Camping in the UAE again

(We are back in Finland but I have a few more posts about the UAE in the pipeline.)

My favorite part of our trip to the UAE was going camping with my two former neighbors. We three moms took six kids into the desert and had a spectacularly successful camping trip. There were camels, dunes, a lizard, a campfire, s’mores, and a moderately poor night’s sleep (not too bad for camping, though). We all woke up cold in the night but it was a delicious cold, the kind that you know will come to a brilliant end once the sun comes up (and how!). I ran up the dunes first thing in the morning to get my body temperature up, but soon the sun was shining and it became a race to get the tents taken down before the heat caught us.

Once again, I felt myself coming full circle with other memories from our time in the UAE. Desert camping is one of my favorite things! 2010-2015 in the wilds and beaches and mountains of Oman, too many times to count. 2011 in the Empty Quarter, twice. And many other times closer to home, including one last-minute trip in 2013 on a school night (!). Last Friday, I looked at 12-year-old Miriam and 9-year-old Magdalena playing in the dunes and all at once could also see 5-year-old Miriam and tiny 2-year-old Magdalena. I remembered lightning storms and dead baby camels and watching Downton Abbey on a laptop in the corner of the tent, trying to distract myself from both pregnancy sickness and all the scorpions I had seen outside after dark.

No scorpions this time, though! It was a lovely camping trip and it felt good to be making new memories in the Sharjah desert.