expat returning from summer leave Archives - Circles in the SandCircles in the Sand

Operation LongVac is nearly over! Passenger numbers at Dubai International airport have swelled as families return from extended summer holidays, and the traffic on the roads is building up again. Arriving in Dubai after a prolonged stay away is the only time you see the city through a tourist’s eye. You walk through the cavernous, marble-floored airport, with its glass elevators the size of your first apartment, wall of water and endless shopping, and appreciate how clean and modern it all is.

If you’re wearing jeans, they’ll stick to your legs within half a second outside

The extreme heat and humidity slap you in the face as you exit the airport, reminding you just how hot the desert gets in summer, even in the middle of the night. If you’re wearing jeans, they’ll stick to your legs within half a second outside, and you know you’ll be peeling them off your calves later (Dubai re-entry and jeans are like a bad marriage). Then you pile into a taxi and tell the driver where to go. He’ll nod in that Dubai way which could mean he knows the exact route or hasn’t got a clue. In the latter case, you’ll find yourself playing navigator to someone inclined to disbelieve every direction you give him. After the smaller, residential roads of your homeland, Dubai’s twelve-lane highways seem supersized, the lit-up cranes Orwellian. And don’t be surprised if you see more cranes working in one place than you’ve ever seen before, an army of giant derricks towering above a huge construction site that popped up while you were gone. Next, there’s just the small matter of getting the kids over their jetlag and finding your sand legs again – because transitioning from one country to the other is never as easy as you think it should be. For the next few days, Dubai re-entry shock will mean everything looks almost right, like wearing contact lenses in the wrong eyes. Welcome home! Tip: Suffering from Dubai re-entry blues? Please consider reading my new book, Distracted Housewife in Dubai DIARY, for some laugh-out-loud entertainment. Available on Amazon as an ebook (for a Kindle or iPad with a Kindle app). The links are to Amazon.com – just switch to whichever region’s Amazon store you use to purchase. Thank you! Customer Review:

A brilliant book detailing exactly what life in Dubai is like. If you have ever lived in Dubai, you will recognize all the different characters in the story and you will laugh and laugh (and maybe even recognize yourself!)

School runs, Dubai brunch, valet parking...Marianne gets it so perfectly right in a fun and humorous way. Even if you’ve never lived in the UAE, this book will give you access to life as an expat and the trials and tribulations that go along with it. It’s a lovely and easy read!

We arrived back in the sandpit on Sunday, but it’s taken me until today to resurface – because, despite there being a tiddly three hours’ time difference in summer, I always develop a flu-like case of jet lag when travelling eastwards (pathetic, I know!).

My pilot DH has to put up with me lamenting about needing to sleep, but never at the right time (at bedtime, I’m bog-eyed with a fidgety wakefulness for hours), and believe me, he shakes his head at me, absolutely dumbfounded that anyone could be so utterly *hopeless* at jet lag.

While this should only apply to mums travelling back from the US or Canada, with an 8-hour-plus time change, it's not far off.

She’s travelled back from the US. I have no excuse.

“But I think I was still on a mid-Atlantic time zone after the US,” I protest, with a yawn. “You have to fight it,” he responds, at a loss.

And so it goes on: me plodding through the day, which has a surreal, otherworldly quality when you’ve just landed in the post-apocalyptic 43° heat of the desert, and unable to sleep at night; him business as usual despite having flown to six different time zones while we were away.

Aside from the insomnia (which the kids also have. Ugh.) and the wading through hot treacle, the other thing about arriving back in Dubai after a long period away is the brain dump that takes place while travelling. Simple things, like the route to your local retail centre, making a packed lunch, or locating the cupboard in which mugs are kept, require deep thought, while grocery shopping feels like a thousand-piece 3D puzzle.

Still, even though I drifted onto the highway today in a daze rather than into the supermarket car park, and have climbed the staircase a total of eight times tonight to soothe the two riving insomniacs upstairs, it feels good to be home.

EDITED TO ADD: At 11.30pm and decamped to the children’s room with my laptop, I can now say, hand on heart, jet lag is the SCOURGE of summer travel. Sigh.