The view is blinding...literally

I have had to get used to the fact that whenever I go outside, I am temporarily blinded. I have never been in a place so bright, and I literally have to give myself a few minutes for my eyes to adjust to the massive amounts of light. Why do I not wear sunglasses, you ask? I do, and they don't solve anything, because as soon as you walk outside, your sunglasses fog up IMMEDIATELY. Worse than the bathroom mirror when you get out of the shower. They take a few minutes to de-fog, and by the time that happens, you have already squinted your way to the car. But once they de-fog, they definitely come in handy, and I would never think about leaving home without my sunglasses (it's a good thing I decided that I really DID need that 4th pair of sunglasses that I bought before coming here...). So you will imagine the sacrifice that it was for me to snap these pictures for you, my dear readers, since I did it from the terrace of the gym, and didn't have sunglasses with me. I actually just closed my eyes and took a few shots and hoped that at least one of them worked out all right. This should give you a decent idea of what it looks like here.

Notice the cranes. There is a TON of construction. And you will see lots of "sand." The sand here is not what we have back home. It is more of a hard packed very fine dirt, but everything is coated in it, and people here get their cars washed A LOT. Not me, of course, because I don't care if I have a dirty car. But maybe that is because I have a very ghetto Mitsubishi Galant (that shakes when you drive over about 90 kilometers and has blue interior and red rugs), and not a Range Rover, a BMW, or a Porshe, which many people here seem to be driving.