Thursday 23 July Day 4:
Today is my day off, there’s 3 others as well, we were planning on just spending the day at the mall we will be performing at tonight, but it ends up there isn’t much to do there.
We don’t have transportation until after lunch time. Lauren and I walked around because we needed to find pop, because we need the cans for a dance that the children do. It was quite hot out, but not unbearable. Just felt like a really hot summer day in California. There’s no wind and it’s quite humid here.
Next week our venue is a nice mall so we will probably go there. One good thing about today is that I saved money. It would be hard to not spend money in a big mall. They also have a lot of sales on now because we are part of a yearly festival called Dubai Summer Surprises (DSS) and people from here and all over the world come and have exhibits and shows set up in the malls to attract tourists. Many stores put on sales to attract attention to their place, so although it’s the hottest time of year, there’s some good sales. I haven’t been able to look yet, so far I have found things to be quite expensive with the exchange rate of the Pound which means its even more in CAD or USD.
I’m feeling very tired. The last 3 days I don’t think I have ever felt so tired since being on tour. Today feels better being able to relax. I really do cherish my days off. Although I don’t get extra sleep, it feels better.
Friday, 24 July, 2009 Day 5 1:41PM Dubai Hotel
Last nights concerts were interesting. We performed at a smaller mall which was far out of the city, so it was more of a local mall, which means it didn’t have many tourists. The crowds were much smaller, so we had to advertise our product even more. We will have to do the same tonight. I think we are planning on having the children advertise it in the concert. That’s what they usually do in their full regular concerts, and it seems to be effective. It’s really important because the only way we make money for the children is through product and any donations we may get, which aren’t very much so far. It’s still early though. We will be at some large malls next week.
Today was good so far. We went to one of the lady’s church that works for the organization that is hosting us here. It was really good, especially the music, the children got to join the kid’s church and we went with them. There were a lot of South Africans there from all over the country. It was very well put together, a lot of places aren’t prepared for 23 children to show up, especially if it’s a smaller class. Most importantly the children loved it. We are scheduled to perform a few songs there next week, so everyone is quite excited now that they have met the children. I thought it was interesting that they held church on a Friday, I didn’t get a chance to ask. It was held in a conference center, and that could be the only time that its available for use. It’s summer so it doesn’t really affect children’s schooling, but I’m not sure how it works for the business world and work. It’s a large place and the auditorium was packed, they had to put up more chairs for everyone to fit. I will have to ask someone. I have so many unanswered questions about things I have seen here. Especially the clothing, there’s so many different styles.
It’s now nap time. It has been extended to 2 hours. (I’m so grateful!) Then we will have rehearsals and school time has now turned into rehearsals, so I’m pretty much free until 5 when we will leave for the concert. I just can’t leave because I have to be here to get the children from place to place. The other 4 chaperones that weren’t off yesterday are off today, so we are taking care of their kids as well, so it takes a bit longer to get to where we need to be, hopping back and forth to each hotel room to get them. It’s fun though, and I am enjoying it more here everyday. The heat isn’t really an issue unless you are having to go outside a lot.
Well folks, I’ve got an hour and a half until I need to wake up the children, so I’m going to take a nap myself. We have had some really late nights due to the 9 30PM concerts, and then having to get back to the hotel (the place we are performing tonight and last night is an hour away) then showers and getting them in bed. It can be quite tiring at times. I want to get all the extra sleep I can so I’m done typing now :)
So I slept 10 minutes past my alarm, I woke up to the sound of the doorbell...oops! I gave myself 30 minutes to get us there, so I just rushed them, I felt so bad.
Now I’m just planning for school. We are doing a Dubai project where we are going to put the kids in 4 groups and we will make our own newspaper. The groups are Food, Fashion, Weather, and Religion. We are going to show and talk about the differences. Its going to be really cool when we are finished. My group is fashion :) I’m going to try and take them into a few stores during their concert break so they an see some things they have here. It’s such a great learning opportunity for them to be here. Yesterday they went on a school trip to a mosque. I was off so I missed it, but I heard they learned a lot, I’m going to have to ask them about it. Some of the chaperones gave me bits and pieces but I feel like I missed a lot not being there.
Time to get changed for the concert!
Monday, 27 July, 2009 Day 8 11:20AM Dubai Hotel
Wow, I don’t even know the date. So since I’ve last updated...I’m tan after being in the sun for 1 hour (2 sessions of swimming for 30 minutes) The swimming pool is on the roof of the hotel. That’s all it takes in 40 degree weather. We can’t stay outside much longer than that, it’s not safe for the kids, or us. My shoulders got a very mild burn the first day, but it was gone by the morning.
