Christmas in Saudi Arabia?

The picture above is kind of deceiving. These aren't Christmas lights, they just like to put up decorative lights in Saudi Arabia, although I have to say they do remind me a lot of Christmas. The truth is Christmas is against the law here in the Kingdom and I also have to work today which is kind of sad, but as I've gone throughout the season I just tried to remember past Christmas moments that I really loved. Muslims do believe that Jesus was a prophet sent from God but that he was not His son. They also believe that he was born of the virgin Mary, and that Gabriel came and announced to her that she was to have this miracle son. They believed in the many miracles he did, but they don't believe that he was crucified because that would mean his mission was a failure. According to them, Jesus was taken by God before he could be killed.

On December 23rd, Chris, Jared, and I went into the city and wanted to hit up a new restaurant. We decided to go to Johnny Rockets (a 50's diner type of a place) and it was the first food I had eaten here in Saudi that was like American food. I had my first hamburger here as well as onion rings and a chocolate malt. This really reminded me of home. Every week in Moab when I finished a river trip I would go with my friends to Milt's (another 50's diner) and get the exact same meal. It was a nice change here in Saudi. Below is a picture of me there, but I have to say I look kind of weird in it. Afte we went to Johny Rockets, Chris and I took a cab home and we had an interesting experience.



Our cab driver ended up being Kurdish. The first Kurd I had ever met. He asked where we were from (he spoke very little English) and we told him America. He said "America!? I love Bush!!" I was so surprised. Almost all foreigners tell me that they hate Bush. It was pretty funny. He said "Obama, so-so, Clinton, so-so., but Bush very good!" Chris and I figured it was because Saddam Hussein would kill and persecute all the Kurds he could, so we guessed Bush did them a favor by taking out Hussein. This man, Ali, drove us around for about 35 minutes and when we were getting out, he absolutely refused payment from us. It was extremely kind of him, and I thought it was right in line with the Christmas spirit.

Its a little cool here now, but nothing like winter in Utah. I never wear a jacket outside or anything like that. I have to say I kind of miss the snow. I've had many great Christmases in my life and I have to say they are always connected with snow so it is kind of weird here when I pass sandy lots. I'm sure almost all of my students have no idea that its Christmas, and if they did know they probably wouldn't know what it was about anyway.

My students are doing well. We have now finished weeks 8 and 9 which means we are almost half way done with the semester. Time is simultaneously passing very fast and very slow if that makes any sense. Things have been crazy here as usual but I think things are starting to calm down. We are in a chapter about health care so I was telling my students about addictions. Many people here smoke so one of my students who smokes told me that he could quit and it would be easy. I challenged him to stop for two weeks and I would stop eating chocolate for 2 weeks (I told them that was my addiction). As far as I know he did it, unless he lied, but I'd like to think he was honest with me. It was pretty funny though, I would always come in and say "Abaan, did you smoke yesterday?" and he would say "no teacher, did you eat chocolate?" and I would say no. He would tell me to hurry and eat chocolate so he could smoke again. I said, "why don't you just never smoke again?" and he would say "I will in the future, maybe when I'm married." Good times.

One day I walked into class and my students were sitting in two groups on two opposite sides of class. My class smelled very bad. Someone didn't wash their clothes or take a shower or something. One side smelled, the other didn't and I figured they were trying to escape the smell. The first thing I said was "It smells so bad in here! Did someone not shower!?" I was very serious about it. I told them their homework was to all go home, wash their clothes, and take a shower. The students thought it was pretty funny and it worked because the next day we didn't have that problem. We have a lot of funny experiences in class.

This will be the first Christmas of my life that I work so it will be interesting. I want my family and friends to know I'm thinking of them this day and hope you are all well. I love you all and Merry Christmas!

