In Dubai

After many more hours of traveling, we finally made it to Dubai! We left our hostel around 8 pm, flew out around midnight, and then arrived in Cairo, Egypt around 8 am local time. We arrived in Dubai around 3 pm local time and were greeted by a much cooler climate!

We came to our hotel, Riviera Hotel, which overlooks the Dubai Creek. It is a beautiful hotel with all the amenities - quite a change from our hostel in Ghana where we had no sheets, no toilet paper, no air conditioning, etc! The first thing we all did was take warm showers (no warm water in Ghana either) and finally feel clean. Then, we took a water taxi across the creek to get dinner. We ate at a small Middle Eastern restaurant, where I had fish and rice. It was pretty good. Then we walked around and explored the city a bit before taking a water taxi back to our hotel. We got back just in time before the thunderstorm started! After getting back, my roommate Chelsea & I decided we were still hungry, so we ordered room service. We got a plate of hummus, baba ganoush, stuffed vine leaves, and fattuosh delivered to our room for 20 dirhams (about $5). It was so delicious!!!

Since being back in our hotel, I got the internet set up on my laptop (yay!) and proceeded to watch the Ravens game on NFL.com. I cannot believe they beat the Patriots & hope they can pull it off again next week against the Colts!! On the topic of football, I am going to close with an anecdote my aunt e-mailed to me tonight:

A man goes to the Pittsburgh Steelers ticket office and inquires about buying playoff tickets. The ticket teller replies that there were no tickets for sale because the Steelers did not make the playoffs- this goes on for 3 days and on the 4th day the ticket teller loudly replies the "Steelers did not make the playoffs!!" The man replied, "I know. I drove all the way from Baltimore just to hear you say that!"