Summer had begun and so had traveling for me. Sitting with my parents and trying to decide where to go this year wasn’t as easy as I thought. We didn’t really agree on anything because my dad wanted somewhere historical and my mom wanted to go somewhere fancy, while I wanted to be somewhere adventurous. We finally came to an agreement to go to Dubai. There is one thing that my dad struggles using the most and that is technology, so of course he would let my sister handle the booking of the flight.


A week later I was on my way to Dubai with my mom, dad and sister on the plane. After a five hour flight from Ethiopia we had finally arrived to our destination. Being helplessly excited, I ran out of the airplane as fast as I could to see what the country was like. As soon as I walked out of the airport, the burning sun and humidity made me feel like I just walked out into a sauna. We got into our hotel and tried to cool ourselves before our journey began. As the sun was burning through my skin, I thought to myself, “what am I doing here; it is hotter than a stove!”
Later that day, we headed down to a mall that was close by; it was one of the biggest malls I have ever seen. My sister saw a part of the mall that had skiing so we went ahead and joined it. Did I forget to mention that we have never gone skiing before? After we signed up, I couldn’t help but notice that my mom had a worried look plastered to her face and kept on saying, “I can’t bear to watch this!”
My dad, standing at one corner with a mischievous look on his face replied, “I can’t wait to laugh at this.” As we were gearing up to start our very first skiing experience, I turned to my sister and said, “Promise me that you will be right by my side”.
Trying to hide the fact that she was just as scared as I was, she replied, “Don’t worry I will be right there with you the whole time.” I took a deep breath and placed my feet on the ice. I started to move extremely fast but I came to a jerking stop in the middle and the only thing I could think of at this point was how fast everyone was moving. I slowly turned around to look at where my sister was and she was skiing like a professional – she was in her own world and didn’t even bother to look at me.
“What a promise,” I thought to myself and started looking for my parents who were squished between the crowds.


I saw my dad mouthing, “Come towards me!” but he was completely in a different direction to the movement of the people. As idiotic as I am, I tried to go towards my dad, spinning uncontrollably, and fell flat on my back! It was by far the most embarrassing day of my life! The crowd laughed for which seemed like ages. I tried getting up but was unsuccessful. I hopelessly tried to flee and before my entire body was frozen, the guard had come to rescue me.
The next day, my parents couldn’t stop talking about it while my sister constantly reminded me of the embarrassment I had faced. This is the moment when I realized that skiing was not for me!