We leave for Dubai in 21 days! Holy smokes, I hadn't counted the days until just now. Things are progressing well given that we are doing an international move, selling our home in the US, and storing the rest of our things for the next two years. Last week the movers came and packed up our shipment that is headed to Dubai. We expect it to take at least 6 weeks to arrive and our car was shipped this past Monday and should arrive around March 26th. I'm packing up the rest of our house and getting it ready to go into long term storage. Fortunately, Randy's parents are coming in two weeks to help me finish packing the house and get it ready to be put on the market.
There is so much happening in such a short time and by April 1st my goal is to feel a little bit settled; just in time for our first Dubai guest. Randy's sister is flying out on her dental school semester break and staying with us for almost two weeks. I'm really looking forward to doing some of the touristy things in Dubai since we haven't had a chance to do much yet because we've been living in Abu Dhabi.
I'm not the only one busy with the move, Randy is running around like a madman on that side of the world as well. He was able to find an awesome house for us in Dubai and next weekend the movers show up to our Abu Dhabi flat and pack that up and move our stuff into our new home.
We were able to find a house in the Arabian Ranches neighborhood that we wanted to live in. I've had my eye on a certain floor plan for a long time but it's always been out of our price range. Randy spent a weekend in January looking at houses in the area and ended up finding one and looked through it but knew it was a huge house and most likely well out of our price range so after he looked at it he didn't think much of it again. Until a couple days later when the listing agent called and asked him if he liked the house. Randy told him it was a nice house and the listing agent suggested that we make the landlord an offer. So we did and the landlord accepted our offer! In UAE when you are looking for a place you don't have to do credit checks or prove employment, etc, but you do have to pay your yearly rent up front, in full, in one check. Sometimes you find landlords that will accept two checks but in our case it's one check, to the tune of just over $62,000 US dollars a year...for RENT! Fortunately Randy's company pays part of that for us. It's jaw dropping for us Americans to hand over a check like that, but that's life in UAE.
Speaking of our house, I LOVE it, I love it, I love it! It's my favorite floor plan, about 4,400 square feet, 5 bedrooms and 4.5 baths, maid's quarters, and a HUGE kitchen. It's in a great part of the neighborhood that has two pools and sits on the entrance to a cul-de-sac with a park in the middle. I think it's going to be a really nice area.
On top of all the moving craziness we are sorting through, we are working on getting Artem's school situation worked out. Here in the states he misses the August cut off for Kindergarten this coming September since he won't turn five until November. But in UAE the cut off is December 31st and that means Artem will start Kindergarten this year. EEK! There aren't free public schools in Dubai that expat children can attend. The schools for the expat children are private FOR profit and they fill up very quick and maintain long waiting lists all year long. At this time of the year, most schools are already filled for the upcoming Fall school year. Randy's company provides us with allowances to help cover the tuition of our children but even with the allowance we are looking at it costing us at least $8,000 per child per year and that's just tuition, not any of the fees. I've found a school that I like but I cannot wrap my head around the 22-24 children per class and my four year old being one of those 22 children. Will he be okay? Probably. Is it the best situation for Artem to be in? No. So Randy and I have been discussing the idea of me home schooling the boys while we are in Dubai. I do have a degree in Early Childhood Education and I did teach Kinder and First grade for ten years so surely I can home school our two munchkins. Right? (insert nervous chuckle) I shipped the majority of my teaching supplies to Dubai including over 750 children's books, so our classroom will be well stocked. I also found a wonderful home school group in Dubai that meet at each other's homes for enrichment classes and go on field trips together. I'm actually looking forward to teaching the boys myself and seeing how far I can take them with so much of my attention.
And with all the copious free time I'm going to have on my hands, this is where I plan on spending it. This is one of two pools in our neighborhood and it's cooled in the summer and heated in the winter with a covered kiddie pool. Ahhh...paradise!
