DRIVE BY SHOOTING (no pun intended)

My visa ran out. Problem. Dhs 750 problem. Who knew it was only 30 days? Not me.
My father and I had to go to the gong-show immigration office to get it renewed, and on our way back home we drove past our neighbour chilling on his lawn.
What was he doing?
I kid you not- he was checking out his golf swing using a mirror.
Now, he has a yard with a very large wall that would prevent anyone from seeing him- but no. He is on the patch of grass on the corner of our street practicing his golf swing in front of the mirror he took off the wall of his entranceway.
So what did we do?
What any terrible person would.
My father drove me back home so I could get my camera.
We then circled the block twice so we could get a picture.
It wasn't even a fear that he would see us- he was way into his swing.
It's another wonderful day in the neighbourhood.

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THE ONION

I met up with my long-time-no-see friend Anna Ray today, and she shared this gem with me. I laughed. Gotta love the Onion.

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/dubai_debt_crisis_halts_building

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POOP ART

if we ever hung out anymore, i'd have a really good idea about what we could do.

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Playing, and other such things.

So I'm home from dubai, and as everyone knows, very very very unemployed. I know that I should go look for a job, but I am having a very tough time motivating myself to make a resume and drop them off. I have a couple weeks worth of work in lethbridge starting next week, so I figure I may as well enjoy it while I can. I have done such activities as making headbands with my sister, and sister-in-law, going for lunch with friends, reading a book, and making some goals for the next little bit. If money wasn't such a big deal, I would be quite content to do this forever, as I feel that I'm being productive, and really enjoying my new freedom. SO until I find a job, I'm going to keep on playing on my teeter totter....

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Jobless

This is how my conversation with Amy went today as we were both on our computers, thinking about how Amy has to go to fabricland, and I still need to unpack, de-stink my clothes, and clean my room.

Amy: "Bonnie, this is sad. We both have university degrees, no jobs, and are still in our pajamas."
Bonnie: "I know."

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Here are my pictures in no particular order. The one with me and my brown friend will be using in my upcoming engagement announcement. As well, the one in the desert with the awful hair, it was a rough ride dune bashing as you can tell. Enjoy, and maybe i'll take some pictures of what i bought, and post them.

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Dubai farewell

ok, so the last few days here have been great. we did some last minute shopping and i bought a bunch more scarves for the concert. a guy from one of the stores who thought i was half-arab asked for my email address. he's the one who proposed to me. i think he's going to make a bid soon on the dowry. we went to church this morning, and then spent the afternoon at the beach. we justified it because we are going to church all over again in 2 days. we leave here in about 20 minutes for the airport, and fly out at 215am... gross. overall this trip has been great. i'm not going to lie though when i say i'm ready to come home for a rest. i can't believe how much we've done on this trip, and there's really not anything else left for us to do. i'm very grateful for the chance that i've had to go on this trip.. it has definitely opened my eyes to the world more, and i have a new found appreciation for lebanese food, especially hummous. i'm going to start buying it all the time now. i'll call as soon as a get home to let you know i've made it. we don't foresee any problems getting home though. and i have a full suitcase full of extra stuff i've bought. i may or may not have purchased 34 scarves on this trip. don't judge too much. if anyone asks, they were all for the sugar beats. mom, if you ever want to go on a shopping trip, i suggest the middle east, the prices over here are amazing.....probably a quarter of the price in canada. anyways, i'll call when i get home. talk to you soon. love bonnie.

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Dubai day # 9, 10, 11

ok - so since i posted last we have done interesting cultural events. we went to a cultural breakfast monday morning at some centre for cultural understanding. the food was surprisingly good. i ate breakfast ahead of time because i was concerned it was going to be fish heads on rice, but it was donuty type things, some really good bread, and some rice. there was also a question and answer period with the lady who ran the show. very very interesting. of course we talked about their traditional garb, and arranged marriages, and what not, but overall a very informative session. we then went and did some shopping at another market, and as usual i was a sucker, and bought more scarves. i also bought some silk for dresses....wink wink mom. i got 2 yards of 3 different colours. and the man promised me it was the finest indian silk he had. we also checked out the spice souk, and the gold souk. i'm starting to get sick of people selling me their crap. that night we went shopping at one of the many many malls here, and i got a new bag because my orange one has a broken zipper. and i may or may not have picked up a few other items.

