Hot Tea

Ok soooo we worked in projects all day w/e day this was...6/28?  and later we went to the old city.  It was HOT!  Anyways we wondered looking at art and old architecture for not too long before we had to leave or some of us would die :P  Anyways we saw some cool stuff, but the best part was on our way out.  There was a group of men sitting on a porch drinking hot tea and they invited us into their porch area.  Most of us just wanted to leave but Bern insisted we chat for a bit.  The tea as always was delicious and they had some yummy crackers.  Eventually one of the men offered us in the house, which was acutlaly not really a house, though I'm not sure what it was.  It was a dwelling with pillows lining the walls and pictures of maps and Sheiks and all sorts of things hanging around.  The man told us a lot about Dubai, however I was being a bit add and only caught some of it.  It was interesting though, we saw a midcentury aerial image and you would never know it was Dubai. Long story short best part of the day was trying on Shayla and Abias!

Maya and I rockin' the look

Later that night we went to Planet Hollywood(since non of us had ever been) and got our drank on...not really but I did have a margarita and enjoyed it thoroughly

Skii Dubai and the Mall of the Emirates

So on the weekend we went to Skii Dubai and the mall which housed it.  It was pretty nuts, my ankle is still not perfect and I don't want it to get worse so i did not go skiing but Emily, Maya, Zoey and I had some fun in the snow park tubing and tabogoning

Emily, me, Maya rockin the skii dubai jacket and pants set

They had one of those balls that you rolled down the hill in (our tickets) did not cover that

dragon in the exploration cave..it changed colors

outside skii dubai

Also outside...

So we toured the mall for a bit...most pictures were taken at a toystore...

and then after that we went to the Marina and FINALLY got some remotely arabic food..it was kinda Mediterranean but w/e, close enough.. i had lentil soup that tasted like chicken

At dinner some guy tried to sell us stuff it took me a moment to realize what he was doing and when I found out I told him to gtfo

Touring Sharja and hanging an exhibit

Sooo I'm a bit behind in blogging and to catch up I shall make this a bit shorter.  So on...tuesday we went to Sharja to see an archeology museum as well as an art museum.  The archeology was cool especially seeing as how new it was, the art museum was okay, living near so many museums I think I have been spoiled.  Anyways yea, Sharja was an interesting contrast to Dubai... I'll put some pictures up, but the part we drove through was pretty much all autoshops, honestly I have never seen that much in one place it was crazy.

Outside of the archeology museum 

Getting dates and tea(or coffee?) inside the museum, I love the tea, not so big on the coffee and the dates were ok...I liked the ripe part but not the other.  Did I mention dates are EVERYWHERE

Babies were buried in this, one of the handful of things that I remembered form the tour...I was a bit busy trying to get my camera to work and looking for patterns for our art project

driving through Sharja(see lots of car places)

Outside of the art museum....

This was a fun set of paintings

some architecture in the museum

The next day we went to "the shelter" to help set up a show.  This is the artists web page: listeningwithmyeyes.com  It was neat, we didn't actually see the show though because we couldn't find out where it was.  But we pretty much cleaned and strung letters( though I don't know why we cleaned them, they looked kinda cool with the lazer cut burns)

inside the shelter( there is a main cafe area, and studios on either side).

Later that day Rhoda(one of the Emiratie girls) took us to Maratco(another mall)  to get our nails done, after which she treated us to dinner at an italian restaurant named "Bella Donna".  I believe thus far I have eaten more italian than Arabic food, mebbe I'll eat more arabic once I go to Italy : P 

And these are some veiws from inside the mall

The next day at school the girls brought us lunch : )

Pictures

So here are some of the pictures I promised...

So this is the airport, there were lots of palm trees, it was pretty kewl

This is the hotel we ate at the first night

This is was at Soto Soto, the restaurant we ate at when I got here

This is an outside picture of Zayed U..it kinda looks like a submarine

This is the inside, I made it large cause it's super sweet

There's a bunch of these with different designs all made by the students

We went to a show of last years student work... This is one peice

We have a psychotic bird, and they have a monkey...remember that song???

This is the mosque we visited in Jamera

Ceiling in the mosque, lovely

Images from inside a mosque

Demonstration of prayer

more mosque pics....

our printmaking room

group shot

and for dinner we went to one of those rotating sushi places..it wasn't great but it was cool to go to one