Dubai in the United Arab Emirates is a Muslim country with strict religious rules. Many women are covered in burkas. You hear the call to prayer throughout the day. Yet I think it felt like the most American place I have ever visited outside of the United States. I have been wondering about why (because it is actually very different – I am referring to only how I felt being there), and I think it dawned on me today. It was the consumerism, the “bigness”, and the ambition. I have never felt more at home in another cultural context, and it was because of all the shopping and dining options, the open freeways, the grandiosity, the comfortable and spacious accommodations, and the wealth. We ate at Five Guys Burgers, Krispy Kreme, Shake Shack, and Chili’s (although the best food we ate was Lebanese). We went to the world’s biggest mall to look for clothes at The Gap and to visit to the tallest building (Burj Khalifa) in the world. I come from a state which claims that everything is bigger, and surprisingly in Dubai I found myself myself in a city where everything was the biggest. It felt like Dallas on steroids.

The Burj Khalifa fountain. Gotta get it on video.

On the beach walk.

Sports cars were everywhere.

Burj Khalifa – I couldn’t fit it in my phone’s camera