then tuesday morning we went on a tour of the jumeirah mosque, which is the only mosque in all of the UAE that non-muslims can go in. the tour was actually led by 2 women, who spoke about islam, and answered questions. once again - very informative. my one complaint with the religion is the call to prayer every morning at 6 am. i hate it. they have loud speakers that blast everywhere, and wake me up everytime, as they tell people to hurry up and get to the mosque to pray (in arabic). that afternoon we went to the beach, and then we went on a desert safari that afternoon and evening. we got picked up at our house at 3pm by some crazy driver, and he drove for an hour to take us to the desert. we went dune bashing, and it was fun, until i got sick sick sick. like i was green. about to vomit. i'm not joking. they have pictures of me looking a ghastly colour. i had to ask the driver to stop and give me a bag. thank goodness he was just about to pull over for sand boarding (just like snowboarding), or i honestly would have upchucked everywhere. for the record, i didn't. but i was so close it was disgusting. and i have no idea who would have cleaned it up. i feel gross just thinking about it. after the dune bashing (which was riding in a jeep up and down the dunes), we went for a camel ride (it was short), and then there was a bbq with a belly dancer. kinda a weird experience. i can say i've done all those things, but i don't know if i'd do it again. my stomach is starting to feel queasy all over again just typing about it. i'm not even joking. we got back home at about 9, and i collapsed on the couch while everyone else watched a movie.

today we got up early and did tons of shopping at the outlet mall, and at dragonmart again. i bought red boots. i love them. and i might have bought a purple pleather jacket. don't judge me. i really like it. then tonight we took it easy again. i'm going to have to come home and take a rest from this holiday. i'm absolutely exhausted every day. and the thought of the long flight home doesn't make matters better. tomorrow we're doing a little more sight seeing, and then some beach time, and back to the global village in the evening. i didn't have a chance to buy any scarves today mom, but i'll get some tomorrow. i hope you like lime green. i should probably go to bed, and recover and get ready for tomorrow. see you all very very soon. i will be arriving saturday at 3:24, i'll know who my true friends are by who shows up at the airport. no pressure. love bonnie.

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ONE DOWN...

We've identified one of the CMBP writers.

Bri's going send a hey-what's-up-do-you-keep-in-touch-with-anyone-else facebook message and, voila!

Anytime you need me to do any detective work, my rates are cheap.

