Oh The Places I'll Go . . . : Canadians and Abaya's

I cannot believe that it is already Winter Break here! Two more days with students and then they will be on break and we have one week more of PD days and then two weeks off in Italy. Time has flown by so quickly here. So much has happened lately that for your sake, and mine, I am going to break into events that I have done here lately.

National Days:
Dubai won the 20/20 expo bid for the World Fair in 2020 so the country gave everyone a day off of school. Then we had our National Day celebrations the next week which was basically a big party. I wore an abaya and a sheila that kept falling off the whole day (I don't understand how these women fuss with it all the time). We walked around and saw exhibits, the girls had henna done, rode camels and horses, and much more. The night before the school's celebration a mother of one of my friend's students offered for us to get our henna done for free in her salon so the three of us went and had it done professionally all the way up to our elbows. It was very beautiful but is already fading off my arms. The boys were very funny they kept telling me "miss you look very beautiful in the traditional clothes. More than your normal." And they kept trying to convince me to wear an abaya every day. Ha I couldn't tell if it was meant to be a backhanded compliment. Regardless it was still cute how excited the kids were to see me dressed up and participating in their nation's celebration as a country. 42. Only 42 years old as a country and the excitement and pride in their nation is contagious. Every car was decorated, every student dressed traditionally, and about a week of lessons lost due to all the excitement. Our middle school boys looked like young men in their kandoras and participated in their traditional dances, and the younger girls who are allowed to show their hair did the traditional female "hair dance" as I call it. They basically flip their hair back and forth to the music. I think my favorite part of the celebrations was when one of the fellow teachers was getting her henna done in a tent her baby was crawling all around and I got to pick up Natalie and hold her for a large portion of the day while I walked around with my girls. Hala teased me that I was going to keep borrowing her baby, but it was so nice to hold an infant it made me think of all my nieces and nephew whom I have been missing like crazy. Below are some pictures of the National Day celebrations at school.

Dubai 7's Rugby Tournament:
Besides National Day celebrations I also recently went to the international Rugby tournament in Dubai a few weekends ago. I got a lot of lip for dressing up as a Canadian so before you see the pictures read my reasoning. My group of friends are all from Canada and I was going with them. None of the American teachers were dressing up. And the Canadians wanted 7 Canadians for the Dubai 7's. Since there are only 6 of them they asked me to join them. So for the fun of it and to help out my friends I did. I told people I was from Vancouver but moved to Portland the last four years (which is partially true ha). It was so much fun to walk around with everyone and meet so many interesting people. My friend Jill and I started a game where we tried to get pictures with as many crazy costumes as we could during the day. We also kept sneaking over to the stand where all the Kenyans were to hang out. She recently got engaged to a Kenyan so it started that we went over there to get her picture with the Kenya flag. Then it turned into our game of pictures with crazy costumes. After the entire day of eating pork, meeting new people, dancing, and mingling with professional rugby players, we went to a place called the Irish Village and danced the night away in our awesome costumes :)

This upcoming weekend I am going to Dubai again but this time for a color run. I started running and working out again the last few weeks and am excited to try a 5K here. Besides running I also have sort of become part of a rooftop yoga club. Me and some girls get together on the roofs at night and do yoga, and it is so peaceful with the stars out, the call to prayer being played over the town. Just very peaceful time to relax.

There is so much more I could write but I have been working two 12 hour days in a row because of parent teacher conferences so I am going to call it a night. I will try to blog sometime after the color run and definitely after Italy! Please keep in touch everyone reading this and let me know how you are doing.