Since all of that talk of quarantine, I have finally gotten out and about and feel so much better because of it! When I finally did get released it was on Independence Day… the Irony! What has followed is my constant effort to comprehend what I’m supposed to be doing at my job while trying to get in with the local group of expats and enjoy my off time here in Abu Dhabi.

The second day I was at work, we had a high level visit where I had to walk around like I had a clue what was going on, I’m not really sure if it worked. O-well. The expat community in Abu Dhabi is plentiful considering that the country is made up of something over 60% or more expats. They are everywhere. In order to try to meet some new people I started with the InterNations website and from there branched out into a ladies night happy hour WhatsApp group, and from there found a bunch of other groups as I started meeting more people. 

It actually all began at a happy hour with 2 other ladies and has steamrolled since into an entire group of people. One thing I had no idea about was the “Ladies Nights”. As in… every night of the week, women can go to different locations and pretty much get all of their drinks free with food up to 50% off. This usually includes the entire menu! That is the crazy part. As in you can drink for free and get a steak and pay for all of it like you just went to get fast food.

My First Ladies night was at Stratos which is located inside the Le Royal Meridien hotel on the top floor. The seating area slowly rotates so you can get full views of the city while you are enjoying yourself. It was quite fancy, but I’m learning that pretty much everything here is quite fancy. Their ladies night includes free drinks for the whole evening and 50% off the menu. Waaaa! It’s different everywhere you go but I was thinking.. um how do they make any profits by doing this.

Someone told me the premise is that the ladies nights entice men to come out for the evening, who have to pay full price. It might have been a profitable thing before COVID, but now you are really not allowed to interact with big groups of people in one area whether you know them or not, so I’m not really sure if it is as effective. 

In addition, I started to bring my work friend to some of the events and we took a boat to Moon island the other weekend, which was also A TON of fun and is definitely worth a trip. We actually did not even catch the boat until after 4pm because it is so hot here right now and waiting until late afternoon is so much more manageable since the sun was hot but it wasn’t as insufferable as it sometimes is. We had a great time. There was an all you can eat brunch included, which was pretty good and we met loads of new people from the groups and got added to even more of them. Overall event win.

I just found out a couple days ago that the Islamic New Year is this upcoming week so we will have a long weekend (Thursday-Saturday) so (Ce) and I are planning a trip to Dubai. I finally got the card I need to cross the boarder between the emirates of Abu Dhabi and Dubai less painful. The boarder has been established since COVID to monitor personnel coming and going from the capital of Abu Dhabi. You are required to have a COVID test within a certain amount of time before crossing in order to travel to Abu Dhabi. It has been a pain since I’ve arrived here, but now that I have a specific card it should make this process MUCH easier.

I’ve been coming up with ideas of what I want to do up in Dubai so stay tuned for that.