Dubai...still an adventure!

Day Five

Another day in Dubai, but it was very foggy when we first got up. Neither of us slept really well again, I think that we are still fighting a bit of jet lag. A 12-hour time difference is quite a change for my body clock! Jenny read somewhere that it takes a day for every hour of time change…so 12 days later… I’ll be back home.

So we got out of bed and head down to yet another breakfast buffet. Then back up to the room for a little catnap before we met our car for our trip to the Jumeirah Mosque, which was one of the highlights of our trip so far!

The Jumeirah Mosque is the only Mosque in the city which is open to non-Muslims. We made it for the 10am tour and the next 1.5 hours were really enlightening. I had been to a Mosque in Malaysia, but it wasn’t a formal tour or educational experience. This tour was incredible.

We started by observing the pre-prayer cleansing ritual, as well as the religious meaning behind it. Then we were shown into the Mosque (we had to remove our shoes and as women, we had to be all covered except our feet.) We were given “lectures” on Islam – history, tradition and beliefs. We tried to learn as much as we could in the 1.5 hours, but still has many more questions. We were also shown the prayer ritual and the meaning behind the steps. Our teacher was a Kuwaiti gentleman, who lived in the US for 20 years, and a British woman, who had lived in Dubai for over 15 years. I wish I could explain what we learned but it was just so much! And I wonder if so many of the world’s problems could be solved just by learning more about each other and discovering that we aren’t as different as we think!

Then after our Mosque tour, we headed back to the hotel and grabbed lunch – Chinese food :). We enjoyed a relaxing meal. Then, for me, it was off to do my helicopter tour. One of the pricier ones that I have been on, but it was enjoyable. The best part was that the pilot was a friend of mine from college so it was fun to reminisce and catch-up. We then took off to meet another friend of mine who was also in town, and Jenny met up with friends of hers. So all-in-all, it was a night of great fun!

Love,
Kathleen