It's the Little Things

Last weekend I found myself sitting on my bed eating rice cakes with peanut butter and nutella (no more room service and buffets, back to dorm food) and thinking what in the world am I going to write about considering last week's post was the fairy tale adventure known as my Eid break. I was afraid that everyday life could not live up to the craziness and excitement of my previous posts. Then several times throughout the week I realized it is about the little things in life. :) Here are the moments that made me smile this week.

This week I rediscovered how much I like the library or at least the coffee shop in the library. I had a midterm Monday night so I spent all my free time Sunday and Monday cramming in the cafe. It is amazing how accomplished you can feel after spending a few hours in a designated study spot so I spent almost every night after practice in the library doing something or another.

The best part was the walk back to the dorms each night. It is finally getting nice outside (meaning less than 100F) and the skies are a lot clearer (the dust in the air settles in the winter) so evening walks are amazing. I also have this really strange habit of pretending I am in a movie when I am walking in a really movie-esque environments and listening to music. It happened earlier in the week when I was walking through the palm tree lined path and Oh, Pretty Woman came on. I secretly (actually not so secretly) love the movie Pretty Woman so listening to that song while walking home made my day. It was like I was in my very own 90's film...but in the UAE and not at all like Pretty Woman actually but you get the idea.

This week I also stumbled upon an amazing mentorship opportunity. No exaggeration, I did not realize that I had found someone to mentor me and help me as I prepare for writing a thesis and life after Dartmouth until I had already had a few conversations with him. Believe it or not Sheikh Mansour has volunteered to mentor me the rest of the term. Right now we are working through what education means and how it can help bring change to countries all over the world. The cool part is we are approaching the topic from not the traditional angles but rather unique ones and consequently I see the subject in a different light now. I think I have learned more in our conversations this last week than I have all semester. They are incredibly helpful not only because he has so much experience with politics and diplomacy but also because he will give me an idea and have me try to figure it out on my own before we talk about it. I am excited to see what cool things we will talk about the rest of the term.


Thursday may not be considered a little thing but it definitely made this week memorable. The men's and women's volleyball teams all got together and went to the desert just outside of Dubai to hang out.

Noor and I widdling sticks and talking about life

Once we were already in the car and on the way there we realized we did not get sticks for the marshmellows. My immediate thought was, no worries I am sure we can find some sticks. Then I remembered we are in the desert so there is no way we will find sticks. Fortunately, there were some sticks in the wood they bought for the fire and they just needed to be widdled a bit. In typical American fashion, my friend Jamie (who is another exchange student on the men's team) and I began to widdle the sticks. My friend Noor came over and became our apprentice as she learned the art of pocket knife widdling. We sat on the ground widdling away for almost an hour and it was one of my favorite hours of the week. Noor and I just talked about our lives, our families, our passions and our goals. It was one of the first sincere and heart felt conversations I have had since getting here. I am truly blessed by her friendship and am so thankful she came over to us to learn how to widdle a stick so we could talk.

The rest of the night was spent making smores (we made them with nutella instead of Hersey's...best idea of the night), singing Kareoke, playing volleyball and an insane game of charades. When we were picking the charades teams Jamie and I were on the same team which some people thought was unfair since the two Americans were together and we were doing movies (all of the movies they watch are American). We proved them all wrong because our team was horrible. That or the other team had some sort of charades super power because they guessed movies that we thought were nearly impossible to act out. I guess not. Either way I spent the entire night laughing and was so thankful to spend the time with some of my closest friends here in the UAE.

Trying to get the fire ready for making smores....note that Jamie is the one who fell down during our trip and that is why is ankle is purple

I absolutely love these girls!

This is how karaoke is done in the desert :)

We sat on the sand dunes during charades and if you can't tell by our faces we were in awe by the other group's ability to get every movie right

Though I didn't ride in a helicopter or run with giraffes this week it has been just as rewarding and fun. This place is really starting to become more than just a place I am passing through but my home. It is hard to believe that it is already the end of October and that before long I will be leaving all of these wonderful people who have become a part of my life. But let's not worry about that yet, I am going to just keep enjoying the little things in my days :)