Last Day

Ah, it’s finally here, the last day of the trip. Basically we were lazy, grabbed a final lunch in the student union, played some Ben Folds 5 on the piano, and trekked out to Jumeirah City for some Italian.

The best part of the day, however, was another selfless, generous gesture by one of our neighbors. I’ve been trying to figure out how to get my two sizable carpets back to the U.S. for a few days now. I decided I was going to need a huge duffel bag of some sort, so I asked the girls next door if they had a suggestion as to where I could find one. It’s not easy to get off campus, so I was hoping they had an idea. They suggested Carrefour, the large, Walmart-like grocery they have here. As Olan and I were getting ready to head to dinner and then Carrefour, one of the girls, whose name I don’t know, came by and offered me a bag of hers if the carpets fit. She said she had a bag she didn’t need anymore and I could come and look at it. The bag turned out to be a huge suitcase. I mean, who offers you a suitcase? Of course I told her I couldn’t possibly take a huge piece of luggage from her, and she said take it, and we went back and forth forever. After assuring me she didnt' need it again, I finally accepted. This solved a huge problem for me, and was an awesome gesture on her part. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, people here are so nice, they don’t even think twice about stuff like that. Needless to say, I picked her up a thank you gift for her when we were out at dinner tonight, and now I have a suitcase and a nice parting memory :)

There’s not much else to say about our day. Italian was great, the Burj was all lit up, and we had decent cab drivers! Olan and I took a walk around campus and said goodbye, so now we just have to finish packing and wake up at 5am (groan)!