Taking A Look Back On Hopes and Wishes For Abu Dhabi

     I wrote this last year before I left. I wanted to take a look back and see what I have accomplished and what I still need to work on.

• Save some money so that I can come back and put a down payment on a place

Still working on this. I decided to take this year to pay off my school loan as opposed to saving. 

• Pay off my debt

I have paid about half of my debt (all of my student loan, hamdullah) I am happy about this.

• Travel, travel travel--I hope to go back to Southeast Asia at Christmas (Parts of Thailand I have not been to; Phuket, Chang Mai, North Vietnam and Cambodia)

This year I did go to Chang Mai, North Vietnam, Cambodia, Loas, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, and Greece. I am impressed with the travel I have done.  I still need to go to Phuket, maybe this Christmas. 

• My travel wish list also includes; Australia, Turkey, Oman, Quatar, Ghana and hopefully a few weeks backpacking in Europe, I have NEVER done this!

Australia, Turkey and Ghana are still on the list as well as backpacking. I think I will do the backpacking when I leave the UAE and take a month in Europe. 

• I pray that my apartment has a gym and if not I hope that there is one near by

    No gym in my apartment but I joined one at the hotel, the membership includes a pool. 

• I am able to run and hopefully make some running buddies.

Too hot to run :(

• I want to run the Abu Dhabi Half Marathon in November!  How cool would that be?

Ummmm see above.

• Learn Arabic, I love languages and Arabic would be a great one to have working knowledge of

Started taking lessons but had to stop. Going to try and at least work on my letters. 

All in all I am happy with with the goals I have accomplished.

This year:

-travel to Kenya, Phillipines, Japan and Ireland, maybe I can squeeze Turkey in there. 

-Pay off the rest of the debt.

-Go on a few more dates.

-I have a big wedding next summer so I am going to focus on dropping some weight. I wanna say 25 pounds to start but 40 would be ideal.