Dubai: First Impression

Wow.

Holy smokes.

Large.

A lot of words come to mind when I try describing my thoughts when I first got to Dubai: Holy Toledo. Jesus. I need a job. Large. Big. Vegas on steroids. Huge. United States. Gigantic. Beautiful. Money. Like a dream. Pretty. Vacation. Thank you. Expensive.

This place is not messing around. Not at all. Dubai really does remind me a lot of the States but super large.  And large as in tall. I think the buildings reach the galaxy, or the moon maybe.  I’ll never know because I’m afraid of heights and am in NO rush to go to the top of any of them. If I plan this right, you won’t be seeing pictures of me from the top of a building in the near future.

Even from the view I saw from the plane, I knew Dubai was something worth seeing.

I liked describing a place with the five senses, like in my last post about Bahrain. So I’ll do it again with Dubai. I feel this way I can’t forget anything.

Sound: Dubai sounds like any other large city. Lots of car horns, people talking, music, ect.  The radio stations have some of the same shows as the States, so it feels like home when the radio is on.  Because we’re in the Middle East, you can always hear the mosque at prayer time, which is a couple times a day. I should also mention, I can hear so many different languages on a daily basis.  Everyone speaks differently, languages and accents. English is everyone’s go-to though, praise the Lord.

Smell: Hmmmm Dubai doesn’t have much of a smell going on. Besides the typical food you can smell on occasion…

Taste: I haven’t eaten out once since I got here. Wafiq’s family has taken WELL care of me. The house has delicious food.  Each meal there’s a table set and ready with chicken, rice, salad, beef, fish, or anything else you want. I’m grateful for them being so willing to continually feed me 🙂

Touch: I’m going to take this opportunity (‘touch’) to describe the zoo’s I’ve been to here in the Middle East. You might be thinking.. “When referring to the zoo Katie, why think of touch?” Well allow me to explain…

In the States, God and everyone knows when you go to the zoo you do not touch, play in the cages with, or feed the wild animals.  Well that’s not how it appears the Middle East works.  The zoo’s have a “YOLO” (You Only Live Once) mentality.  These zoo animals do not have big metal cages with glass windows. Nope, they are right next to you looking over the cage wall. Several times I saw birds, pelicans, peacocks, and roosters climbing over the cage walls to chill with the visitors.  And for the ones that can’t get over, never fear the children will get in!  Of course! In the giraffe cage there were two girls about 3 and 4 years old dancing on the wall of the giraffe cage. There were about 4 boys inside the endangered turtle cage.. I WISH I could have taken a photo or two of this experience but I was scared for my life. Bull, Snake, Horse, Giraffe, Elephant, whatever it is, in a Middle East zoo, you can touch it! At your own risk of course.  The animals could stick their heads out of the cages so far I could brush their teeth if I felt obliged.

Sight: Tall buildings, tall buildings, tall buildings. That’s what you see in Dubai. All over the place.

I’m living in the Marina, which is where boats can drive through the city I think. Or park their boats or something. All I know is it’s gorgeous. I feel grateful for this place and that I get to live so close to it. My little apartment is cute and perfect for me too.

Today I went running along the water’s edge.  There’s a long path right outside my apartment that I can use, which is where I took this first picture from.

And the water here is blue, there are a lot of beaches. This is me praising Jesus I finally got to a beach! WOOHOO!

Now, I need to get a job and find somewhere to spray tan.