We performed at Modhesh World the last 2 nights. It’s an indoor fair, much like Playland but the roller coasters are much smaller. The other rides are the exact same. We got to ride them for free, that was really fun. The kids loved the bumper cars and the swinging boat the most. The boat is like the one at West Edmonton Mall if you’ve ever seen it, it goes back and forth quite high. I felt sick when I went on it before, so I avoided it this time. I’ve taken a video of it.
They had camels there and we really wanted to ride them, but we had to pay so we couldn’t go on them. I was very upset, that’s one thing I really wanted to do while we were here. We didn’t have time either.
I got left behind the first night. After the concert everyone just disappeared and no one told me where they were going. So I sat for almost 40 minutes and no one showed up, so I thought they had left, so I headed to the main entrance to ask if they had seen them, and I spotted them. No one even noticed I was missing, we are usually focused on making sure we have all the children. It was scary though. I got left behind another time going to dinner, but Heather found me and we found them together.
They were in a closed of section sitting down to eat a fancy catered dinner with the shake (I’m sure I’ve spelled shake wrong, but the shake is similar to a governor) They have one for each Emirate. I never actually got to meet him or figure out who he was. There was so much press taking pictures of us and different people talking to the children. We really do live celebrity lifestyles, especially in Dubai. People stop us walking to take pictures all the time. Head turning and eyes staring constantly. I’d do it if I was them. You don’t often see a line of African children in Dubai, although there is quite a large number of Africans here.
Tomorrow is my day off, we are performing in the Dubai Mall tonight and tomorrow, it’s the biggest mall in the world, so I’m expecting product to do really well. We will also get to spend our day off there, which will be fun.
Everyone is getting tired, especially the children, so we have decided to give them all a night off by taking 5 or 6 of them out of the concert and they will stay at the hotel with a chaperone. Tonight is my night, it gives me a break from product, but it’s not always easy being responsible for 6 children. I’ve got some boys who don’t always like to listen, so it’ll be interesting. We are going to do some drawing, play games, read and then I’ll feed them and then get them to bed early. Then tomorrow a different set will go. We have tried to choose the most tired lot to go first, but they really are all quite tired. They are also trying to cancel one day of concerts if they can, so we can all just relax. It would be really good.
As far as differences in Dubai go, they don’t really eat yogurt here, I know they have it because I had a potato salad with plain yogurt, it wasn’t nice. They may have it in the stores, but it’s not at the hotel. I’m missing it. They have toast and cereal, but most people don’t eat it. It’s usually hot dog sausages, eggs, porridge, and hash browns, pancakes, french toast, fruit salad, it changes each day. The hummus, pita and raw veggies and fruit are there every meal. I’m feeling much better with the food here.
I’m not sure if I mentioned during one of our breaks between concerts we had hot dogs from IKEA, and they are SO much better here. I really like them. I’ve heard the UK ones are better also, but I haven’t tried them. I only eat ours because they are cheap and can tie you over until the next meal.
The children are in Siswati class now with Agreeneth so I’ve had a bit longer of a break which is nice, I can’t seem to type fast enough though. I have a lot to type up before tomorrow. I don’t want to pay for internet if I’m spending half the time typing things. It’s not worth my money.
I’m going to work on my support letter now.
Now I am playing with the children who are staying here, we played junior scrabble, I didn’t think we would make it until the end, but they really liked it. Now they are playing with play doh and making funny masks.
Well, it took quite a while to get them to be sleeping, but we got there. I really want to sleep but I know once my head hits the pillow the doorbell will ring, and then I have to do it all over again with my boys. I’m excited for the day off tomorrow.
Ray is here with us in Dubai and he has been working hard to network with as many people as he can to help people learn about what he is doing with the ACC. We now have connections in Australia and Indonesia, so we are hoping that everything works out and our choir will get to go both places after Christmas! Nothing is set in stone, but having heard it from him means the chances are good as long as everything goes smoothly. Angee also asked us last night how we felt about boat cruises as she was mentioning Indonesia, so I think that’s part of our trip there. I’ve always wanted to go on a boat cruise.
Thursday, 30 July, 2009 Day 11 10:43AM Dubai Hotel
So I’m sick :( I’m pretty sure it’s from the transition from A/C to heat, or even just the A/C. I really feel yucky though. My head feels like it weighs 50 pounds. I’ve heard it’s really horrible being sick on tour, I was sick last month, but it wasn’t as bad at this. It’s the second day, and I’m a lot worse, my voice is going in and out. One of the boys had a cough, so I could have gotten it from him. I’m with girls now, and one of them has started, so she could have gotten it from me or him, because we were both in this hotel room (apartment, not room.) Lauren has also joined me in my room. We have 7 rooms and 8 chaperones so some of us had to share our rooms. It’s nice having someone else to talk to, it gets lonely at times. I’m happy to have girls now, the boys were a lot of work, but I miss them a lot. They didn’t want to leave me, it made me so sad. It’s also great to have someone else help get the children ready, so we take turns, makes it a lot easier.
