Las Vegas of the Middle East

Of all the cities I've seen, Dubai is the shiniest. It screams "Look at me! I'm the ____-est!! I have lots of blinking lights!" The buildings are a mishmash of styles and imaginations, like if a crayon skyline came to life, rising out a the desert, completely disregarding its context. 

It was a fun weekend, and my host family was nice enough to invite along some of the YES girls to come with us. As a group of twelve people (my host family, the YES girls, my host aunt and miscellaneous cousins) we were about the size of a "normal" Omani family.  

The first place we went was the Old Souq, and what I found most interesting there was this sketch-looking alleyway. 

Well, not exactly the alley, but the neat little museum that we found at its end, buried inside the maze of Arabizi nick knacks that is Dubai's Old Souq.

It was devoted to a famous old Emirati poet, whose house had been converted into the museum. I honestly didn't spend much time reading his poetry (it was in Arabic) but the house was huge and fun to explore. 

This photo reminds Hannah that museums for dead poets aren't exactly Dubai's biggest draw, and that she probably ought to touch on those things as well.

We also did the customary Dubai-y type activities like mall-ing

And they were sufficiently ginormous, not that any of my photos capture that.

And fountain-ogling 

 (Photos that don't suck are courtesy of my host dad)

And giving out valentines to random strangers. Since we went over Valentine's Day weekend, and the city has enough foreigners that we didn't think anyone would be horribly offended, we decided to spend the day giving out cards to lonely-looking-turned-confused-looking people. 

A very nice weekend.