Jerusalem

Jerusalem!! Otherwise known as J-Ru, according to one of the girls who went there. Oh my gosh, it was amazing. I absolutely loved it and I am extremely glad that I went. Okay, so let me start at the beginning:

Paula, James (a grad student from GW who is in my arabic class), and I took a bus to the border between Jordan and Israel/Palestine. The Jordanians didn't give us any trouble, but once I got to the Israeli side, they gave me a ton of trouble. Paula and James got through fine, but they kept me waiting for an extra five hours! All because I had lebanese stamps on my passport and my name sounds arab. See, I asked not to have my passport stamped because if they stamp it I won't be able to go to Lebanon or Syria without getting a new passport. They were not too happy that I asked them not to stamp it and they decided to keep me there for a few hours. It was soooo boring. The best part was talking to this cute guy from Denmark, but that only took up about an hour of the waiting period. I was questioned too during this amount of time. They asked me things like, "what do your parents do? why did you go to dubai? why are you studying arabic? do you have any family or friends in Israel? what do you plan on doing in israel?" I was, of course, polite and sweet and they ended up not stamping my passport, but it was absolutely ridiculously waiting there forever.

Instead of typing a crap load about all we did there (we left wednesday morning, july 30th and returned on saturday, august 2nd) I will just describe the pictures above, which I hope gives you a decent idea of J-Ru.

The first picture is a view from the Mount of Olives. The forefront is a Jewish graveyard and the area behind the tree, I believe, is West Jerusalem. (Jerusalem is split between West and East. East consists of Palestinians and West consists of Jews and is cleaner. Just as a side comment I liked the East more than the West :) )

The second picture is of a pizza place we ate at twice. It's located in the Old City near the Austrian Hospice. The Old City is almost a completely different city within Jerusalem. Battlements from.....I'm not sure which century, surround it and there are four different quarters contained inside: Jewish Quarter, Christian Quarter, Muslim Quarter, and the Armenian Quarter. This was my favorite part of Jerusalem, and I would love to live there. The Jewish Quarter is extremely clean; there are lots of bagel shops; and you can see lots of people wearing traditional Synagogue clothing. The Christian Quarter--I don't think there are any Christians in the Christian Quarter besides the tourists. Anyway, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is located there and there are tons of Christian paraphenalia shops. The Muslin Quarter has some of the best souks/food I've ever seen. It's really cool to walk down the small streets and have people asking you to step into their shops or try their food. Then there is the Armenian Quarter. We're not really sure why the Armenians got their own quarter? It's nice, but there is no outstanding quality about it. So, the pizza place was awesome and they had the best lemon and mint drink ever. The food was relatively cheap, which made it even more attractive. The price of food in Jerusalem was ridiculous (ex. our first dinner was about $25 for just pasta and water).

The third picture is part of the inside of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. This church is extremely old and a huge holy sight for Christians. There are about five different Christian denominations who use different parts of the church (that number may not be accurate). I believe that one of the muslim emperors opened up the church to other christian faiths (besides Catholicism) such as Romanian Orthodox and Greek Orthodox. Also, the stone where Jesus' body was prepared for burial is located there and the rock where crucifix was hung is there. This was one of my favorite places in J-Ru. (side note: James and I had some rosaries blessed be a random, visiting French priest.)

The fourth picture is of the money exchange place where Paula and I got our shekels (about 3.5 shekels per dollar and 4.9 shekels per dinar). I put a picture of it here because the guy who worked there took a fancy to Paula. The first time we met him he purposely stared at Paula to embarrass her--it was hilarious :)

The fifth picture is also from the Mount of Olives (located outside the Old City). It basically shows the entire Old City, and the gold, shiny dome is the Dome of the Rock.

The sixth picture is of the Damascus Gate, which is the largest entrance into the Old City. Our hostel was located right outside the Damascus Gate. We, unfortunately, made the mistake of looking for our hostel inside the Old City when we first arrived. It was very tiring and we got hopelessly lost inside the Old City, which is how we found the money exchange place.

