Dubai

View my pictures of Dubai here.

Dubai was crazy. It’s literally a city rising out of the desert, in the middle of nowhere. It felt to me like an incredibly expensive combinatin of Vegas and Disneyland, and you can’t decide to deride it or be fascinated by it. Little bit of both.

A refugee woman I work with in Atlanta, Selwa, has extended family in Dubai, so her neice Reem and nephew Mohammed picked me up with a big red sign with my name. They took me all over the city and didn’t take me back to the hotel until 3 am - and we didn't have dinner until midnight, which is apparantly quite common here!!! I was starving after my long flight!

It was interesting hearing their perspective on the city and its development, as they were both born and raised here. They took me to the beach, which was beautiful- crystal blue water and the whiteness of desert sand. Then they showed me all of the ridiculous marvels of modern Dubai – that sailboat 7 star hotel is more surreal than you could imagine. Same with the tallest building in the world, the Palm island that extends out into the ocean where some of the world's wealthiest people have homes on individual islands shaped like palm fronds, and the ski resort inside of the mall, which you have to see to believe. It is literally a ski resort - big slopes, lifts, lots of snow, people in snowsuits, and outside it's 110. Crazy. Apparantly each person living in dubai uses 8 times more energy than anyone in the rest of the world. There are more malls than I have every seen in my life, each trying to outdo the others with their extravagance.

After the tour, they took me to this amazing Lebanese place with a spread the size of the table – fresh bread, salads, homemade hummus, incredible schwarmas and kebabs. And of course it's "harem" to thrown food away in Islam, which is incredibly difficult given the unending amount of food that I'm always served in Muslim homes and countries!

The next day I took a bus tour of the old city. I thought that I would be most interested in seeing the historic parts, thinking that they would be more culturally interesting - the old city, the mosques, the ancient markets, the old pearl diving area that put the city on the map, etc. However, most of it has been turned into tourist attractions and it's quite difficult to picture the city as it was - an old pearl diving village. Seeing the mosques was the highlight - the different architecture is really interesting and beautiful. But besides that, the crazy hotels and malls and skyrises are what was culturally interesting. A bit sickening, perhaps, but interesting nonetheless =-).