Submitted by Travis Plystak on the 2019 winter session program in Dubai sponsored by the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering…
Dubai is a vibrant city-state in the UAE and is full of people from around the world. Less than one hour after getting off the plane, I had already seen/talked to people from five different countries. The first thing we did was go to a mall where we got food and while in line I got to talk to a South African woman named Megan who told us about good places to go to out, make friends and have fun while we’re here. The mall, Ibn Battuta is a worldly place in which different sections of the building are designed to look like a culture from different parts of the world.
The next day, we took a tour of the Palm Island in Jumeirah with one of Dr. Small’s friends from the area and then had dinner with even more of them that night where we were welcomed with open arms. That night, I learned about the Bedouin, a nomadic tribe in the Arab world and their practices. What struck me as most interesting about them is that they won’t ask a traveler ‘s name until their fourth day of acquaintance. This is because the Bedouin believe that knowing one’s name is equivalent to taking responsibility for their health and well-being between the pair. If the traveler is with the tribe for more than three days, that meant that the two parties had some sort of purpose together.
Besides that, some interesting things I learned about Dubai during the first week were that people in the Middle East sometimes eat food with their bare hands and no utensils. I got to experience that first-hand at a little seafood place by the beach where me and two friends ate fish, rice, and prawns with just our hands while stray cats looked on at us. There are many stray cats in this city and they are revered creatures because of an old Islamic tale of when a cat slept on the King’s robe and the King cut off that corner of his robe in order to not disturb the cat.
There are many more things I’d like to talk about, but I have had a lot of information thrown at me in the two weeks I’ve been here and I will try to write it all down to the best of my ability.