The seventh picture is of the Dome of the Rock, which is located inside the Temple Mount. It was so cool. The design on the outside (we were not allowed to go in) is so intricate. According to one of the guide books, a caliph had it constructed (691 AD) because he did not want muslims to be "seduced" by the church of the holy sepulchre. So, he made the building completely different from the Church--the church is very dark and somber whereas the dome is very bright and airy.

The next picture is of the Western Wall, which is located right next to the Temple Mount. For those of you who have not heard about it, it is an extremely holy place where you can place petitions in the wall and pray there. There's more history to it, but I don't feel like typing it up.

I hope this gives you an idea about jerusalem and some of the adventures there. Please post comments/questions!

Petra

I went to Petra this past Thursday, and it was ammaaaazzzzziiinnnggg! We left right after class and rented university buses/drivers to take us there. It was a three hour drive with a few stops, but it was worth it. Petra is huge, and they are still excavating a lot of it. We walked to the Treasury, which is one of the main attractions. Then some of us decided to walk to the Monastery. Bad and good idea. It was a ridiculous walk up 950 steps after an hour and a half walk just to get to the steps. I wasn't sure I would make it to the top. When we got to the Monastery we continued to walk for another ten minutes to see "the view." (This is in quotation marks because there were many signs along the way labeling it as the "View.") The view is this beautiful high point where you can look out at the mountains and valley. Those of us who climbed to the view (myself, Paula, Brett) basically ran to return to the visitor center before the Petra at Night tour we went on.

Petra at night involved walking to the treasury in complete silence with just candles to light the way. Then we sat in front of the treasury listening to traditional bedouin music and drinking sweet tea. It was quite relaxing.

(FYI: if you go to Petra and walk around for hours, try not to carry too much with you because my bags definitely gave me bruises. Also, history fact of the day: Petra was built by the Nabataens in, I think, the first century AD.)

Video: The View

Pic 1: The Treasury (famous from Indian Jones)

Pic 2: The Monastery

Pic 3: the lanterns at Petra at night

*By popular demand I have put up, not people pictures, but places pictures.

Camping in the Desert

I went to Wadi Rum and Aqaba this weekend with the University (University of Jordan) and most of the Miami U kids who are in Jordan. It was sweeeet!!!!! It took forever for the bus drivers to get us there because they kept stopping, but it was worth it. It was ridiculously hot and there were tons of ants, but the desert was beautiful. Some people rode camels, others went rock climbing,....I fell asleep in the tent. In the evening we watched students and other tourists awkwardly dance. And we ate this delicious dinner (some of the best meals--lunch, dinner, breakfast--I've had in Jordan so far). Unfortunately, one of the bus drivers was being a bit too forward with the foreign girls, but oh well. He dragged us out onto the dance floor multiple times.

*aside: a little bit about the bus he drove- I would like to quote one of my friends from class, "It looks like a 70s porn bus." It really did too. The seats were upholestered with this ugly green and brown fabric, a carpet with tassels was hanging from the window, and, of course, there were many poles.

We drove around the desert in truck (and by "we drove" I mean we had drivers). My groups driver was sweet. He totally held down the pedal with something and stuck almost his entire body out the door. Another group had a 10 or 12 year old kid driving. One of the students has a really good picture of him. Some of the highlights of the day: watching the sunset and hearing about my friend getting proposed to by some guy she had just met. Also, it was just really cool being in the place where Lawrence of Arabic was filmed; I love that movie.

The next day we drove to Aqaba, which is a resort town along the Red Sea. Four counrties meet there: Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel/Palestine, and Egypt. We used the facilities at the Movenpick resort, which was absolutely beautiful. I didn't really explore the city, but I did hang out at the beach and pools for most of the day. Now, I'm going to stop boring you with my writing and post some pics!