The mall we are performing at (Dubai Marina Mall) has free internet if you buy a drink from a cafe, so I am going to do that tonight. Last night I didn’t know, but I decided to go shopping on my break, so I got all my souvenirs. Things are so expensive here. I found a really cool shop with lots of neat things. I didn’t get everyone something, because I’m trying to stay on a budget if possible. I don’t know if i’ll ever get back here, so I wanted to make sure I got some things.
Oh I wanted to mention that people drive on the right side of the road here, I didn’t even notice at first, I guess because it looked normal so I didn’t realize. Also, people drive quite fast here, so even on non busy roads, it’s hard to cross. It’s interesting that I haven’t seen any accidents since I’ve been here. Some drivers have road rage, but I think they are just those kind of people. I found that not many people would slow down to let us cross, it’s a bit of that New York thing where everyone is in a rush to get nowhere. It’s not as severe, but I have seen more of it than I see in Canada, that’s for sure.
Most tourists tend to be North American, African, or Indian. There are people from all over the world, and I’ve seen more than I can name, but based on the accents I’ve heard that’s the majority. Also quite a few Australians. It’s interesting to see the people that Dubai attracts. I see more families and females shopping than anything, which makes sense with all the malls, and child attractions throughout.
The tourists, especially the kids really do love seeing the choir perform. The locals are interested, but tend to leave after seeing one song, I’m not sure the reason though.
At The Dubai Mall I got totally swarmed by people wanting to buy product from me, it was great, but I got a bit flustered with them all yelling at me at once. We had to get more sent in because we sold out of almost all the t shirts. It’s a great thing :)
We are teaching the children geometric shapes right now, it’s really fun. We are going to make some out of toothpicks and foam balls, Michelle tried to find marshmallows, but couldn’t. I struggled a lot yesterday trying to introduce it only being able to use the shapes in my dining room for examples. Each tutor has their class come to their room for school. We can all fit in one room, but there isn’t enough table space for all of them to write. My table seats 6, but I took 2 chairs a bedroom so I can sit also, there’s still lot of room to write, the chairs are just large.
It’s funny because I just realized why the hotdogs from IKEA taste better here. They don’t have PORK in them. I worked with a Muslim guy from Sudan, and remembered they don’t eat pork. I’m not a big pork person, I might have bacon or ham every once in a while, but otherwise I avoid it for the most part. So at breakfast every morning we have cut up hotdogs, but it’s called chicken sausage. I’m not a big sausage person, may have mentioned that before, but its because a lot of sausage is usually pork. I eat the chicken sausage almost everyday because it taste like the good IKEA hotdogs. I’m surprised I didn’t realize earlier. I did notice it said chicken, I just never thought about why it said that.
I’m so thankful that I’ve found free internet I can use. It’s such a blessing. I was prepared to pay the hotel only because I knew I wouldn’t get to go to the cafe again while I’m here, and once we are at camp it very very likely we won’t have it. I have a feeling the Edinburgh Fringe Festival is going to be a bit like Dubai where our schedule will be quite hectic because of all the concerts we have. It’s not as intense as here, I think we have one or two days off in the week, and then weekends off, but they have 2 concerts on concert days, as well as school and rehearsals. I’m excited though because we will get time to do some sightseeing, which will be fun.
On Saturday we are getting up early and going to the beach. I don’t know how I feel about it. I guess if we are in the water it won’t be too bad, but I’m very nervous about burning. I don’t know if there will be any shade, I’m not counting on it. I didn’t buy sunscreen because I didn’t expect to be in the sun long enough to need it. I think we are only scheduled to be there for an hour, so it shouldn’t be too bad. It’ll be fun though. It’s great to be able to say I went to the beach in Dubai. We haven’t gone swimming all week because we use the time to nap, which is good, but my tan isn’t getting any darker haha. I’m just kidding around. I’d way rather sleep right now, especially feeling so sick. I think I’ve gone through 30 tissues in the past 48 hours. Not fun :(
I encourage anyone reading this to make comments and ask questions. I’m sure you have them as you read, and I try to answer them before being asked, but I can’t always think of them all.
* I'm at the Mall now... 9:00PM with 30 mins til our last show.. some lady came up to the product table and started talking to me about what we do and so on and then she bought me Starbucks, it was so sweet of her, it made my day :)
Off to answer emails now...