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Dubai day # 6, 7, 8

Ok, so here's the scoop on what we've been up to lately. Friday morning over here was church at 9, so we drug ourselves out of bed and got ready and went to that. They hold church at a villa about 15 minutes away, and it was actually such an interesting ward. It's made up mostly of americans, and filipinos. For sunday school, they have a separate class for ysa, and there was about 25 people there. And they were all filipinos. In the class there was an interesting discussion about marriage, and marrying non-members. Over here, there's a ton of female filipinos, who are working to send money home to their families, but there's no one for them to marry, so it's a real problem as to what they should do. Anyways, it was a very interesting discussion at church about what they should do, and obviously there is no easy answer for them. After church, we had dinner and took a nice little nap, and then we got ready to have a fire in the desert with the ysa. The stewarts oversee ysa activities over here, so they planned for us to all go out together about 45 minutes outside of the city, and do a little fireside. We acted out the story of shadrach, meshach, and abednego with the fire as our prop - it was pretty funny - but i don't think anyone else understood what was going on. We kind of became friends with this guy from utah who is over here working for some company, he's 28, and probably leads the loneliest life ever as the only single white mormon in all of dubai. he was pretty excited to see us. saturday morning we got up at 7:30 to go see camel races, only to discover once we got out to the track that there were no races that morning, i think we might try again later this week to go. we all looked disgusting because no one had showered from the night before, so we came back home and got ready and then headed to karama which is this sketchy little market that is all knock off crap. I bought some scarves there, and at the one store, the guys that worked there had a field day when we all came in and bought stuff. it was getting borderline ridiculous. i have a video of it that i might share with you. one almost proposed to me, but then after i discovered he was only interested because he thought i was half-arab. but i milked it for all i could and saved a lot of money on what i bought by bargaining him down. it was also sweet in karama because all of these stores have little secret upstairs rooms where they house all their knockoff stuff they can't sell in the open. we got invited to go up more than once, and it was so sketchy with what they were trying to sell us. so that got pretty old, pretty fast. when we got home from karama we were pretty tired and looking for something to do that didn't require walking or thinking, so we drove 5 minutes to this district called satwa and got pedicures done for $10. the beauty parlor we went to was semi-ridiculous but oh well, we were going for the cheap labour. we also went and found this man from iraq who makes bread with cheese inside in this little oven, right on the street. one thing, that i've really liked about dubai is the interaction that we've had with the locals. mom, i'm being completely honest when i say that 100% of the time on this trip i've felt safe walking around. i'm pretty sure whyte ave is a lot scarier. after pedicures we went home and put on jeans to head downtown and check out the marina. the marina here has these sweet yachts so we walked around for a bit and then went and got ice cream and checked out a few more buildings. i can't get over how sweet the architecture is over here. all of the buildings have some sort of quirky thing about them to make them distinct. this really is the las vegas of the middle east. this morning, being sunday, is the first day of the week, and is our version of monday. so we got up this morning, and booked our desert safari for tuesday, and then went to the atlantis aqua-adventure water park. it puts west ed to shame. it's all outdoors, and was one of the coolest things we've done. almost all of the rides are done in tubes, and some of the rides shoot you up instead of down, and to get to most of the rides, you just sit in your tube and get on a conveyor belt, and it takes you to the top. pretty sweet. i also got a pretty good tan today, so all in all it was an exhausting day. on our way home from the water park, we stopped and got some food, and as per usual got a million stares, as 4 white girls went for dinner at a little cafe. i think we're quite the novelty over here because the only tourists are really only europeans. since we've been here, i haven't actually seen any americans. then tonight we came home and got ready, and by 9 we were ready for a night out on the town, and we were in the car heading to the royal mirage hotel to go walk around, and then we all realized that we didn't actually want to do it, and even if we did have it planned for the night, if we didn't want to do it, we shouldn't force ourselves to. so we turned around and went back home, and have been enjoying a nice evening of doing nothing and taking a break. tomorrow we're heading to a cultural breakfast of some sort, and then more shopping i think. and i'm saying once again - that if requests aren't made for me to buy something, than it probably won't be bought. i'm not buying junk just to buy it. so if you want a shirt or other crap, let me know, but if not, i take no responsibility. i'll try and post tomorrow about our day. i can't believe we only have 5 days til we have to go back to freezing edmonton. boo. hope everything is well at home! love bonnie.

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Some names

I want to help your search...awhile ago someone that they might know who it was, and these were the names they listed on their blog. ask bri about them. i think i checked once and he was friends with some of them on fb.

David Bruce, Jared Kinnard, Joseph Rowley, Michael Rushworth, and Brian Early.

If we could actually expose them this would be great.

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Anonymity

I know very little about the Mormon blogging world.

I know we have a blog.

I know Scottietoohottie has a blog.

I know about 'Why Mormon Girls Stay Single'. [Thanks Bonnie.]
And I know about 'Confessions from a Mormon Bachelor Pad'.

The latter of which I had never actually been on until YESTERDAY.

The story goes a little like this - I was on our blog, bored, so I clicked on their blog and started reading, mildly entertained, until I saw something along the lines of:

"... back when we were on our missions in Dublin, Ireland ..."

DUBLIN, IRELAND MISSION! HELLO!

So Bxx and I spent a while last night trying to figure out who the guys were, via facebook stalking and other such means. They would definately have been out the same time he was.

He hasn't quite identified them yet, but I'm now on a mission to make sure he does.

