Dubai U.A.E.

I'm finally back from my travels. It was such a fun 2 weeks! I spent about 5 days in Dubai (which is in the United Arab Emirates...on the Arabian Pennisula near Saudia Arabia for those that don't know) for vacation. Dubai is one of the coolest cities I've ever been too...it's extremely rich (it's the business capital of the Middle East) and makes America look old! It is definitely one of the fasest growing cities in the world. There is one area of town where there are at least 150 high rises under construction. I've never seen anything like it! By 2008 Dubai is supposed to have the tallest building in the world. It was so nice to be in a 'real city' again with nice paved 4-lane highways and driving on the right side of the road. The big thing about Dubai is all the shopping! There are tons of malls and one even has a ski slope inside it. CLICK HERE to see more pictures

Here I am in front of the famous sailboat-shaped Burj al Arab hotel on the coast of the Persian Gulf. It is the only 7-star hotel in the world and only costs about $1000 a night to stay there.

I went to Dubai with Christy and Kristin who both work at Heritage International School in Kampala. Here we are enjoying some good American food from Chili's! Eating at American restaurants was one of the highlights of our trip! They had Applebees, TGI fridays, Tony Romas, tons of fastfood (including Papa Johns which I was very surprised about) and even a marble slab ice cream place!

Desert Safari

We went towards the border of Oman and took a desert safari. One of the coolest expereinces of my life thus far! We rode in land cruisers and went 'dune bashing' a.k.a the roller coster that never ends. 45 mins of sliding and turning and hopping sand dunes was awesome, but made us a bit sick to our stomachs (some people in the other cars threw-up whenever we stopped). We had a neat Egyptian family in the car with us (husband, wife, and 2 year old daughter). They were very nice and taught us a lot about the culture too. We were taken to a big tented area where we rode camels, got henna tatoos, ate a traditional meal, and was etertained by a belly dancer.

I never thought I'd get to ride on a camel in the desert! When camels sit down it is scary....as you can tell from my face I screamed :)

Here I am drinking some strong arabian coffee where we had a traditional meal in the desert. After our meal (including tasty lamb kabobs) we were entertained with a belly dancer.

Dubai is famous for their gold souks (arabic word for market). It's supposed to be one of the cheapest places in the world to buy gold. We didn't buy any but had fun shopping for other suveniors and looking around. I can't believe this beautiful building is a 'market'! Much different than Uganda's markets :) This country is so clean, there are actually trash cans.....we missed seeing the cavaras (plastic shopping bags) everywhere. Here's Christy and Kristin doing a little window shopping.

Dubai is still rich in Arab culture although 80% of people living in Dubai are foreigners (particularly South Asian). Here you can see traditionally dressed muslim men and women in front of the mosque that was in one of the malls we visited. There are prayer rooms or mosques almost everywhere you go (malls, airport, restaurants) and the call to prayer is played over the speakers inside the malls (as well as outside from the mosques that are on every corner). Some women were fully veiled in a burqa, others only covered their heads. The women were dressed so beautifully and it was such a rich place that we felt poor in our jeans and t-shirts. While some people speak English, Arabic is still predominately used and all signs are in both Arabic and English. It was interesting to me to see such westernization along with such tradition.

Airport Madness....

Even though we left Africa to see some westernization, we booked our airline tickets in Africa (Kampala, Uganda) and of course we have a fun story to tell about our return home...cause 'that's Africa'. We arrived at the Dubai airport at 2am and checked in for our 4:45am flight. We were 'greeted' by people returning to different parts of Africa (Nigeria, Zambia, Ethiopia, etc) and all their STUFF (as you can sort of see in the picture). I have never seen so much stuff....people were checking like 5 huge boxes full of who knows what. We saw everything from generators, to car tires, to comforters, to huge stuffed lions...it was INSANE! There was even one lady who checked all her stuff in only to go out into the airport and buy more 'duty free' stuff and then she tried to bring it back to the counter to check in more luggage! I have never seen anything like this before in my life. The idea of waiting in a line is not a concept that is well understood in most of Africa so people were pushing us with their carts trying to 'cut' in front of us. One person got pushed so hard they fell down!

So, here we were 3 white, American girls with one suitcase apiece trying to to check in. After waiting an hour and a half we finally reached the counter only to find out that we really didn't have tickets on this flight! Aparently the Ethiopian Airlines office in Kampala did not confirm our return flight (and didn't tell us that we were supposed to have done that 4 days ago). We were told that we would have to call the airport at 6:30am and see if we could get on the next morning's flight (same time). So we ended up renting a car and going back to the guest house we stayed at to catch a few hours sleep. At 6:30am we called and were told that we could get tickets but we didn't receive an itinerary or anything...they just told us to come to the aiport at midnight to get the tickets (a little scary, but what can we do?). The next day we got to go back into Dubai eat at Applebee's, see more sights, and go to a mall and watch a movie while waiting for the clock to strike midnight. We arrived at the airport at 11:30 and waited for an hour, but thankfully we did get tickets and they were able to send us to Uganda instead of Nairobi, Kenya (we were going to take a bus back to Uganda cause it is so much cheaper...but much more dangerous). So then we went to check in this time at 1am for the 4:45am flight hoping to 'beat the rush', but we were too late. There were already like 100 people with their 50 billion bags/boxes trying to check in. Thankfully this time we just went to 'business class' cause we wanted to make sure that we really had tickets on this flight and we did so they let us check in. It was a pretty crazy 2 days (or was it just one?), but God really took care of us and blessed us with a free flight to Uganda and an extra day in Dubai! He works all things together for good!

Finally....After a year and four months...Starbucks!

I think we went to like 10 starbucks....it was amazing! It's not just the coffee that I love so much it's the atmosphere...the comfy chairs, the 'feel-good' music, and the smell of brewing coffee. There is NO PLACE like this in Uganda where you can just sit for hours and relax! So we definitley took advantage of it while we were in Dubai (well Christy wasn't too excited about it, but she was a great sport).

This Starbacks looks like it's outside doesn't it? Nope...it's in a mall (Ibn Battuta Mall named after the famous Arab explorer) and it's one of the coolest malls I have ever been to. There 6 different sections of the mall and each one has architecture from different countries (China, India, Persia, Egypt, Tunisia (which is where this was), and Spain). There were like 3 Starbucks alone in this one mall! Here I am enjoying my mocha coconut frappuccino....the African continent has no idea what they are missing!

Mombasa, Kenya

I spent the first week of my travels in Mombasa watching some MK's for another cluster's annual meeting. We had 5 boys (baby-4 years old). Aren't they cute? It was a lot of fun and of course it was an added bonus that we were on the beach :) I got to meet some new people serving in this region as well as hang out with my journeyman friends from Tanzania again. It took about 24 hours of driving to get there, but it was worth it...the Indian Ocean is so beautiful.

Traveling...

Just wanted to let you know that I will be traveling the next 2 weeks so I will not be posting. Please pray for saftey as I travel to Mombasa, Kenya (on the coast) to work with the children at some fellow "workers" annual cluster meeting and then to Dubai (United Arab Emirates) for vacation with some friends. Thanks. Sorry for the lack of posting these days, but pictures and stories coming soon.....

This is my new night guard, Fred, being baptized by Aloysious, the pastor of our Runyankore service at church. Fred was already a believer, but had never been baptized. He is an older man and seems to be a good guard which I am thankful for (I've had some not so good guards in the past) and now he has been attending our church. Praise God!