So here I am in Dubai again.

For those of you who don't talk to my mum all the time, here's the deal. The company that sent us out here has been treating us like crap from day one. We were not taken care of, or really given the opportunity to take care of ourselves without significant out of pocket expense. On top of that, our job seems to have been set up to fail. Every time we made any progress a wall was thrown up preventing us from continuing in that direction, and we were continuously being antagonized by management. We were in a fleabag hotel for a month and a half, stuck eating fried eggs and toast every night after a bout of food poisoning left us afraid to eat anything else from room service. And believe me when I say room service was the only dinner option we had (barring a $15 cab ride to get anywhere).

Finally this past weekend, the plug was (mercifully) pulled on our project and we were informed that we would be heading home.

I can't say that I'm upset about the situation- we were all so miserable with how we were being treated that the only time we had any fun was when we went on our weekend trips out of Mumbai.

Nick and I spent a weekend in Udaipur, which was arguably one of the best weekends I've had in my whole life. We flew out Sunday morning, checked in to the Leela (read: GORGEOUS resort), and drove around town all day with an awesome rickshaw driver who took us to all of the cool places for 150RS ($3) for the whole day. Because it was the off-season (tourist season is right after monsoon season as the lake is dried up the rest of the year) everything was much cheaper, including the hotel, and we didn't have to deal with annoying tourists everywhere. I got clothing custom made, and we both bought some really cool souvenirs. After driving around all day, we went back to the hotel and got massages. Totally perfect weekend. I'll post pictures soon.

Anyhow, that brings me back here, to the Dubai airport. I was given a hotel voucher as my layover is eight hours long, but I didn't feel like going through security again, so I decided to stay put. Just ate some burger king here at the airport, and spent a few hours talking with a very nice med student from Leeds (UK) on his way to Africa to write his dissertation. Pretty cool.

I've only got another four hours or so before my flight boards, thankfully. Glad for Dubai's beautiful airport and free wifi.

Hey guys,

Sorry for the long gap between posts- we only managed to get our wifi cards working a few days ago, and the internet at work is spotty at best.

I just got back from a bar- the LA crew plus a bunch of our coworkers went out tonight. It was a lot of fun. They were playing a whole bunch of American music from the 80's and 90's so we were all singing along. Pretty much the entire group was dancing like crazy, as well (except myself, of course). It was really great to spend time with everyone outside of the stress of a work environment and away from all of the crazy deadlines.

This past weekend Nick, Tammy and I went to the Taj Mahal. It was a two hour plane flight and a five hour drive each way. We had some rather major hiccups- the short version is the travel agency didn't allow us enough time between flights to even get to the Taj and back, which led to us being stuck in the Delhi airport for seven hours waiting for the next flight. And on top of it all, our phones were all unable to dial out. We got everything figured out in the end though, and the Taj was truly amazing.

I took a ton of pictures, which I'm trying to figure out how to upload. Expect them in a few days.