What Is An Expat?

Well, we’re taking advantage of one last vacation before this job evaporates. They won’t pay for airfare since I won’t be back the requisite 60 days, but at least I get the vacation time and travel days. We’re going to fly out tomorrow morning at 1 AM and at 6 AM land in Paris. We’ll spend about 5 days there and on day trips near it, before taking the night train down to Rome. We’ll be there 3 days and then spend 4 days in the Naples / Sorrento area, and one last day in Rome again, followed by a flight back home to Dubai. After we get back, Dubai is only home for about 2 more weeks and then we’ll start another chapter in our life.

Last Tuesday, Guli and I traipsed on down to the US Embassy in Abu Dhabi, which is about an hour or so away from Dubai. As my tenure here is ending, it was about past time to put in for her residency for the USA. As a side note, I’d like to point out that the embassy is a really bizarre semi-triangular shape that looks like the bow of a sinking ship poking out over the water. It’s very strange. After several rounds of showing paperwork and waiting again, they told us that it’d have to go to USCIS for approval, which is going to be around 4 weeks probably, but if we haven’t heard from them in 6 weeks to check in. That sounded quite doable. (more…)