Dubai

Outside the 

When planning our trip, we discovered that many flights from Kenya to Beijing went through Dubai. Our good friends, Grace and Andrew, are teaching at an International School in Dubai, so we thought we'd stay a few days on our way to Beijing. If I had one to describe Dubai, it would be New. If I had a sentence it would be "The new part of Vegas, minus the vices". Since we were coming, Tom Cruise decided to come as well and premiere Mission Impossible 4, which stars that funny guy from Shawn of the Dead and this really big building.
It is difficult to describe the Burj Khalifa except to say that it is a really big building. Dubai's skyline is impressive, but the Burj gives everything a Napoleon complex.
Dubai is set up with with multiple sub-cities that are oriented around specific industries. There is an academic city with university satellite campuses from around the world, a technology city where Microsoft has a high-rise, and a theme park city known as Dubai-land. We stayed at Grace and Andrew's apartment in Motor City. The don't build or sell cars in Motor City, they race them. An impressive race track, overlooking the sea is at the heart of Motor City. Charlotte and I enjoyed breakfast at Starbucks, while watching a class learn to race Ferraris. Dubai is a bit of a car culture, where Porsches are as common as Corollas. I guess when you can't eat Pork BBQ (redundant BBQ can only be pork) or drink anything harder than coffee, fast cars are the next best thing. They also have excellent shopping, and the largest mall in the world. Between the tall building and biggest mall, it seems that Dubai is just trying to make America jealous.

The night pictures are from the observation
deck of the Burj Khalifa. 

We enjoyed our brief time in Dubai, were able to see a few things, and get a great time catching up with Grace and Andrew. Going from Kenya to Dubai was in many ways like night and day. Not that one was better or worse, just that they are two distinctly different places.

Public Service Announcement

We interrupt your regularly scheduled non-programming to bring you the following...
So we hit a little mix up in our travels, and found it almost impossible to blog from Dubai, as Google, in its infinite wisdom decided that since we were in Dubai, we wanted to read and write in Arabic. (Mark Davis is pleased with my run on sentence). Never mind that 90% of Dubai is international and likely doesn't speak Arabic. When we asked Google to translate everything back into English, they neglected to change grammar and punctuation rules. So the blog has been once again neglected by the Rippys.
I'll catch you up on where we are, and then go back to posting previously planned updates as we had a few adventures that we'd like share.
After school we went to Lamu for 5 days of R'n'R, then back to Nairobi for 1 week to tie up loose ends, then off to Dubai to see our good friends Andrew and Grace for 5 days before heading to Beijing visiting family for Christmas. We are now in Beijing. Do the math and it adds up to neglecting "Around the World in 120 Days". At least now you understand the title.  
...We now return you to the Lifetime Original movie that has become your guilty pleasure