All That Glitters....

Having to get up earlier on vacation than I do in real life is just plain wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. I had to leave the hostel at 5:15 this morning to catch my next flight. No wonder I'm becoming a coffee addict on this trip.

The flight was short and easy, 3 hours and only about 25 people on board so I had a whole glorious row to myself. But I deserved it after what they served me for breakfast: I ordered the "sausage omelet" and what I got was some sort of white meat. Yes, white. It remains a mystery as to what it was.

But then I got to Dubai! I have wanted to come to Dubai for years and I'm so excited to finally be here and to experience it for myself. I have a feeling it's going to live up to all the hype. Even just stepping into the airport you get a sense of the newness and the grandness and the sparkling sparkliness of the place. The airport is an awesome, insanely modern, immaculate, remarkable experience in and of itself.

Once you step out of the airport, you get a sense of the heat. A big, fat stifling sense of it that smacks you in the face the moment you walk outside. When I left Amman this morning I was chilly and wearing a sweater. When I walked out into the Dubai air, my breath caught for a moment. And this is the fall. In the summer, it regularly reaches 50C, or 122 degrees Fahrenheit. Holy. Crap.

I am staying with some really cool couchsurfing members for my first two days here, Dolores and Andres. She is from Argentina and he is from Brazil; they moved here in July for work reasons and kindly open their home whenever they can as they love to meet people from other countries. I walked into their apartment and was blown away by how nice (and clean!) it was. I'm sure it had even more of an impact after coming straight from the dingy, grimy hostel world. They live in a high-rise with a beautiful pool on the roof and a magnificent view of the city. It almost made me weep with joy to realize that I would get to stay in a place so clean and modern, even if only for a few days.

Dolores is taking Arabic classes so I took off on my own to explore the city for a bit. It sounds strange but I started off at the Dubai Mall as that is where you have to go to buy advance tickets for the Burj Khalifa (the world's tallest building!), which I wanted to get lined up. I thought it would just be a mall. But it was a mall unlike any mall I had ever imagined before. The luxury and over-the-topness of it all was mind-blowing. It's like everything is just dripping in wealth. Think of all the world's most major fashion brands that you know (Louis Vuitton, Armani, Tiffany, Burberry, Chanel, Dolce & Gabbanna, etc) and put them all under one gloriously ornate roof and surround it all in gleaming white marble, gold and crystal chandeliers. Oh, and then throw in luxury restaurants, and indoor waterfall, an ice skating rink, a full-size aquarium and a magnificent outdoor fountain that puts on 'shows' every half hour. It's not so much a mall as an experience. I don't even like to shop and yet I walked around for a couple hours after buying my tickets just taking it all in. Whoa.

I came back to the house and met Yasna, an Iranian girl who is also staying here for tonight. She, Dolores, Andres and I had dinner along with all sorts of interesting conversations about politics and culture (imagine that conversation with an American, an Iranian, an Argentinian and a Brazilian). To me, it was the epitome of what the Couchsurfing project is about: it really isn't just about having a free place to stay, it's about hospitality and meeting people from different cultures, learning about them and, as cheesy as it sounds, making the world a smaller place. Such a simple, yet remarkably brilliant concept.