Officially on my way. I left Ottawa at 5:00 in the afternoon on Monday and flew to Toronto. At 9:40, after a beer with a few random people from Saskatchewan, I got onto the never ending plane journey. I was pretty proud of myself as I made it through the 13 hours without too much fuss.

Once I arrived in Dubai (Tuesday evening), Barb picked me up and the airport and then we had a good catch up over wine and cheese (yummy). I was able to get a good night's sleep, except for the two hours in the middle where my body refused to comply with my desire to sleep. This afternoon Barb and I took off to the Mall of Dubai which is apparently the largest mall in the world. We watched the feeding at the gigantic aquarium for awhile, had some lunch and did some shopping.

The highlight of the afternoon, however, was the skating adventure. Apparently Barb has wanted to do this for awhile but my uncle refused to go. So being a good Canadian girl I put on a pair of skates and out we went. There were some funny moments and I have to say I was impressed by the skating abilities on display.

Still trying to get my body to comply with the new time zone, so the goal is to stay up until 9:30 tonight...see how that goes.

I would also like to introduce you to my new travel buddies. As Andre decided last summer that he had had enough of traveling with me, I needed to find somebody new. Lucky me, I was able to find two buddies willing to travel. Some of you may have previously met Dieter as we met in New York on my birthday. Dieter is a dragon who wants to travel the world. I told him we could be friends. So he has joined his first overseas adventure. The second travel buddy arrived from northern Alberta last month. He hasn't told me his name yet, so I am taking suggestions. Right now, I have had some ideas - Otto, Diesel, Robert...but I am willing to take suggestions or let me know if you like one of these names. As you can see from the picture, yet to be named travel buddy is a penguin. He also informed me that he would like to see the world and his big goal is to get to Antarctica, clearly he was meant to be my friend. So that is all, talk to you all soon and welcome back to my blog!