I was a young girl in a Midwestern Baptist town in Illinois. A town filled with old blue haired ladies, dogs that nap in the street and a local preacher who relied upon the generosity of the parishioners for cookies and meatloaf dinners. It was a town not too dissimilar from Bomont. It was a stereotypical farm town upbringing with Levis, boots and beer, and all the crazy shenanigans that bored country kids get themselves into.
My high school crowd could easily be identified as those that would leave our community and those that would stay. In October 1984, just as the corn was harvested from the fields, Footloose came to our uniplex theater and provided those that would leave the hope that even small town rebels with a big city itch could have a future out there somewhere beyond the wheat and the soybean fields.
Fast forward 35 years and I am half way around the world, in the Middle East, at the New York University Arts Center watching a cast of 30-40 expats with a Russell Stovers box of accents, perform Footloose. A movie so Americana that I can smell the hay.
Continue reading “Everybody Get Footloose! with The Abu Dhabi Choral Group”
“That’s a real pisser!” Mini said to me.
February 5th at the Westin Resort in Abu Dhabi it was all about fashion, shopping and an evening of fun with the girls!
Indigo Saturday brunch and the one-hundred mile tea.
You may think all we do in Abu Dhabi is eat, eat, eat. But you’re wrong. We also talk about eating a lot too. And I guess like any vibrant large city in the world, we like to talk about new restaurants on the scene.
Living in possibly the world’s glitziest city takes cash. Cold. Hard. Cash. There might be an oil field a few kilometers from my villa but I am not on the payroll. So therefore, we expats have to find ways to make the biggest splash with the least amount of cash — because this awesome lifestyle doesn’t come cheap! Those gold flaked cappuccinos… well, they don’t grow on trees.
Want to support women’s work in the UAE? Plan to attend this NYU sponsored event exploring the various ways women’s work in the UAE goes beyond “fixing” the women to transforming the contexts in which they live and work. Representatives from the education, entrepreneurship, private, and public sectors discuss cutting-edge research and private-public partnerships that support work-life balance strategies, nationalization efforts, and social policy aimed at encouraging women’s employment. In examining different ways to conceptualize women’s non-linear career paths, the panel moves away from simplistic stereotypes about women’s “preferences” or assumptions about their “choices” to a characterization of the micro mechanisms that facilitate their learning, career development, and long-term well-being.
theabudhabipta.com 