Monday Madness!

We live on a dead end street and each individual lot is surrounded by a wall. At the entrance to our lane, one of the lots painted this sign on the outside of their wall:

You need to know that proper public restrooms are nonexistent in Chennai. It's unfortunate. Men, women, and children pretty much urinate (and other stuff) anywhere and everywhere. The men don't even try to hide it. If they're walking along the sidewalk and need to go, they just stop where they're at, unzip, and go! And people continue to walk around them. It's crazy.

We live on the beach and since many people like to frequent the beach, and there are no bathrooms, well...... you get the picture.

notice the wet spot below the sign

Maddening!!

Our Christmas Cruise - 4th Stop

Saturday morning was Christmas day and we arrived in Bahrain (upper left corner). It didn't feel much like Christmas. First of all, we had exchanged gifts before we left India so there wasn't a Christmas tree with presents, etc. Second, it was so warm and sunny! But that didn't matter - we were enjoying ourselves immensely.

The kids opted to stay on the ship while Corey and I took a taxi into the city. We had a wonderful time walking the streets of Bahrain, talking, shopping, and eating. When we returned a few hours later, we spent the afternoon laying out at the pool.

Aahhh.....Now that is what vacation is all about!

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Our Christmas Cruise - 3rd Stop

We woke up Friday morning in Abu Dhabi in the UAE. It's about 1 1/2 hour drive south from Dubai.

We didn't have a lot of time here so we jumped in a taxi and headed to "Ferrari World". It's a new indoor/outdoor amusement park with about 15 attractions including the world's fastest roller coaster - 250 kph or 156 mph. It was crazy fast!!!

It took us a few hours to hit all the rides and grab a bite to eat. We really wanted to stop at the Emirates Palace to see the most costly Christmas tree in the world - $11 million U.S., but we ran out of time and didn't want to risk having the ship leave without us.

What we saw of Abu Dhabi was modern, clean, spacious, and sandy. Again, the weather was beautiful.

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Monday Madness

WHEN DOES THIS EXPIRE?

Please, just tell me the date!!!

Make sure you bring your calculator when you go food shopping. One thing maddening about grocery shopping in India is figuring out the date something expires. Yes, that's right, you do have to figure it out.

First of all, the way dates are written here are different than in the U.S. For example, if you want to write January 10, 2011 you would put either 10 January, 2011 OR 10/1/2011. So already I have to do a little thinking when I look at dates to make sure I don't read the above example as October 1st, 2011.

Secondly, most of the products put the "Manufactured Date" only and then somewhere else on the product they will put in very tiny print "best used before 120 days after manufactured date".

And sometimes they don't put dd/mm/yyyy, they just put dd/mm or mm/yy. Arrgghh!

So this is what I ran across the other day: Manufactured date said 11/10 and after 5 minutes of searching the product, I found "best used within 3 months of manufactured date".

Does this mean it was manufactured on October 11th and in this case the product would be expired, or does it mean it was manufactured on November 2010 and I still have a month to use it?

So, I asked the store clerk, just to be sure, and of course, he didn't know.

I was feeling risky so I bought it anyway. If you don't hear from me next week, you'll know why..........

Our Christmas Cruise - 2nd Stop

Thursday morning we woke up in Al Fujayrah in the UAE. Again, we didn't sign up for any of the excursions and ventured out on our own.

We didn't feel like shopping today and since it was so nice out, we opted for the beach. We were advised to visit a private beach versus a public one due to the modesty rules, safety, etc...

At the port, we hopped in a taxi and found the Le Meridian Hotel and Resort about 30 minutes away. It was a lovely, peaceful, clean drive up the coast. For a fee, we had access to the pool and private beach for the afternoon.

Take a look:

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Our Christmas Cruise - 1st Stop

The kids had 3 weeks off over Christmas break, so we decided to take a cruise in the Middle East.

We took a 4 hour flight to Dubai - which is a city in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and embarked the Costa Luminosa (an Italian cruise ship) at Port Rashid Monday night - December 20th.

We arrived in Muscat, Oman on Wednesday morning and explored the city on our own. It was perfect weather - blue skies, dry, sunny around 80 degrees.

A few snapshots:

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Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas!

Seasons Greetings!

Happy Holidays!

From the Wurtzbacher's to YOU!

We hope this year will be filled with love, happiness, peace, smiles, hugs, kisses, and a little craziness!

We are going to try hard to keep up on blogging this year, and would love to hear from all of you!