Dubai

Hello everyone-

I'm back from four days in Dubai and have survived my first week of full school days after Eid break. Dubai was an amazing getaway-I had such a nice time with my travel companion Andrea, who was actually the first person I met here. We sat by each other on our flight from Germany to Kuwait, and now our apartments are next door to eachother. We had an excellent experience on our trip from the beginning flying Gulf Air to Dubai, which even serves very cute free snack boxes!

We spent our first night in Dub at the Mall of the Emirates, where we met my friends from India Joe and Shikha and their son Yugaan for dinner. The mall is absolutely incredible-so huge, and it contains an indoor ski hill. I believe it's the biggest mall in the UAE, or maybe even the world, or maybe it's just one of the biggest, but in any case it's enormous. As we arrived on one of the last days of Eid the mall was packed with people, but we had fun doing a little bit of shopping and just people watching.

Day two in Dubai we spent the morning wandering the old Bastika area and souqs. We didn't buy anything, but it was fun to see all of the goods for sale. There are so many expats in Dubai, and many of them are from Southeast Asia, so I felt a little like I was back in India during our shopping!

That evening we went on a "desert safari", which was one of the highlights of the trip. We did sand surfing, which is basically driving around in jeeps as the driver goes up and down sand dunes as fast as he can. It's like a roller coaster and makes you feel like this:

The desert was incredibly beautiful, and after our "surfing" we ate a delicious meal in a giant tourist tent with belly dancing, henna, falconry, traditional Emirati dress, and hookahs.

We did a driving tour of Dubai the second day, getting to see all of the incredible development in Dubai, including the exterior of the Burj al Arab (the only seven star hotel in the world!). You have to pay a lot of money to even go in and see the exterior, so we didn't make it in, but just seeing how built up the city of Dubai is and looking at what it was like fifty, ten, five, and even one year ago is truly amazing.

All in all it was a really fun trip, and I'm sure I'll visit Dubai (and hopefully Abu Dhabi too!) again during the time I'm here.

I hope all is well with all of you!