Hello there,

Sorry for no blogs for a few days but believe it or not I have been extremely busy!!! (As I have just said to Vera in the UK busy is all relative! Haha)

Had a non-valentine gathering at ours on thursday, it was the usual crowd plus H's team from work. I can tell you the Muslim staff can half drink mango juice!!! We had to send out for more twice!!! So we have decided that they must be mango-holics & they should probably set up a self help group!!
It also was interesting that as I was cooking chicken wings etc I had to remember not to touch them with the utensils I had used on the pigs-in-blankets & sticky honey sausages. (Thoughtful of me I thought!)
I took out my honey sausages from the oven & passed them round with the phrase 'who wants a hot sticky sausage!' Obviously all the ladies had some but I was most surprised at how many of the guys wanted hot sticky sausages. (You can take the girl out of essex etc!)
Was an absolute pratt when taking the sausages round as I also had cocktail sticks to prick (sorry pick!) them with and did the classic of turning my hand & lost the lot - do you know how far about 100 cocktail sticks go when dropped on a tiled floor? Was still finding them 2 days later!!

Sunday night my lovely friend P arrived from the UK on her first visit. Its been lovely having her here.
We started her holiday with a day in the old town. Had a walk along the creek (I drove there & can I say was proud of myself finding it & getting there without incident). We then had a fab time doing the cultural breakfast at the centre for cultural understanding.

The Emirati women doing the Q&A were brilliant & we learnt a lot. They stressed the need for us to pass on to people that the veil is NOT worn for religious purposes (which many of us already knew) so hopefully you will all pass that on too! They wanted the misconception stopped as I think they are fed up with women using it as an excuse to stir up trouble which in turn makes their lives more difficult with westerners.

Anyway when P goes home will give you all an update on what has been happening!
Love Jane