Thursday in Dubai

Today Larry went into the office – there are 3, one in Oud Metha, one in the Outsource Zone and one in the Dubai International Finance Center. Oh, we should explain how the city is divided up. First, there are no addresses. Mail is ONLY delivered to P.O. Boxes, on top of that you should only send mail to your company P.O. Box because personal boxes are not reliable. The city is divided up into areas or zones, each having a name. Businesses areas are grouped by what they do – for example, there are zones called Internet City, Media City, Academic City, Medical City, Sports City and so on.

Later in the day, we visited the Dubai American Academy. We liked it but it is rather large. We prefer the American School of Dubai. We have applied to both and will hope for the best that we get in to one or both of them. There are waiting lists for both already.

After the school visit we came back to the hotel and did homework. Then we went out to the Karama Shopping center, a.k.a. Canal Street in NYC. The girls are proudly sporting their new “futbol” jerseys from there. This experience was very interesting, every few steps you are asked “want copy watch? Want copy designer bag?” These are designer knock-offs. And if you want to see these you have to go into “secret” rooms in the shops. One time we went up a crickety set of stairs into a closet full of silk material scraps. The sales guy pushed a button and someone behind a book case moved the book case out of the way to expose a very small door into a secret room. Larry had to completely bend in half to fit inside. Unfortunately there were no sparkling bargains that we just had to have… maybe next trip. And if anyone comes to visit we will be sure to take you there. *big grin* Elle says she’s not going back “its creepy!”