Here's us with Faisal's friend Vadim saying goodbye just before getting into our taxi to the airport! Thanks a million for having us, Faisal! We had THE BEST time!
And then I set my camera all the way across the tent and used the timer to take this awesome Hustler Magazine inspired photo that I call "The West's Corruption of the East."
...a giant air conditioned (and carpeted!) tent. We went inside and Meredith took a bunch of photos of the two of us acting like we're working out some Old Testament business deals. Hahaha.
Around 5pm Faisal got home from work and we had dinner together. Faisal works for the Emirati government and so he wears a dishdasha (the long white robe thingy) and a gutra (the headscarf thingy). After dinner I asked a million questions about the dishdasha and gurta which culminated in...
...and we saw the Simpsons Movie! Here's Faisal and Mer with the rest of the fam, minus Bart who must've been stolen! Hahaha. (By the way, they had the same exact display in NYC and someone broke Homer's arm off. Nice to see that Simpsons-vandalism is so universal).
Here's a group shot of the four of us doing our best to pretend that we're not freezing our fucking asses off! (We all laughed at the winter hats that were for sale because we figured "How cold can it really be in there?" Surprise, surprise! Turns out, if you want to keep snow in the desert from melting, you need a room that's really fucking cold.
After we'd finished skiing indoors, I didn't think that the mall would have any other tricks up its sleeve that would impress me...but that was only because I didn't know that the Mall of the Emirates is also home to...
Check this noise out! After you get through the changing area, there's an escalator that takes you up to the base of the skiing and snowboarding section. Thumbs up (and crazy eyes!) from Faisal!
I was so fucking excited to go I could hardly finish my lunch! Here's Faisal and Biba about to enter a world of indoor skiing! (Everyone decided to ski except Meredith. She was like "I don't even like skiing outdoors...fuck that bullshit." Hahaha).
The lunch time crew! From the right: Philip, Biba, Faisal, Mer and Philip's friend. The food was great, but if you look in the background, you'll notice something more interesting than the food...
After I was finished gawking at the mall's lobby (just like some gobsmacked huckleberry in Times Square for the first time), it was time to get our lunch on in a restaurant named Sezam (pronounced SHAZZAM!) Which is a giant "we have everything you can think of" type restaurant...
We slept in on Friday. Here's Biba, Faisal and Meredith relaxing in Biba and Phil's amazing all-glass living room and trying to work up the motivation to do something.
After lazing around and digesting for a while, we finally got motivated to get up and get going. On the way out, someone was nice enough to take a pic of all of us together.
Madinat Jumeirah is ridiculous even by Dubai's standards. It's a resort that takes up an entire kilometer of the coast and the entire thing is connected by man-made waterways. Here's the "water taxi" that showed up to take us from the lobby to the restaurant.
