Made it to Dubai!

So today didn’t go exactly as planned.  Upon arriving at the Dubai airport I immediately looked for signs pointing me toward baggage claim. There were tons! Unfortunately they pointed in every direction. You have to understand that the Dubai airport is easily ten times bigger than any airport I have ever been in. I thought my best bet of going in the right direction was following a guy who I saw on my flight. He moved quickly, which I liked. Ten minutes into my stalking I realized he was rushing because he was in fact on his way to another flight. I was then forced to resort to my fail proof fallback plan—flirt my way through. It worked.

Once I got my passport stamped, I was determined to quickly notify my parents that I was alive and well in Dubai. Of course, the airport didn’t have wifi. Tired and hungry, I figured I’d cut my loses and just move on to the university. On a brighter note, the taxi ride went really well. I barely had to even hail the cab. It was just there. Haha.

I was very pleased when I got to the university and got let into my dorm building right away. I did not, however, get let into my room promptly. No one was in the building but cleaning ladies who barely spoke English. They kept reassuring me that someone was going to get my keys soon. I waited for about 30 minutes before getting antsy. I made up some excuse about needing to go to the bathroom to get away from the cleaning ladies.

As I feared, there was NO toilet paper. Worse—no soap. All I wanted to do was wash my hands after touching plane stuff and the sweaty hands of my taxi driver. What a pity.

Eventually someone gave me my key, my admissions packet (a little late, if you ask me), and a welcome bag of food. Naturally, everything in the bag contains gluten. Wonderful. It’s currently taunting my empty stomach on my desk.

 My room is huge. It is the biggest double I have ever seen. It is on the fourth floor, and the ceiling must be 15 to 20 feet high. I am quite pleased with it. Also, I have my own bathroom. There are two toilets (?), a shower—without a curtain, a sink, and a decent size mirror. The view from my room is great—lots of pretty palm trees.

As I started to unpack I noticed that my suitcase smelled unusually delicious. As I’m sure you can guess, my shampoo broke open. So did the bag the shampoo was in, the only bag of liquids that I didn’t double bag. The mess wasn’t too bad, thankfully. I went to go rinse the stuff effected in the sink, and it started bubbling. Normally that would totally make sense… but the bubbles weren’t just going down the drain. They were coming up from the drains in the floor. Only in the Middle East. Haha.

So many things are odd and out of control that I just have to laugh. At first it wasn’t so funny, but what am I going to do? I am the ONLY STUDENT HERE so far, so no one is prepared. The bus that takes people off campus in the morning left a 9am. I was here at that time, but no one else was except the cleaners. Ha. Anyway, I am SO hungry. I need to buy a lot of other stuff, too. For example I need an internet cable. Currently even the campus wifi doesn’t connect to my computer for reasons unbeknownst to me. Don’t worry—the housing manager says that IT will be back on campus on Saturday, only 3 days away. I surely hope I will have the internet before then. I’m just typing this in a Word document, but I’d love to post it online.

Ah! The adapter that the housing manager said I could have isn’t actually a fit. I just noticed that my battery is running out. Great. Haha. Alright, that’s all for now. I need to save the power I have left.