Thoughts on Terrorism

First of all, thank you to all the concerned souls who have sent emails in the past few days warning us of the new terror warnings in the UAE. Luckily, as sheltered as we may feel, we do still get MSN and CNN and stay caught up (well, I do... I definitely don’t vouch for Stu… he didn’t even know Brangelina were expecting twins! Gahhh!) on the goings on of the world (yeah, mostly celebrity gossip).

I do think there are a few things to be said though. Number one, you DO get relatively jaded when you live here (or, I would imagine, any Middle Eastern country as a foreigner) simply because it feels like the underlying “threat” of “something bad happening” (net necessarily terrorism… could be a wicked case of food poisoning) is ever present. Secondly, there is so much hostility in this region both now and, um, forever thus far, that it doesn’t seem that out of the ordinary.

Right now, a couple hundred miles from here in a northwesterly direction, Hamas and Israel are “keeping it real”, Yemen to our southwest can’t keep its rebels under control, there’s all of the obvious turmoil still present in Iraq, and now Iran, which is separated from the UAE by a mere 42 kilometers of “Gulf”, insists on continuing its nuclear proliferation, much to the dismay of… the world. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia remains sitting as the comfy neighbor to the west.

It should really be no shock to anyone that The US Embassy (following UK’s example) issued a warning to Americans living or travelling here. In an article on MSNBC (*click the hyperlink on the word “warning” to read the story) I thought it was a worthy point made about how the UAE isn’t quick-to-frighten people as America may be prone to do. Here, tourism is such a huge industry (and will become more so once the oil is depleted), in addition to the vast amount of money pouring in from big business interests all over the world that have set up shop here.

Anyway, the warming is for “as summer approaches” and is a general threat, nothing specific. I imagine we won’t be changing our routine much. We don’t do a whole heck of a lot outside or in heavily-populated-by-westerners areas anyway. (The bank account doesn’t go up if you’re spending!) But I did want to touch on it since friends and family seem much more concerned about it that I had let myself be. We love you all and appreciate that you don’t want to see us blown up!

Iran, cooking up some "nookler energy" (thank you, Gulf News.com for the pics)

Yemeni Rebels

Can't sleep.

Soooo, I woke up probably 15 times last night and this final time decided I was trying in vain to stay in bed any longer. So I am up. Heh.

I guess I didn't anticipate being this nervous about leaving. I mean, we're going to my Mom's today, not Abu Dhabi yet... why be so stressed out? But alas, here we are on the old laptop, sitting in my aunt's living room, waiting for even Kaden to wake up and join me. I was going to go ahead and take a shower and "greet the day" but I realized that Stu packed up the car last night so I don't have any clothes pulled out. Haha. Looks like I will be wearing a jammies shirt today! :)

Anyway, so we leave Boise this morning for Coeur d'Alene (Spokane actually) for three days with my family. If it's anything like last night, we're going to be hard-pressed to find a family member willing to let us take Kaden without a fight. My aunt and uncle are plotting ways to keep us here.

Last night Kyle, Melissa, and Kristin (with little Kaden) came over for food and goodbye (again, haha) and it was pretty tough. I can't imagine having to do this for the next week straight! (Although, it should be noted that yesterday when I left work, I decided to "say my goodbyes" and started [and subsequently finished] with Brett. I did it to myself, but I went to knock on his door and thought, "How many hundreds of times have I done that?" And of course got all teary-eyed. So my goodbyes ended with Brett. haha. I decided I'd send an email once we were in-country and I couldn't change my mind anymore, lol.

I am going to go get some cereal and pace around the room "packing" until someone else decides to get up with me. :)

Stay tuned!

Syd