Ruwais Mall

When you move to a new place, I've found that it's usually best to try to live within what the culture has available rather than constantly trying to recreate things from home without the right ingredients. This is what we do most of the time, with the occasional special treat of making things like flour tortillas or other things we miss from Texas and Guatemala. What we've been able to experience this way, as a bonus, is one of the best parts of travel abroad: the local cuisine. In a multicultural place like Abu Dhabi, this has meant  a combination of Filipino, Indian, and a variety of Middle Eastern foods.

In Ruwais, especially, this has been the experience since the variety found in the many-malled area of Abu Dhabi is not available in this desert town a good 2.5 hours away, so finding something we missed from home even for special occasions was either a "see if someone feels like mailing it" or "just do without" thing. Part of this has changed with the new Ruwais Mall.

Some of the main things found at the mall that were difficult to get otherwise are flour tortillas, sour cream and salsa, some of our most missed and not-easy-to-make items. We still will only get them for special occasions, but it's nice to have the option!  Some other ways this will add variety to Ruwais, (soon, since all of the shops are not open yet) will include restaurants beyond the Indian/Arabic food option available, a wider variety of clothes and office/school supplies, baby supply shop and even a nutrition shop that might have more natural options for things like toothpaste, deodorant and coconut oil. That's what is important  to me... I know many of the other ladies are excited about a beauty salon and cinema.

I don't even know half of the new options this is going to provide, there's not too much I miss besides people and certain foods (I'm sure there's a connection there...) and I generally don't like malls, but just adding another air conditioned option for walking around during the the 100-125 degree months is a welcome diversion here.

Dubai Mall and the Dancing Fountain

I'm not very good at spending money and am not easily comfortable in big crowds, so I avoid malls whenever possible. Since malls here offer the largest air conditioned entertainment in the desert, that pretty much means I'm avoiding a good bit of where city life happens in Abu Dhabi. This does not bother me. However, when we were already in Dubai and with friends who knew their way around, it wasn't so intimidating. And a bit surprising...

While we were waiting to get in the restaurant I got to explore the first natural/organic food store that I've found here. I finally found good coconut oil. The coconut oil found in the markets is super processed and smells like lard... Coconut oil should smell like coconut!

We ate at the Texas Road House where, for the first time since moving here I heard the familiar sounds of harmonicas, fiddles and country twang coming over the speakers. Even if country music isn't your thing, if you are raised in the southern U.S. it reminds you of home. It was interesting to see the variety of nationalities enjoying food that was from my home country. The waiters were mostly Philippino, while the customers were mostly a mix of western expats, local Emirates and people from surrounding Arabic-speaking countries. It was amusing then, to see the people's reactions to the waiters and waitresses bursting into enthusiastic line dancing. I can't get the lady's expression who was across from our table out of my mind: it was a combination of shocked and amused and a little bit worried all at the same time!

We got to see the "dancing fountain," which was water synchronized with music and lights in a beautiful display that plays every 30 minutes and changes songs each time. Elias was trying to grab the phone part of the time, but here's a sample:



Talia liked looking at the fish as we were outside the huge in-mall aquarium. It supposedly has a tunnel that you can walk through, but we didn't have time this visit to do that. We did see a shark from the outside. The ceiling outside of the aquarium was twinkling with "stars."

She also really liked the butterfly ceiling decorations where what looked like a million shiny, white butterflies linked on strings were hung mobile style from a huge block of ceiling. Their wings fluttered with the wind, making it even more realistic.