Celebrating

I have been slacking in a major way when it has come to blogging. Sometimes life gets in the way of writing about life...funny how that is!

Recently it was UAE National day...aka the 41st anniversary of the country. There are many things to note about National Day, but let us first tackle the 41 bit. Last year was the 40th anniversary (obviously), so this year, in the good charming broken English way, a lot of cars I saw had stickers that said 41th. I understand that these are finicky parts of the English language but you'd think that someone, ANYONE, who came into contact with this sticker at the various stages (manufacturing, shipping, sticking it on the car at the shop) would have looked twice and realized that 41 (th) just isn't quite right. I'd like to think that maybe it was much to the amusement of the strong-English speaking Filipinos who put all those stickers on. Then I accept it with a smile.

Secondly, schools go all out with National Day celebrations and our school was no exception. I could not take a lot of pictures as we are not allowed to show the faces of our students or even take their pictures without permission, but I can show you the cafeteria. They rented a legit catwalk to have a Arab women fashion show. The students wore a variety of clothing from UAE and other cultures, complete with 5-8 in inch stilettos and decked out in hundreds of dollars worth of gold jewelry. Some of the sweet little Muslim girls were swinging their hips a little too seductively..we saw our Vice Principal giving them the eye. In Canada we just BBQ, drink beer, watch fireworks and yell "woooo! Eh!" on Canada Day, so this was slightly more spectacular.

Our school also hosted the elementary kids to put on a National Day show. Some little girls dressed in UAE colours and flipped their hair around (the traditional UAE dance for women) and others dressed up in army fatigues and did a dance with fake, plastic AK47s. While this would be entirely disturbing in North America, in UAE it considered quite normal and cute. 

The rest of the Emiratis celebrated by going down to the Abu Dhabi waterfront, parking their cars, honking, silly stringing each other and making a lot of noise. I did want to go and celebrate there until I heard that men sometimes take it as the perfect opportunity to grope women in the crowd with no repercussions...so I skipped it. 

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Over the last two days I travelled home to Canada. I took two separate flights, one on Emirates Air (known as one of the nicest airlines) and one on AlItalia which was nothing to write home about (though it appears as though I still will). Emirates was really nice and the seats were even more comfortable than a traditional airline (even in Economy-of course in first class you get a damn bed!) Luckily for me, I had 4 seats to myself so I laid across them the whole way, it was lovely. The food was actually quite good-stewed mutton, mashed potatoes and chocolate mousse and all the wine I could drink (a little ironic since they announced call to prayer on the plane). I found it very interesting the way they announced our arrival. First in English, stating we had arrived in Rome, the weather and thanking us for flying. Next in Italian, none of which I understood, but it sounded pretty smooth. Lastly, they announced in Arabic and I counted that they said "Alhamdulillah" (Praise to God) 5 times in the one announcement. I find it interesting, that although people of other languages/cultures may be religious, they very rarely mention God in daily speaking. They did say Merry Christmas in English though. 

Then I went to Rome and ate a lot of pork during my layover and listened to Christmas music. It's good to be home!