It looks like my Dad is going to have to fly half way around the world to get his fix of Krispy Kreme.
That's right. Krispy Kreme, the doughnut company (founded in my dad's home town might I add) has stopped making the Kruller. Stopped making the Kruller, except in Dubai apparently.

I took a photo to prove it.

Mike came to visit us in Dibba last night. We were at the beach when he arrived at our house. We got a call from one of our housemates.

Kent: "Mike brought us presents, they're on the kitchen table."
Curtis: "What, booze?"
Kent: "Better. Krispy Kreme."

So Dad, I couldn't exactly bring it home for you. It would definitely get stale and possibly moldy during the 8 days until I leave, and then the 10 days in France. So I did the next best thing. I ate it and took photos!

Only in Dubai will you hear your American friend yell to his German buddy "Yella Habibi!" Arabic for "Let's go, my love"

Nearly half of the buildings here are in various stages of construction, with cranes and scaffolding everywhere. The skyline is littered with cranes. We play the crane game as we walk through the city- who can spot the most. Do the cranes on super yachts in the marina count? Just construction cranes? I can easily count twenty in view as I walk two blocks.

Dubai lacks a grounded sense of culture. Its like a giant international airport in an Arab country. There are clues to tell you where you are, but everyone and everything is from all over the place. Your taxi driver speaks four, maybe five languages. You can buy groceries with three different currencies.

There is this one section of the main drag, along Sheikh Zayed Road, where the skyline is really weird and ominous. In Manhattan, the skyscrapers form this mass of skyline, surrounding each other to form a dense downtown. Dubai doesn't have that density. So many of the skyscrapers are pretty solitary. It looks really bizarre, a skyscraper surrounded by three and four story buildings. This one section of Sheikh Zayed Road is lined on each side by skyscrapers. But behind them are tiny single and two story buildings. When you drive down the road, its like driving through a gauntlet. I found a photo on the internet that shows how dramatic it is.



You find yourself using words and phrases in daily interaction that come from places you have never been, in addition to the place you currently are. I adopted the following words:
'posh' from the United Kingdom
'braai' from South Africa
'post' from Germany
and my most beloved phrase;
'yella habibi' Arabic.

For reasons out of my control, I spent an extra 24 hours in Dubai, which I definitely didn't complain about! Mike was "stuck" in Dubai for an extra day too, so we decided to just walk around aimlessly and see what we found. We walked around Deira, the neighborhood our boss Paul lives in and eventually wound up at the souqs and Dubai creek. I bought awesome hand made leather genie shoes. They're bright pink with silver rinestones and mirrors and have curled up toes. I'll try to post an awesome picture at some point.
We wandered into the Hindi district right by Old Dubai. We decided to be tourist-y and go for the obligatory camel ride. The owner and handler actually took my camera and took lots of pictures without me even asking! We only paid 20dhs (about $5) for a 10 minute ride around old Dubai. It wasn't a whole lot different than riding around on a horse, save the getting on and off part. Oh, and camels make crazy noises. I thought it was dying or something. They were these crazy gutteral bubbling gurgling noises. Creepy!

Oh, and I'm headed back there for two months in 2011. I'm going during February and March. Can't wait!

Last week we headed to Dubai for more exploring. Dubai is huge and we haven't scratched the surface. We went back to Deira to see the souqs again. On our way to Deira, we spotted an awesome looking Chinese restaurant and decided to try it. The restaurant was very traditional and had giant lazy susans on each table. We ordered food we hadn't heard of before. Micah got jellyfish and Jesi tried lotus seed and white fungus soup. The jellyfish was cut into small pieces, fried and served over noodles. The flavor and texture was similar to calamari. The lotus seed and white fungus soup was interesting. It was a very light, sweet broth with these large pieces of what we assumed was white fungus. It was very ruffle-y and a slimier version of boiled cabbage. Very interesting. The steamed mutton dumplings were amazing.
lotus seed and white fungus:

mutton dumplings


We headed to the spice souq, which was closed, so we payed one dirham to ride in a little boat across Dubai "creek." Its an incredibly busy salt water "creek" filled with boats carrying tourists on day long tours, people going back and forth across for work or play as well as lots of really really large dhows that make trips back and forth from India and Pakistan carrying goods back and forth. I loved the way the dhows looked so I took tons of photos.

a view of the creek before our boat ride-

Mike took a photo of us on the little boat ride

We headed to a bunch of old traditional souqs that were unfortunately closed for the day. Friday is like Sunday in the UAE. Pretty much everything is closed, especially at midday. But the camel was there! They have an area set up like a traditional nomadic camp with a traditional tent and various items like coffee pots and incense burners.

Mike hoping the camel won't spit on him....The owner actually came over and let us feed the camel palm fronds.

We headed to the old Dubai souq which was insane. There were TONS of souqs selling everything from cheap t-shirts and shoes to pashmina shawls and traditional clothing. I bought the most amazing pair of pants for 20 dirhams (around $5) They are striped and poufy with ties at the calves. I'll post a photo soon. Everyone calls them my circus pants. We bought shoes and clothes and haggled our butts off. We drank from coconuts and wandered aimlessly. Our landlord Ali met up with us to take us out. As promised, he took us to the Irish village. As soon as we walked into the Irish village, I felt like I was in Savannah or maybe some part of Ireland that was warm. There was a large outdoor area filled with heavy wooden tables and chairs sitting on cobblestone. The fronts of the restaurants looked like any Irish pub should. We ordered Guinness and Irish coffee and ate the most amazing fish and chips in the world. Seriously. It was a relief to speak English freely when ordering and eating comfort food. Afterward we headed to this really nice resort on a beach. The beach turned into a nightclub at night, with bars, music and dancing. On the beach are giant bean bags people lounge in to smoke sheesha. Even awkwardly dressed we had a blast. We didn't get home till after midnight. We're all hoping to explore more before we leave.

