Two stores that changed my life

OK, one of them is more than one store.

1. Carrefour Al Juraina, and, by extension, Matajer Al Juraina. They opened this shopping center in our area last summer and it has changed my life. There are four Matajer shopping centers open now in Sharjah, and their model of operation is that they are small shopping centers located in communities. Before Matajer, I made a pilgrimage to either Ajman or Dubai once a week to buy groceries. It was a time-consuming and exhausting ordeal, in part because of the distance but also because the grocery stores at large shopping centers (aka malls, and that's where the grocery stores are located in this country - they're not stand-alone structures, generally) are HUMONGOUS. There was just no way to be efficient about shopping because the stores themselves were so big. Even if you had a well-organized list and were quick about it...it still wasn't quick.

The Carrefour at Matajer, on the other hand, is somewhere between a 7-11 and a Macey's in size. Not too big, not too small. Sometimes they don't have everything I need, but the fact that I can get my weekly grocery shopping done and be home within an hour is something I am grateful for on a regular basis. Plus, there are lots of other little shops in there, too. Basically, I love Matajer and yes, a grocery store opening up nearby has changed my life. It's true.

2. Decathlon. I have no idea if this is a store in the US or not. I believe it is a French store originally. Before Decathlon, there was virtually no place in Dubai or the Northern Emirates where you could reliably find decent quality and reasonably priced sporting goods. Ballet shoes, leotards, swimsuits, life jackets, hand weights, nice exercise clothes, athletic shoes, snorkel gear, camping gear, etc. - it was hit or miss. Maybe you could find it at Sun and Sand Sports. Maybe not. Maybe you could find it at Ace Hardware (yes, we have one here, but it's different than in the US). But maybe not. And if you could find it, it was probably prohibitively expensive or not quite what you needed, and you'd just have to make do.

With the arrival of Decathlon (about a year ago), all that has changed. Decathlon has everything. They also have a store brand, so you can often find quality sporting goods for a very good price. In past years, I remember stressing about having to find a new swimsuit + board shorts because I left mine in a changing room in Oman, and worrying that Miriam was growing out of her ballet shoes and I'd have to drop a fortune on a new pair if we couldn't hold on until we got to the US, or literally wearing holes in the one pair of long exercise pants I owned because I didn't feel like spending the equivalent of $50 on a new pair. Those days are over, hooray! Thanks to Decathlon.

On another note, it's interesting to realize that we've lived here long enough that a definite sense of "before" and "after" is emerging. We've lived here long enough to witness a lot of change. When we moved here, the old-timers enjoyed telling us stories about what things used to be like here. Now we've got a few stories of our own. And I promise some of them are more interesting than "in the old days, you couldn't even buy a sleeping bag in Dubai!"

May 17, outsourced

This is my new favorite mental exercise. Palmer family rules are that you can't use any outside source to figure it out - only your brain and the scene in front of you. My high score is 13K-something, and in one round, I was able to correctly distinguish between a Japanese garden in Japan and the Japanese garden in Portland (it was the one in Portland). [HT Matt]

Don't judge a Book of Mormon by its cover. Really interesting article about missionaries turning the Book of Mormon musical into an opportunity to teach. [HT Susanne]

I'm sure you all heard the news about Angelina Jolie. Take the time to read her original Op-ed in the NYT. Bravo.

Cherry season in Aleppo - normal life goes on despite the war in Syria.

Life goes on in Gaza, too, with KFC deliveries being smuggled in through a tunnel.

On a lighter note: 21 kids who sold out their parents. "I love you more than cow," indeed.

What Miriam reads

The university library at AUS is a wonderful thing, but it is not a place where my kids can load up on tons of books to read (fiction for children is not a university library's niche). Sometimes we check out non-fiction books from there, and I think the time is coming when Miriam could enjoy some of the graded readers they have, but in general, we're on our own for books.

