Weekend in Bahrain & Abu Dhabi

With our new callings for Brian as a counselor in the Stake Presidency and me as Stake Young Women's President, we get to travel quite often to various places in the Middle East. This past weekend I combined it with a shopping day with friends to Bahrain on Wednesday and then we flew from there to Abu Dahbi early the next morning.

The purpose of our shopping trip was to do some Christmas shopping in Bahrain, which is far more liberal than Saudi Arabia and some stores actually sell Christmas items. I added a couple of Santas to my collection, but we bought lots of other stuff, enjoyed a nice lunch and had a great day together.

We were in Abu Dhabi on Thursday and Friday for church meetings. Since we've decided to hold our stake youth conference in February in Abu Dhabi, we spent Thursday checking out possible venues there, including a mosque tour, activities at the sand dunes and beach. Friday we participated in leadership meeting for the UAE wards and branches.

The new mosque in Abu Dhabi is the most beautiful mosque I've ever seen, and we've visited a few in various places in the Middle East. This one has just one less pillar than the Holiest of mosques in Mecca - one we'll never see.

Going local with the sunglasses!

We were given directions to a location among the sand dunes, just outside the city. One locator was to pass the forest on our right. We concluded this must be the desert version of 'Forest'. Since living in Saudi Arabia, I've discovered some similarities between sand and snow. They typically represent temperature extremes - hot & cold, both can be wind-blown and create wonderful ripples across the surfaces, boarding is a fun activity on both (snowboarding & sandboarding) and this weekend we saw a new similarity.

This is what a day at the beach looks like for an Arab family.