Feeling pretty brave, we took the bright yellow Tahoe into Dubai on Monday. The traffic in Dubai is insane, and the drivers are even more nuts. We headed to the area of Dubai called Deira, which is the older part of town where all the souqs (stores) are. We spent tons of time in the spice souq buying frankincense, vanilla, saffron pistachios, saffron and cardamom. We had street food and found an awesome shop selling traditional clothes and shoes from India.
Mike and Micah tried on the traditional Arab men's dress and I put on an abaya and a sheila. Then Jesi and I had way too much fun trying on handmade leather shoes from India. I tried on a pretty crazy pair, and bought a different, equally interesting pair.
The boys in their regalia-

The three of us-

check these shoes out-

The shoes I actually bought are a little less ridiculous. The ones above have the pointy, upturned elf-like tip. The ones I have are pretty pointy, but they don't have the elf look going. They're handmade out of leather in India. The weird thing is that they make both shoes exactly the same, there isn't a left or right, so they're pretty odd feeling until they're really broken in. I plan to get them nice and damp the first time I wear them to speed up the process.

After spending way too much time trying on fun clothes, we headed to a sheesha shop. In the states, the pipe is called hookah and the tobacco itself is sheesha. Here, you just say sheesha pipe instead of hookah. Mike bought a small sheesha pipe and several flavors of sheesha. Micah and Jesi bought a really big cool hookah and a couple of flavors. There was a great view of the Burj Dubai, the tallest building in the world, from the sheesha shop.

When we got home, they were eager to try out their new toys. They got both sheesha pipes going as well as some Omani frankincense. Omani frankincense is the highest quality and also the most expensive. It typically costs around a dirham per gram.

Several days ago we had our first day of work. We had a large group of 40 or so students from a local private school. Many of them were from the region with a few from other places like Australia and the United States. In the morning, they rock climbed indoors, took on the Jacob's ladder and did a low ropes course. After lunch, we lead them in a few initiatives. The kids are pretty much just like kids back home and did pretty well at all the challenges. Here's a few photos of our first group:

As most of you know, I left for the United Arab Emirates on February first. I flew from Raleigh to DC and then from DC to Dubai. North Carolina was cold, with a couple inches of snow and ice on the ground. I have lots of photos to upload, but I'm having problems with the internet here. Flikr, Google Chat and Skype are all banned. The blogspot up-loader won't load the photos. So far it looks like I can't upload any photos. This is extremely frustrating. I know there must be a way.
When I landed in Dubai, it was quite warm and humid. I flew United Airlines the whole way. I got really lucky and had a window seat on both flights. On the long flight, no one was seated next to me, so I could lay down and sleep. I was picked up at the airport by a hotel employee and taken to the Holiday Inn Express. Everyone thought I was a guy (the porter and the front desk) until I arrived because David had given them my nickname (Ali) instead of my full name. I stayed at the hotel for two nights. My second day they took me to a mall where I could people watch and get some food to eat and do some shopping. Wednesday morning I was picked up to go to the Dubai Women's College to meet up with Jesi, Mikah and Mike. We led local school kids through a full day program of indoor climbing, an indoor jacob's ladder, low ropes challenges and then initiatives. The program went over very well and the schools will be hiring David's company to do programs with even more kids in the future.
Then we drove 2 hours away from Dubai to our house. I thought we would be just outside of Dubai, but We drove through the dessert and I saw lots of camels! ( are actually in Oman. Dibba, Oman. We have a little house that's right next to a mountain and a short bike ride to a town with a nice beach and some shops. Our neighbors have donkeys and goats. This morning, we saw a goat high up in a tree eating leaves! The mountains are very strange looking and rocky. We took a long bike ride today to see the plantation where we'll be doing lots of programs, the beach and the small town. All the locals here are extremely polite and helpful. If I ever need help, I just ask. Men here treat us very well and with the exception of the airport, I don't get stayed at rudely. There is a large bouldering field, lots of sport routes, mountain biking and kayaking to do. The people I'm here with are ready to leave the internet cafe so I guess I'll sign off for now. Hopefully I'll be back in a couple of days and able to update you guys with a bit more detail. I plan to write it in microsoft word first so I can just copy and paste it here.
Look for another post in a couple of days!
Ali

I haven't posted in a while, because I wanted to post something new and interesting, but couldn't really come up with much. I've already done a gear list, a review, and a project so I was waiting until something interesting came up to write about. And now, something VERY interesting has.
In a week or so, I am leaving for Dubai. yes, that Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates. I'll be working for two months as a sea kayaking, backpacking and ropes course instructor. I am extremely excited to have this opportunity to travel for free and experience a place that is so radically different from anything I've seen before. I'll be leading girls from local Dubai schools and working with my friend Jessi, who I met through a mutual friend, worked with at Great Outdoor Provision Company as well as Pamlico Sea Base. They needed another female guide so she called me. Without her, I wouldn't have this opportunity!
I'll be documenting my adventures here on my blog. I'm planning to take tons of photos and keep a journal. There is a small internet cafe down the road from where I'll be staying so I'll be able to keep in touch.
I have lots of ideas about what I would like to do while I'm there, most of which are very vague, but I do know that I want to ride a camel in the desert! Hopefully I'll have an opportunity to do that and much more.