Sunday, January 11, 2009

Update: Round 2

So to continue updating from the last post, we had the car for Saturday as well, and woke up early and drove out to Jumiera Mosque for a group tour. It was really interesting, and the mosque was beautiful. The guy leading the group was a Muslim who had lived in the US for something like 26 years and had an American wife. He made the explanation really interesting and comfortable, but I wish it would have gone more in depth on what exactly Muslims believe and why. We also didn't really get a lot of information about how a Muslim prayer service is conducted. Hopefully I will learn these kinds of things in my Islam class this semester. Anyway, after the mosque we went to this big ex-pat hangout called The Lime Tree Cafe. Very British-y, but cute. After that we went back to Creekside Park and finally took our cablecar ride, which was awesome! We got some really great views of the entire city. We spent a good amount of time in the park. Again, an interesting mix of western and Islamic culture you really would never see anywhere else. It seems to me that Westerners and religious Muslims, for the most part, don't interact at all on the streets. Both just kind of go about their business without really acknowlidging the other at all. Then we went into Old Dubai and saw the Dubai Museum and walked around a little. By the time we got to the souks (marketplace) it was just before a call to prayer, so most shops weren't open or were getting ready to close. We walked around a little more by Dubai Creek. The call to prayer was really cool to hear. Not every single person went to pray, but it seemed most of the people out and about did. After that, the souks reopened and we walked around. There is a gold souk, a textile souk, a spice souk, and more. The gold souk is especially ridiculous. I'll try to post pictures soon. Dubai was built up around the creek, with the north side of the creek, Diera, devleoping as something of a separate area from the south side, Bur Dubai. You can travel from one side to the other in an Abra for one dirham (about 33 cents). Abra's are these traditional little Arab boats... kind of like ghetto Gondolas, that taxi people back and forth. There are also lots of Dhows on the creek, which are traditional wooden Arab sailing vessels that transport goods. They're very old world-- something you wouldn't expect to see in use against a backdrop of skyscrapers and luxury SUVs.

Today we had study abroad student orientation, which was a total joke. We all got to meet eachother, which was really nice, but other than that (and free food), it served no purpose. They didn't give us a tour of campus (not that we realllly needed it, as campus is pretty tiny), or tell us how to access our email or student portals, or anything else. Basically they were like "Welcome to Dubai. This is a different country and culture. Girls shouldn't ride in the front seat of a taxi. Good luck." We went to the beach, then came back and had a cookout on the front quad tonight, which was fun, and then went out for hookah with some new people. Classes start tomorrow and I'm less than enthused to get back into the swing of things, but its a necessary evil. I've heard from returning students that classes here aren't nearly as hard as in the States. That's good. I feel I'll learn more here from my travels and experiences than anything else.

I love and miss you all and hope everything is fabulous. Leave me comments so I feel popular, and so I know people are actually reading this.

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