The first picture is of the tents at Wadi Rum. The second is me and a random camel we found (we actually passed wild herds of camels, as we were driving....are they called herds?). The third is of the sunset. The fourth is of, what looked like, the first train ever made. The fifth is of the hotel in Aqaba.

pics from last post

The top picture is part of the famous mosaic map in Madaba. The middle picture is an internet picture of the Palace and the bottom picture is me (of course) in the royal cemetary.

the king's palace, the american embassy, and other things...

The King's Palace! well, one of them anyway.....It was really cool. We visited Raghadan palace, which I think was the first palace built in Jordan by the king in the 1920s. They had two history teachers give us the tour and we got to go to all the state rooms and sit on couches where the King sat and where foreign dignitaries sat. There was a lot of pride and history of Jordan contained in the palace. The guides basically told us that the history/founding of Jordan is contained there. It is simply decorated except for the gifts that people have brought for the kings, which are usually made of gold. We got to see a racing cup awarded to King Hussein (King Abdullah's father) when he raced against Nixon. The palace was, of course, heavily guarded, but we did not have any problems getting in. One of the military guys was our......i know this isn't the right word, but he was basically our babysitter: rode in the bus with us, followed us from room to room, escorted us out, etc. Unfortunately I do not have any pictures of the palace because we were not allowed to take cameras, but I did get to take pictures in the royal burial area. The imam allowed us to take pictures and to go in without our hair covered and we even got to pray with him if we so desired. (just as a side note: everyone here loves king hussein, who basically built jordan, and his son, king abdullah II, is liked but they like king hussein better)

We also got to visit the U.S. Embassy--one of the students set up the visit for us. It wasn't quite as exciting/pretty as visiting the palace, but it was still very cool. The embassy is also heavily guarded; I had to chug a small bottle of water I accidently brought in with me, but it was cool. We didn't get to tour the embassy, but we did have the opportunity to talk with people in the public and foreign services (US Aid, Political, and Economic areas). Unfortunately I don't have any exciting stories about the embassy because we mostly just sat in a room talking to the aforementioned people. It was informative, and honestly, it was kind of nice to be in America for just a few hours. That sounds horrible, I know, but I haven't seen anything truly american (besides people) in months. I didn't think I'd miss it, but I actually kind of do. Okay, no more sappy crap. I couldn't take a camera to the embassy either so I don't have pics of it :(

So, before I go to Wadi Rum (the desert!) and Aqaba (seaside resort!) with the University this weekend I want to describe my last school trip to a city called Madaba and Mount Nebo. I think all of the Miami students, except one, and a bunch of other students from the university went on a university bus to see Mount Nebo, which is where Moses was supposed to have been given a glimpse of the Holy Land and where he is supposed to be buried. I could kind of see Jerusalem, Jericho, and the Dead sea from the mountain, but it was really hazy out so I could only make out blobs and point in the general direction of things. Unfortunately, our guide from the university didn't know anything about the history there and the site was under construction :(

Madaba is a christian/muslim town with tons of mosaics and churches. One mosaic is particularly famous because it is supposed to be one of the first maps ever made. Again, our guide stunk, but the church where the map was contained was absolutely beautiful. It's a Greek Orthodox church, St. George, and the map is actually on the floor, which is totally cool. I'm sorry I don't have more details, but it really wasn't that exciting. I will hopefully have better stories after this weekend.

Ahh! I will have to post pics another time because blogger won't let me right now, and I must go get ready for a bedouin wedding we're going to =) I'll try and get back online sunday and put up tons of pics/stories.

