For the Al Hijra long weekend, we finally made it out to the great wild west of U.A.E.; the desert! We went for a BBQ and bonfire with a bunch of other people from the campus. Maybe it should have been obvious, but we hadn't really made the connection that oil rich also means tons of awesome fossils. But the spot they took us to was covered in fossils!
We figure it's some sort of sandstone. But we left our resident geologist back in Canada. When he visits, I'm sure we'll all know more about the rocks around here. But as you can see, the fossils were everywhere!! I guess that's what we get for moving to a oil rich land. Dino Bones every where!When we were driving out, Dippy pointed something out to me that I couldn't make out. Turns out, it was a huge rock structure that I would have never seen back home! Probably because it would have been covered in trees and grass... But still! HUGE! You could see this mountain for kilometers! (or miles for the American readers out there).
The sand was so soft. I thought it would be coarse because there wasn't any water to buff it. but as I got explained to me and felt first hand, air does a great job blowing it around and making it very soft. I sat down on the top of the dune and within minutes i was covered. There was a fine layer on my skin and being that my shoes were practically all mesh, I now had a dune of my own in there!
Our host quickly told us that we would have to get our selfies now since we'd have no light in ten minutes. and he was right! Once the sun started to set, it didn't waste any time! Soon it was completely dark! Like can't see in front of you dark. We didn't have and flashlights of our own but our host, Ali, and his family had brought a few.
Then we built a fire and started barbequeing our stuff.
There was so much food being shared that I was stuffed very quickly. After talking and eating for three hours we started to pack up and leave. However, as we were driving away, our SUV decided that it's had enough of this sand stuff and broke down! We weren't completely stranded since we were diving caravan style. The moment the vehicle stopped everyone else stopped too and we made plans to switch vehicles and left the SUV in the desert for the night (or at least until the tow showed up). 
When we got home, we had another shower because you could just feel the sand everywhere! I mean, we took our shoes of at the door and these small little sand dunes appeared on our tile floor...
