Afterwards, we drove to Jebel Hafeet. The cooler temperatures and the fact that we had been walking for hours at the zoo made the hot springs there a welcomed treat. We sat on the water's edge and soaked our feet for about half an hour while basking in the warm sunlight. It was really as nice as it sounds. When we felt ready, we all made the trek up one of the lower hills of Jebel Hafeet and sat up there for awhile enjoying the view. Since we had done this earlier in the semester, we became bored with it rather quickly and decided to drive up to the top of the actual Jebel Hafeet and see what the view was from there.
From the top of the mountain the view was amazing. Unfortunately, it was rather humid and cloudy, so we couldn't see too far, but what we could see was seemingly endless desert. We stayed there for awhile but decided to leave before the sunset since we didn't think it would be that good because of the humidity. Of course, the sun set was we were driving down the mountain, and it was beautiful, but we no longer had the amazing view.
After that, we had four more days of classes, including class on Christmas Eve which was not fun. On Christmas Eve night, Kendal and I, after many phone calls and negotiations, managed to get a cab to go to the St. Michael's Catholic Church in Sharjah for Christmas Eve mass. We had never seen a church any where in the UAE, while mosques are on every corner, so we were interested to see where these elusive churches were hiding. It turns out they are down a back alley way in Sharjah, and all the churches are together.
The mass consisted almost entirely of Indians with maybe four Westerners. For the longest time, Kendal and I feared the mass would be in Urdu or some other language we wouldn't understand, but thankfully it was in English. It was definitely the strangest mass I have ever been to. They only played a few traditional Christmas songs and all had been redone to sound like a Mexican hat dance song. They also randomly played Feliz Navidad. We stood for excessively long periods and no one shook hands when it came to that part of the service. They had a plastic baby Jesus doll which they held up in front of the congregation as if he was Simba in the Lion King. Receiving communion was a fight to the death as no one observed any sort of structural line formation; instead, everyone just pushed and shoved each other in an attempt to get to the front as if they would run out of bread or some other catastrophe would befall them and prevent them from receiving communion. Overall, it was an experience; a strange but good one.
Christmas day had its ups and downs. Of all days for this to happen, the internet went out on Christmas morning for "unknown reasons." It went out around 7:30 and it somehow took the IT people on campus the next six hours to contact Etisalat (provider) and get someone working on the problem. This would have been inconvenient on any other day, but on Christmas, when we all needed Skype to call home, it was completely ridiculous. Also, we entrusted Jeremy to cook the turkey. For some reason, he was under the impression that it would only take two hours to cook. We had planned on eating at four so we could go ice skating afterwards, but since Jeremy didn't get the turkey in the oven until three, we weren't able to eat until 6:30. These to occurrences, and the fact that I wasn't home for Christmas, put me in a pretty bad mood Christmas morning.
But some good things did happen as well. I was able to download A Christmas Story and watch that as a Christmas tradition. I cooked cookies and brownies, both of which came out well. Kay and Kendal adopted a stray kitten for the day, so I got to play with her for awhile. In the end, Christmas dinner turned out to be delicious, though a little late. All the food was great (everyone cooked something) and it was nice to have a Christmas dinner. We exchanged Secret Santa gifts and sung Christmas carols. After dinner, since it was too late to go ice skating, we all stayed in the student center to watch the movie Elf. Overall, it was an untraditional but fun Christmas.
The day after Christmas I spent studying since I had three exams today. It was pretty rough but I felt well-prepared for my test today and feel I did well on them. I had test in Political Economy of the Arab World, International Public Law, and Arabic today, and for the most part they went well. The finals went from 8 AM until 4 PM, so by the time I was done, I was mentally exhausted and my hand hurt immensely from writing so much. I went back to my room and watched some TV and relaxed.
We all went out to dinner tonight as a farewell dinner for Daniel who left tonight. We went to Fudruckers, his favorite restaurant, and then dropped him off at the airport. Afterwards, some of ice went ice skating in the Dubai Mall. It was a lot of fun and not as cold as ice skating rinks are in the States (it was inside). The Dubai Mall just recently opened and is the biggest mall in the Emirates. The ice skating rink was filled with people, including several Arab boys who were rather good and did coordinated hip-hop style dances on the ice. It was interesting to watch, particularly because boys would never be seen doing such things in the United States. I've really come to appreciate the openness and closeness of male relationships here. Anyway, the Dubai Mall also has an aquarium, so after skating we went to look at that. It was decently big with way too many fish in it. It had sharks, sting rays, a few huge fish, and hundreds of smaller fish. Again, another strange but interesting aspect of the Emirates.
Well, that's all for now. I have the next two days off, then one more final, then two days to relax and pack, and then I'm home.
-Lindsay
Mountain Ram at the Zoo:
Really Overweight Jaguar:
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Endless Desert:
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Our Sad Token Christmas Tree:
Our Christmas Dinner:
Sheikh Maktoum on a Huge TV Screen Above the Skating Rink:
Kendal and Kevin:
Bader and Kevin:
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