Derivatives in Dubai: 10 Things I Learned in My First 10 Days in Dubai

I've been in Dubai for a total of 25 days. I can't believe it's been that long. I meant to get this blog going 15 days ago so that the title would be appropriate, but Dubai had other plans for me. I'm learning that is how Dubai goes.

And now this post has been sitting in my draft folder for a couple weeks, so who knows if I will ever get around to posting it.

Here I am though, and without further ado I present the following things I've learned about Dubai:

1. It's hot here. I mean I knew it was going to be hot here. The internet told me it was hot. I just didn't fully understand how hot it is here. It literally feels like a sauna outside all of the time. The billboards even advertise for indoor amusement parks so you can "spend your summer indoors".

I try not to check the weather very often because I don't want to put a number in my brain that tells me exactly how miserably hot I am when I'm outside, so usually I have no idea. Also people talk about how hot it is, but they talk about it in Celsius temperatures which mean nothing to me (silly Americans and our silly Fahrenheit temperatures). The other day I stepped outside and thought "It's cooling down! It feels so nice out today. I feel like I can breath and like there is a cool breeze in the air" so I decided to check the temperature and it was 95F outside. So I guess I'm already acclimatizing.

This was the strange forecast one day.
That is exactly what it looked like too, just dust.

Advertisement on the Metro door to
not be out in the heat of the summer.

The nice thing is that the AC here is insane in such a good way. Every building and car that you step into blasts you with freezing air, so you never have to be hot for long.

2. The work week is Sunday-Thursday with Friday (the Muslim holy day) and Saturday off from work. That's been a strange adjustment. It makes the time difference from me to home (Utah is 10 hours behind Dubai) seem even bigger because my family is waking up and getting ready for church when I'm getting home from my first work day of the week. Even my Christian church here in Dubai meets at 8am on Friday mornings.

3. The most common question from people is what I wear here. Honestly I wear whatever I want. The only rules for clothing are posted inside government buildings and in the malls. I had a friend who got turned away from a government building because she was trying to get fingerprints done in a dress that showed her knee cap, but I have never heard of people getting turned away from the mall for not dressing appropriately, and I definitely see people when I go to the mall in short shorts and tank tops, but it's rare. The general consensus is that it's respectful to cover your knees and your shoulders.

There are signs like these all around the mall.

My school read out the dress code to us before the students came back. It said that our shoulders needed to be covered and at no time when sitting, standing, or walking should our knees show. It also said something about avoiding clothing that "shows the female form". I was super nervous about that because I generally make a concerted effort to not buy actual burlap bags as clothing, but I scrounged around in my closet and found some nice baggy and long clothes to wear on the first day. I looked like an absolute frump next to all of the other teachers. They were wearing normal "female form" clothes and looked great. I guess I took the dress code a bit too seriously.

4. Living in a Muslim country means that I can hear the call to prayer regularly. It happens five times a day. If you're in the mall or the airport or near a mosque (which you probably are if you're anywhere in Dubai, there are lots of malls and lots of mosques) you'll hear the lovely music. I have really enjoyed the many, many reminders to take a second to recognize the religious part of my life a few times every day.

5. The second most asked question is about the food. Good news guys, literally everything is here. I honestly can't think of a single food that I want that isn't here. I have seen everything. There are hundreds and hundreds of American restaurants, but there are also tons of international choices as well. For example, I went to a Turkish brunch the other day and my favorite cafe in my neighborhood is French and sometimes I order Lebanese food to be delivered to me.

6. ...which brings me to my next point: literally everything here delivers. Everything. You want some Southwest Egg Rolls from Chilis at 1am? At your doorstep within an hour. Out of toilet paper and too lazy to walk to the shop downstairs? Call someone to bring it up. Services like laundry and cleaning are pretty cheap as well, so it's normal for the average person (not even a rich person) to have a cleaner come to their house once a week.

Also, just so you know, I've ordered some Papa Murphy's Pizza to be delivered to me while I've been typing this, but here you can choose to have your pizza cooked before it's delivered to you. I've been saying for ages that should be an option at Papa Murphy's.

7. Speaking of rich people, people are crazy rich here. Like crazy rich. Not everyone, obviously, but there are definitely people with money here. For example, when ordering a car on Uber there are the usual options for premium or VIP, but then there is also an option to order your own helicopter ride. You know, in case you can't be bothered with the traffic like all the peasants.

I know that my students are rich, but I'm not sure exactly how rich. Sometimes they say things that make it very obvious that we grew up in different worlds, like they'll be arguing about if they like their Macbook Air or Macbook Pro more, or whether it's more fun to vacation in Ibiza or Bora Bora. I once was talking with the students about how math is everywhere in the real world and one of the students raised their hand to give an example of how he could use math if he wanted to study whether there were more Ferraris or Bentleys driving on Sheik Zayed Road.

8. People ask me about the cost of living a lot, but I don't really know how to answer that yet. So far my life here is expensive, but I think mostly that's because moving anywhere and settling into a brand new life is expensive and also because I am living like I'm on vacation instead of living a real life (see #10 below). I need my life to calm down before I reliably answer how the cost of living is.

Just for your info, in Dubai we use the dirham (dhs). There are about three and a half dirhams in every dollar.

The weird flavored Doritos are only 5dhs,
but the American flavored Doritos are literally 4x that.

9. People are nice here. I can't even tell you how many times I've been trying to figure out something new and I've gotten it totally wrong and made a fool of myself and I just have to think "wooooow I'm so glad I don't know anyone here so I don't have to worry about anyone I know seeing that", but in those moments the strangers around me are so quick to help me out with directions or carrying things for me, or whatever.

The men are strange. That already needs a blog post of its own. They aren't rude because they don't say anything or whistle or yell like American men tend to, but they definitely stare. Unabashedly stare. I suppose it's my fault for having blonde hair. That's super rare here.

10. Life here is a constant vacation. Every day of the week there are clubs and pools and beach parties. I'm pretty good about being reasonable on week days, but the weekends are insane. I've been on some fun adventures and seen some amazing things. I still walk around every day and think "Wow, I can't believe I'm actually here." I'm loving it.