Dates

Probably the most popular fruit here in Arabia is the date. They taste like a fig/raisin/prune, and they're about that color, too, once they're fully ripe. They're about the size of big grape or sometimes as big as your thumb. We've eaten them in more places than I can remember, but we didn't really understand how they grew until now.

Dates grow on palm trees, and they start growing around December and ripen in the summer months. They're getting closer to ripe right now. So here are a few pictures that we took around campus of the dates ripening.

















HERE'S WHAT THE PALM TREES LOOK LIKE FOR MOST OF THE YEAR.





















HERE'S WHAT THE TREES LOOK LIKE ONCE THE DATES START TO RIPEN - YOU CAN SEE THE CLUSTERS OF DATES HANGING DOWN.












HERE'S ANOTHER ONE WITH THE DATES HANGING OFF OF THE TREES.

















HERE IS A CLUSTER OF DATES. THEY'RE GREEN NOW, BUT WHEN THEY'RE FULLY RIPE, THEY'RE BROWN AND LOOK LIKE GIANT RAISINS.

Rolling Out

The last day of final exams here at the American University of Sharjah was this past Saturday, May 15. It's a lot like finals at home - nervous students not getting much sleep, bad students complaining about their grades, lots of caffeine, and everyone in a mad rush to get out of town as soon as their exams are over.

Cindy and I have noticed one thing that's different, though. In America, students would have their cars in the parking lots outside of whatever building they were taking their final exam in. The cars would be absolutely loaded down with stuff so that they could be on the road the minute that they walked out of their exam. Stereos, clothes, bedding, dirty laundry - all of it was in the car. In America, students just scrape whatever they can off the floors of their dorm or apartment and throw it in the car.

Here, we didn't see a single car loaded up for the trip back home. Now there were probably a few kids moving out of the dorm back to their folks' houses in Abu Dhabi or Ras al Khaimah or something like that, but for the most part, everyone on campus flys in. Think about it. Of our 5000 students, less than 1000 are from the Emirates. The rest are from Jordan, Lebanon, Qatar, Saudi, India, Egypt, Palestine,.... (here's a breakdown). You can't (or wouldn't want to drive) to most of those places. So that's one thing that we've noticed is different here.

Gold

In case you missed the story this week, there's a hotel in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the UAE (about an hour's drive from Dubai), that just installed a special ATM. It's an ATM that dispenses gold bars. Seriously.

The ATM sold out the first day. Seriously.