December has been a very busy month in the UAE. It started with the country celebrating its 37th anniversary of unification.
Like everything else, this celebration was a world record. On Dec. 2 the UAE held the world’s largest fireworks display that lasted over 45 minutes in two different locations, all choreographed to music.
The streets were completely packed with families in automobiles celebrating. My family and I went to Emirates Palace on Dec. 5 to view another world record: the Hydra open air cinema with the world’s largest free standing movie screen, which also included fireworks, and a laser light show.
Parts of the proceeds for this event were donated to a new school for children with learning disabilities.
Getting ready for Christmas in an Arab society is not easy, but most of the major stores do cater to the Christmas tradition.
This is the first year my family and I have had an artificial tree since most of the real Christmas trees are very expensive and not very pretty.
The villa compound where I live celebrated Christmas in traditional fashion; most of the villas have been decorated with lights, and a few Christmas trees can be seen through the windows.
On Christmas after we opened our presents, the residents of the compound got together outside in the common area, and had a Christmas brunch/barbeque. It really didn’t feel like Christmas when you’re outside in shorts and tank tops having a barbeque.
The Saturday after Christmas my father had to drive us to the Sultanate of Oman to have our visas renewed.
Oman isn’t that far away; the border is right next to Al Ain. We finally got to see our first herd of camels walking in the desert, and once in Oman, we stopped and photographed a mother and baby camel grazing along the road. Both animals were calm and didn’t seem to mind us taking their picture.
Oman is very mountainous compared to the UAE, and from what we saw, has very little construction, so it was nice to see what an arid desert looks like when people haven’t had the opportunity to dig it up.
That’s about it for the month. I’ll write more later on, and check out the blog for pictures of the camels and Oman.
(The Carrothers’ family blog may be found at: http:carrothersuae.blogspot.com.-Ed.)
