Monday, April 25, 2011

The Easter Camel

I completely forgot it was Easter Sunday yesterday morning until the husband came home from the night shift with a chocolate camel.  I'm pretty sure there isn't a sneaky camel of children's folklore who hides eggs for the little scamps to find behind desert roses, palm trees and cacti, but nevertheless, it seems appropriately festive.

The fact that I had forgotten it's Easter isn't exactly surprising in a Muslim country.  Easter eggs are on sale in the shops here but you're not bombarded with advertising for them the way you are in the UK.  The newspapers mentioned Easter a bit but as we don't have a TV at the moment, I can't tell you whether the same goes for TV.  Crucially, people don't automatically get the days off here.  Sunday is a working day because the weekend is Friday and Saturday.  I think non-Muslim companies will often give their workers a long weekend so they get Sunday off but I think most people are back to work today unless they've booked it as holiday.  I imagine when Eid comes around, it'll probably be a different story and we won't be able to get away from it.  They also do Christmas in quite a big way I'm led to believe.  The Sand Warlock tells me that in the run up to Christmas, the shops are full of Arabs in traditional dress buying large amounts of gifts with a look on their faces that seems to say: "What?  I just felt like doing a lot of shopping on December 20th.  Christmas? Christwhat?"


You'll be pleased to know this particular camel is made with camel's milk chocolate.  I have tried camel's milk chocolate.  It doesn't taste all that different from cow's milk chocolate, perhaps slightly sweeter.  The real difference seems to be that it's several times more expensive than cow's milk chocolate which can be said for a lot of things in Dubai.    

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