The Dead Sea and Jerash

The Dead Sea was amaazzzinnngg. I had so much fun (and I actually got a slight tan--yay!). It is such a strange sensation, floating in the Dead Sea. It's almost like the water is pushing against your butt whenever you try to sit or swim. It's also really awkward when you flail around. The water tastes disgusting, which is not suprising, but I thankfully didn't get any in my eyes. We (Paula, Brett, Alex, two French girls, and I) took taxis to and from the Amman Public Beach (the Dead Sea resorts are way too expensive), and we basically spent the day there. You can rent towels and eat in the restaurant (buffet style) and swim in the pools they had available. I didn't spend too much time in the actual sea, but I did spend a lot of time in the pools. The weird thing is that the water of the dead sea doesn't look that different from regular sea/ocean water. I think I was expecting to actually be able to see the salt. The sand at the bottom of the water, near the shore was interesting though because it was really hard and a white-ish color from the salt. Unfortunately, we didn't get a chance to see the baptismal site near the dead sea, but we might make another trip to the Dead Sea before we leave.

So, this past Tuesday I went to Jerash for the Jordan Music Festival to hear Elissa, Omar Abdalat, and Georges Wassouf. It was awesome! The concert was in this roman amphitheater and it was packed with people. There were people with lebanese flags (for Elissa), Jordanian flags and signs (for Abdalat), and heart shaped pillows (for Wassouf). I kid you not, the guys had heart shaped pillows and t-shirts for Georges Wassouf (who is also Lebanese). They knew all the songs for him, which is good because I'm not sure Wassouf could remember the words to his songs. He, according to multiple sources, gets drunk before he sings. That's the only way he'll do it. They also played some Abdel Halim Hafez and Fairouz songs, which everyone knew the words to, which should be strange because those are singers/songs from the 60s and 70s. Omar Abdalat is true Jordanian (no mixed background), which made Saleh really happy. He sang a song for Palestine, which apparently ruined his career. Everything revolves around politics in Jordan (and Lebanon). Also, I've heard on the grapevine that most Jordanian singers sing about the army and different areas of Jordan, so love songs are hard to come by. By the way, nine girls out of the 11 girls who came on this trip went to the festival. Saleh and Tawfiq (one of the administrators at the University of Jordan) came with us and basically served the function of bodyguards. Whenever some guys bothered one of the girls they would be there to look mean and scare them off. Oh, I forgot to mention: Saleh got us through all the lines at the festival by saying that we were American students from the U.S. Embassy. For all of you who have never heard me talk about Saleh, he's our Arabic prof from Miami who just happens to be Jordanian.

Also, the king/his represents were at the Festival. They had special tents set up away from the main amphitheatre area, and a million guards were sitting in front of the flaps.

Random note: I love speaking in Arabic here because all the men peg me as lebanese because of the accent I have when I speak in dialect, which automatically makes me cute. And therefore gets me better service :)

The top two pictures are of the roman ruins and elissa at the Jordan Festival. The second two pictures are at the dead sea. The tents in the background of the pic with me in it are bedouin tents. Bedouins bascially puts tents wherever they want. There are some near the two major malls in Jordan. It's kind of sad because, if you think about it, all this land used to be their's to live in and now there is all this commercial stuff.

I hope this is enough writing/pics for now. Next time I'll talk about our visit to the palace :)

jordan pics

Since I'm running out of time to post (Gloria Jeans closes at 12am and I still have homework--ahh!) I'm just going to put up pics, but I have plenty to write about because we visited the Dead Sea this past weekend.

I made it to jordan

So, I realized that I hadn't posted in a while and decided that it might be a good idea to let everyone know that I made it to jordan. Jordan is ridiculously different from dubai. Most people dress more conservatively, and you will definitely get comments in Arabic in certain areas if you look the slightest bit foreign. Most Muslim women in dubai will wear (and forgive the un-technical terminology) the long black coverings, but here, most wear these floor-length suit coat looking things called (I think) jalaleebs. Unfortunately, I won't be able to put any pictures with this post because I forgot my camera.

My apartment is extremely different from my dorm in dubai. We don't have a stove, we kind of have a fridge. The water is solar heated so the best time to take a shower is in the afternoon. There are cockroaches and we do not have internet access (which is why I am sitting in a Gloria Jeans, using the internet).

