unique place – everything is new, huge, and the best description of the culture we heard was a “mall culture.” We had a blast! We enjoyed time with family friends the first evening, then spent our first afternoon walking through the Mall of the Emirates – where we indulged in as much American stuff as possible (think P.F. Changs & PinkBerry) and gaped at the indoor ski slopes. Skiing, indoors, in the middle of the desert – crazy! Then we headed out to Palm Jumeirah and the Atlantis hotel to take in sunset over the Gulf.
 

Mall of the Emirates

Ski Dubai

After a fantastic dinner, we slept in, got up and went back to the mall. This time, it was Dubai Mall, the largest mall in the world, which had stores from pretty much everywhere, including Chicago's own Garret's Popcorn. From there we headed next door to Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world. We went up to the observatory on the 124th floor, which was still 50 or so floors from the actual top. It's quite the view.

Burj Khalifa

In the evening, we watched the water show outside of Burj Khalifa, which was designed by the same engineers who designed the show for the Bellagio in Vegas. The weekend went by fast and we really enjoyed ourselves. Certainly a pretty great way to spend Halloween!

View from the 124th floor

Jad gets artsy with his photography

Jad strolling through Dubai Mall with his new buddy...the 3 year old son of our friends. His dad works at Cartier, hence the reason he's the only kid-o walking through the mall with 2 Cartier bags in his hands (although, they are only filled with puzzles) :)