Day 2, Wednesday - A place to call home

Dubai

Driving into the new part of the city.

Skyscraper after skyscraper...interesting.

Love all the different architecture here.

So many of the buildings are in the middle of construction.

Since we are struggling with the time change still, our hours of sleep are still off. It is becoming quite common for Big Buddy to wake up at 3am hungry. So he will eat a granola bar and juice and then go back to sleep till 5am. I am becoming quit accustomed to the wonderful breakfasts here. I will definitely miss them when we leave this hotel.

Day 2 we packed up the family and drove to Jumeirah Beach Residence (JBR) in Dubai. I read a ton of great things about it online and scheduled an appointment with a realtor to see an available apartment. I expected to meet with an Arab gentleman to see this property, however, it turns out that there are tons of Russian women Expats living here and working as realtors. Interesting! So I was excited that I could be apart of the bidding process to get a place to live. Women to women shouldn't be bad right...wrong! Even though these gals were nice, I realized immediately how they were used to working...with men. We worked with two separate gals and each were dressed in see through provocative clothing that left little to the imagination (Mr Big thought this was fantastic). Big Buddy told me he could see one gals "Nummies"! LOL! They also whore...I mean wore the most expensive accessories like a Louis Vuitton bag with Versace heels. At first I wondered how they could afford such luxuries and then quickly figured it out. For each 1 to 2 bedroom apartment we looked at, it seemed they were doubling the price from what I recall seeing on the web. (So glad I searched the web before these viewings). All in all, what a waste of a day, but a very interesting learning experience. We decided we were not going to pay $5,500 per month for a two bedroom apartment or even $4,500 for a one bedroom with scant furniture. Frustrated and tired we took matters into our own hands. We looked up the sites on the Internet and made tons of calls. We found several more affordable options in the same JBR residence and also out on "The Palm". With appointments set up for early Thursday, we began to feel much better!

Big Buddy fell asleep in the car on the way back at 6pm. He was fully asleep for the night by 7pm. Once again we were all up at 3am.

Reflecting on this day, I really liked the JBR area since it seems to be a melting pot of cultures. It really reminds me of say The Gateway in SLC were you can live there in a community and be so close to food and shopping with the added bonus of being right on the beach of course! Sure hope the gods look upon us and help us find an affordable place to stay...or we are about to become homeless in Dubai.