I actually got to use my Arabic today! We (me and some Miami peeps) went to a souk in downtown Amman and the shopkeepers that we actually talked to pegged me as Lebanese right away. I asked how and they said it's the way that I say "yes" in Arabic. I'm going to try and pass for jordanian, but I'm not sure it's going to work. I promise that the next time (soon) I post I will have pictures.

AUD

School is coming to an end, and finals suck as usual. I only have one left, though!

I think you guys would laugh if you could see how much students get away with here. They complain ten times more than we do (which is saying a lot) and they do less work. I know it's the summer session, so that may factor in to how much the students care about work, but still. Grades are also extremely inflated here, and none of the teachers are willing to fail their students. Which reminds me: professors are not called "professor" here, he or she is either sir or ma'am, respectively. It took me a while to get used to that--it sounds really formal at first.

I'm not sure anymore because I've been here too long, but I think that paper is bigger here. As in, I don't think they use 8 1/2 x 11 sheets, but something slightly larger.

Most students commute from Abu Dhabi or Sharjah (each about an 1 hour away without traffic). There's also an American University in Sharjah, which I've never heard of before, but they have classes that are separate for girls and boys. At AUD, they acclimate the students to the "american" environment so that they get used to taking classes in mixed company. The students themselves aren't that different from students at home, except that many of the girls here are already married. One of the Iranian girls I met in my Arabic class got married at 17 to an older man. They are in love (according to the gossip grapevine at AUD). Another girl (Indian) is engaged to be married next year, but she wants to get her MBA so that her fiance can say she has an MBA. However, she won't actually ever use that MBA because in her culture, it reflects poorly on the husbands ability to provide if the wife works.

Please tell me if I'm boring you with these random details. For now, I must go study for my Finance exam....wish me luck!

details

I've realized after reading some of the other students blogs that I definitely have not talked about half the things that I could. So, before I depart from Dubai, I will try to give more detail about the goings-on here.

Some of the prettiest architecture in Dubai is invested in the malls. Each mall has a different theme. I've already told you about Mall of the Emirates (ski dubai), but there are so many more to cover. Ibn Battuta, as the name suggests, follows the journey of the Muslim explorer of the same name, which means that each section of the mall is named after a place he visited i.e. China Court, Egypt Court, etc. Wafi mall (where I went to eat for my birthday) has an ancient Egyptian feel to it with pyramids and hieroglyphics; everything is ridiculously expensive there. Mercato mall has more of a Spanish feel to it with extremely pretty architecture.

The burj al-arab (the boat) is, of course, one of my favorite buildings, but the burj dubai (tallest building in the world) is kind of ugly. I wish i had time to take the elevator up to the top, though, because it would be cool to see the entire city laid out before you. You would think that when you fly in at night you would be able to see all the lights and stuff, but the smog is so thick here that you can't see anything until you get really close to the ground.

Taxis are really clean here compared to other cities. Every singly one is metered and prices aren't too bad. There is a 3 dirham starting price, which jumps to 20 dirhams when you take a taxi from the airport. There are also lady taxis that are called pink taxis, which operate from 4pm to 3am in case you do not feel comfortable taking a regular taxi.

Unfortunately, I must be off to study for finals, but I'll post more about my final impressions/thoughts about dubai and the university soon.

Lebanon!!!

Oh my gosh! Lebanon was amazing. I absolutely loved it, and I felt, for the first since I've been in this side of the world that I am in the Middle East. If anyone is your family is Lebanese, then you are automatically Lebanese, regardless if you've ever been there or not. Pratically everyone speaks French, Arabic, and English. I used more Arabic there than I have in Dubai. And I got to use my French! (especially at the airport, where I mostly spoke in French). The farther away you get from Beirut, the less English you see and the more French and Arabic there is.

