That's what $40 a gallon gets you.

We left to fly to Abu Dhabi fairly early on Saturday morning. We were all a little bummed at the prospect of flying Egypt Air, just for the sole reason that we'd heard pretty bad things about it, plus it was no Emirates. The first thing we all did in Cairo Airport was rush straight for the Starbucks a floor above our terminal, and we pretty much took it over. I spent 35LE on an iced latte and a beanbag chair muffin, but it was so worth it. We were all enjoying our Starbucks in the terminal, waiting to get on the buses that would bring us to the rickety staircase that would lead us to the plane, and we discovered free, fast, wireless internet. Starbucks and free internet? Is this Christmas, you ask? Yes, Christmas in June. That it was. Unfortunately, by the time we all had our laptops out and ready, they called us to get on the bus, so nothing substantial was accomplished. We checked through and packed onto this huge bus that drove us to the plane. The first thing that I noticed, not even ten steps in, was this rank smell that permeated the whole plane. It smelled like the worst bathroom you could possibly imagine. I wanted to throw up. It was so gross. I was humming "That Smell" by Lynyrd Skynyrd through the whole flight, and that pretty much sums up my feelings on Egypt Air. I'm glad I was too nauseated to eat the food they served because a few people got really sick from it.

Now, everything the Abu Dhabi involved was VIP, even from the time we left Cairo. Our bags were taken care of for us, we didn't have to wait in line to check in - the only thing we had to do ourselves was get our departure stamps on our visas. That didn't change for the rest of the trip. When we landed in Abu Dhabi, we were immediately rounded up by four very chic-looking Muslim women and taken to a VIP lounge inside the airport. No one knew what was going on, we just all assumed this was part of the treatment. We handed over our passports for new visas, and were told not to worry about our bags, and that we just had to make sure they were on the truck outside, and then it was into minibuses, and off to the hotel. We drove for a while through fields of palm trees, and men in funny outfits watering flowers, and we finally came to a hotel on a hill, with a big I on the side, and we knew this is where we'd be staying. We walked into a marble lobby, dripping with crystal chandeliers, were handed an envelope telling us that food, laundry and various other amenities were free, and were led up to our huge rooms. We had two fluffy, pillowed-covered, down-comfortered beds next to a huge picture window that overlooked the front of the hotel, and a plasma TV. When you walk into the bathroom, there was a sink right in front of you, a tub to your right, then to the left, a standing shower stall, and further in, a separate little room for the toilet. It was slightly ridiculous. Joyce and I pressed every button and touched everything in the whole room to figure out what it did. We both showered and sunk into the most comfortable beds ever, and around 7:30pm, our doorbell rang and a guy wheeled a cart full of food into our room. We had pasta and chicken and french fries and bread and soda and just food galore. They told us they'd send us up a snack before dinner at 9pm, and this is what they sent. It was delicious.

An hour after we finished, we had our first "ice breaker" with the Arab students, and it went pretty well. They led us into this huge ballroom with like, 30 tables and three long tables lined with food. We dispersed ourselves so it wasn't all Americans at a table, and we ended up sitting next with Azza and Jinana. All of the Arab students are so nice and friendly, and really eager to get to know all of us. We took more group pictures in the first 10 minutes than I've ever taken in my life. It's so sad that we only got to be with them for a few days because I'm sure we could've all become better friends than we did. Dinner ended around 11, which is the time they told us they want us back in our rooms by, and some of the Arab students wanted to party more, so they invited Joyce and me up to one of the rooms. We knew better than to start trouble on the first night, so we just went to bed and enjoyed a nice long night of sleep, before the work began. Sunday morning we all we requested to dress formally for our first session of the conference. We didn't really know too much about what we were going to be doing in Abu Dhabi before we got there and were actually told that we would be participating in an Arab-Western Youth Dialogue sponsored by the Arab Women's Organization, and that our findings and presentations would be published. It was crazy official. There were cameras on us at all times, and reporters roaming around the room we were dialogging in and it felt really official-like. The first day we broke up into groups to cover different groups to discuss different arenas of women's rights. I was in the Social Group [which, grammatically, annoyed me, since Society would've been the right word] and we discussed things like marriage, divorce, women in the workplace, violence against women and other things like that. We were told that we had to have a 20-minute presentation ready to give on Monday afternoon at the session. We were all a little surprised by it, but we were keeping pretty thorough notes, so aside from the statistics we needed, we were pretty much set. It was just a matter of putting it all together into a powerpoint presentation.

