Dubai (Academic Travel Part 1)

Sunday March 10, my class and I left for Academic Travel, a 2 week trip visiting Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Kuala Lumpur to look at the Global City. We left Milan in the morning to fly to Dubai for 5 days and arrived late Sunday night. Dubai was a whirlwind! Monday I had two meetings for a business plan that I am writing, one in the morning on the Palm Island and the second in the Dubai International Financial Center. In between meetings I was able to meet my brother-in-law for lunch. He took me to the cafe at the top of the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world. We were on the 122nd floor and were able to see all of Dubai. The view was incredible and I was able to see the Palm Islands and the World Islands from above. It was so great to be able to meet up up with Chris in his new hometown and catch up! That night a group of us saw the Dubai Fountain Show. The fountain is the largest in the world and every half hour they have a fountain show choreographed to different music. We watched one to Michael Jackson. After we got dinner at Lebanese restaurant which began our juice obsession for the rest of the trip.

Burj Khalifa

Tuesday we toured Dubai because our professor had gotten us the hop on hop off bus tickets. It was my first time using a tour bus and although we had some difficulty finding the stops at the beginning by the end of the day we had figured it out. The bus was good in the sense that it brought us to all the sites but I don't think I'll use one again. We got to see the gold and spice souks, the Dubai Mall, the Palm Island, the Burj al Arab (the world's only 7 star hotel) and more. We ended the day at dusk on the beach, with our tours in the Arabian Sea!

Gold Souk

Me, Jeannie & Shannon on the beach with the Burj al Arab behind us

On Wednesday, we left for Abu Dhabi where we met with NYU Abu Dhabi and then with masters students from the Men's College of the Higher College of Technology. The last visit was interesting because we got to speak to Emiratis about their experiences in the UAE and learn more about their lives and businesses. My favorite part of the day was our trip to Masdar City, a zero carbon, zero waste and totally sustainable city that Abu Dhabi is constructing around 15 km outside of the city. The construction is around 80% complete and currently, people are living there, business are operating and they have a masters and phd program. We had a guided tour of the city which started with a ride in the magnetic cars to the city center. We saw their solar panel farm which consists of 87,777 panels and their wind tower that helps cool the city. Their residential apartments are brown colored and the facade is made from sand. They use slanted windows and proximity of the buildings to help cool the city to around 10 degrees cooler than Abu Dhabi. Having studied Masdar city at Colgate it was so interesting to go there in person and was definitely a highlight of our visit to the UAE!

Masdar City!

The following day Jeannie, Shannon and I headed to the Dubai Mall for some speed shipping! We spent the morning in the mall and had lunch before heading back to the hotel to go see some camels. We were told we were going to see the races but the races are at 7am so we went to a camel dairy farm instead, which smelled disgusting. We fed the camels some carrots for some prime photos and then went to the camel milk shop, appropriately named "Camelicious." They sell camel milk and camel milk chocolate, and we were able to try both. For dinner the entire class went on a boat cruise on the Dubai Creek, a nice ending to our trip first part of the trip.

Dubai was definitely a very interesting city, and I'm so glad I had the chance to visit. They had everything written in both Arabic and English so it was cool to see both side by side to understand what it was. It was interesting to see first hand the attempt to balance the large expat population, around 90% of Dubai, with the Arabic culture and Islamic law. The built environment is unreal and they're continuing to build it up. It would be interesting to go back in 10 years to see how much it will change. The food was delicious and their fresh squeezed juices were out of this world. Being in the UAE is definitely a cultural experience I will never forget!