Day 2: Can't touch the girls

Day one is done.  And day two brought its mighty fine adventure.  We got up and went to Abu Dhabi, which is the capital of the U.A.E. It takes around an hour and a half to get there from Dubai, so we spent some time driving in the traffic today.  It really was nice time in the car hearing from Mr. Parks about some of the things that we saw yesterday and what was to come for us today.  So, when we arrived, we met Mack, Victoria, Andrei and Josh White at the Sheikh Zayed Mosque

I seriously have so many pictures of this place, but not one, even captures close to the whole thing.  This mosque is enormous.  Seriously, it was crazy.  When we walked up they asked us to put on an abaya, which is the cloak that muslim women wear over their clothing to hide their shape from men.  The men though, did not have to wear anything special, except for the men with visible tattoos.  And we happened to be with Josh, who is what I would call tatted up. Also, they asked Josh not to touch the women as we were taking a picture with him.  That's why he is awkwardly standing on the side there.l

After leaving the mosque, we went to downtown Abu Dhabi to the NYU branch in the city.  We went there to meet with some of the student leaders from the campus ministry there.  They told us that this is one of the THREE Universities in the Middle East that is allowed to have a Christian club on the campus.  

The people that we met here were so great! We got to get to know some of the students.  It was a neat time, because I almost felt like we weren't in the Emirates any more.  Everyone was speaking English, there was grass, and especially after we had been to the mosque it was a bit of a shock to talk about Jesus so freely with the friends there.  We had a nice little pow wow in their grass courtyard, and got to chat as Josh played us a little music that he wrote and they would typically sing at his church.  Check out the website.  I really like what this guy is doing for Christ in Portland http://www.doorofhopepdx.org/

As we rode back to Dubai, we had an amazing time watching the sun set over the city.  This might be my glorious photography moment

 

We ate TONS of DELICIOUS Lebanese food when we got back to Dubai, and did I mention it was delicious??l

Until tomrrow. Check my twitter @LauraCantrell1