Silver, Gold, And A Few Days Off

A little precursor for this post: As I write, I’m currently feeling a little under the weather, therefore my brain is not working at full capacity and this may not be my best work. And by feeling under the weather, I do mean I have a severe stomach ache from eating THREE heaping spoonfuls of Nutella within a ten minute time period. This is in addition to the Nutella I was spreading onto several (Arabic version) Oreo cookies. You won’t find a lot of information on it, so don’t waste your time researching my claim, but Chocolate is actually one of the six steps of the grieving process….

Anywho….I’m finally an Emirates Training College graduate, WAAA HOO. I asked my trainers if I get a reward for holding the record of longest time spent in training. They informed me that several months ago there was a girl who found the course work particularly difficult, and had to repeat every single section of training, so she actually had me beat. Just like that, my morale improved, as I rejoiced for not being THAT girl. As is always true with life, there’s always going to be someone who has it better than you, and always going to be someone who has it worse!

Monday evening the group of us who had all finished training together went out for drinks, and celebrated!

Yesterday was the big day that we were all supposed to find out our rosters for the next month, as well as our flight schedules for the rest of March. All of my batch mates quickly began posting back and forth on Facebook about their exciting first layover destinations (Sydney, Dublin, Hong Kong)…so eagerly I logged onto my work email to discover where I would be traveling, and then I see the dreaded code written all over my April roster…RSV, reserve. This means everyday for a month, I will wake up not knowing if I’ll be spending the night in Dubai, Auckland, New York, or anywhere else that the company may see fit to send me to on that particular day. It’s obviously not the worst thing in the whole scheme of life, but being on reserve definitely makes it difficult to make any form of plans for the entire month. Emirates does their scheduling on a seven month rotation, therefore, every six months I will be on reserve. It’s actually a much fairer system than the seniority based schedule most companies use.

The other kicker came when all my other batch mates started receiving notifications as to where they would be flying this week, and I did not. After some investigating I discovered my General Civil Aviation Authority licensing has not been processed yet, because my vaccinations were not completed on time…obviously because I was out of the country for the last two weeks. So basically, I’m on stay-cation for about another week.

Not that I’m ever a super, hard core schedule orientated person, but I don’t think it’s very mentally healthy for anyone to be 100% routine less either. So to combat this problem, I started off today, day one of my stay-cation, by making a list of things I needed to do. In all reality, I don’t really have that much I NEED to do, so some of my items were simply listed in order for me to be able to cross them off and feel some sort of a sense of accomplishmen. For example, task #1 on my list for the day “Wake Up.”

Instantaneously, I had already met one of my goals for the day! I’m always a fan of setting myself up for success!

So besides waking up each day, I’ve been filling up my days with social activities, which is fine by me. Last night I went with my friend Maggie, a fellow Emirates flight attendant from Minnesota, to meet another American, Sara, who is living in Dubai with her husband, a first officer with a smaller airline here in the UAE (did you get all that???). Maggie’s aunt used to work with Sara’s husband, and set Sara and Maggie up on a friend date! We had a great time watching the Dubai Fountain Show and cooking dinner together at her awesome apartment that has an amazing view of the Burj Kalifa, the world’s tallest building.

Today I met up with two of my friends for lunch at an outdoor pub, and spent my afternoon shopping. Rough life….


My mom’s voice constantly plays in my head, and ten years ago I would never admit to this, but today, I’m so very thankful that it does. As I continue to meet lots of new and interesting friends, I’ve recently found myself humming the sweet little tune to the old Girl Scout song, “Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver and the other’s gold.”

I think of her smiling as she led me and my fellow Brownies in singing that song so many times throughout my childhood. I’m almost certain that she’s still smiling. To be even more specific, she had this particular face that I am picturing in my mind, my friend Brittney referred to it as her proud face, as she only made it when she was truly pleased with your actions.

I think she’s making her proud face right now at the way all of my golden and silver friends have taken care of her “little one” during this past month.
I think of everyone from my group of friends in Dubai, whom I have known for such a short period of time, my group of girl friends from home (whom have been my best friends since….well basically forever), to all the other amazing friends that I’ve met from the times in between, all going out of their way to routinely check on me. Honestly, my mom’s death has not led me to any Earth shaking revelations about taking people in my life for granted. I think through her LIFE she taught me that every person is a blessing, and to treat them as such! I think for the most part, I got it! I’ve always treasured my relationships, (mmmmm maybe not the romantic ones, that’s for another post :)) and even though this is a HARD time for me, I know they’re here for me. And God forbid, if hard times come across for any of them, I’m quite certain they know I’d be right there wading through the trenches with them as well. And that’s pretty cool.

"A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature."
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson