After I had breakfast at the apartment (awesome raisin, carrot muffins that Megan made), I
made my way over to the LuLu Hypermarket – basically a supermarket. It was the cleanest, most organized grocery store I have seen in my life. It made me think of what a grocery store would look like in the middle of the night, where everything is perfect. All of the shelves were fully stocked and they looked as if the distance between each box of cereal or carton of milk were measured! It was bizarre! It was interesting to see that they have everything you could think of, however. It was like going to a grocery store at home along with one from France combined. They have all the France cheeses and breads, but have all the packaged junk that we have at home. It was really impressive, actually. I guess they want to please the entire expat community!
From there I walked over to “The Mall of the Emirates”. I got there around 9am, but everything actually only opens at 10am, so I had a nice walk around before things even opened. This is the mall that has the ski hill inside of it! It was really odd – but no different, really than going to West Ed and seeing a theme park or a water park inside the mall! Here, too, it was like combining North America with Europe – all of my favourite stores from France like Pimpki and Oxygène were there as well as American Eagle, and The Gap. They even had Cinnzeo cinnamon buns and Seattle`s Best Coffee. Kind of an odd feeling of displacement, but it was interesting.
There weren’t a lot of people around first thing, but it was interesting to see and hear the mix of cultures, religions, and languages. There are the Dubai women who wear their hair piled high on their head and cover the back half with a scarf. There are the Muslims, who Megan says typically come from other Muslim countries, who are covered all in black. There are a lot of Indian women and men in their typical dress. There are many Asians, French, Italian, Spanish, and North Americans too. It is kind of like being in the United Nations!
I visited a lot of the stores including the Persian carpet stores – they are so pretty! I asked about the prices of a couple…that started at Dh7000! It is a good thing that I have expensive tastes, eh?! I left those stores and went and bought a t-shirt from Pimpki – close as I’ve been to France in a couple of years ☺.
I saw my first GOLD ATM! There were different weights of gold being sold in the machine
including a Canadian maple leaf coin! It was really cool!!
For lunch I bought a petit pain au chocolate and the equivalent of a booster juice (I wanted to
buy strawberries but for 6 berries the cost was more than ½ of a juice drink!). There were no seats in the entire mall so I wandered outside and found a tiny piece of grass outside of the parking lot where I sat down to eat my lunch. Ahhhh the looks I got! I don’t think people ever sit down on the grass here (well, there isn’t really any grass here), never mind have a picnic outside of the mall! It was gorgeous, actually! There are palm trees and birds singing. I had no problem ignoring the cars going by – better than the piles of snow at home!
I decided I want to go to Abu Dhabi on Tuesday, so I had visited a travel agency in the mall, but
they were rather useless. They only have tours, which are highly overrated – and won’t let me have time to get to the beach to get the sand I need! So, when I got home I researched the local bus schedule to get there instead. There is a 2h direct bus there for Dh15 (about 3.5$), so I will be taking that at about 7am on Tuesday. The tour of the Mosque is at 10am, so I want to make sure I don’t miss it.
Megan was teaching ultimate Frisbee after school today so I went and joined her and her kids
for the game. It was really fun ‘cause the kids were really good. I couldn’t believe where they were all from. Out of the small group of about 8 they were from Canada, Spain, Ireland, Izbackistan, Italy…all over!
The school is really nice as well. They have a full gym and pool and big sports area outside.
Megan even has TA’s for her science class! It is very well organized and clean. I guess that it helps that it is a ‘for profit’ school, for sure.
Megan and I took a cab over to the Karama area, which is basically the Indian area that has a lot of the knock-off shops! It was dead quiet when we were there, however! Very un-India like!! It was good to see, as it is supposedly something that has to be done, but I didn’t buy anything. Megan bought a hanging, however! She wants it to decorate her apartment here.
We had the most awesome hummus and pitas for dinner! I think I could eat that every night
while I am here, actually! They have a little restaurant at the bottom of their building and it just came from there – about 2$ for a big tub of it! We also each ordered soup, which was really good as well!
Yum!
I am just about to go watch a couple episodes of “Brothers and Sisters” as Megan has them on
DVD! Brandon and Megan already went to bed because they were both totally wiped from getting me from the airport yesterday/this morning! Uggg…I feel bad! ☹
Tomorrow I am going to visit the Souqs and when Brandon goes skiing with his kids tonight I am going to go too! Not often you can say you went downhill skiing inside!
Night
-Allison
P.S. I'll try to get pictures uploaded...but the resolution is too high for this high-tech program at the moment! :)
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