The trip over! And Dubai

The trip over to Uganda was pretty much AWESOME! It started out sad, of course, saying bye to my family and then waiting to get on the airplane by myself (and, by the way, I was basically taller than the airplane!). Anyway, then I found one of the other interns going to Uganda, Julia, and I felt much better. We flew to New York, and pretty much hung out in the airport for a loooong time. Of course, when I tried to listen to my ipod, I realized my headphones were broken. Thank god I was still in New York, so I bought some awesome Carolina blue ones to keep me company! I also read my Uganda guide book, trying to learn about Uganda’s history and all the awesome things that I hope I can do while I’m there (like going on a safari and hanging out with rhinos, hiking to a waterfall and exploring caves, and going on a two day rafting trip down the Nile!)

The next part of our trip was from New York to Dubai, which was a ridiculously long flight on a ridiculously awesome plane. I got my own touch screen TV with literally over 300 movies and a LOT of TV shows. I watched like 10 episodes of Friends, and I think I may have disrupted the entire plane by laughing so much I almost cried. I slept a lot under the roof of the plane that had a “starry night” theme, and it was good because I had been staying up late packing and everything. There was a camera under the plane, so we got to see below us the whole time, which was especially cool when we were landing in Dubai. It was the perfect farewell USA plane ride.

Dubai is pretty much the coolest place ever (although I was only there for like 12 hours). It sort of reminded me of Singapore, because it is a really big, really clean, really safe, and really wealthy city (not all of it of course). We got to our hotel just in time to take the night city tour, which was so cool, although I do wish I could have seen Dubai in the day too. We saw the tallest building in the world, which was actually really really skinny. I felt like I was looking at a gigantic needle! The architecture is definitely as awesome as I had heard. On our tour, we stopped outside the sailboat-shaped hotel, which happens to change colors and cost at least $15,000 per night! I got to put my feet in the Persian Gulf too! It was insanely dark, so I couldn’t see that much. I did however, see women swimming in burqas. I also collected seashells to give to people back in the US, since I thought it would be cool to have a seashell from the Persian Gulf!

We also drove up and down the palm tree islands (which are a bunch of man-made islands that form the shape of a palm tree if you look at them from above. I got to see them from the airplane, and it was AWESOME). At the end we stopped and took pictures at the Atlantis hotel, which has rooms that cost up to $36,000 dollars a night!! What. What?!? I was talking to the lady next to me on the bus about how that is more than most people’s yearly incomes in the US, let alone soooo much more than most of the world will ever earn in their lifetime. It sort of makes me mad, all of the excess and luxuries. I mean, is a $36,000 hotel room really necessary? There are people suffering and dying all the time; that money could be put to a much better use.

There are definitely some things I found interesting about Dubai, especially what our tour guide told us. Like the fact that only 20% of Dubai’s population are actually from Dubai and the rest are foreigners! That sounds so ridiculous, but I definitely believe it. Aside from the rich neighborhoods that we drove through, I felt like there was no one there. It was sort of an eerie feeling. I also thought some of their marriage laws were interesting, because local men are allowed to marry foreign women, but local women are not allowed to marry foreign men. And if a local man marries a local woman, the government gives them $25,000! I guess that is maybe to encourage population growth and mitigate foreign influence on the local population? Of course, I still don’t like it since there are different laws for women and men. But Dubai is definitely one of the more liberal places in the Middle East. When I saw a McDonalds next to a mosque, I realized there is probably a lot of tension between “westernization” and religion and customs.

Overall, Dubai was a cool experience, and I am glad I got to see it for myself. The only bad part was when I was trying to fall asleep alone in my hotel room, and my gigantic 50 pound backpack fell off the couch. It literally scared the living daylights out of me.