Hello all,
Greetings from The Springs Neighborhood of Dubai. I arrived last night after a twenty-six hour journey Dushanbe. I think no person goes from Dushanbe to Dubai in the way that I did -- and all it says is that I am a crazy traveler. On the 27th, I woke up at 2:30am to get to the airport in Dushanbe. The whole family woke up to say goodbye, and six packed into Sharaf's car to drive me at 3am. It was really sweet. They walked me up to the front door, and then Firuz handed over my bags. The flight left at 6 am, and six hours later or so, I arrived in Istanbul. I didn't check my bags all the way through because I don't trust airlines to check bags properly when you change airlines and have two stop overs, so in Istanbul I exited, got my passport stamped and picked up my luggage. I waited until 11:30 for the check in for Qatar Airways to open. When I got to the desk, the woman said, where are you flying, and I said, "Dubai" - she checked the computer and said, "Oh, you mean Abu Dhabi"- at this I was a little confused, but didn't think about it much - and was quite sleepy. I almost got charged 400 dollars because Qatar had a stricter weight policy for luggage than Turkish. In the end, the manager took pity on me and let me go, but originally the woman at the check in desk handed me back my passport and told me that I should get out of line until I pay the money.

The qatar airways flight was great - even better than Swiss. The seats were spacious, the food was great and the service was really excellent. They also had really good movies on the personal tv screens. I watched Darjeeling Limited, which was a tad silly - and I didn't really understand the point of the movie. I have never seen such friendly hostesses, even if they forgot to serve me a drink and my first seat's entertainment center was broken. I understand their five star customer satisfaction rating, and I highly recommend them.

Anyway, I had my second stop over in Doha, which was a modern looking aiport, but very crowded. At this point, I look at the departures screen and realize that there are equal numbers of flights going to both dubai and to abu dhabi. It suddenly occurred to me that in my booking I accidentally reserved a flight to abu dhabi and was actually supposed to be going to Dubai....which would be especially unfortunate because Mahdi and Reza were supposed to be waiting with the rental car in Dubai and NOT in Abu Dhabi. Even more unfortunate was the short time I had in Doha so that I couldn't get to a phone to call Reza to let him know I was going to the wrong airport. I did though find a free Samsung internet post, which gave me the chance to at least find Reza's phone number. I got on the plane, not completely sure that they wouldn't be in Abu Dhabi, but nevertheless when I arrived, I discovered that no planes were arriving from Tehran, and sure enough Reza wasn't at the airport waiting. The arrival and passport check at Abu Dhabi is a zoo. It's filled with migrant workers who need work visas. I was really happy to be American - as we don't need visas here, and I could avoid, after twenty three hours on the road that awful "visa delivery" line.
I went to a little convenience store in the airport and had a big negotiation with the information desk about what I should do - I got a phone card and they nicely let me use the info desk phone with a card, so I called Reza and told him I was in Abu Dhabi (150 kilometers from Dubai city airport). His exclamation "Oh my God" made me exclaim "Oh my God" --- but in the end, it wasn't soo bad, except for my exhaustion - I got in a taxi - unfortunately a private taxi and put up with the 75$ price --- considering the distance, it's not sooo exorbitant. The awful part was that 4 kilomters from the airport we got stuck in the worst traffic everywhere, because yesterday was the start of the religious holiday. Reza called about twenty times to the driver's phone to see how we could take so much time to get past four kilometers. I think it was 27 hours before we got to Reza's pretty house and I finally got to sleep.
Today we went to the Ibn Battuta Mall, which was modeled after every regional architecture that the traveler visited. A stunning mall --- but everywhere in Dubai is a stunning mall!! My favorite section was depictive of Tunisia, where the ceiling is painted like a starry sky and the buildings seemed like a street. Many of the stores were the same that you would find in our home malls - like Forever 21 or Claire's. Some were more unique though, with Indian styles and fashions, but everything was VERY expensive. I'm going to look for the old bazaar where I hope to find antiques.
Now we are sitting and watching a bit of TV - there's a movie called The Message- about the life of the prophet, and we are talking about the Iranian President's Hajj trip.
See you!!