Category: travel

  • beach in Sandestin

    In early April Debi and I had a conference in New Orleans where we presenting a poster with one of my students.  Since both of us were going, we decided it would be easiest to rent a car and drive to take Toren with us.  To break up the drive, which is about 11 hours,…

  • Oklahoma City Memorial

    In March I traveled with a group of students to Oklahoma to volunteer during spring break.  On the last day the volunteer trips typically include an excursion.  While we were volunteering with the Cherokee Nation, which is closer to Tulsa, we decided to use our excursion day to travel to Oklahoma City to see the…

  • UAE Trip – Day 11

    I probably don’t need to include this day in the trip report, but I’m going to use it to reflect a little bit, so I’ll include it. As noted in my last post, my flight from Dubai left at 1:30 am on the 14th, arriving in Frankfurt around 5:30am.  I had a 7 hour layover…

  • UAE Trip – Day 10

    We had just one CIEE related activity this day – a farewell brunch at 2:00 pm.  With the entire morning to kill, K. and I decided to go for a walk.  We first headed southwest to Safa Park, which is one of the bigger parks in Dubai.  It’s quite beautiful, but it’s not free.  It…

  • UAE Trip – Day 9

    We were back at AUS this day for another lecture.  This time it was Dr. O. Ishaq Tijani on gender and culture in the gulf from a literary perspective.  Also present was Basima Muhammad Yunus, an Emirati writer.  They talked about female oppression and how women authors in the Gulf use their stories to challenge that…

  • UAE Trip – Day 8

    We had a full day guided tour by Dr. Samia Rab to Ras Al Khaima, one of the less affluent Emirates, and to Sharjah.  I shot another photo as we headed to AUS to pick up Dr. Rab that does a pretty good job of illustrating what it feels like to drive through Dubai: The…

  • UAE Trip – Day 7

    This day started with another trip out to the American University of Sharjah.  While I typically sat in the back of the van, I requested to sit in the front this day so I could get a clearer picture of the traffic (bad drivers, but not as bad as I thought) and so I could…

  • UAE Trip – Day 6

    Day 6 was a day of panels and lectures.  We started out with a panel presentation on the UAE as the new Arab media hub.  Panelists included Abeer Al-Najjar, an Assistant Professor of Communication at AUS, Mohammad Ayesh, a professor of media and communications at the University of Sharjah, and Mishaal Gergawi, an op-ed columnist for…

  • UAE Trip – Day 5

    This was our first day of lectures. CIEE has a center at the American University of Sharjah (AUS) and they drew upon the expertise of the professors there to give us additional information about the UAE. Like many institutions in the UAE, the AUS is new, having been founded in 1997. It was built over…

  • UAE Trip – Day 4

    Our first full day was a day of site visits. The first stop was Masdar City in the emirate of Abu Dhabi. Masdar City is being billed as the first city being purposely built to be environmentally friendly to the tune of zero-carbon emissions and zero-waste. The roofs of the buildings are covered with solar…