Fortunately, both girls have access to their libraries at school. Miriam can check out one book a week. She sometimes asks the librarian for guidance, but for the most part, she chooses her own books and I let her. I do wish she could check out more than one book a week because she's often able to read the book twice over by the time library day comes around again, but we're grateful for what we have.

Here are the books that tend to emerge from her backpack on Sundays (her library day) after school.

My Secret Unicorn. The title says it all. I like these books, too. The writing is quality, there are a few simple pictures throughout to keep things interesting, and it's a series so she always has something to look forward to. Plus, what 7-year-old girl doesn't wish she a) had a pony; and b) that that pony was secretly a unicorn? Win/win.

Seahorses. This one (and the others in the 3- or 4-book series) are slightly above Miriam's level - more words on the page, more complex writing, and no pictures - but she plows through them anyway. Good for her. I think the librarian recommended this one.

The Rainbow Magic books. I am ever-so-slightly UGH about these. First, there are about a million of them. Seriously, they never go away. Second, they are a little too easy for Miriam. She can toss one off in a day. And third, the stories don't have any oomph to them. But she's the one reading them, not me, so whatever.

Miriam also reads quite a few books from the Oxford Reading Tree series, which is what the British schools here (including my kids' British schools) use to teach literacy skills. Miriam is at Stage 13 or thereabouts, which means there are quite a few non-fiction books for her to read. I really like these books and there is enough variety that she's always learning or reading about something new.

We often read these together, but Miriam also likes to read them on her own on road trips or other long periods of quiet activity: Usborne Illustrated books. I can hardly overstate how much I like these books. I am often wary of collections of stories because either the writing is crap or the illustrations are crap or both. Usborne has managed to put together a lovely series of books that introduce my kids to age-appropriate versions of stories from all kinds of times and places, all beautifully illustrated. For example, one of the girls' favorites is A Midsummer Night's Dream. Seriously! The writing in these books is smart, but easy to follow. Miriam can read them on her own, but both she and Magdalena enjoy having the stories read aloud to them. Plus, these books tend to feature the "real" versions of fairy tales and such. It's a nice contrast to some of the saccharine Disney treatments...even if it is ever so slightly odd to end a bedtime story with "and then the little mermaid DIED." Our pattern so far has been to get the girls each one of these books every Christmas, but I might want to pick up the pace because they are so great.

What books do your kids choose to read from the library, school or otherwise?

The Impossible

I watched The Impossible on the plane ride home from Germany last month. I was alarmed by how much I liked it. Airplane movies are not really something you ever like, you know? It's even more surprising considering that you might think The Impossible is a movie that needs a big screen and surround sound to really make an impact. It's a quasi-disaster movie after all, right?

Wrong. The Impossible is a story of a family, first and foremost. If you watch this movie because you want to see amazing scenes of the tsunami hitting the beach, well, you will get some of that but you will also be missing the point. This is a movie that goes small almost every time you would expect it to go big. I'm reminded of a scene midway through the movie. A young boy is sitting around a makeshift fire with other displaced survivors, including a very old woman. They talk together about what has happened and their missing family members, among other things, and at one point, referring to the stars whose light he can still see shining, the boy says, quietly, "They're all dead, aren't they?" In 99 out of a 100 other movies, you would expect the music to swell and the woman to lose her composure and start sobbing and the movie would make it totally obvious that oh my gosh, how TRAGIC, that boy is talking about his family and not even the stars!!!

Instead, The Impossible does...none of those things. Thinking back on that scene, I'm not sure the boy was talking about his family. But the movie leaves that open for you to think about and decide. There are plenty of other scenes like this - they go small when you think they'll go big - but I don't want to ruin anything by describing them.

The movie's subtlety is helped along immensely by the fantastic acting on the part of everyone. Naomi Watts is ostensibly the star of the movie, but I thought the actor who played her oldest son really stole the show. And the younger brothers are amazing, too!

