Our travel lasted about 17 hours and 30 minutes, a long day to say the least. Our program participants gathered at the Philadelphia Airport at 7:30 am, with a take of time of 11:15 am. The first leg of our journey was a 12 hour flight from Philadelphia to Doha, Qatar, which meant we arrived in Qatar at 6:45 in the morning with a connecting flight to Dubai taking off at 8 am. We deplaned, rushed through a security check point and navigated to our next gate. Fortunately we had enough time to sit down, some people found water and snacks, before boarding.
The next flight from Doha, Qatar to Dubai, United Arab Emirates was a little over an hour, arriving at 10:10 am. Our next step was to clear immigration, which easily took an hour. Between our flight and many others coming into the airport there were hundreds of people waiting to move through. As we slowly trickled out of immigration we collected our bags, exchanged or withdrew money, stopped at the Duty Free shop and congregated until we had found everyone. Fortunately, no ones bags were lost over 6,000+ miles of travel.
We found Dr. Sohail just outside of the arrivals and preceded to the bus. At this point, my body was completely confused on what day and time it was. We arrived and checked into our hotel, 4 people to 2 bedroom apartment, and then headed upstairs for a quick lunch at the hotel. Our next stop was a program introduction at the American University in the Emirates. And then finally, and as an attempt to beat as much jet lag as possible in the coming days, we headed out for a group welcome dinner.
Dinner was a three course Lebanese meal at Kan Zaman in the Al Shindagha Heritage Village, which is on the banks of the Dubai Creek. First were a tapas style appetizers, everything from hummus and tabouli to chicken livers and falafel stuffed with beef and pine nuts.
Next was an array of grilled and roasted chicken, beef and lamp, followed by a dessert of semolina and sweetened cream cheese.
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