Think about what you might want to do with that information... stalker e-mails, expose them to the world, force them to come up and go on dates with you or you'll reveal who they are...

Such power.

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dubai day #3,4,5

so here's the update from the last few days. the last time i did a real post, we went to the mall of emirates shopping, which was great, i got a few shirts, and then we went to global village. it's made up of a million shops and each area is divided by the country that those people are from. we went to yemen, india, iraq, pakistan, and africa. we never should have gone to africa though, it cost us a bloody fortune, since we had wanted to get our pictures taken with these guys dressed up in african gear, only to discover afterwards that they wanted to charge us money. they made us pay 10 dh which is only like $3 but still, it was stupid. i did buy a painting for a 100 dh from the iraq booth, it's a desert scene and i think it's pretty sweet. then the next day we got up early and drove to fujairah which is about 2 hours away. we stopped on the way there to see some historic mosque called Al Hali (or something like that), anyways, we had a tour guide from pakistan and he was hilarious, and forced us to take pictures...at one point he told me that i "was very bad" at being in pictures, because i couldn't just keep my mouth shut and smile. he then started to say "just teeth and lips" to me....it was priceless. that night we stayed at an apartment of the friends of the stewarts who was out of town, so it worked out really well for us. i ended up going to sleep at about 7pm, i'm way out of whack over here with my time difference, and still haven't totally adjusted. then this morning we woke up early and went snorkeling. the original place that we were going to go to was going to cost us about 150 dh to take a boat out to some island and go snorkeling, but their boat was broken, so we drove another 20 minutes up the road to another hotel, which ended up being way nicer, and was 25 dh less. they gave us all the gear we needed and a tour guide and took us out in a boat to these 3 islands. it was probably one of the coolest things i've done on this trip, since there was tons of fish, and how many people can say they've been snorkeling in the indian ocean. definitely a highlight for only $30. we drove back to dubai this afternoon, and then headed over to the palm, because the stewarts have friends in their ward who live on it, and invited us over. if you don't know about the palm, definitely look it up on the internet. it's this man made island thingy in the shape of a palm tree, and there's these huge mansions on it. the people who invited us over, there dad oversees the Dubai nasdaq. pretty sweet. they told us that we were more than welcome to come use their beach next week, so we might take them up on that offer. and now we're home for the night. church over here is on a friday, so we're going to that tomorrow morning, and then all the ysa is going to meet up and we're going to have a fire in the desert tomorrow night. i still can't get over how good the food is here. we get hummous, and fatoush with every meal, and everything else that i've had to eat has been really really good. that's all that is new here. i can't believe we only have a week left. time is flying by. i'll keep you updated as per usual. love bonnie.

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Vampire Diaries

[Am I technically allowed to post anymore? Probably not. Whatever.]

I know y'all are more occupied with sun and sand and schwarma right now, but I thought I'd let you know that a friend from work just lent me THE FIRST TWO BOOKS OF THE VAMPIRE DIARIES.

That she says are way better than the TV show.

I'll let you know how it goes.

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Dubai day #?

Hey guys, you'll get more of an update later tonight - but we're here in Fujairah for a few days sightseeing and enjoying the ocean. We're going snorkeling today in the Indian Ocean, should be pretty sweet! And i'm not just buying junk, I bought a painting from Global Village, from this artist from Iraq, it's pretty sweet! Anyways, gotta run! Love Bonnie.

