| | Moving to Dubai has been an amazing experience so far. First of all, after being in Armenia where there are very few western products and where there were so many things we couldn’t get, the choices here are almost overwhelming. Going into a grocery store feels like you are stepping into a store in America – everything is available you would expect to find back home; except here, the Brits, the Aussies, the Indians, the Pakistanis, the Kiwis – everyone can find just about anything they would expect to find back home. I guess just about anything in the world is available here. It’s pretty amazing. Jennifer was here for a little over a month visiting. She helped us explore the city, and since we had a visitor, we did some of the touristy stuff that we might not have done right away, like going on a city tour and taking in a desert safari. The desert safari was interesting. First they take you “dune bashing,” where in 4-wheel drive vehicles they drive you over the sand dunes. It was fun, although I think our driver took it pretty easy most of the time because a couple of our passengers weren’t really up for too much jerking around (I won’t mention any names). Then they took us to a camel farm where we saw camels and a falcon – oh yeah, and a dung beetle that was really pushing a piece of camel dung around. After that, we stopped on the dunes to watch the sun set and then headed to the Bedouin camp they had set up in the dessert. There we got to ride a camel, smoke some flavored tobacco in a shisha (that’s a water pipe), eat a buffet dinner and then watch a belly dancer. Many people got up and danced with her part of time, including my shy and reserved child, Claudia. What are we going to do to bring her out of her shell?! We also got henna tattoos. These are temporary tattoos that these very talented women can paint on at amazing speed. I don’t know everything about this custom, but I know in the Middle East and parts of India (maybe other places as well) women get these for weddings in elaborate designs on their hands. They also do this for special occasions, such as holidays. Speaking of weddings, Jennifer, Claudia and I got to go to a wedding. One of the strangest things was that none of us knew the bride or the groom, but we were invited along by one of my new colleagues. The bride goes to our school. It seems that it’s no big deal to go along if you are invited by another wedding guest – the more the merrier. These weddings are definitely different than western weddings. First, the women and men have completely separate parties. The actual vows or contract is carried out a few days before with some religious leader involved (most of the time) and I think filing some legal paperwork. The party we went to was in a large banquet hall. We all sat around at round tables of about 12 people each. We arrived around 8:30 p.m. or so, and it was on a weeknight. There was a lot of food and tea and Arabic coffee – no alcohol, of course. Then at around 10:30 p.m. the bride came in. She was wearing a very fancy, white, western-style wedding dress. They dimmed the lights and had a spotlight on her as she walked slowly around the room so that everyone could see her. Then she walked up some steps to walk slowly down a runway, like at a fashion show, and then onto a stage that was elaborately decorated with red curtains framing a sofa. She sat on the sofa, and then everyone went up in groups to greet her and have their picture taken with her. Because it was all women at the party, many of the women had taken off their abayas (the black robes they usually wear) and headscarves. You have probably rarely seen such over-the-top dresses and jewelry assembled in one place! Some of them were quite beautiful, although I don’t think there would be anywhere to wear them back home, except maybe the evening gown competition in some beauty pageant. Some of these were probably too much even for that. About an hour or so after the bride came in, certain music is played so that the women know that the groom and other men are about to come in. Many of the women covered themselves, but I was actually surprised at the number of women who didn’t. The groom came in with a group of men – I think one was his guardian (the bride and groom, as I understand it, were both orphans) – and then several guys his age. They went up to the bride, where he lifted her veil and kissed her on the check. Then the bride and groom sat together on the sofa and people went up to greet them again. We left around midnight while this was still going on. From what I’ve been told this was a comparatively simple wedding party. Sometimes there will be dancing and/or entertainment. If there is one thing there is no shortage of here, it is malls. Jennifer said she was surprised that she was actually getting tired of malls. There is the Mall of the Emirates, which is the one that has a ski slope inside. There is one that is built to look like an old traditional souk (market). There is one that has sections representing different countries conquered by someone or traveled to by someone – some historical figure whom I don’t know anything about. Anyway, it is really beautiful. If you’ve ever seen the Venetian casino in Las Vegas where the