I also loved that everyone on the airplane from Dubai was extremely excited to be arriving in Beirut. I think there were three non-Lebanese people on that flight. The pilot kept pointing out landmarks once we started flying over Lebanon. The contrast with the flight returning to Dubai was hilarious. The plane was almost empty, no one was excited, etc.


I didn't get to stay in Beirut much, but what I did see was, of course, beautiful (I'm not biased at all ;p ). And I had my haircut there at this ridiculously nice salon, which was really cheap compared to what it would have been in the states. $1 in Lebanon gets you 1500 lira, but you can pay for stuff in dollars and they won't give you evil looks. Everyone was extemely nice (except for this one army guy in the airport.)

Unfortunately, I wasn't there long enough to go sightseeing and show you guys the really cool pictures, but I took what I could. There are some pictures of my grandparents house and the town they live in, and there are pictures of what the mountains/towns look like. The weather, by the way was absolutely beautiful--clear, warm, not humid (unless you're in Beirut). It was refreshing, and the food of course was amazing. I think I gained 10 pounds from eating so many sweets from the sweet shop. Anyway, I hope that's enough detail for now, but post/facebook/email any questions.

finally, a post!

Hey all! Sorry it has taken me so long to write a new post. Life just hasn't been exciting for the past week--we had midterms, ugh. I did go to the beach yesterday, and it was absolutely beautiful. The sky is actually blue, instead of this milky blueish-white, when you're near the water. Unfortunately, there were some creepy workers staring, but whatever, it was still fun. (The second and third pictures are from the public beach in between the Hilton and Sherton hotels in Jumeirah.)

The first picture is of the people I hang out with the most. On the far left is Alya: she is half English and half Iraqi, but she lives in Qatar and goes to AUD regularly. Isabely is next and she is from the Dominican Republic, but she goes to school in Florida. Unmoal is next to her and she is from West Virginia but is originally Pakistani. The girl in betweem Unmoal and I is Kristen. She is from Colorado, and we have Arabic class together. By the way, in this picture we are at an Iranian restaurant in Souk Madinat Jumeirah. If you every get the chance to try Iranian food, do it! It's ridiculously good.

A note on what things are called in Dubai:

Cellphones do not exist, they are mobiles (pronounced mo-BILE, not mo-bill).

You can not get anything "to go," they will give you a funny look if you say it. But it is correct to say "take away."

No one understands you if you say "I'm from the states or the U.S." You have to say "I'm from America."

Coca Cola does not exist here, I swear. You can only get Pepsi, and if you say you want a coke then they will ask you if pepsi is alright.

Hmmm.....that's all I can think of at the moment.

Next weekend I will be in Lebanon!!!!

So I had an awesome birthday yesterday. After class, the girls took me to the old gold souk. We wanted to ride the ferry across Dubai Creek to get to the souk, but, unfortunately, we left during rush hour so we went straight to the souk instead. (that was not a fun ride, the cab drive jerked us around a lot with sudden stops and it took an hour to get there). The gold souk was amazing; it had everything you could possible want in gold. A lot of the pieces looked like art, for example several of the shops had shirts made of gold. Unfortunately it was really hot and humid last night, so we left early and went to the Wafi mall. Wafi is an up-scale mall decorated in an ancient Egyptian style. I had Italian food (pumpkin ravioli.....it was really good) and the creepy waiters sung happy birthday to me. Some of the girls had shisha (hookah, but everyone calls it shisha here) and dessert and then we returned. All that took 8 hours because we had to take cabs everywhere. I'm fairly sure that "rush hour" here lasts from 4:30 to 8:30pm--it stinks.

I am hoping that one of the girls will put up her picture of all of us on Facebook so that I can point out who the girls are. My picture of us came out blurry :( It was a relaxing night and I had so much fun with them. (P.S. the study abroad guys called to make plans with me, but I was already taken for the night :) -- Apparently, one of them, who I haven't met yet, is from Michigan and knows people from Miami.) Anyway, I hope you had a nice memorial day and I'll try to put up more pictures soon.

to expand upon food and other things...

