Running out of time!!

Since our trip to the Palm, things have been moving at supersonic speed.

We’ve had to wrap things up with the professors that are leaving, trying to get the grades finalized and all. We have officially decided we don’t need sleep, and are running on a couple of hours a night, just so we can work and go out! Hahaha

The weekend that just passed was great and outdoorsy, I got my tan on! (not that I need to do any such thing). Thursday night was a birthday of one of the students on residence, we went to an Italian restaurant, and then made our way to the movies. We decided to watch.. LOL I can’t even remember the name of the movie.. PAUL! That’s what it was.. it was about some alien trying to get back into space. It was funny at parts, but they censor a lot of the movies here, so sometimes they seem really choppy.

Birthday Party

Friday we woke up early and went to this corporate event. Waterloo and Bax Consulting was one team and we met a lot of Canadian teachers and engineers that work in Al Ain (we went there .. see posts below haha).  It was nice to meet people from home! Anyways a lot of us had no idea how to dragon boat race, so we had a quick tutorial and..off we went. It was so fun; we did 200 m I think, and it should take like a minute to do. It was an intense workout though because you have to row so fast!

That night I founded the suburbia of Dubai.. Arabian Ranches. It’s a lovely place but it’s like a mini city.. everything is there, you never even need to leave the compound. I got to have lovely home cooked meal at my aunt’s house and I began my goodbyes for the trip.. sadly.

Saturday was our day with our Dubai Dad (Barry). We went over to the Rotana hotel and hung out at the pool then walked to the Satwaa souks later at night, I’m pretty sure we walked like 5 km EASILY. It was very tiring, but we got our shopping done. These “souks” were the places I hated going to as a kid in Saudi; it’s strange that here I am 10 years later, willingly going there for a whole day (sorry for all the tantrums mom, love you!).

At night we went with some of the professors to Jamie Oliver’s restaurant at Dubai Festival City. The food was good, but nothing extraordinary, the service was not good, they didn’t have lemon mint juice, and they didn’t allow takeout!  They didn’t allow takeout was the major problem.. if you didn’t finish your food you basically pay 100 aed for a third of your meal. They said that it’s for safety .. chances of food poisoning when you reheat food and stuff.. BLAH BLAH. I want my food to take home.!!!! Overall, I wouldn’t go back, but it was a good experience.

Sunday was boring!!!!!!!!  I just did work till sooo soo late, 4 am, see I do work sometimes.

Monday I got some more of my shopping done for mom and dad! Tuesday I went back to Arabian Ranches to another family friends’ house. I forgot how funny they were.. good company. After that I headed to Barasti, which is this bar/pub by the beach, they have couches and tables at the beach, so we hung out there enjoyed the light drizzle and headed home.

Yesterday we also said our goodbyes to Professor Knight. It was really sad; he is the first one of us to head back. He had taken so much care of us when we were here, buying us liquid milk instead of the powdered one for our tea and coffee, taking us to Abu Dhabi, driving us to dinner, giving us all his travel books, and giving me the mini coffee maker haaha. I think we were very lucky to have such a great group of people here, and we really took advantage of it with all our social events at work.

Today.. I am flying to Oman, I’m very excited! Going to stay with some family friends for the Oman weekend (thurs, Friday). Then I have a couple more days in Dubai till my trip to Pakistan. I’ll be home so soon!

<3