Dubai Life: Marriage and teamwork, Dubai-style

Of all the things Sven and I are learning in Dubai, one of the best things has been increased teamwork.  When things go awry it's often really confusing and involves communicating with a LOT of people at the same time.  And most of the time, it's in English that is either very limited or very different - spoken extremely fast in syntax we're not familiar with.  And to navigate the volume and complexity, we've learned it works best when we do it together. 

When I consider how connected our life is now, I realize how separate we've been up until this 'adventure.'  Back home most of our time together was spent sharing meals, doing recreational activities (hobbies and fun stuff), and sleeping.  We did almost everything else by ourselves, and it was cool (mostly).  Perhaps because we'd become accustomed to doing it alone in our single lives, or because it could be accomplished with little to no effort, or because we don't have children, or because we like being strong, independent women (haha, yes Sven too).

Now that we're in Dubai, we're becoming much more dependent on each other and it's a really surprising (and sometimes frustrating) experience.  To put it simply, I think it's because 1) two heads are better than one, and 2) we want to have and give support while we trying these new and flabbergasting tasks that we might not get right.  But I've always prided myself on being fairly independent (or fiercely, depending on who you ask) and this is far out of my "I can do it all by myself" comfort zone.  It's hard learning/allowing yourself to rely on someone in this way, and there's definitely a weight/sense of obligation in being relied on in return.  But what I'm learning, very slowly, is that doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad thing.  The weight of obligation/dependency doesn't have to be heavy.  Building and having this kind of trust can be a powerful thing; a beautiful thing.

And it's weeeeeeeird.  But in a good way.

So today, as we tag-team to try and get the water back on in the villa (day #3 without water) get Steve's car towed to the shop, have a rental car delivered, take Phoebe to the vet, etc - I can't help but smile at how far we've come.

Except while driving.  We cannot, for the life of us, figure out how to drive harmoniously. 

Mostly, we settle for good GPS and very few passenger comments