Let it Rain, Let it Pour

So yesterday we got not only rain, but a thunderstorm.  I love it when it rains at home and I didn't realize how much I missed the rain until yesterday.  Earlier that morning, it was sprinkling, but not too bad, so me and a friend, Danna, walked down to the little shopping center, Matajir.  It's not that big, it has a Carrefour, McDonalds, Shakespeare and Co, and a bakery, among other things.  We were getting groceries and then stopping by the bakery to get some fresh homemade Manakheesh.  It was very good.   When we turned to head back to the university, it was pouring buckets full from the sky.  We watched it just puddle outside for a few minute.  Around the entrances to buildings and then even on the ground between buildings in our academic quad(ish) there are these large tiles.  So the water was starting to create large puddles on these tiles and not soaking into the ground.  Slowly the water started to building up and the automatic doors were open for some reason and so the water was slowly piling up from the outside and spreading indoors.  It was a mess. 

We eventually were able to call a taxi and get back to the dorms, only slightly drenched.  On the way back though, the taxi was driving and sending up these huge sprays of water from where it collected on the road.  I guess rain is enough of a commodity to mean that not all roads are made with good drainage systems.  I heard Sheik Zayed road, which goes into Dubai, can get really bad at times from water build-up.  As we passed onto campus, right beyond the gate, there was enough of a dip, that the water was collected in just a big puddle and was sloshing over the sides of the curb.  I wished I had my camera to take a picture at that point.

This weekend is also National Day Weekend.  So we have Sunday and Monday off from school.  It's a four day weekend, yay!  Although I've been asking some of my classmates if they have any great plans and most say no.  This weekend is being used as a weekend to catch up on sleeping, eating, and studying.  Unfortunately this weekend falls around the time for a second round of midterms.  I myself have a midterm coming up this week and then next week and then a paper due the following week, etc. until the end of classes, which is around the time of the new year.  It's January 7th in all actuality.  The end of the semester is coming closer and either some of friends are counting it down or avoiding considering the last day of classes.  I'm somewhere in the middle.

Zoo, Zoo, Zoo, we're going to the zoo...

So this past weekend was another three day weekend to enjoy.  It was the hijra holiday on Thursday, which is the first day for the Islamic year.  So despite upcoming midterm and other homework overloads, myself and another friend, took a trip to Al Ain in the Abu Dhabi emirate.  It was an adventure of itself.  We originally planned to stay until later evening, but ended coming back early.

So we took public transportation which was old, but air conditioned.  It was thirty dirhams to get to al Ain.  My friend thought we were getting stares, but I mean she's tall and I'm really pale which is one reason we stand out.  We sat in the ladies only sections, but there was this kid sitting in the row behind us who kept sticking his head between my friend's and my seats.  That was slightly annoying.

After getting to the bus station in Al Ain, we took a taxi to the mall were we had lunch at Applebees.  I know I fly half way around the world and end up eating at an American restaurant, but my friend had never eaten there, so we got the lunch special and then took another taxi to the zoo.

The zoo was a decent size.  There were lions and tigers and bears (oh my!") as well as lots of African safari animals and monkeys.  The zoo wasn't the biggest or nicest I've seen, but still a nice place to go.  There's a park inside the zoo that big and rather nice.  My favorite part was being able to feed the giraffes.  You really got to see them up close and personal.  There's tongues are really long and they have really big heads.  The weather was also beautiful and perfect, so it only made the day more enjoyable.

We finished off the day with a return trip to the Al Ain mall and eating at Shahryar Restaurant (Iranian food).  Overall it was a fun and enjoyable trip.

As a sidenote, we went to the movies today to Skyfall.  It was so very very good.  We got waffles will in the theater.  It was a first time for me to eat waffles with Nutella instead of eating popcorn in the movie theater.

