In the UAE, National Day is the biggest holiday of the year. For weeks before people have been hanging lights, flags, banners, and huge balloons. They have been "wrapping" their cars--essentially huge see through stickers over windows, and opaque over the paint--and covering side rear view mirrors with mini flag colored booties. They have the flag colors and/or the famous shot of the original 7 sheiks. You know how some houses in the states go a little overboard with lawn and house decorations for Halloween or Christmas? It's awesome and a little hilarious. The gym in the American Colligate School, where the girls do gymnastics, had so many red, white, green and black streamers, balloons, and flower bursts hanging over our heads, you could hardly see the ceiling. I wish I had snapped a collection of pictures of the best yards/cars/buildings, but I've got nothing. Goal for next year. There were parades and fireworks. My favorite parade picture in the paper was of a group of men wearing dish dash and playing bagpipes. On Sunday I got this text.
We didn't have any desire to go into the complete madness of downtown. I heard way too many horror stories of insane driving (radio has been announcing that the full police force would be out all weekend) and crowds. But we did drive a mile away to Global Village hoping to catch their rumored firework show. We couldn't find any definite answer about a time let alone whether or not they were doing any. We drove over at 9pm and decided to wait 30 mintes and then go home if it was a bust. We had started listening to The Hobbit again, so they were game to stay as long as I would wait. We lucked out after 15 minutes and saw, heard and felt a great show.
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