D is for Dubai

Continuing along today with the April A-Z Blog Challenge and my travel adventures. This month I am reflecting on the time I spent overseas during my teens. 

D is for Dubai

Dubai was not a place I had even heard of before I moved to England. And for any of you readers unfamiliar, it is essentially a "state" in the country the United Arab Emirates which is a country in the middle east, situated on the Persian Gulf bordering Saudi Arabia and Oman. 

My school had a 2 week spring break and each year I spent the first week on a service project trip with Young Life. The second half of the trip we would either relax at home or take a family trip somewhere. In 2007 though, we took a big trip to Dubai along with 6 other families from my school. This made it an even more memorable experience since I had several of my close friends with me. 

Most of our time was spent around the resort where we stayed. We hung out at the beach, the pool, played soccer and volleyball and enjoyed getting to have all that time with just the "kids". 

We ventured out one evening for a boat cruise. One of the dads had arranged the excursion and we got to tour the area by boat. 

We saw the Burj Al Arab Hotel. Also known as the sail. And we headed to the mall one night. The mall? Yes. That doesn't sound like it would be a "tourist" adventure but this mall was pretty special. It had a ski slope...inside the mall! We were also pretty excited about the Cinnabon store because there wasn't one near us at home. Teenagers can be pretty easily pleased guys.

I also got to parasail one day. Normally heights are not my favorite. And while I definitely had some running dialogue with myself in my head about the potential for falling, parasailing was actually really fun! Would I do it again? I don't know, but I'm glad I did it then. 

We made a daytrip to WildWadi, a local waterpark, with one of the waterslides reaching 108 feet (I'm pretty sure I skipped that one). 

And we headed into the desert for dinner one night. We took jeeps to get there, over sand dunes and into what felt like the middle of nowhere. We sat on pillows in the sand in tents, and had a delicious more traditional middle eastern dinner. 

The trip was relaxing and fun. It was exciting and interesting. It was different than so many other places I had been. I got to enjoy it with my parents. And I got to enjoy it with some of the best friends!