Christmas in Dubai and Edinburgh!!

I stayed in Dubai for Christmas this year, which was actually really fun. My friends Karen, Laura, and I did an all you can eat dinner (basically a nighttime brunch). It was awesome. They had an entire room for desserts!! They had everything. There was even a whole pig which had a label that said, "contains pork" you know, so the Muslims don't accidentally eat it...

So the paper crowns are a british/everyone but Americans thing apparently. I had never heard of them but apparently they're a big deal. The silver thing on the table in front of Laura is called a cracker (I've seen them in stores in the US, but I thought they were full of crackers that you eat....lollll....). Anyway, they have a paper crown and a prize inside. You each pull a side and whoever gets the largest side gets what's inside. I got a paper fan. Unfortunately there were whistles in some of them.....and there were kids there. Draw your own conclusions about that.

A couple of days after Christmas I flew to Edinburgh, Scotland to meet my boyfriend. It was freezing and raining and gorgeous! I had been there before but my boyfriend is Scottish and he went to college there so we got to see a log. There are Christmas markets all over the city. You can get mulled wine or cider and just walk around with it! I had part of a haggis burger and it was pretty good, shockingly.

Scotland Photos:

These houses are right next to the Edinburgh Castle.....I told Raiph I was going to become a rich and famous writer so we could live there. He doesn't believe me. Can you believe that????

New Year's Eve!!

I met Raiph's cousin Victoria.

I couldn't give 2 shits about Harry Potter but this is the pub where J.K. Rowling wrote the first book!!

The Edinburgh Castle is situated on an extinct castle...

We went to Mary King's Close. OMG LOOK IT UP! Here's the link. I can't even describe how cool it was!!! Basically houses used to be 15 or so stories high. If you lived on the top, you would have to traipse through 14 other houses up the stairs to get to your house. The government took off the top houses and sealed the ones underneath to build a government building. People kept living down there! One guy passed out on our tour when we were in the black plague room, haha.

Here's the wikipedia article. Read it!:

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_King's_Close

Sorry if Santa was late to your house...he was ice skating at Dubai Mall.

My birthday is in December and this grade 1 class made me a card! These girls are so hilarious.

Laura made me a birthday cake....in the microwave in a Tupperware thing. She's the best, lol.

Birthday Dinner at the Jumeriah Beach Hotel.....check out the Burj Al Arab in the background!!!

Sorry if this was written quickly, but I'm sure you will enjoy it anyway!!

Bubbalicious!!

Ok ladies, here's my obligatory blog post for this 6 month period ;)

Basically the weather is perfect right now.....until the end of April when we will all want to kill ourselves due to the heat. So, for now we are enjoying it. There's been a few beach days.


The most exciting thing I've done recently is go to the Valentine's Day brunch at the Westin on the Palm. It's called Bubbalicious. You can get anything from champagne to a watermelon or coconut filled with liquor. This is by far the most extravagant brunch I've been to yet. It takes forever to walk from one side to the other. It takes up the whole bottom floor of the Westin, and outside. Basically all the restaurants are connected and you can walk through them all and eat whatever you want! Nothing can ever do this brunch justice. It even had live entertainment and a massive playground for the kids. It costs about $130..... I know, I know, ridiculous. But I can tell you that the amount of food I had probably would have cost that anyway, haha. They even had a tree with bags of gummies all over it! I'm obsessed with gummies so that was awesome.

My friend got a teapot full of gin. Yes, a silver teapot. She's British. They like their teapots. I stuck with the mojitos and margaritas in coconuts basically because walking around with coconut is awesome. The concept at these place is like Willy Wonka's factory of alcohol and food. Ok, time for some pictures which is what you guys want anyways so here we go!!:

Yes, that is a syringe...it had some sort of pineapple shooter in it. Notice my bag of gummies off the gummy tree! 

This was our view. We got a table outside right by the pools and beach!! Like I said, the weather is perfect right now.

This was insane. This woman flipped this table in all directions in the air. We were sitting right in front of her. Crazy/super weird.

Yup, that would be about 50 hoola hoops. 

This isn't even a tenth of the dessert display but I had to take a picture. Look at all those V Day themed cakes. Awwww. Too bad my boyfriend is in Turkmenistan at the moment. Oh well.

This is what the beach looked like this weekend....just in case you wanted to know ;) I must admit, I had on a little less than these ladies.

This is my friend Laura. She's been living in dubai for 8 years!! Thank god we found her a boyfriend this year because she was threatening to leave us!!

***One surprise we got lately is the fact the Sheikh gave us a day off when we won the World Expo bid. If you don't know what that is...google it. Apparently it's a huge deal. All we care about is the fact that it is making our rents go up, but oh well.

***The bummer of the week was the fact that I was supposed to go see the ROLLING STONES in Abu Dhabi with my boyfriend's mom...but my bathroom decided to gush water from the ceiling so I didn't get to go :( Oh well, Justin Timberlake is coming soon so I'll just have to go to that.

***Cool thing of the week: Laura and I have been getting a meal serviced delivered to us in the mornings before work. We get 3 meals and 2 snacks. They just leave a cooler outside your door and you put the empty one out each night. It's AWESOME. It's a diet service but it just tastes like normal food. We also started buying dresses online. They deliver them the next day and you can pay cash on delivery.....dangerous. 

Ok, you should be somewhat caught up! Shew. That was exhausting. Have a great week!!

If you're wondering....no I am not saving that much money. Must marry well!!