Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Eid Break

It's been nice the past few days.  Finally there is time to sleep and catch up on TV and avoid thinking of the craziness that was midterms last week.  I had three midterms and a paper due last week which wasn't fun. 

The week of has been for the Islamic holiday of Eid al Adha.  This is a celebration of the event in the Bible when Abraham(Ibrahim) was about to sacrifice his son Ishmael(Ismail).  Instead God sent a lamb to be sacrificed instead.  One of the traditions for the festivity is to sacrifice a lamb along with spending time with family and enjoying large quantities of food.  It reminds me a bit of Thanksgiving for Americans. 

As similar to American shopping traditions, the malls in Dubai have had 24 hour shopping hours.  Myself and two other exchange students here for the holiday went to Dubai mall to do some shopping.  I was able to finally find Harry Potter in Arabic.  We stopped to watch the fountain show and were pleased to hear Michael Jackson's Thriller, a Halloween theme.  There were a few stores that were decked out for Halloween, but it's not as big a holiday as in the States nor the small following in Europe.  I was told that Halloween is celebrated to some degree on campus, but since it falls during the Eid break this year, everyone is at home and not at school.  I'll be enjoying Halloween movies and candy tomorrow as well as spending Halloween with family on webcam.  With this semester abroad, I've come to appreciate webcam and the Internet greatly.

I will put in as a side note that quite a few of the other exchange students found good deals to travel to other places during the break.  There are exchange students that went to Istanbul, Nepal, India, and I think Jordan as well.  For Wellesley students, if you are intending to travel extensively during your study abroad, this is a good place to travel from, with Dubai airport serving so many different areas.

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