Once everyone heard that we had actual work to do and present, they disappeared. It ended up that out of ten people, the four Americans and Stephanie from Lebanon were the only ones actually working on it. No one showed up to the group meeting we had that night either, aside from me, April, Mary, Stephanie and Ussama. That was really frustrating, and I did end up confronting Maria from Morocco about it the next day. We had gotten pretty much all of the presentation done, but we needed one last thing from the internet. We wanted verses from the Qu'ran in English that talked about hijab. We sent Maria to the internet room to find them, and fifteen minutes later, she came back with nothing. I went, and 30 seconds later [literally, I was timed], I came back with three. They were on the first website that came up in a search for "Qu'ran verses hijab". I told Maria I didn't believe that she really looked, and she took me to the computer she was on, found the exact search she did on the drop down menu, and the first website that came up was the one I printed out. She swore up and down that that didn't come up when she searched, but I still don't believe she really looked. She was messing around just like the rest of the group was sleeping. Dr. Moataz heard me talking to Stephanie about it, and ended up highlighting the names of the people who did all the work in red on the title slide, so at least he knew about what really went on. The presentation went off without a hitch and it was a relief to get it done and over with. We had a report due the next day, but that was only a page for each side, so we weren't worried about that.

That night, we went to the Picasso Abu Dhabi exhibit at the Emirates Palace Hotel, which was so sweet. Me, Molly and Andrew we unlucky enough to be stuck behind someone who was dropping bombs through the whole exhibit. We could always tell when someone was smelling it when they turned their head to the side and their entire face contorted. We died laughing to keep from dying of asphyxiation. The rest of the week was mostly chill. The only time it wasn't fun was when I was supposed to go out to see the Italy/France soccer game with Laith and Molly and a few other people, but we weren't allowed because we're girls who were going to be out in public, at night with Laith, a guy, and that's not okay. It was frustrating because that's something I've never been told. I've never had to miss out on anything because I'm a girl and I ended up watching the first half by myself. I ended up watching the second half with Molly, Ruthie and Diana, but it would've been really nice to actually go out out of the hotel and hang out with the Arab students. Not just go on the field trips they organized for us. It's not a big deal now, but it was upsetting at the time. But Italy won, and I saw Laith later that night and everything is everything now.

Tuesday was spent visiting various places around Abu Dhabi. First was Sheikh Zayed mosque, which was a beautiful, although overdone mosque whose patrons seemed only concerned with world records and not really what mosques are for. It reminded us all of the Sultan's palace from Aladdin. After the mosque, we went to Abu Dhabi University for what seemed like an open house. I felt bad for the guy giving the presentation though, since everyone fell asleep as soon as the lights went out. I'm sure our paparazzi got some great pictures of all of us snoozing. They took us on a tour of the main building, and everything was really shiny and expensive but I guess that's what $1000 per credit hour gets you. Not for me, thanks. After Abu Dhabi University, we went to the Center for Strategery and listened to more presentations and slept in really comfortable chairs and got some pens and saw the news center, which was pretty cool to see. There were something like 24 monitors, each on a different news source, and there were 2-3 people monitoring them at all times. The Center for Strategery gave us a little snack, and then we headed back to the hotel for lunch. I had a really nice conversation with Rachid from Morocco on the bus ride. I never knew how involved he was with kids and getting them involved in music and all the things that he does. I think the programs he was talking about that he has in the works are amazing.

Wednesday we had most of the day to ourselves, aside from a visit to the Arab Women's Organization. That was pretty cool. There was a lideshow at the beginning that used "Eye of the Tiger", "Beauty and the Beast" and then the overture from Phantom of the Opera. I lol'ed. We saw a bunch of different small workshops with Emirati women working in them, wearing the traditional dress and it was definitely different. We got a chance to wear the abiyas with the face covering, and it was weird. I don't mind the abiya, but the face thing is just too much for me. I don't like things covering my mouth, plus it left this nasty blue ink all over my face, as well as everyone else who put it on. We ended the day in a huge tent drinking water and juice and a lot of people got henna tattoos, and sat around talking for a good hour before they corralled us back onto the buses to go back to the hotel. The day before, there was a terrorist warning for all non-natives of the United Arab Emirates from the UK, so our trip to Dubai got canceled. We still had to go though, because our flight was out of Dubai airport, so we left at 7pm to drive there on our sweet leather-seated bus and go straight to the airport. We stopped at the Emirates Mall and some indoor market en route. The mall was pretty cool. It was just like any other big mall in the states, but it had an indoor ski slope, which I would love to do one day, despite my aversion to skiing. I had a mini-breakdown in the airport when our flight number was announced as 911. I know that mostly everyone was affected by the events of 9/11, but I also know that not everyone was affected in the same way. The memories of being sent home early from school and seeing the smoke on the horizon while driving to get my sister are still too vivid for me to not have a reaction to those numbers put together. I still miss my cousin Tommy, who was a fireman lost in one of the building collapses, and because of that, I have a different reaction to the numbers than some others. I was questioned for "overreacting" and told that "the number means nothing" by people who live in places like Massachusetts and Pennsylvania who weren't affected in the same way I was. I had my mini breakdown, and Diana sang an Alicia Keys song to me, and it made me smile and after an hour or so, I got mostly over it, but I was still nervous until our plane touched down in Cairo. Seeing the sunrise from a plane window is something I'll never get sick of.

I'm glad to be back in Cairo. I've missed it.