Same Difference

One of the humanities classes offered at AUS is the Communication Across Culture's class and students in this class needed to conduct an interview with an exchange student concerning AUS and how it is the same/different than their home school experience.  I felt vary much the celebrity when I had three different groups asking me for an interview.  After having completed one and then looking towards the two that I have next week, it has given me the opportunity to look at the differences between Wellesley and the American University if Sharjah.

One question asked me about the difference in peoples and cultures and my experience with culture shock.  I have since adjusted fairly well(I think), but there are some differences.  Here the abaya and dishdasha are commonly worn to class.  That was a difference, but I also had this impression that the abaya was worn very plainly which is clearly not the case.  I'm actually kinda' envious of some of the styles that have these sleeves which are wide from the elbow to the wrist.  Making friends and interacting with other students and professors, wasn't some big deal.  Back to clothing, but there is the feeling to dress up for class here more than I would do so at home.  Occasionally I'll where jeans and a t-shirt, but I other students are usually much more put together. 

Classes and such are structured very similarly to American style teaching, because that is the basis of the school system at AUS.  More specifically comparing to Wellesley, I feel there is a lot more stuff that just needs to get finished.  Also at Wellesley I feel that between homework or studying for exams students in the same class at least get to know a few people in class.  My classes are still relatively small, but there's no "class spirit" if there is such a thing.

The biggest difference to adjust is not the shifted schedule, where we start classes on Sunday and end on Thursday.  It is not scheduling to take exams outside of classtime.  It is probably the residential life that is so different from Wellesley.  The dorms are newer than Wellesley and hallways are very open, but no one really keeps doors open like where I lived in Freeman for the past two years.  At Wellesley you can fill your life with school, work, and then squeeze a few extracurriculars to leave you in a constant panic.  Clubs and orgs are different here.  A normal club runs about 1000 people and hosts a few events during the semester.  Like the Book Club is going to the International Book Fair in Sharjah next week.  There is a music club, but I've had trouble finding information about their activities.  The clubs here are much larger and hold less frequent activities.  On the weekends at Wellesley, almost every weekend, expect maybe at the very beginning of the semester there is something going on on campus.  So reorienting my life from extracurriculars was a big difference and probably the one I took the longest time adjusting to.

After talking about all these differences, but I'm still enjoying my time here.  Classes are heating up as we past the midpoint in the semester.  It's nice to not have a million things to be doing for clubs, as a full course load here is 5 courses.  One course may not make much of a difference until you count in the fact that there is now 3 hours more of class time and whatever other time for homework.  That was another adjustment for me.  And contrary to what I was told, just because you are an exchange student doesn't mean you will have easier courses.  I feel that courses here don't offer the same stress perhaps as my Wellesley courses, but are definitely close to par learning wise.  I especially love the Language lab we have once a week for Arabic.

Eid Break

It's been nice the past few days.  Finally there is time to sleep and catch up on TV and avoid thinking of the craziness that was midterms last week.  I had three midterms and a paper due last week which wasn't fun. 

The week of has been for the Islamic holiday of Eid al Adha.  This is a celebration of the event in the Bible when Abraham(Ibrahim) was about to sacrifice his son Ishmael(Ismail).  Instead God sent a lamb to be sacrificed instead.  One of the traditions for the festivity is to sacrifice a lamb along with spending time with family and enjoying large quantities of food.  It reminds me a bit of Thanksgiving for Americans. 

As similar to American shopping traditions, the malls in Dubai have had 24 hour shopping hours.  Myself and two other exchange students here for the holiday went to Dubai mall to do some shopping.  I was able to finally find Harry Potter in Arabic.  We stopped to watch the fountain show and were pleased to hear Michael Jackson's Thriller, a Halloween theme.  There were a few stores that were decked out for Halloween, but it's not as big a holiday as in the States nor the small following in Europe.  I was told that Halloween is celebrated to some degree on campus, but since it falls during the Eid break this year, everyone is at home and not at school.  I'll be enjoying Halloween movies and candy tomorrow as well as spending Halloween with family on webcam.  With this semester abroad, I've come to appreciate webcam and the Internet greatly.

