November 6

Well, I certainly had high aspirations for today, but somehow common sense took hold of me.  I did not get on the Dubai bus as I had originally planned, and instead slept an extra 2 hours.  Frankly, I think it was the better choice.  I had a charming breakfast with Jessica and Nick, the two people going with me to Perth, and then we headed out on the MLC bus to downtown Abu Dhabi city.  It drops us off at Marina Mall, and then we walked over to the Emirates Palace.  Talk about a swanky hotel/jewel of the city.  Obviously, if you have the money in the UAE, you spend it.  Saddest thing about the whole place was that there were no people on the beach.  I repeat, no one.  We saw 8 people on the beach during the entire day.  Certainty there are places we couldn't see, big billboards block the view of the beach for privacy we think, but it was just incredibly depressing.  We just need to figure out where we can have co-ed swimming.  We hear Al Maya Island is nice, and we may try to get there next weekend.  We visited a local market area, which had a lot more 'normal' people from Abu Dhabi in it.  We finally found shwarma for Nick, it's a sandwich/gyro like thing, but unfortunately they don't start serving it until 5 PM.  Oh well, at least he knows where it is now.  We had some 'American' fast food, that was pretty nice actually.  Jessica and I got stared at and winked at constantly by these strange Algerian? guys.  So creepy.  I guess we were pretty much the only girls not wearing hijab, but really?  Oh well, at least we had Nick.  :)  Caught a taxi back to the mall for our bus pick-up, then home for a nap.  I had a pretty productive evening working on my homework for class.  Looking forward to next week when I finally leave for Australia though.  :)  Love you all!