Kuebitz Family in Doha-Qatar

By:Charlotte Kuebitz

It was October 2012. Posters were up saying, "Eid Mubarak," meaning Happy Eid. Eid is a celebration that Muslims celebrate. In school, we had a four-day weekend for Eid brake. Since my mother was pregnant, and due in December, she was not allowed to travel. So, she stayed with my little brother at home. The airplane day arived, and we nearly forgot our camera!

First, we stayed at the Dusit Thani. There we went to the Burj Khalifa and Dubai Mall. Dubai Mall had a HUGE aquarium. There we saw stingrays, sharks, eels and a bunch of fish. There was also a lot of small exibits. There was a lot of weird fish in the small exibits. To enter the Burj Khalifa, there is a special elevator (the fastest in the world at 10m per sec.) to get to the top. So we would not miss our apiontment to the Burj Khalifa, we ran whille we were eating to the elevator. We had to wait in a long line before it was our turn. When we went up it felt like I was taking off on an airplane. We went on a balcony and took a lot of pictures. Sadly, we had to go. When we went down, we got our picture taken and saw a real falcon! After that, we began to get hungry. So we chose a restaurant called the Rainforest Cafe. There it had a small view to the aquarium and every 30 minutes, the fake animals would start moving and making noise. Then, we went back to our hotel and went to bed.

The next day, we packed up and took a taxi to Atlantis. (If you don't know what Atlantis is, Atlantis is a hotel and water park.) It had a splendid lobby. It had a marvelous wax sculpture in the middle, the story of Atlantis on the wall, and a big throne in the corner. Once we got to our room, we unpacked our suitcase, got our swimsuits and went down to the water park. There was a water structure for kids, a ziggurat, a lazy river, a wave pool, dolphin bay, and it connected to the beach. First, we went to the kids' area and got splashed by the splash bucket. Second, we got inner-tubes and went down the lazy river. We got lucky and took a conveyor belt up to the top of the ziggurat. One ride was going down a pitch-black tunnel and ending up in the lazy river. another ride is going down a steep slope and in a pitch-black twisty tunnel. Then....Dad went down the Leap of Faith (a really steep slide)! In the afternoon, we went to Dolphin Bay. When our names were called, we went with two or three other families to a small room with a projector. There was a small slide show about dolphins. Then, we went out to meat the dolphins. Dad put his camera to the side and we got into the water. Our dolphin was named Blade. In turn, we each got to play fetch, dance or kiss a dolphin. When it was my turn, I kissed and danced with the dolphin. (but he had fishy breath!) Christoph did the same as me and dad played fetch with Blade. Instead of getting the ring, he went to go play with his girlfriend, Alice! After that, we went back to our room. We took a bath and had fun with the hotel robes. After dinner, we went to the hotel swimming pool. It was fun to swim in dark water with mysterious lights.

The next day, we went to the water park one last time, and checked out. There was a sky bridge near Atlantis we took to get to Dubai Mall. There we went to Kidzania, a play area that has jobs for kids to make them feel like they are in the real world. We were pilots, super market helpers, police, and nurses. When we had to leave, the person who let us out was not letting us out! So my dad used his convincing voice and we hurried to catch our plane.

Dubai was a fun, exiting, and a cool place. You will never go to a taller place!

(Pictures selected by Christoph Kuebitz)