It's great to see Abu Dhabi expanding its cultural base virtually by the month. The city is trying to establish itself as a city rich in the arts, and judging by its future plans, it is well on its way. The state ha HUGE plans to build one-of-a-kind island complete with the worlds greatest art and architecture museums. 2010 (if I'm not mistaken), Saadiyat Island will be complete, with a Guggenheim museum, a Louvre, and some other very interesting/important stuff. I'm no authority on art, and given that this will be the island's primary focus, it's best to give you the link for further research. The designs of some of the places are mind-blowing, and here's the web link if you're interested in learning more:
http://www.saadiyat.ae/
This weekend was a big celebration in the UAE, marking the country's 36th Anniversary. People celebrate it in strange ways, but we'll get to that later.National Day Celebration at school That's right, the UAE is only 36 years old, and no matter what people think of this place, it's pretty damn impressive to see how far a country can come along in 36 years. They went from nothing but desert to what is becoming one of the world centers of business, luxury, and eventually, even art. The official National Day was yesterdat (Sunday), but we celebrated it at school on Monday. Some photos of it will follow. All Arabic students dressed up in their traditional clothing. It was a great, relaxed day in which they shared with us their love and joy of their culture. If I got anything out of these celebrations, it was a great lesson in nationalism. People here are VERY proud of their culture, seemingly much more so than we are in the USA.
Me and some of my students in the classroom.
Yousuf (on the left) is from Egypt and Tsotne is from Georgia (of course the country and not the state in the USA).
The boy on the left is not one of my students, but his mother is from New Jersey, so we have this cool little connection with each other. The boy on the right is Azfar. He's one of my students. He's Canadian and Pakistani. Very kind, polite, and respectful boy!
This is the courtyard of the school during the celebrations. The day included traditional dances and lots and lots of traditional food, which you will see next. Now, our school, for whatever reason, is where the majority of the royal family sends their children to study. In fact, I even teach the son of the president of this country, which is quite interesting. The family is wealthy beyond anyone's imagination, and every once and a while, they give back to the school. For example, they provided lunch on this day, which was no small task. They completely transformed the school courtyard into a banquet hall. Here are some photos:
There were several trucks loaded to the top with trays of food. Each tray was loaded with excellent, natural, home-cooked food. The royal family's had their private kitchen staff prepare it all for us.
This was just one corner of the line. There was another table just like this on the other side that wrapped around, and given that our school is co-ed, the same amount of food was served on the girls side, as well! The food was incredible! I just wish I could eat like that everyday!
This is part of a professional singing and dancing band. They are hired for weddings and other special events. The royal family hired them to perform today for all at school.This is the car of one of the members of the royal family. One of the facts that I find most interesting about this country is that their license plates are actually ranked based on your status. If you're the most important person in the country, your license plate is number one. This goes all the way up to the 100's, and as the number goes up, so does the quality of the car! It's pretty important to these people, and last year, someone apparently auctioned off their very low-numbered license plate for an amount of money that reached into the millions!
This is the Rolls-Royce of one of the members of the royal family. As you can see, license plate #64. Very important person. Quite interesting to see.
These are the janitors of our school. All wonderful men, but paid very little for their job. Their situation opens up my eyes to the unfortunate reality of life for so many! They're all here to support their family's back home. With the exchange rate, they send good money home, but here, they live quite a meager existence. It makes me both value what I have and share it with them at the same time!Finally, the official National Day Celebration
Some things just plain blow my mind. As a soccer fanatic, many of you have seen or heard of me at my wildest, but what I saw last night was beyond wild. It has already gone down in history as one of the funniest things that I would have ever seen in my life. For last night's National Day celebration, it seemed that the thing to do was decorate your car in the wildest way possible, line up on the main highway of the city, and rev your engine and honk your horn for hours on end. People were literally sitting and standing on the hoods of their cars. The fact that they were on a highway did not seem to matter. I was walking on the lanes in the stopped traffic taking photos of these people. It was BRILLIANT, and I can't remember the last time that I laughed that hard. Here are some photos of what I saw:
The photos are cool, but they don't do enough justice to what the scene was like. I tried repeatedly to load some videos here, but for some reason it didn't work. Anyhow, imagine that the only audible sound for 3 hours straight anywhere in the city is the revving/destroying of engines. The stench of burning rubber from screetching tires was overwhelming, and the beauty of it all is that it's done just because the country turned 36 years old. Even more disturbing is that they do this each year. We were laughing last night that if they were to ever win the world cup, they'd probably knock some of their buildings down in celebration... All this said, it was still thoroughly entertaining!!!
'Till the next time!
