It dawned upon me this year that the UAE has changed so much in the past year that I've lived here. We were joking the other day that the new teachers can get their drivers license here in our little town, while just last year getting our license was a horrible experience that we had to go to the city for. Then I saw our town on the news that same week. Google decided to strap a mapping device to a camel in Liwa (a town fifteen minutes from us). The camel and a young boy (actually one of my student's cousins) are walking through the desert and putting the sandpit on google maps. You can read more about it here:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/10/08/google_put_a_street_view_camera_on_a_camel_in_the_liwa_desert.html?wpsrc=fol_tw
And while having Google mapping our backyard is pretty impressive even more so is what has come about from the UAE's involvement with aiding the US in airstrikes against ISIS. In their first air strike against ISIS an Emirate female led those missions. I teach seven girls whose dreams are to be pilots. When that news hit the National Newspaper my all girls classes were squirming with excitement for this enormous step for females in the UAE.
Now this last move of progress is going to seem trivial after stating those other events. However, all of us teachers are so elated at the development of our little town. At the end of last year we finally got a gym in town. Then new hospitals. And now a real grocery store!! Not a bargaining for your groceries and only labels in another language kind of store. No, a real grocery store like we would find when we go to the city with fresh bread and everything! It makes me nostalgic to think back a year when there was only one main road in our town and only two teachers apartment buildings. Now the town has expanded out even further into the dunes and with these expansions many western luxuries are coming to us in Madinat Zayed. Although, I still have yet to find cool ranch Doritos anywhere in the UAE which has come as a big hit haha. But seriously, who doesn't sell cool ranch Doritos?!
