UAE NAtional Day weekend

Living in a country ruled by a Sheikh has its benefits. He decides radomly that some days are holiday, like Thursday for example. The UAE celebrated its 40th birthday on Friday ae we got Thursday off to celebrate. Yay!

Wedesday was the day the we celebrated at the school. There were camels to ride, Hena painting, traditional tents, music, and dancers. The kids had a wondeful time and it was really fun to see them enjoying all the festivities.

Thursday I celebrated by going knockoff shopping to Dubai with 2 ladies from school. We went down to the main area in Dubai where all the knockoffs are sold. We parked and not even 2 minutes later a man approached us "Purses, purses, are you looking for purses?". We followed him up to his sketchy apartment filled with purses, sunglasses, and the like. There were LV, Chanel, and all of those big names that I don't really care much for. I was pretty excited by the knockoff Raybans though.

We continued down to the other shops. Most of them selll their purses in a regular shop, except for the "high class" ones of the season which are illegally sold upstiars or behind secret walls that move. It was a pretty neat experience. I didn't buy aything because I am going to Turkey in 2 weeks, but there were a number of things that caught my eye. I especially liked the Mulberry purses. fun!

After knockoff shopping we headed over to Global Village. It is a place in Dubai where there are mini markets from a buch of different countries. I could've spent so much money there. I really liked India, Jordan, and Turkey. It was exciting to see different food and souvenir items. I am so excited to go to Turkey now because I wanted to buy everything in the tent! It was freaki awesome. I would defiately go back to Global Village.

We rushed back from Global Village and went straight to Aloft in Abu DHabi so that we could watch the fireworks from the rooftop bar. We got there 15 minutes too late, though and ended up missing them.

TO make up for missing the show, we went to Tim Hortons and onto the light show at the Grand mosque. IT was fantastic! They changed the scenes on the mosque and it was really cool to watch. It looked even more Grand than usual!

Friday was more of a usual day. I wet to Church and then we wet down to the Corniche to celebrate National Day. We got there just after 5 and met some of the workers from the school. We walked through the crazy crowds for a few hours. Apparently its mostly the Indian and Pakistani workers who go to the Corniche to celebrate. I stood out like a sore thumb. It didn't help that I was wearing a UAE coloured cowboy hat and scarf, carrying a flag. There were Indians stopping to take pictures of me like crazy. I even told a few of them that I expect 5 dirhams in return for a picture. It didn't work though. I ended up yelling 'no' at them in order to get the crowd to go away. It was ridiculous. We roamed the streets until we found a nice spot to sit in the sand. We waited for over 2 hours for the fireworks to come on.

It ended up that there were no fireworks. We sadly decided to give up and go home. Walking through the crowds was crazy. There were people running around with silly string and spray snow. It seemed fun at first, but they liked to run up to people ad spray it right in their faces. It seemed like they were aiming for people's eyes. Sometimes it feels like many of the people here are just so arrogant and priveleged that they are intent on proving their status. It was a bit scary to be walking around and trying to avoid getting blasted in the eyes. There was also crazy traffic and backfiring cars going off all over the place. I was very happy to find the safety of our car, which we then sat in for an hour trying to get around the block and back to the main road.  It was quite entertainig to watch the chaos ensuing arouf us, but I don't think I will be sticking around for the show if I am here next year. It was woderful to leave the city and find the comfort of our little villa.

Today is Saturday and I am ejoying some quite time in my pj's to get caught up on work and to relax. Yay for long weekends!