I will put in as a side note that quite a few of the other exchange students found good deals to travel to other places during the break.  There are exchange students that went to Istanbul, Nepal, India, and I think Jordan as well.  For Wellesley students, if you are intending to travel extensively during your study abroad, this is a good place to travel from, with Dubai airport serving so many different areas.

Shopping-Dubai Mall

One of the first things to be thought of in Dubai is the shopping.  From the modern malls to the old timey souqs.  Last Thursday me and a couple of friends finally made it out to Dubai Mall, the biggest mall in the world.  It was lots of fun, just walking around and around and around.

The mall was structured like a layer cake.  Here are the furniture stores, baby clothes and other accessories stores, or jewelry stores with restaurants and cafes sprinkled throughout.  It was overwhelming within the first few minutes, but once you walk a bit and can visualize the basic layout of the mall, it's not too bad.  You tend to use landmarks such as the game corner, the movie theater, or the indoor aquarium.

Or you could always use the ice rink as a landmark.  We were considering going, but none of us had appropriate clothing to be fooling around on the ice.  It looks like fun.   We'll definitely have to go skating, maybe sometime after midterms :).

Here is the Burj Khaleefa, tallest building, all lite up for the night.  We went outside to watch the short water fountain show and saw the tower right there next to the mall.  The water fountain show is one of the attractions to the mall, so it was pretty crowded and I wasn't able to get a good picture, but the fountains were nice, not anything spectacular.

So the picture above and below is of an Arabic ice cream store.  At this point in time I was tempted to get some dessert, but we'd just eaten at Chili's (I know, go to an another country, but get food from a known restaurant) so  I was just too full to consider it.  It was interesting, they were making some ice cream when we walked by.  My friend was explaining that Arabic ice cream has a almost gummy component to it, hence the large pestle and mortar.  The person on the right was tapping the ice cream scoops in time to the pounding of his friend.

So this was a sum-up of the mall of Dubai, but there was still a lot more to cover.  It was interesting to see brands I recognized from home, next to stores that Michelle(she's from Australia) recognized as being from Australia, and still other stores we didn't know but our third friend Danna(who's family lives in Abu Dhabi) recognized.  It truly was a mix of international cultures.  Now I just get to the mall of the emirates to compare.

Third Week In

So as could be expected the first two two weeks of classes were not too bad.  I had some reading there and some bits of homework.  Then there comes the third week and all of sudden it's like, "Yes school has finally resumed brain, pick up the pace!"  So there has been a lot of work done yesterday and to do today.  I was happy to get to the gym this morning, it will unfortunately be one of the few times I get to leave the room today.

This past week was also the Office of Student Employment job fair for on campus employment and  the clubs/organizations fair.  I didn't go to to the job fair, mostly because visiting/exchange students cannot apply for work through the OSE office.  The Club and Orgs fair was fairly overwhelming and really interesting.  I found out that to be an "active" club, you maintain 1000 members, which to me sounds really big, coming from Guild of Carillonneurs which is at best in the forties and Quidditch team which is somewhere between 15-30 depending on the day.  Palestinian Cultural Club is supposed to have the highest participation rate with about 3000 members.  I did end up signing up for Math Club(its the fun math), Music Club and Performing Arts Club(I would like to play some music while I'm here, otherwise why bring my oboe), Emirati Culture Club, Islamic Cultural Club and Islamic Cultural Club-Women, Arabian Culture Club, and Book Club.  What was really nice was all the food that was being served.  To entice people to join, almost every club had some kind of food item, little sandwiches, marshmallows with chocolate and crushed graham crackers on the outside, mana'esh, donuts, etc.  The Islamic Culture Club had a sweet fried doughball that was dipped in a sweet/bitter maple-syrupy-like sauce.  I can't remember what it's called, but it was really good.

I don't know why my posts keep coming back to food.  The only other thing on the agenda for today is homework and an "Arabic Through Drama" meeting.  This is an extracurricular program for the international exchange students to learn Arabic language through the use of drama and music.  In the end we will be putting on a play.  To track our progress each session is filmed and then will be compiled with the final filming of the play.  We will then have a copy to take back with us, which I think is pretty neat.