Saturday, 1 August, 2009 Day 14 1:16PM Dubai Hotel
So I just got back from Jumeirah Beach. It’s a private beach so you have to pay to go there. It’s sooo sooo amazingly beautiful. It’s like the resort beaches you see in the magazines or on TV. The water is bluish/green and you can see through. The water is very very warm. We went early to avoid the heat, it can’t be avoided, but we tried. It wasn’t bad at first, but as time passed it became quite uncomfortable.
It was the kids first time to swim in the ocean, their first response after going under water was “my eyes hurt” or “I can’t see”, the second was a sour face and “the water tastes bad!” so we had fun explaining it wasn’t just a big pool. The have been to the beach before but they were just playing in the sand. It’s an extremely messy thing taking 23 children to the beach in hot weather. We had fun, but I don’t think I’d want to do it again.
We stayed longer than scheduled so I’m hoping I didn’t burn too bad, I’m thinking I burnt for sure, just not sure how bad it is yet... :(
We just had lunch and it’s nap time until 5PM. I’m so excited. Kyle wants to go with me to the internet cafe because this may be our last chance so I’m typing this quickly before we head over.
I forgot to tell you all my experience eating at Chili’s on my day off last Tuesday. The 4 of us that were off decided to go there. So we sat down and the hostess tried to get us to buy alcoholic drinks, obviously to make money, we asked for water and she said room temperature or cold, we all said cold. So they brought cold mugs and a 1.5 Litre bottle of Aquafina. We all looked at each other, I said “I bet they are going to charge us for it.” They did. I don’t know the price, because Kyle put it on his bill. Before we ordered we asked for separate bills in case it was going to be a problem. The host didn’t speak very good English so she kept repeating it back trying to figure out what we wanted, she eventually figured it out. Then we got chips and salsa and guacamole as a starter so they brought that out, and no server came up to us, we were in a bit of rush because we wanted to look around the mall and we were already an hour late getting there because of a wrong turn our driver took, and she had to take the long way to avoid the tolls.
It seemed like forever until the host came and took our order, she repeated it back about 3 times each. I got a chicken quesadilla, and she said “so you want chicken in it?” then kyle got steak fajitas and she asked if he wanted steak in it. It was very interesting. I think she was nervous to mess up our order. We all just felt really awkward the way she was speaking, it was like she didn’t understand us at all. Our food came with someone else, and then another person checked up on us. We never knew who our server was. I think I was being a bit critical because of RR training. The food was really good, all of it, I was glad.
I paid cash, and it was DHS 48.60 and I paid with 200, and got back 150, a 1 dirham coin and a coin which none of us knew the value, because it was in Arabic. It confused me because I was quite sure they didn’t have a .60 coin. (After doing a bit of research on the Arabic numbers I figured out it must have been worth .50 I don’t know the word for ‘cents’ is here) We couldn’t find anyone to ask, and just wanted to leave. All I had in my wallet was another dirham, so the tip was 2.50, I felt really bad because none of us had any other way of giving them more. When we left at least 15 of the staff said thank you to us. We were laughing just because it felt quite strange walking out.
Yeah so that was my Chili’s experience at The Dubai Mall, not sure if I’d want to do it again.
We performed at the Deira City Center Mall last night. It is a happenin’ place. Our hotel is actually in Deira which is a suburb of Dubai, so we all expected it to be a tiny local mall. It honestly was like Metrotown the day before Christmas. Apparently it’s always like that. I had to set up product very quickly because so many people were stopping by. Surprisingly the sales weren’t as much as I had expected. We had a huge crowd but I think the people in that mall aren’t used to performances like ours so they didn’t really clap. There weren’t as many foreigners as in Dubai. But A LOT more people. It’s a great mall.
I have pictures but no time to get them up, sorry :(
Tuesday, 4 August, 2009 Departure Day 1:14PM Dubai Airport
So I'm sitting in the airport and have a lot of time to use before our flight... I wasn't prepared to have internet so I don't know what to do with all the time.
Yesterday we went to Ski Dubai, it's an indoor ski/sledding place in the Mall of the Emirates. It's great. It was the first time the children got to see snow, and they were so excited. After about an hour, they started to complain their hands were cold, and a few started crying, I felt really bad, the gloves weren't very thick. I took lots and lots of photos, but don't have time to get them up right now. We just went sledding and tubing, the skiing isn't very safe, we didn't want to deal with anyone getting hurt, and no one did :)
So I'm flying to Manchester now and we will spend 3 days in England at a camp where we will play and relax, like I said before, and then we go to Scotland for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
I have more things to say about Dubai, I just have work to take care of first.
Overall, it was a really good trip, I have mixed feelings about leaving. I'm sad and happy. I think I'm more happy because I like going to new places. Everyone has said Edinburgh is one of their favorite places, so I'm expecting it to be a great 3 weeks there!
