Hey all,
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________We___________
This weekend was a holiday weekend for Islamic New Year, so we had an extra day off. The weather was too hot to do much outdoors, so I mostly used the time to clean the apartment, catch up on schoolwork, and sleep, but I also got the chance to go to Dubai for the day with friends.
After a quick lunch at an Indian restaurant (hooray for masala dosa!), we started out by visiting the Dubai Design District to see some art galleries. Unfortunately, a lot of the galleries were closed for the day, but we still had fun hanging out and seeing what there was to see. For example, this shop selling Afghani carpets was open.
One of the office lobbies also featured this interesting piece, inspired by sound waves.
Even the outdoor areas in the design district had plenty of artsy photo spots.
After that, we took a water taxi across to the historic areas of Dubai where there was an old market selling spices, perfumes, and gold. A moment to remember: random vendor dudes calling me "Shakira! Shakira!" trying to get us to come buy stuff. A little creepy, and obviously I don't even remotely look like Shakira, so we were laughing pretty hard after we got safely away from their pushy salesmanship.
Waiting to catch a bus back from Dubai to Abu Dhabi was quite the experience. We were melting in the humidity and couldn't wait for it to arrive. Good conversations were definitely the highlight of the trip.
Classes are good. This evening, I met with my Reading the Earth class to watch the TV series adaptation of one of the novels we've been reading, Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South. My engineering classes, Electronics and Signals & Systems, are beginning our first homework assignments. In my Chinese class, we had our first quiz. It was definitely a step up from the elementary level in terms of the difficulty, but I'm keeping up. For example, in the elementary level, the listening section of the exam would have pictures, and we would listen to a sentence and mark "true" or "false" based on whether the picture matched what the sentence was describing. Now, instead of pictures, there's a written sentence. So, not only do we have to listen to the audio sentence, but we also have to read and understand the written sentence, and then decide whether the written sentence is true/false based on what the audio implies. Also, we now have a section where we have to write a complete paragraph by hand in Chinese. It's good practice, though.
Anyway, not too much else going on, so I'll leave it at that.
Goodnight from Saadiyat Island,
Alison
This weekend was a holiday weekend for Islamic New Year, so we had an extra day off. The weather was too hot to do much outdoors, so I mostly used the time to clean the apartment, catch up on schoolwork, and sleep, but I also got the chance to go to Dubai for the day with friends.
After a quick lunch at an Indian restaurant (hooray for masala dosa!), we started out by visiting the Dubai Design District to see some art galleries. Unfortunately, a lot of the galleries were closed for the day, but we still had fun hanging out and seeing what there was to see. For example, this shop selling Afghani carpets was open.
One of the office lobbies also featured this interesting piece, inspired by sound waves.
Even the outdoor areas in the design district had plenty of artsy photo spots.
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| Our Dubai! |
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| Historic Dubai |
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| Tried an Iranian dessert called faloodeh for the first time: Ice, sugar syrup, rose water, and little starchy noodles. It was a little too sweet for my taste, but good for the hot weather. |
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| Exploring the gold souq |
Waiting to catch a bus back from Dubai to Abu Dhabi was quite the experience. We were melting in the humidity and couldn't wait for it to arrive. Good conversations were definitely the highlight of the trip.
Classes are good. This evening, I met with my Reading the Earth class to watch the TV series adaptation of one of the novels we've been reading, Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South. My engineering classes, Electronics and Signals & Systems, are beginning our first homework assignments. In my Chinese class, we had our first quiz. It was definitely a step up from the elementary level in terms of the difficulty, but I'm keeping up. For example, in the elementary level, the listening section of the exam would have pictures, and we would listen to a sentence and mark "true" or "false" based on whether the picture matched what the sentence was describing. Now, instead of pictures, there's a written sentence. So, not only do we have to listen to the audio sentence, but we also have to read and understand the written sentence, and then decide whether the written sentence is true/false based on what the audio implies. Also, we now have a section where we have to write a complete paragraph by hand in Chinese. It's good practice, though.
Anyway, not too much else going on, so I'll leave it at that.
Goodnight from Saadiyat Island,
Alison
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