Finally, I really did want to post some kind of picture this week, so below is a photo of our exchange group from one of the previous outings.  In it you can see some of the guys in traditional Emirati clothes, the dishdash or khandoura.  It's the male counterpart to the abaya.  It's kinda rude/frowned upon to take pictures of women you don't know(especially those dressed in an abaya), so when I get a picture I'll post one.  They are black but still are very much styled and come in a range of designs.  I've seen some with lace edges and some with black cheetah print along the collar.  It's as much a style statement as anything we might wear in the states.

Miscellaneous facts I've learned/highlights over the past week:
1)  Hair Salons here don't have windows.  This seemed very strange to me when I first noticed it until my roommate mentioned something about windows being tinted in buildings here so that if I woman was inside her house she could take off her hijab/abaya.  Which makes sense that the hair salon wouldn't have windows, so that the stylists could cut/trim/fashion the hair without every passer-by seeing.

2)  Grape leaves are actually really good.  My roommate's mom brought stuffed grape leaves to the dorm.  I was hesitant to try them, because the grape leaves I had in my first week here were served cold and tasted very bitter.  I'm determined to get the recipe from her, because these didn't taste like the cold ones.  These were served warm and were very warm and delicious.  My roommate claims the ones I tried that first week were Lebanese style and served as an appetizer.

3)  The freezer is not a good place to store your room key.  I woke up got ready for class and realized I couldn't find my key.  I looked everywhere until my roommate mention when she was coming in last night I was putting the mana'esh back into the freezer.  So I looked in the freezer and low and behold my key was underneath the frozen food.

4)  When planning for classes at your study abroad institution, be flexible in planning, plan for the worst case scenario.  Also if you are taking language classes or such, ask for a placement test.  I've been running into conflict concerning which Arabic class I should take because I took the advice of the intermediate professor and my study abroad program adviser, rather than asking for a placement test/conversation from the beginning.  One of the reasons I have so much homework is to try and catchup as it was decided I needed to be in a more advanced Arabic class.

The Visa(and other paperwork) Process

   This week has been consumed with not only classes, but trips to the Ministry of Health.  So we received our visas when we got into the airport in Dubai.  They're pretty on a slightly peachy colored paper with a shiny sticker on the front, but then we have to get them processed.

   The International Exchange Office was trying to be as helpful as possible, but the process changed from last semester, so us International Exchange students went in batches to the Ministry of Health to get our paperwork processed, and boy was it a process.  We come in and take a ticket.  This ticket is for getting our UAE ID that we need while in the country.  Then our name gets called, we provide proof of insurance.  Some of the students ran into trouble if the expiration date wasn't on the card, but if it was handwritten on, then all was well.  We then pay the fees for this at a different desk, come back and hand the receipt to the first person.  We then are told to make copies of our visa and passport and another type written paper that the first person has given us.  So we go wait in another line.  There's another line to get passport pictures taken at if you didn't have any with you.  When we went, the photographer was on lunch break at three in the afternoon, so we waited about twenty minutes for him to come back.  Then we turn pictures and copies into the first person and finished the first process of getting our ID application in.  We get mailed that in about three weeks.

   So we then go down to the medical part of the building to get blood drawn and chest x-ray.  They're checking for HIV and Tuberculosis.  It's the last step in the process for that trip and I was exhausted when I finally got back that evening.

   Today I went with one of the groups to pick up that paperwork.  After doing so we needed to get it typed up for a third and last time, paying for the cost of the medical stuff.  I just came from turning in the bundle of paperwork and passport to get my visa processed.  We were really happy to find out that it will get processed within three days, starting Sunday.

   Overall it wasn't too bad.  I agree with some of the other people that it wasn't an easy process, but I found that some of the people were helpful in showing me where I needed to go next or what I needed to get done.  I'm just glad the process is done.