ceilings look like the sky and you feel like you are really in Venice – that’s what this mall is like. There is a Persian section where everything is done in tile – mostly blue. There is Indian section that has a life-size elephant (not real). There is a Chinese section that has a life-size Chinese boat. You get the idea. Even one of the ‘smaller’ malls near where we are staying right now has a small amusement park inside, complete with a roller coaster! We are currently living in a hotel apartment very close to my campus – close enough to walk to work before we got a car. We were supposed to move into a villa (house) where the person I am replacing lived. It had three bedrooms and a maid’s room, a pool across the street shared by about 12 villas, and a really pretty small yard with a palm tree and several large flowering trees. It was also about a 15 minute walk to the beach. We should have moved in at the end of last week, but when the guy from our school called to request some maintenance to be done, he got a notice from the company that owns it that they don’t want to rent to the school any more. This is becoming a problem in Dubai. Housing prices have gone through the roof, so the company can sign a new lease and probably get twice as much for the villa as before. We were all really depressed at this news. However, things have worked out okay. We got to see an apartment a couple of days ago that is really terrific. It has three bedrooms and a maid’s room, it is on the third floor, and it has a balcony that runs the entire length of the apartment. It has a really nice pool as well as an exercise room and sauna. It’s much newer than the villa, so it’s nicer and more modern in many ways. The villa was good in that we could have ridden bikes around there – it really felt like suburbia. The apartment is more in the city, with lots of shops and restaurants conveniently located around. We’ll be able to walk to a lot of places once the weather cools off. Also, they are building a metro system in Dubai, and there is a stop about a block away from the apartment. These are a lot of the conveniences close by that we enjoyed about living in Yerevan, Armenia. It’s also only about a 15 minute drive to the beach, so it’s not that much further away. The thing we will miss the most about the villa is having a yard, but at least there are some good trade offs. People from all over the world live here. Just in my department, the following countries are represented: India, Philippines, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Palestine, Lebanon, UK, Egypt and U.S. (me). I’ve read different figures, but approximately 75% of the population of UAE are expats from other countries. In Dubai, I’ve read that 90% of the population are expats! We are discovering, however, that not all expats are created equal, sadly. As part of the process to get your residency visa, you have to go to this hospital where they draw blood (AIDS test), take a chest xray (TB), and take a urine sample (who knows). Dubai gains almost 900 residents per month, so this is a very busy hospital with lots of waiting at the different stations. I went with Bill there last week – he is finally getting his residency visa (that’s another story I’ll have to tell sometime) – and we were amazed that if you are white, you don’t have to wait in any lines. Bill would try to wait in line, but some employee would come up and take him to the front of the line and say “no line, no line.” Even the other people waiting in line didn’t want Bill to wait in line, like they knew he wasn’t supposed to be there. Those waiting were almost all from India, Pakistan and the Philippines. I was amazed. In a part of the world where white people aren’t the majority population and aren’t the indigenous people, we get preferential treatment. What should have taken 2 - 3 hours took less than one hour. In spite of the convenience, it didn’t feel right at all. It made me feel sad and uneasy. Uneasy that we were treated one way at the expense of other people, and that there really wasn’t anything we could do about it. Sad that so many of my friends wouldn’t have been treated the way we were treated because they were either from the “wrong” country or had the “wrong” skin color. It made me think about a lot of issues – and about how this happens in a lot of places in a lot of different ways, but I’ve never experienced it so blatantly. This is a topic to delve into deeper at another time. On a lighter note and to summarize, we are as settled in as we can be until we move into our apartment. We stay out of the heat as much as possible, since it is getting pretty unbearable – especially in the middle of the day. Work has gotten quieter since 99% of the school is gone on summer vacation. I have some time now to sift through the mountains of information I got in May and June and try to make sense of it all. Claudia has been accepted into an American school, so she will be back in regular school in September – thankfully! Bill will start looking for employment soon. A company he used to work for, Ecolab, is here, plus there is a really large Ace Hardware store close to Claudia’s school that could be promising. We’ll see . . . and we’ll keep you posted. |
