Last Blog from Sharjah

Saturday…

Postcard of Dubai Aerial View

On Thursday we slept late…caught up on emails….then headed our to the area where they have a lot of shops with nuts and dried fruit and stocked on some nuts for our trip.  On the way there we smelled some bread and saw a small shop with a window where you ordered the bread.  It was naan right out of the brick oven…amazing!!  So yummy….

At Chili's

Enjoying ColdStone

When we got back we decided to go to the mall just to walk around and have a nice meal.   It was such a hot day at 11am that we thot it would be nice to enjoy the air-conditioning.  It starts getting a lot hotter from here on out…getting up to 120-140F…I can’t imagine how that feels.  We got to the mall about 2:30 and started walking.  We were enjoying the walking more than the window shopping.  It is a huge mall!  About 3:30 we were getting hungry so found a Chili’s and decided it would be nice to have a taste of home.  I have to say I totally enjoyed it from the first bite of chips and salsa and ate way to many.  I got homesick for Ben and Sarah because we often meet at Chilies when we meet for lunch near where they work.

We managed to walk around that mall till 8pm (with the help of Cold Stone) when we caught the free hotel shuttle back to the hotel.

We met up in the morning on Friday with 2 of the retreat attendees to go to a church (Redeemer church) that meets in a hotel at the mall we had been to the day before.  The 2 women live in Nigeria and are taking a bit of a vacation before going home (they left last night).  It was great to see the wide variety of nationalities that meet together there.  After the service we went to the food court with a lady from the church that had come to the retreat as well.  It was interesting to see the wide mix of nationalities there as well. :)  Only about 10% of the people who live here in Dubai are actually Emirates.  So you see a lot of Filipinos, Indonesians, Indians and people from other surrounding countries…Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, etc.  We had interesting conversation learning a bit more from this lady who has lived here for 6 yrs.

Scarf's at Dubai Souk

After that we went to the old Dubai Souk that is down near the Creek (river).  I was so sad that many of the stores we had seen when we walked thru it with the bus tour group were closed.  There were a lot of fabric stores I was hoping to see….at least for photos because they were so beautiful.  Since Friday is their holy day that may be why they were closed but there were a lot of souvenir type stores to see that were interesting but I can’t buy another thing!!!! Our luggage is full.   

Pashmina ???

One of the ladies that had come to church with us came with us on our exploring and she enjoyed seeing a different area than the mall and enjoyed the shopping and looking.  It was fun to get to spend more time with her and hear about what she is doing and where she lives.  We decided to take the water taxi back across the creek (as opposed to regular taxi) and then we walked the mile back to the mall to catch the shuttle.  It was an interesting walk along the wharf area on the creek and seeing some boats that were loading products to take to…who knows where.  They say they go to Iran, Pakistan, India, Iraq …etc.  They are not huge ships…more like large wooden dhows.  It was fascinating to see and I would have loved to go exploring among them.  You could tell people also lived on the boats.

We got back to mall and found a coffee shop and had a sandwich (with feet propped up) and drink before heading home.

Saying our goodbyes

So this morning we are going to go out to say goodbye to our new friend Shakr and Roger decided to give him one of his Swiss army knives as a gift.  (Did I mention he gave me a necklace to remember his country by?)  I looked him in the eye and said I will never forget you and he said the same…the Father has put him in my heart. 

Not sure what these were but they are beautiful

This is Roger wrapping up the day.  On the way to the Blue Souk we saw a sign to an animal and bird market so we walked through it and saw all kinds of birds and animals for pets including hunting Falcons.  We did not know they had so many pets here but there were lizards, rabbits, parrots, chickens, fish, love birds, canary's and many more.

Next post, Manila