Since I still haven't don't anything exciting (but I will on Monday) and in answer to some posted comments:

I have not seen the tallest building in the world yet, which is still not finished. I haven't been to the main downtown part of the city really. There are a ton of things to do here so that's not surprising. I do see the Burj Al Arab almost every day because the main roads pass by it so often. A suite's starting price in the Burj is $25,000!

Food is actually really cheap here. A dinner could cost anywhere from 30 AED (dirhams) to 120 AED, which translates to about $8.25 to $33. It can get more expensive, but I try to avoid those places. Like I said before, you can have practically anything you want here. For example, in the past week I have eaten moroccan, indian, lebanese, iranian, and american food. It kind of wreaks havoc on your stomach, but it's so good.

The major supermarkets are Geant and Carrefour (French Walmarts, basically), and they are also fairly cheap. Any fruit from the states will cost about the same as it does in the U.S. Anything that is locally grown (meaning from the Middle East) is cheaper. The supermarkets are located in the malls mostly and so far I have been to two malls-Ibn Battuta and Mall of the Emirates. Ski Dubai is located in Mall of the Emirates. The pictures above are of Mall of the Emirates and they are of just one side of the mall; it is much bigger. The big silver thing in the background is the top of the slopes in Ski Dubai. I am hoping that I will be able to take a picture of the inside, but I am not sure security will let me. The other person with me in the picture is Nidhi, a fellow Miamian, whose parents live in Dubai.

Tomorrow is my birthday! and I will hopefully have exciting pictures and activities to share with you.

(*I hope this is enough detail for those of you who asked for more ;) )

Moroccan dining

Unfortunately, I don't have anything exciting to report, but I do have some food comments to make =) The food is amazing; anything from basically any country is here. The only thing I haven't tried is food native to the Gulf region, but I am not sure exactly what that is. Lebanese food is big here, so when we go to restaurants I actually know what some stuff means. Last night we went to souk madinat jumeirah, which is this -posh place with traditional shops and tons of restaurants. It even has a man-made creek that you can take boat rides on (almost everything here is man-made, half the beaches didn't exist until they drained the land to make more room). Anyway, I ate at a Moroccan place, which was amazing, and the waiter brought live entertainment to us as were eating.

Side note* I ordered merguez, which is a type of sausage, and the only way I knew that small piece of information was because a certain French professor took points off of my presentation last fall because I pronounced the work incorrectly. You must remember this is Janine writing, and of course I'm going to include something about school ;)

I went on a desert safari on Friday, which was amazing. We rode the dunes in 4x4s (thankfully our driver went easy on us and didn’t do some of the crazy things the other drivers did i.e. drive down really steep dunes). I even went sand surfing, which is where you slide down the dunes on a snowboard. Unfortunately, there aren’t any good pictures of me because I did it at night :(

We were planning to spend the night in the desert, but it didn't quite work out that way. We were they only eight people who wanted to; everyone else left. Okay, let me clarify, after driving on the dunes, they take us to a camp site where there is food, bellydancing, henna, etc. There were a lot of people, but they all left after the food and entertainment was done. We decided that we would stay the night despite being the only ones. Unforutnately, they turned the lights off at 11pm , so we could not play cards or anything really. We hung out outside the campsite on this hill until about 3am when we finally asked the drivers to take us back. But we didn't go back to the university we went to McDonald's. There is more to this, but I don't want to make this post too long. Suffice it to say that we got in at 4:30am after eating at McD's and stopping at the boys' place.

First Week in Dubai

Dubai is ridiculously awesome. You know how they always say that the city is so wealthy and people throw away money because they have so much more to replace it? It's true! Dubai is hard to describe--it's new, it's fast-paced, it's expanding, and there are tons of expatriates here.

(pic above is of the AUD campus)