After last night i was amazed we got all got up and ready in time to make breakie! We ate all we could then rushed to get to the buses in time for the tour day. Turns out people skipped buses and there was no room for us! So we had to get a private lift with the organiser to the lift and then had a private tour of the Mosque. The Mosque was amazing, like nothing I've ever seen before. We had an amazing tour guide who was great at explaining the history of the mosque while also making the tour entertaining and full of laughs. It amazed me how much there was to learn about the building and the culture. I mean its one thing entering another culture and respecting it but understanding it and hearing about it from an inside point of view is very different.
Now this is where my stupid mind got the better of me and i managed to make the rest of the day crap for everyone- but I'm angry enough at myself for that so i don't want to dwell on it, I'm just lucky enough to have amazing friends who looked past it! I don't know i just started to feel left out and unwanted but looking back i think i made myself feel like that because I'm so used to being made to feel like that that i just assumed everything was too good to be true!
The next stop was the media station. We were originally meant to go on tourism tour but people took our places so we changed to the media tour. Turns out this was the best decision we could have made. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity and it was amazing seeing everything! They were the nicest people and true to their motto of doing something and doing it well, they took us to the filing room, the broadcast room where they were doing a live broadcast, to the studios and to the news room, they even gave us a gift bag at the end! To top it all off the whole tour was filmed on camera and was later covered on the Abu Dhabi News!! I can't wait to see it!
Before heading back we stopped at the mall for lunch and a quick look around and then we made our way back to the hotel and quickly napped ready to leave for the desert safari. Turns out the bus left half an hour before we thought, not leaving me anytime to change but oh well. So we ran down stairs to the bus and sat next to two tutors for the 2 hour bus ride. Oh and our bus driver had no idea what he was doing!!
No-one knew what to expect heading into the safari so what we saw was even more amazing. We got dropped in the middle of no where to a group of only six 4WD's. Me and Karen ended up in the bosses car meaning we got the 'VIP Experience'. We had no idea what was happening as the rest of the crew on the buses followed but eventually we were four wheel driving in the sand dunes. The dunes were amazing, flawless! The drive was insane! Turns out because there was only two of us that we got two turns, another after we picked up 4 more people. We were driving all over the desert, in and out of sand dunes until suddenly we came to a stop and we were in a desert oasis. It was just at the bottom of the hill, a brick wall lit up with lights and a banquet area, camel rides and quad bike rides. It was like nothing I've ever seen before and it was one of this things you never expect to see, a real once in a lifetime experience. We spent the night taking photos on the sand dune, sand boarding, taking camel rides, riding quad bikes and listening to music while a belly dancer performed. The dinner was a traditional BBQ followed by henna and shish.
Tired as anything we went back to bus and made our way back to the hotel to rest. On the way back i couldn't sleep so i joined in on a conversation with the girls from the university. It was so interesting to see how surprised they were at the way we all saw and believed their lifestyle to be. They said that the religion is being modernised but people aren't aware of this and view their life to be very different to how it actually is. Its definitely been awakening culturally and made me intrigued in the rest of the world- i want to see it all!
