Last week one of the See the World, BE the Future scholarship recipients, Jordan Sparks was in the throes of campus life activities. With a full week of the Club Fair, the unexpected rain showers interrupting daily commutes, and ending the week with an exciting Footballmatch, he has settled in quite nicely.
It has been one month since Jordan landed in Emirates. And this week, he admits that a little homesickness has finally crept upon him. But the AUS (American University of Sharjah) Carnival was just in time to help cure his longing for Texas and the US when, amongst the numerous food trucks and carnival games for he and his fellow students to spend their money on, there were live performances by bands and singing from some of the student body, he was reminded of the local carnivals he grew up attending. No, there was no John Legend to perform, a huge Ferris wheel, or any Rodeo competitions, but the carnival gave him the taste and feel of home.
An all-student band performing on stage to the AUS Carnival crowd.
The mechanical bull is always a crowd favorite. Here’s a student taking his turn.
Later in the week the exchange office took some students to a quieter emirate (or area of land) called Fujairah, which is west of Dubai and Sharjah. There was a highway market, which opened every Friday and unlike the other emirates full of skyscrapers and fancy cars, beautiful scenic countryside and huge brown mountains surrounded Fujairah. While there, they got the chance to visit the oldest mosque in the country, Badiyah, which was a modest clay building. Jordan reports that on top of the mosque, at the top of the hill, there were two big guard posts that clearly signified that at one time there was a very important settlement that, whether they knew it or not, was years ahead of its time, by building the first mosque in the region. It was refreshing for Jordan to see another side of the UAE that was still very much underdeveloped, making Fujairah special in its own way.
View of the mountains that characterize Fujairah.
Al Badiyah Mosque, the oldest in the UAE.
The tower on top of the oldest mosque.
To add to an already interesting week, the highlight of the excursion for Jordan was when they got to see one of Fujairah’s oldest traditions, Bullfighting. He fully expected an Arab matador in traditional clothing with a red cape, ormuleta,in a little hole in the wall arena. Instead, it was a hole in the wall arena, but with hundreds of locals inside and around the gates watching two bulls go at it and whichever bull walked away first, lost. Jordan witnessed very little order to the event and at one point one bull was loose and everyone inside the gate scurried as it charged right at the section he sat in, but that was all a part of the experience of local bullfighting in Fujairah.
The best shot I could get of the bulls going at it.
The social outings with fellow classmates and exchange students at the AUS Carnival, Bullfighting, and for the first time, visiting an emirate known for its landscape and tradition, as opposed to business and luxury, filled Jordan’s week with all new learning experiences. He says the UAE is full of various areas and many different vibes and for a country commonly known for Arabs with bucket loads of money and the tallest building in the world, there are actually seven emirates, and they are all different. After experiencing four of the seven, Sharjah, Dubai, Abu Dhabi and now Fujairah, his new goal is to cover the next three emirates!
Check back next week to see if he was able to cross one more emirate off his list!
Also, it looks like we have a celebrity on our hands! Jordan and some other exchange students landed on the official instagram page for the the University while at the Carnival. Don’t forget to check out it out, follow, and like!
“Me and some other exchange students made the AUS Instagram page. Good number of ‘likes’ too, I might add.”
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