Another Year (officially)

Well, as of yesterday, we are officially living in Dubai for another year. Not that that is groundbreaking news, or surprising really, but, it's official in that we signed our apartment lease renewal until September 16, 2011. And in Dubai, rent payments are done quite differently than back home, or most places in the world. What you would think would be normal (paying your landlord on a monthly basis, ie, a check every month) is unheard of here. The best you can hope for here are 4 checks for the year (quarterly), but more commonly, they want you to pay for the year in 1 or 2 checks. Pretty crazy. Last year we paid in 2 checks, but in order to negotiate our landlord to knock 10,000 dirhams (roughly $3,000 USD) off our rent for the year we paid in one check. So, more binding than the lease is that we just paid the rent for our apartment for the whole year. Sooo, we'll be sticking around to live in our apartment that we've paid for until next September. Visitors still welcome, because we're going to be here until at least September 16, 2011.