Summer is here. In France, there is a tradition of celebrating the first day of summer with a music festival, the "Fete de la Musique". The French (and this is what I love about them) are so attached to partying and summer and vacation, that anywhere that you have more than 2 French people on June 21 - someone is bound to organize a Fete de la Musique. However, the idea is to have music in the streets. With 100+ degree weather (40+ for Celcius fans), staying in the street for longer than 1 minute here is rather uncomfortable. So, the Alliance Française organized the Fete in the airconditioned, reconstituted traditional arab souk/shopping mall, Madinat Jumeirah. We meandered among the Ties 'r Us, henna tatoo salons and souvenir shops listening to the arabic band and catching a belly dance. There was western music, too, with flute duets, a classical guitar orchestra and broadway tunes. Hopefully, next year I'll be participating with some choir members.
Growing up in Louisiana, I'm used to the extreme heat - as long as I have ample air conditioning. However, the weird thing here is the water. As of a few weeks ago, the cold water taps give hot water because it heats up in the water tank outside. So we turned off the water heaters and use the hot water taps for cold water. This water sits in the hot water tank in the air conditioned house and cools off.
