National Day was Dec. 2nd. The UAE is 40 years old! What a young country. Sheikh Zayed joined all the emirates, minus Ras Al Khaimah, in 1971. RAK joined in 1972. I just found that out. Interesting. Even though RAK joined in 1972 they still celebrate, they're just a year behind. The amount of celebration that goes on in this young country makes me wonder if our founding fathers celebrated when the USA was only 40 years old. Did they decorate their horse and buggies? Did they have parades? Did they decorate their houses? Did they get off work for a 2 day celebration? Interesting thoughts and questions!
My National Day celebrations began at school with our day long assembly/party. We celebrated on Tuesday 11/29 due to a parade for the older students on Wednesday and no school on Thursday. It was actually much better than last year. I think it's because I sort of knew what to expect. The girls looked amazing in their fancy dresses and make-up. There were some that didn't get all fancied up, they just wore "play clothes" and I thought they looked cuter than the ones in the fancy dresses and make-up. There was lots of singing, dancing, and hair flinging (national dance). The 4th graders sang the song that Andrea wrote for them. They did a good job even though everyone wasn't in attendance. I also had 2 students read a paragraph that they wrote about National Day. I was very proud of all my 4th graders, but I didn't want to have them all read when I knew that no one would be paying attention. Hessa Mohammed and Fatima Saif wrote with lots of details and did a wonderful job reading their paragraph. They, all of them, have come so far in their English abilities.
Since I had Thursday off of school I headed to Dubai early in the morning. Well, not too early. I actually left later than I wanted to and didn't arrive until 11:45. I wanted to be there at 11:00. Oh well. I slept in! I guess I needed it! Thursday was a nice day hanging out with Cindy and helping her get ready to teach the 5 and 6 year olds at church on Friday.
Friday December 2nd was National Day. After church we: Cindy, Sarah, Merle (Sarah's friend) and I went to Khulood's (Cindy's neighbor) house and got prepared for what was going to happen. We foudn out that we were going to be driving on Jumeriah Beach road and it was like a huge party atmosphere. We didn't feel all that prepared! Oh well. We all piled into Khulood's car, and Aysha her 7 year old daughter sat on Sarah's lap. It was a crammed car. As soon as we got to Jumeriah Beach Road the traffic picked up. We were riding in the car parade. She didn't really tell us this part. I thought we were going to go to a party somewhere. The car parade turned out to be sooooo much fun! People decorate their cars and drive up and down the road. There are also men/boys out running around spraying silly string, snow foam, shaving cream, and water at/in passing cars. If you had your window down there was a huge chance that you were going to get creamed with something! It happend quite frequently. As much as I didn't want to get sprayed with shaving cream and silly string I wanted to! Weird! Plus it was fun taunting them to see if they could get me before I got the window up. There was one man that actually opened the door and sprayed me with snow foam! From that moment on we kept the doors locked. A few even put their arms in the open window to prevent it from going up! Too funny! We were laughing and shrieking the whole time! Unfortunately we didn't have anything to fight back with, but I ended up grabbing someone's can of snow foam and using it on him. It was hillarious! I think our car got targeted quite a bit because there were only girls in the car. Khulood's husband went to Abu Dhabi with her sons, so it was just a girls' night.
The night didn't actually turn out as I had imagined. Aysha began crying when the windshield got so covered with shaving cream. She thought her mom wasn't able to see and was going to get in an accident. Then the fumes got to me and I couldn't stop coughing. It was terrible. The windows were up so we wouldn't get sprayed, but they needed to be down so I could get some fresh air, but when we put the windows down we got attacked more. Not good. Khulood ended up pulling over so I could get out and walk around. It took me quite a while to get calmed down and stop coughing enough so I could breath. I was coughing so much I thought I was going to get sick and my throat was so raw. By this time Aysha was pretty tired and still upset so we decided to go home and drop her off. I thought it best to stay at home as well, as much as I wanted to go back out and have fun I didn't want to have another fit. When we got home I kept coughing uncontrollably and Cindy gave me her inhaler, some cough medicine, tea, and honey and I ended up sitting in the bathroom with the hot water running. I eventually stopped coughing and tried to read, but I was exhausted so I ended up in bed by 9:30. Not sure if it was the combination of the medicine or all the coughing but I couldn't stay up. I thought I would be up all night coughing, but that wasn't the case. I didn't even hear them come home and take showers. I woke up Sat. morning thinking that they weren't home because it was so quiet. They actually got home at about 1:15 in the morning, but I didn't hear a thing. Cindy said that they weren't all that quiet either.I was able to wake up early today and leave Dubai before noon. I had so much to do that I couldn't stay even though I wanted to. I talked with Cindy for a while and then had to head home so I could go shopping, do laundry, do lesson plans, post pictures on Fb, do this blog, do grades and check papers. I still have to do grades and check papers and finish this blog!
Flashback to last weekend. That was the Thanksgiving celebration. I was in Dubai for Thanksgiving, but since I had already celebrated Thanksgiving with the Wilson's we didn't do anything until Saturday. Thanksgiving was actually Sarah's 19th birthday and Cindy and her neighbor had planned a surprise party for her. So that's what we did Thursday night. She was totally surprised and it was a lot of fun. So Thanksgiving was celebrated on Saturday. We went to the same lady's house that hosted the German feast to celebrate an international Thanksgiving. Angela, the German lady (although it's not really Angela but she said that's what we can call her), has an American friend who wanted to have a Thanksgiving dinner but her house wasn't big enough so Angela agreed to host it. It was an international Thanksgiving because the only Americans there were Cindy, Sarah, me, and Betty. There were people from Panama, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, England, and India. It was fun! All the Thanksgiving trimmings were there, plus some other things. It was a very different Thanksgiving and one that I will always remember!
I am still coughing a little, but not nearly as much as last night.
10 days left of school and 18 days till I leave for Australia!
81 degrees at 6:00pm.
Are you saying the national dance is something akin to "I Whip My Hair"?
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