Monday, July 12, 2010

More long time no post

Joe’s birthday dinner took place at a restaurant called Marooj Rotana. This place is for the lifestyles of the rich and the famous. I felt completely out of place because not only was the place way to ritzy for me but it was also a Lebanese place complete with a belly dancer and Arabic music. However, it was one of the best experiences of my life. When we sat down at the table, it was already covered in food. The first course was all dips and salad sort of things and man was it all delicious. There were vegetables, hummus, potatoes and much more. I had to make sure I watched myself so I could save some room for later. The second course was cheese, breads and some seafood. The calamari was absolutely amazing, not to mention the cheese. If you don’t know me very well, I LOVE cheese and I was almost done in for the night after that. The third course was all the chicken and lamb and other meats, by this point I was loosening up the buttons a little bit. Fourth course was an entire platter of fresh fruit and when I mean fresh it was practically cut right in front of us. Finally, we had desert which was a cake for Joe’s birthday and I don’t think I have to explain how delicious it was.

Meanwhile, the entire time we were there which was a period of almost three and a half hours, my glass was never empty and the food was always good. Not to mention there was a belly dancer for a good hour then a singer and man did the place start rocking when he came on. There was dancing and singing, clapping and swaying, pretty much all the ingredients for a great night. Although the cost was around 1,000 AED which translated into roughly $360.00, it wasn’t too bad. So if you are ever in Dubai and are looking for an experience, head on over it’s only a block away from the world’s tallest tower.

Saturday night was the big game between Ghana and the United States in the sweet 16 of the World Cup. I suggested to Joe that we head down the Barasti Beach stadium to watch it and he obliged so we were on our way. We had to make sure and get there early in order to guarantee us a seat and a table and when we got there, we were one of the last ones to get a free table. My friend Eddy from our summer team met us there and immediately the American flags started flowing. We met a bunch of other Americans and exchanged some high fives and beers and waited for the game to start. Not to mention we also were dealing with drunken Scottish women who wouldn’t leave us alone. That is a story in itself. Anyway, the game started and the vuvuzela’s were going crazy and then Ghana scored and I was about ready to kill someone. When Donovan scored the equalizer I ran around as much as I could much to the dismay of the Ghana fans. However, at the end of the night I was left heartbroken by our side’s honorable defeat. I couldn’t fault them for playing hard and I did get some encouraging words from the Ghana faithful not to mention a couple kisses from the girls, but it still wasn’t enough to comfort a broken World Cup dream so I went to bed.

This week has been a bit of an up and down because Joe is trying to fight off the flu so we have been kind of quiet and kept in to try and recover. I went out by myself on Tuesday for the first time and thankfully I didn’t get lost. I only went out to the gym for a workout and some small sided soccer then I went to the grocery store because we needed to pick up a few things. Last night held the usual Wednesday night summer league and we had the usual two games. We won the first one 3-2 even though we were playing a man down the whole time and we won the second one 2-0. I am not sure what tonight holds but tomorrow is our day off and I am thinking I might try and head over to the beach to get some sun and go float in the ocean for awhile. Who knows? So for know “Sabah al Kher” (goodnight) from Dubai.

I am skipping now to July 4th. Friday and Saturday were filled with the usual sleep in on Friday followed by a day laying out and working out with some good dinner and the World Cup at night. Yesterday was same old, same old with work and then the Lighthouse for some food and the World Cup… Today however was the day we celebrate our Nation’s Independence. Although it is kind of hard to celebrate in a country where America the Beautiful doesn’t go over to well. Anyway, we spent all day at work trying to find a celebration at an embassy or an American bar or something and we came up with nothing since all of the celebrations were on Friday. So we had to settle and make our own plans. We decided that we would first head to the beach and play some good old American football. Although we didn’t play it was the next best thing we could think of that was American next to playing catch with a mitt and a baseball which we had none of. So I went for a run and Joe enjoyed the night and when I got done we decided to talk a walk down the beach front walk to Bob’s Diner. It was designed to look like a 50’s diner which was impressive considering it was in a desert and boy did this place impress. It had the music the seating and all the interior decorating to make you feel like you took a seat back in the 50’s. We thought this was as close as we are going to get to some old fashioned American food that we might as well give it a shot. First on the menu were the milkshakes. I had to have a chocolate milkshake and so did Joe and man did they taste amazing. Then we had to order some burgers and these burgers were massive. Joe couldn’t even finish mine and as I was finishing mine, I yelled “this is for America”. I thought it was fitting. Then we decided that we ate way to much so we headed back for the house to indulge in a Budweiser and the most American movie on television…. Hoosiers.

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