To give you an impression of my past month I may just summarize the past 36 hours: Creamfields festival in Abu Dhabi, featuring Above and Beyond, Axwell and Ingrosso, and my absolute favourite deadmau5; beach; Louvre Abu Dhabi seeing the famous works of Picasso, Monet…you name it; The Match 2 and 3 of FIFA Club World Cup 2017 in Abu Dhabi, where we saw our favourites Latin Pachuca and local Al Jazira won; 9k beach run in the morning; some work; beach again (snorkeling attempt!).

Since we got a car life got much much easier and we go to more places now and do all kinds of stuff. The headline of November was the F1 annual event Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, where we saw world champions in racing – Bottas, Hamilton, Vettel. I do not claim to be an expert in racing, and to be very frank, I truly hated it as a child when my dad was watching races on TV (so much noise!). But with the premium tickets for 4 days, access to lounges and concerts…the experience was truly amazing. Even the cars didn’t sound too noisy, but the speed was terrific to see live.

The icing on the cake was 3 days of concerts – J. Cole, Mumford & Sons, and Pink. I expected more for J. Cole, and less from Pink, but Pink was great, amazing show.  Speaking of concerts, though, nothing can beat the Ed Sheeran concert in Dubai just a day before F1. I was trying to get tickets for his concert for years, and only here succeeded. The only problem was some British people in the crowd who didn’t like me and my husband being too tall 😛 That we used to our advantage and tried to jump even higher just to annoy people.  During that concert was also the first time ever we saw rain in the UAE!

Speaking of rain, before I came to Abu Dhabi I was told you only see rain here one time per year, if you are lucky. It means I was lucky twice. Last Friday just back from work we saw a very heavy rain for a few minutes. Impressive! Can’t claim I miss it much yet, though 🙂 Sun is fine with me.

In other news, we had a long National Holiday weekend here November 30-December 3rd, which we decided to dedicate to learning a new region and skill. Guess what? We are now certified PADI divers with the licence to dip 18m under water to see what is going on there. Hell, yeah 🙂 We took a PADI certificate course (around 10 hours of online theory), and did the actual diving course with Freestyle divers in Fujairah.  Fujairah is one of the 7 Emirates of the UAE (Abu Dhabi is largest), but it is a totally different one. It is, from apparent, much poorer, yet the landscape is different – mountains and the sea shores are great for camping and diving. It has abundance of sea life, therefore considered best in the UAE for diving holiday. So we did one – a mini getaway, stayed in Le Meridien in Al Aqua, one of the best hotels. Full of Russians, but still. We didn’t spend much time in the hotel, though, as we did 2 diving sessions in the swimming pool and 3 dives close to Dibba rock. We took our GoPro camera with, but couldn’t film on our teaching course, but promise underwater media next time.

Experience of diving? Incredible. We didn’t go too deep (max 12 meters) but it was sufficient to feel the contrast. The diving gear was bulky on surface and breathing from the mouth only was somewhat new to me. Finding buoyancy in water was a challenge.  My husband got a sting of a sea urchin. We saw turtles. We saw all sizes and shapes of fish. And we are definitely going back there!  (Got our own equipment on the way back home).  It is good exercise too, apparently, as we don’t remember being as tired as after dives. Pleasantly tired, however. I am not sure how, but a lot of energy is being used under water even though you don’t feel like using muscles. Doesn’t matter. It’s fun!

Next week is going to be huge for us, as we will see semi-finals and finals of FIFA, where local leaders Al Jazira will face Real Madrid first. Apparently Real Madrid is staying in St. Regis – the hotel of the residence we live it. Chasing Ronaldo will be high on my agenda 🙂  We also have Trevor Noah, the famous comedian from The Daily Show, coming, and a nice boat trip in the sunset in Dubai on Sunday. Not sure we can squeeze the Star Wars new movie in somewhere, but that would be something to relax compared to all other activities on the schedule.

Do we miss anything? Was just talking to my husband another day who says he misses Danish sild for Xmas dinner.  I am happy to skip that as long as there is plenty of seafood around…:)

Not sure we are missing the snow, but we are headed back to visit family in Lithuania at Christmas. Time to pull out the coats and sweaters from the deepest corners of wardrobes.

Stay tuned 🙂

P.S. And if it doesn’t look like we work anything here, we do. We have had a few successful events on blockchain and crypto over the past month, and ready to educate the region more! Plus earn some more for financing the fun stuff 😛 My 50% annual return in FX trading pales in comparison to our crypto fund returns (#notahumblebrag  #workhardplayhard)