DUBAI!!

It’s the little things about Irbid that I love. The music blaring from cabs and shops, the smell of roasting nuts and baking pastries, the overly friendly people... But it’s also the little things that get to me and make me really miss the U.S. The trash and cigarettes filling the streets, for example, the uneven sidewalks, the stench that emerges on a corner and lasts for blocks, the broken everything, or the excruciatingly slow internet, just to name a few. That’s why we spend our weekends elsewhere. Last weekend there were no trips planned for the group, so Brianna, Cassidy, Mike and I went on a very last minute trip to Dubai. We bought our tickets Tuesday and Thursday we were on our way to the UAE! Luckily, Brianna has friends there. ☺ We stayed with Ashank, who is a student at UW-Madison, but lives at home in Dubai over the summer, and his extremely welcoming family. His family is Indian, and his mother treated us to amazing meals and tea every day–we were spoiled! Their house is right on the Persian Gulf and the view was gorgeous! The water was so warm and the beach was beautiful I never wanted to leave. Now we’ve been swimming in the Atlantic, Pacific, Red Sea, Persian Gulf, and soon the Dead Sea and the Mediterranean…. Everything in Dubai is so nice, and clean, and big! The biggest mall, fountain, building, etc. It’s very, very hot though. Almost too hot even for me. It was 113 degrees and humid every day we were there. The architecture all over the city is really impressive. Nothing is boring or plain, and the best architects all over the world go there to design things. Every building has something special about it, even the malls. One mall is modeled after Ibn Battuta, the Moroccan scholar and traveler. He was known for the Rihla, (voyage), his account of his travels to the entire known Islamic world, as well as North and West Africa, Europe, and Central and Southeast Asia–the distance he covered was much greater than any traveler before him and he is still considered one of the greatest travelers ever. SO the mall dedicated to him is divided into sections representing his travels. There is a Persian hall, an Egyptian room, an Indian hall with a giant Elephant statue and the area dedicated to China has an entire boat. We went to the Palm Islands, (artificial islands shaped like a palm tree), and the aquarium in the Atlantis hotel there. Ashank was the best tour guide we could have asked for–extremely enthusiastic and ready with details about everything. We went out both nights, (and had to frantically shop for dresses to wear to the clubs there–our scarves and linen for once were unacceptable). The second night we drank giant, beachy drinks at a bar with a salsa band, before heading to an outside bar until the humidity got to us, and finally a club where we were at first denied for having American driver’s licenses, but let in after showing our school ids and our most convincing smiles. On Saturday we went to the tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa. There’s an interactive feature inside, where you can scan across the world and pick other tall landmarks, (the Empire State Building, Eiffel Tower, etc), and see how the Burj Khalifa compares. It shows a picture of the city and landmark you pick, then the Burj Khalifa will spring up next to it. At 2,717 feet it’s significantly taller than anything else.
Craving anything but pita, we went to Sushi, and it was delicious. It was a cute place too, and had a lot of different, creative rolls. Cassidy got the sushi sandwich– spicy tuna, egg roe and rice in little triangles. On our way to the airport we stopped at Dubai’s version of Chinatown and picked up sunglasses and soccer Jerseys for ridiculously cheap.
The flight to Amman was short, but the car ride to Irbid was long. Our friend Mohammad had his friend Nabil pick us up, because we didn’t get in until midnight and the buses don’t run that late. Nabil is a really nice guy, but was not in good shape that night. His father recently passed away, and he told us about it right when we got in the car, then proceeded to make the sign of the cross, (he’s Christian), and drive half the speed limit, and play this really slow, sad song on repeat, and not pay attention to the road at all. Cassidy, Brianna and Mike were asleep at this point, but I was very much awake and concerned. Nabil was clearly drifting off into his sad thoughts and not focusing on driving at all, and we were driving on edges of mountains, and frequently over the line on the side of the road, and then I realized he had been drinking, (he wasn’t drunk, but either way it was a bad situation). I kept asking him questions about where he was from, because every time I talked he perked up and snapped back to attention and the road, much to Cassidy’s annoyance when she had to wake up and translate for me. Soon he was bright and alert and that was even worse. “Rebecca, Rebecca do you like coffee? Let’s stop at this {really shady side of the road} stand!” Then the police came and we panicked but they didn’t do anything, just smoked outside. Then, “Rebecca, Rebecca this is a church! Let’s back up {in the middle of the mountain highway} and look at it!” Then “Rebecca, Rebecca, do you want some beer? You’re from America you must love beer!” After two hours, which should have been one, we were safely at our hotel, and exhausted. But Dubai was definitely worth it, and we’re going again in January!