Thursday, August 6, 2009

Houston to Dubai

Early in the trip we identified the rebels among the group…

Apparently I was one of them! Can you believe it?

Our first night abroad, we had a layover in Dubai. So, Derek Hawkins a Comm. Major (and the awesome photographer of the pics below and many to come on this blog) immediately made plans for us to take a tour of Dubai. Then we met Jessica, this totally LA, free-spirited, genius of cultural theories who was headed to Cape Town to study abroad for 5 months while also developing a documentary about the influence of hip-hop in Africa…so, yeah-it was a dynamic encounter. Needless to say…the three of us clicked.


















Our taxi driver, Ali was super cool. He took us on a personal tour around the entire city, and apparently he was well connected because we were able to go into many of Dubai’s Luxury hotels and snap some HOT shots. In 5 hours we saw two malls, about 3 beaches, 1 seven star hotel (and many 5 star), an insanely gorgeous mosque, the club scene in Dubai, and plenty of shiny things.



















Dubai is a city that screams capitalism. Like, SCREAMS it. Huge Cartier billboards, shiny Bentley’s and Audi’s everywhere (Oh, and it looked like everyone just washed their car).

Derek described it best by calling Dubai a city that is a beautiful scar. The natural elements of the city no longer exist. It’s a beautiful city; however the construction and development will leave an ugly scar on the world, as do many of our current developments.






















Hope you enjoyed the pics! There are more to come...in addition to awesomely crazy stories about our trip.

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