However, this movie is rated PG-13 for a reason. The version I saw on the plane was pretty smooth, and I figured that not much had been cut out. When I watched the unedited version with Jeremy, though, I realized that there were a few graphic (though not gratuitous) moments that had been removed from the airplane edit. I am making sure to mention this because I recommended this movie to my SIL before I saw the full version and I may have told her that there was nothing very scary in it. That is, uh, not true of the unedited version, mmmkay? Just so you know.

Still, this is one of the most uplifting and life-affirming movies I've watched in a long time. I highly recommend it.

Dibba vs. Khassab

There's a little chunk of Oman isolated beyond the borders of the UAE. It's called Musandam, and a very popular activity to do there is to take a half-day or day-long dhow "cruise" to admire the fjords and the turquoise water and, if you're lucky, the dolphins. Musandam has two main ports: Khassab, on the north end, and Dibba, on the south.

In January 2012, we took a dhow cruise out of Khassab. Last weekend (ahhhhh I love taking Saturdays off), we took one out of Dibba. I was curious beforehand how the experiences would compare, but I didn't find much online. So for your education, here is a comparison of a dhow cruise in Khassab vs. a dhow cruise in Dibba. Unfortunately, I could not control for all variables. We were in Khassab in January (it was cold) and in Dibba in May (it was hot). Some of the differences might be because of that. Who knows?

Price. Our boat ride in Khassab cost less than the one in Dibba, but the one in Dibba was about an hour longer and included lunch and more activities (more on that later). However, there might have been more activities on the Khassab boat if it had been warm outside. Also, the Khassab boat ride may have been cheaper, but we had to pay for an Omani visa to get there. More on that later, too.

Getting there. The drive to Dibba is SO MUCH EASIER. It's shorter, but more importantly, it's less stressful and you don't have to pay to cross a proper border. That is, if you get a note from your boat company allowing you to do so - foreigners aren't usually allowed to cross into Oman at Dibba. It was such a relief to not have to battle Ras al Khaimah traffic or a tedious border crossing or narrow mountain roads, which is what you have to battle through on the way to Khassab. Just zip zip through Al Dhaid and Masafi and you're there. Wonderful.

Boat. The boats were roughly equivalent, but the Dibba one was juuuuust a little bit nicer. Nicer WC, nicer seating on the upper deck, etc. But in the essentials, they were the same. One advantage of the Khassab dhow was that it was virtually empty: there were six of us and then our Korean friends, and that's it. The dhow in Dibba was quite a bit more crowded, but again, that could be because of the difference in season.

Activities. The cruise out of Dibba had way more activities. Swimming, banana boat rides, a stop near a beach, fishing, snorkeling, etc. However, in January 2012 in Khassab, I remember them saying that we could swim if we wanted to, and I think we even put down anchor near a beach, but it was just so cold that we didn't do it. I think it's safe to assume that the same activities would be on offer in Khassab during the warmer months.

Scenery. Khassab is much more picturesque. You wind in and out of the fjords and the mountains are very dramatic next to the turquoise water. Dibba was beautiful, but in a more average way.

Food. The dhow in Khassab was stocked with better drinks (bottled water and a variety of pop). Dibba only had water cups and fake juice. Still, there was plenty of it. Both boats offered fruit and biscuits. The Dibba cruise included lunch which, honestly, I didn't think was that good. I mean, it's a freaking boat. It's not going to be gourmet. Personally, I would prefer to pay less and bring my own food. But it was fine.

Overall. Well, it depends on what you want to get out of a Musandam dhow cruise. If you want striking scenery and a pleasant trip through the fjords, it's worth suffering through the border crossing to get to Khassab. If you just want to spend a day on a boat in pleasant scenery, or you don't want to hassle with a longer drive, Dibba is great. It should be noted that even with all the fun we had in Dibba this weekend, Miriam still expressed her disappointment that we didn't see any dolphins there. Such is the childhood metric of a good time, I suppose.

dolphins in Khassab