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Dubai day # 2

Today is going to be a shorter post, since we're headed out and about shopping in about 10 minutes. We're headed to the mall of Emirates, which is supposed to be ginormous, but I don't think it's as big as the Dubai mall. Then tonight we're going to Global Village, which is where there's markets with things from all over the world. It's supposed to be kinda like heritage days in edmonton, but a million times better. Yesterday we went to the beach for a few hours right in the middle of the day, and i got a slight burn, so as you can tell the weather has been really nice. I guess there's been "arctic winds" coming in, but i sure can't tell. Every day is usually about 24 degrees with the slightest breeze so the weather has been absolutely perfect. Anyways, we went to the beach and then headed over to a mall for lunch where we used a couple coupons. The Stewarts have this book where there's a million things that are 2 for 1, so we plan on using that quite a bit over here. We also got marble slab for dessert, so yummy. Later that afternoon we went to dragon mart, which is the kilometer long mall of chinese crap....and i mean crap. But i picked up some nice pearls, and some cute wallets, so it was still a success. Then later that night, we went downtown to see the Burj Khalifa, which is the tallest building, and we also went to see the Dubai fountain (original name i know) which is the world's largest fountain, and they did a show set to music with it. As you can tell, it seems like everything over here is the world's largest..... So yesterday was another great day, with a mix of shopping and sight seeing. I'm not sure if I'll get off a blog post tomorrow morning. We're headed to fujeriah for an overnight trip. The Stewarts have friends there, and they're away to some other country for a couple months, and they're letting us stay there for the night. We're going to do some snorkeling there, as well as some sight seeing, which should be sweet, because it'll get us out of the city for a couple days. Fujeriah is only a couple hours away though, so the drive through the desert shouldn't be too bad. Anyways, that's what is new here. Hope everything is well at home. I may or may not do serious damage at the mall today with "my" credit card. Love Bonnie.

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Dubai day # 1

So we've survived day #1 here, and things have been beautiful so far. We took off yesterday morning, and walked downtown and hopped on the metro to Union Square. Union Square is about a 15 minute walk to the creek, and so we got to the creek and walked around for a bit and then took a water taxi across for only 1 dh, which is like 35 cents Canadian. That took us to a market, where we did a bit of shopping, and I purchased a few scarves and what not. We also bought some food at the market, the place was full of dead flies, but the food sure was yummy. ( I thought you'd enjoy that mom). Shopping over here is different, lots of bargaining but the guys you're buying from still know how to get your money. I guess I need to learn to be willing to walk away from what they're selling, in order to get a good deal. After the market we took the metro home, after walking for over an hour to find it. Oops, i guess next time we'll bring a map. We did a bit more planning of other things we wanted to see while we are here, and then went down to watch Devon's dad and grandpa get a haircut from some locals. Her grandparents are here while we are, and have added a little flavour to the trip. We all went out to dinner last night to this place called the Eat and Drink, and her Grandpa paid for all of us, so they've been super nice to us. Don't worry - I tried to pay. And their Grandma always has an opinion on everything, but it's hilarious. The one thing that I've noticed over here is that you never just see women out and about. At dinner, of course we were the only ones, and even at the markets, it's all guys. The food over here has been really good so far. They have fruit drinks that are ridiculously good, and then this thing called a shwarma, which is like the burger of the middle east....it's delightful. For today we are planning on heading to the beach in the next little bit, and then it's off to dragonmart - which is the kilometer long chinese mall of crap. I'm excited! Hopefully I don't break the bank, but I'm going to do as mom said, and "buy a lot of stuff". I brought an extra suitcase over here for a reason. If anyone has a request for me to buy something - let me know! I can buy scarves over here for 10dh which is only $3, and freshwater pearls for only $10. I'll keep ya posted on our adventures!

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Safely in Dubai

Hey everyone, so we made it here last night at about 3 in the morning, and the city itself is beautiful. Our flight to London, was long, it felt like it took forever, and then we had a 4 hour layover there which really didn't feel like that long since we had a bunch of lines to wait in, and that was probably the right amount of time to leave for us to still be able to catch our next flight. We flew to Dubai straight from London on Emirates, which is this super nice airline, but I slept for 5 of the 6.5 hours. so I can't say I really enjoyed the service or the movies. Anyways, we were a little delayed getting out of Heathrow, so we didn't fly in til 2, and we had to pick up our car, but it worked out great because Devon and her dad came to meet us at the airport, and then driving to their house which is about 15 minutes away was a joke because there was no one on the road. So it's now 11:11 am here, and we're just kind of getting rolling for the day. I think I've already adjusted to the time difference, even though it's 11 hours difference, and so we should be ready to go out for the day soon after we eat some food. I think our plan for the day is to head to the beach for a little bit, and then do a bunch of walking and sight seeing downtown. Our plans for the week are to go to the Palm because the Stewarts have some friends who live there, and you can only go if you have an invite there, and we'll go to the Atlantis for a day (check it out online), and probably camel racing, a desert safari, and a whole bunch of shopping! I'll try and keep you posted every day with what we've been up to. Don't worry about us! We've already practiced doing our countoff, I'm #1, amy's #2, raquel's #3, and devon's #4. Well, we're just about to head out! Love, Bonnie

