Global Village Take 2

A man painting a sign at his booth in the Africa pavilion.

Tonight I decided to go to Global Village with Steve, Mike Walsh, Allie, and Kristin. The five of us caught the bus to campus and then took a taxi to Global Village. It’s such a cool place. We hit almost every pavilion. For dinner we went to the Egyptian place that Mike and I ate at last time. I got koshari with meat. It was delicious. 

 

Me Allie and Kristin at dinner.

Koshari with meat. It was great.

I WILL be making this when I get home to America.

During dinner we saw the diving show starting. Everyone ate really quickly, we paid our check, and then we headed over there. Mike and I grabbed the extra bread and the bowl of hummus to eat on the way (waste not want not). The Acapoco Diving show was already in the works. We came at the time where there were a bunch of clowns diving and messing around on the boards. Then they went into a little room below the pool and suddenly emerged as regularly dressed divers. They did flips, stunts, jumping tricks, and one guy even jumped from the highest ledge. After that we headed to some of the other pavilions.  

One of the divers jumping off the medium height platform. It was dark so he's a little blurry because he was spinning pretty fast. 

Front entrance of one part of the African pavilion. By far the biggest pavilion at Global Village.

In the Africa pavilion I found this awesome soap stone chess set. The board is painted with colors and the pieces are this orangish brown vs. black soap stone hand carved pieces. I asked the lady how much and right off the bat she said 70 AED. Really!?!? Less than 25 bucks for this awesome full sized chess board? I walked around the rest of the pavilion and then just went straight to her booth and bought it. I didn’t even try to bargain. It was so cheap anyways. As she was wrapping up the pieces she apologized that they were dusty. She said it was from the sandstorm. We talked about how crazy that sandstorm was. She said, “Have you ever seen anything like it?!” Turns out she’s originally from Kenya but lives in Italy with her husband. She came to Dubai to try out the Global Village thing but she doesn’t really like it. She said she’s counting down the days until the end of February when she leaves. I told her I was studying here and that I was secretly also counting down the days until I could go home. She laughed. She said she majored in something like economics. She was so nice. We chatted for a little while longer. Then I put the wrapped up pieces in my orange shoulder bag and carried the chess board in my arms. 

The chess board that I bought in the African pavillion. (It made it home to America in one piece!!)

I held the chess board all night with both hands. I really really really really didn’t want it to break. At one point I had to go to the bathroom so I entrusted it to Mike Walsh. He didn’t drop it. Success. We went to a bunch of other pavilions. Mike and I constantly commented on the amount of Spongebob parafanalia in EVERY country’s pavilions. 

One example of the strange Spongebob invasion of every pavilion.

I saw some drummers called “the workers” from America. We went to the Acapoco diving show again later. This time it was mostly the same stuff except at the end there was the FLAMING TORCH!!!! This guy climbed up the ladder (you could smell the kerosene he was soaked in) lit himself on fire, and then jumped in the pool. When he was on fire you could actually feel the heat. It was impressive.