Ok... So I arrived in Dubai at 4:40 in the morning. I was so tired, because I cannot sleep in airplanes, and I was a bit nervous because I was all by myself. I got off the plane and made it through the first part of customs ok. After I got my luggage however I got in trouble. I am still not sure why. I was to out of it and I did not understand all of the arabic that they were saying.

I was going throught the goods to declare line. It was just one line and so I was just walking through. Well this man was speaking in Arabic, he worked at the airport. I was just curious and looking around and I made eye contact. I guess I was staring at him. I was just trying to figure out what he was saying. The next thing I know he was yelling at me and made me give him my passport. I was then escorted to this room where some airport employees when through all of my luggages and confiscated some of my stuff saying it was illegal and they had to destroy it. I didn't argue or anything. I just signed the paper and kept appologizing because I didn't know. (I had asked the University to make sure I could bring the things I thought might be controversial, so I thought everything I packed was ok.)

It was awful. I wanted to turn around and fly back home right then. I stayed and hung out at the airport until 9 in the morning and then I went to take a taxi to the university. There was a bunch of taxi's waiting out front but the airport workers made me wait until a ladies taxi arrived. Then she had no idea how to get to the University. I even had a map, but she still couldn't get there. So another taxi had to drive in front of my taxi and escort us to the University.

Ok so it doesn't sound as tramatic when I write it here. But that airport situation was really frightening to me.