UAE National Day

The whole crew, faces from left: Dylan, Mike, Nina, Stan, Allie, Mike, Steve, Kristin, Jimmy, Maddie, Andy

Happy UAE National Day!! Thirty nine years ago on this day, the UAE became a fully independant country!!
So today we had a day off to just explore stuff. We decided to go to the beach. This turned out to be quite the epic adventure. In the end we figured out how to get cabs from our living place (Etisalat Academy) to the nearest metro stop (Rashadia Station) then take the metro to a stop near the beach (Jafiliya Station) and then get cabs from that station to the beach park (Jumiera Beach Park). It sounds expensive right? All the cabs and metro and stuff. But in reality, the cab rides here are really cheap. A 20 minute ride turns out to be about 20 dirhums which is about 6 US dollars. Good stuff!!

Mike and Dylan chillin in Jumeira Beach Park.

We hung out at the beach for a little while. People were in mostly regular bathing suits. Girls were wearing two pieces and some had one one piece suits and others had on full robes or shorts and a t-shirt to get in the water.Guys mostly wore regular board shorts, or swim trunks but some of them wore these really small speedos. And some of them I think were just wearing colored tighty whitey underwear. It was a whole range of swimming wardrobes. 

Sunset at Jumeira Beach Park.

After the beach we wandered along the road outside Jumiera Beach Park and witnessed the ULTIMATE UAE NATIONAL DAY CRAZINESS. Everyone's car were painted with the UAE colors: Black Green Red and White. A ton of cars had these rediculously cool sticker things that made it look like a picture of the sheik's face was on all of their windows. They had streamers, confetti, little flags, big flags, painted cars, decorated windshields, and basically everything was UAE. The best part was the silly string. It was everywhere. People would hang out of the windows of their cars and attack other cars with silly string and sprayable foamy soap stuff. It was a constant battle at the crosswalks. 

One of the many cars that was completely decked out
for the UAE National Day Celebration.

Cars were stopped so people would run out of their cars and go snipe another car. Like someone would sneak around the side of a car where the driver was spraying someone with silly string. Then the sneaker person would dive into the passenger side window and completely anihilate the unsuspecting driver with a ton of soap foam stuff, then the sneaky guy would sprint away! There was one couple who were riding this motercycle mo-ped type thing. They stopped on the side of the road to open te middle compartment of the bike and reload on silly string! Then they drove away and went to find more people to spray! We even got sprayed with soap when we crossed this one street. It was craziness. I took a ton of videos of the events. Words just can't even describe how entertaining it was just to watch everything happening that night.

The moped couple that stopped to reload on silly string.