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Remember Us

This is Cathy, and I just wanted to formerly say bon voyage and Devon you better return them all in one piece! I shall miss you all dearly (and have already been missing you Devo) and Amy and I are ridiculously jealous of your escape. We will try to have more fun than you though, so that we feel better about what we're missing out on. Eat, drink, party, repeat. Story of our lives. Keep us posted and we'll return the favour! LOVE YOU GIRLS!

With all the love in my heart,
Cathy xoxo

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So I'm writing this post from my phone mostly because I'm too lazy to go outside in the cold in the van to find my laptop. I'm still at rachels house so I'm not even sure if my laptop is still there or if it's been stolen. And I'm writing it from my phone just because I can. Anyways, I feel like a blog post from me is far over due. Christmas was great. Beyond great. Spending time with family is my favourite as evidenced by Scott thinking I'm a home body but then I also had the chance to spend time with close friends. It was getting to the point that I was looking forward to Dubai because it would be a rest from all the parties and social events I had been to. But don't worry Devo, I won't actually let the fun stop once we get there. Some highlights from Christmas would definitely have to be our new years party in waterton. "it was epic" in the words of crc. Christmas was also a chance to catch up with Melissa who's here from boston for the next coupleonths so that has been great to see her face! I guess overall what I learned this Christmas is how blessed I am. I had a convo with my cousins wife about if I knew how lucky I was to have the things I have and to be blessed with the parents I do. And I think talking to her opened my eyes in that I know my parents have spoiled me but that I've always worked hard so that they can still be proud. I'd like to think that being such a good kid pays off. And my final highlight of Christmas was the fact that cody's nephew remembered a whole week later that my nickname was bontron and asked every 15 minutes when bontron was coming over. Success.

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The Burj cont'd

So last night was the opening of the Burj Khalifa, formally known as the Burj Dubai.
[They changed the name. Possibly after Dubai got financially bailed out by the Sheik of Abu Dhabi who gave them $5 billion. His name is Khalifa. I would want the world's tallest tower named after me too.]
We sat on our roof and had the most perfect view of the tower. It was insane. I can't describe it, so I thought I would put up some pictures. Fireworks all around the buildling- 360 degrees. And keep in mind- the building is almost 1 km long... do you know how many fireworks that would take?!
I felt like I was in Gotham city.
Or it was the Apocalypse.
It was magical.









And because I can't describe it- check out these videos:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8440219.stm
http://www.ameinfo.com/220359.html- stick it out until 3:00 and then it gets good!

I'm a little excited. Can't you tell?

PS- freak it takes long to upload pictures!

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The Burj Opening

Tonight is going to be one of the most exciting nights Dubai has ever seen. The Burj Dubai officially opens- the world's tallest building. If we reflect back to the opening of Atlantis that I may have forced some of you to watch, the opening show cost a mere $32 million. Tonight is going to be bigger. Tonight is going to be better. And we are 10 blocks away from the building.
I am pumped.
They also have a fountain in front like the Bellagio fountain in Vegas that shoots water up in time to the music. Apparently they have coordinated the lights on the Burj to play to the music too.
Our roof is flat so I think we are going to camp out up here and chill and watch the millions of dollars in fireworks they have flushed into this project. If you get bored tomorrow, Google the opening show. I'm sure it will be all over the news.

This place has way too much money.


This is it in all its glory. It is so big you can't even take the whole building in one frame. My camera also sucks at taking night shots. Or I suck at taking night shots. Probably the latter...

For more information, it is on the BBC homepage today:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8438416.stm

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