First Turkish bath experience

WOW!!!  I think that probably sums it up! It was my first experience to receive a Turkish bath today or also called Hammam.  I had won a gift voucher last year during the PTA Pink Day at school.  I had almost forgotten about it.  Thankfully it had not expired yet!

Here's what the spa looks like:

Pretty fancy, eh?!  It's basically a communal area but I was the only one there, so it was like my private spa for the morning :-)

But first, before the bath - I am put into the steam room for 5 minutes. I am not so fond of the steam but thankfully there was a shower head/sprayer with cold water so it didn't feel like I was suffocating in there.  Then, my spa therapist tells me "Time to bake!" so she directs me into the sauna room for another 5 minutes.  It's HOT!  I took a peek at the thermostat in there and I think it was like 85C or 185F.  Phew!!!

Ok, finally I am laying on the marble slab!  She scrubs me with some sort of exfoliation glove from head to toe.  After that, more scrubbing but this time with Moroccan volcanic mud followed by Turkish coffee grind.  Talk about getting my caffeine in for the day!  She is constantly "watering" me with pitchers of water, kinda like in this photo I found online.  Almost felt like she used 5 bath tubs full with water!  Okay, I may be exaggerating but it seemed like a lot!

Alright... what was next?  She then washed my hair with mint shampoo followed by Jasmine conditioner.  It smelled so good!  And then, finally some olive oil soap on my body.  She made lots of suds and put them in a pure cotton towel that was sewed up at the end/bottom. She sort of skimmed it along my body and then squeezed out all the suds over me. Kind of a weird feeling but made me think of how much fun Graham and Charlie would have had with all these suds in a bath tub!!!

In the end, the therapist told me to sit by the edge of the table and she said something like "Okay, I am going to wash you now".  And before I knew it, she dumped out two pitchers of water, one in each hand right over my head!  I did NOT see that coming! HAHAHA!!!  But ahh.... everything smelled so good - my body, my hair... and skin was so nice and soft!  She probably scrubbed of layers and layers of sunscreen!

I was then whisked into the relaxation lounge for about 10 minutes. Oh, the refreshment was a Turkish yogurt drink with some salt and mint. I sort of made a face so she insisted I have the ginger honey tea instead.  Good call!  After some Turkish sweets, I was off to my 45-minutes massage.  I am sort of spoiled with 90 minute massages now so 45 minutes was over in a blink!

Nonetheless, I felt so relaxed after 2 hours of pampering.  Hmmm... Mother's Day can't come soon enough to ask for one of these vouchers! It was just under Dhs1000 which converts to around USD250.  That's not asking for too much, is it Bobby... a.k.a. honey bunny? The love of my life? The apple of my eye??? Hint! Hint! :-D

Is it blue or is it grey???

Somehow or rather, Bobby and I got into the discussion with the color of this mug.  I was asking him to make me a mug of milo (hot chocolate) and I told him that he could use the "blue" mug. And then, he said, no - it's "grey". Well... blue, grey, blue, grey...!!!  What do you think???

Eventually we had to pull up the mug at Ikea's website and guess what it said:  Grey-blue!!!  So we were both correct!  It was quite a good laugh :-)
Of course, Bob insisted that he is more correct though because the word "Grey" came before the "Blue".  MEH!!!

More Recent Happenings

We haven't had too much going on these past few weeks.  Crazy enough, it has been drizzling a lot!  The temperature did hit 32C today - almost 90F.  Nooo...!!!!

In the meantime, I have been busy with some Henna.  This dye comes from a tree and is used for temporary body art.  Sometimes henna is available at school during events but I thought I'd take things into my own hands. A friend of mine gave me a couple tubes of henna and a book of patterns :-)

After a few days, a little more "painting". Okay, I may have gotten a little carried away. The henna dries up and peels off and the color darkens during the first few days.  The lighter colored henna further up my arm would eventually darken and after a week or two, everything will just disappear.  And the fun begins again to start over!!!

Speaking of fun, ALL the boys got a little joyride in a friend's Porsche.  Vrrroommm vrrooooom...!!!

Guess who has "crabby" toes???  Yes, that would be Charlie and that's definitely from the Lee side of the family.  He was so proud walking around with that ink stamper in between his toes. HAHA!

And guess what Graham is trying to spell here?  Did you get it yet? You really need to sound out the letters:

And...?  The answer is "huge" as in "he-you-j".  Too funny!!!  And here is more of Graham's handy work.  After seeing an idea at school, I thought that maybe it would be a great idea for Graham to start writing a diary.  Well,...

We helped Graham with his first entry being "Today, this is my first entry" and Graham obviously took that and ran with it! Little stinker!!!

This next photo isn't so funny though.  Charlie fell at school and gave himself a swollen eye.  It almost looks like he has red eye liner on:

Thankfully he didn't hurt his eyeball.  Everything has cleared up now and he is back to being his mischievous self!

Last but not least, some dancing!!!  Graham and Charlie loves to dance to the credits at the end of movies/cartoons. Check out their moves!

 Happy Pridgen boys!!! :-D