After a busy couple of weeks of preparing for progress reports at school, Julie and I had a wonderful day in Dubai in celebration of her 24th birthday. The day began with Little League Football (soccer). I’ve been coaching Arsenal, one of the Grade One and Two football teams at Wesgreen. While a couple of my players are very good, most of them have never played before so its been a fun but challenging introduction to the game. We had our second game yesterday after a coaches-parents game. I was hoping that the few local men that played would wear their candoras (the traditional white robe that Emirati men wear) but unfortunately they did not. It is nice to see the school offering an activity that allows parents to support their children in a fun extracurricular activity. Normally, these types of events do not take place here so it is nice time for the parents, kids, and coaches to take part in it.After the game, Julie and I went to Bur Dubai, the oldest area in Dubai. We first went to the Dubai Museum. The first half of the museum was in the restored Al Fahidi Fort which was built in 1787 and is one of the oldest surviving buildings in the area. The second part of the m
useum were a series of underground exhibits tracing Dubai’s history from thousands of millennia ago to the present. While it was interesting seeing some of the old artifacts and the displays, I especially liked the significance that the museum gave commercial life in traditional Emirati society (especially the clothing and jewelry). For over two millennia Dubai has been trading with places as far as southeastern Africa, India, and Europe. With this early history of trade and the rise of souqs (markets) in the nineteenth century, the museum seemed to suggest that wealth has always been a part of the local identity, providing an explanation and even a justification for the extreme wealth that has recently been amassed in Dubai. It is as if the museum is saying that global trade and wealth have always been part of the city’s heritage, and, in a sense, that it is the country’s destiny to be wealthy.
Following the museum, we walked around the Bur Dubai souq for a little while before stopping for coffee, fresh mint lemonade, and hummus on the Dubai Creek. It was fun watching all of the dhows taking people up and down and to either side of the creek. Once an informal and the only way to get from one side of Dubai to the other (from Bur Dubai to Deira), now the Roads and Transport Authority manages this frantic rush of people and boats around the creek. After our snack, we went upstairs to find out that this building was owned by the first British trader in Dubai (the building next door was the former HSBC bank). From the roof, we had a great view of the creek on one side, and the souq and two large mosques on the other, one of which is the famous and beautifully-tiled Iranian mosque. We then went back into the souq and ended up buying a beautiful patchwork wall-hanging of an elephant which was made India.
When we left the souq, we walked along the water for a while. There were lots of preserved houses along the creek. Lots of them have been turned into museums including the Heritage Village, the Diving Village, and the House of Camels. The security guard let us in to the House of Camels for a personal tour. The building was a beautiful old house, with all of the rooms dedicated to exploring a different part about the role that camels play in traditional Emirati life. Each room that we went in got more 
and more entertaining. In one the rooms, the walls were lined with different textures that depicted the inside of a camel’s stomach. The final room was probably my personal highlight since I’ve been in the UAE. We got in and there were two life-size mechanical camels f
acing us. The guard told me that I could get on one of them. Once I mounted him, the camel made a few noises and shook his head. Then the lights turned off and the projector behind me turned on. I quickly found myself on the racetrack for my first camel race. My camel quickly started running for the finish line. While I didn’t win, I felt like a real champion after the first race.
To finish the night in Bur Dubai, we stopped at another restaurant on the water for a nice birthday banana split. Next, we walked back up the creek a little ways to look for a taxi. What we thought wouldn’t take too long, turned out to be an hour-long misadventure. Whereas Julie enjoyed walking around the creek since she was not the only woman for once (where we live it is ONLY Indian and Pakistani men), as soon as we left to look for a taxi, we quickly returned to the usual gendered landscape. As I battled hundreds of Pakistani men for the few taxis that arrived, I could faintly hear Julie signing in the background: “W
here have all the women gone?” (to the tune of Paula Cole’s “Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?”). Eventually, we left the area (and our dignity) outside the Carrefour Grocery Store in search of greener pastures and, luckily, we found a taxi in not too much time at all.We then ventured to Dubai Festival City to continue our normal Friday routine. We purchased a new book at Magrudy‘s, got a few things for our flat at IKEA, and had coffee at Mugg and Bean’s before going to Hyper Panda for a few groceries. After these errands, we got in the line for a taxi home. The line went quickly at first but soon slowed down once the Queen concert finished across the street. Yes, that’s right, Queen, played Dubai last night and we got to hear the last seven songs of their set. After another hour-long wait for a taxi, we eventually made it home after our long day.