The Craziness of Teaching: Weeks 6 and 7

I can't believe I've already been back in class for two weeks. That is as long as the break we just had. It definitely took some time getting back into the swing of teaching. Especially since we came back to all sorts of changes. We have new classes and thankfully we've changed things enough that the work load is slightly easier. I do have to say though I was fairly stressed when we started again because for some reason they decided to put me, the first year teacher, teaching the advanced kids. We say advanced, but that is just compared to those students who know very very little. There are some positives and negatives to this new change. My students can understand almost everything I say so we can have some great conversations about life in Saudi Arabia and many other things. On the other hand, they can tell if and when I have no idea what I'm doing or am less prepared. Not that it happens a lot, but as a first year I do have moments where I wonder what in the world I'm doing and how I got here. I do tend to stress way more than everyone else.

Another change that we've had recently is the loss of 5 teachers at my school, and 3 or 4 at the other school here in Riyadh. Apparently they are having a hard time finding teachers at the other schools in Jeddah and Dammam and needed to take some of ours. This occured one week in from our break, and so yet again, another change. I have a hard time knowing if I hate it more or the students do. They can't stand all the class changes and frankly neither can I. Luckily this has not affected my classes at all because I have the upper level kids. However, many of my former students come to tell me of their frustrations. We have hired temporary teachers from the area until my company manages to hire some others (I have some doubts they will find people to do that though). I wonder what would happen if these temp teachers decided to just stop one day.....I think it could be a disaster for the program here. It is much quieter on the ride to school now with those 5 teachers missing. They were some of our more lively teachers.

I have to say I really love my new students. They tell me many things, like why music is bad, about the Djinns, and about life here in Saudi. They constantly surprise me with new words that seem above their current level. We laugh a lot which is nice. They can have some pretty decent conversations but still need a lot of work with their writing. However, even then they show some promise. They make a lot of grammatical errors, but the words they use makes me think that they are so close to getting it. I'm grateful that my partner teacher is a great writing instructor. I focus more on conversation and vocabulary and he focuses on the writing skills. We recently had a test where the students had to write a paragraph about why or why not a factory would be good in their hometown, and here is what one of them wrote (just so you can see what they are doing)

My student "S" wrote (with his mistakes included):

Building a factory in our hometown is a bad idea. Because of the water pollution.

For example some factories make the water dirty when the dump a wates of products into the water and the waster destroy the water and kill the fish. The other form of water pollution when the smoking of making disposition on the roofs of water.

Our hometown is so beautiful and has a lot nice lakes and rivers, but when we accept building factories there we will be regret for that after short time. Because the factories burn many subjects to make its products. Then, dump the wastes into the water. Water contaminates with toxic substances from the wastes of factories. After that, people will resort to eating food imported and set up water purification projects, and they will cost a lot. Do you want that??

Haha, I love the rhetorical question at the end. So this definitely has a lot of work but I have to say I think this is pretty good for where they are at. Plus he used the word "contaminates"! Thats what I mean when I say my students surprise me often. It all brings back a lot of memories of when I was in French classes and discovering all the grammar mistakes I would make. Second language acquisition is extremely difficult.

So things are going pretty well here, but I often feel like this company is on thin ice. I don't know what will happen. Other than that there isn't much to report. I mostly just read a lot during the weeks when school is going on. I can say that for the first time yesterday I was not allowed into a mall because I was single. On the weekends only families can go into the malls. It sounds funny but I think their attitude is that the single men would go and make trouble whatever that means. Usually, because we are from the U.S. they don't mess with us at all and I've been to a mall almost every weekend here in the KSA. But I have been told, and it was true yesterday, that if you get the wrong security guard they may feel like denying you. I was slightly annoyed, but now I can say I've had that experience. We just went to some other better places to spend our day.

Thanksgiving Day at Mada'in Salih and Beyond

Before I get to Thanksgiving Day, here is the tent that we watched Lawrence of Arabia in. It was quite nice. Pretty nice for a tent huh?

I need to get me one of these.

When we awoke on Thanksgiving morning we had a quick breakfast and headed back to Mada'in Salih to see some of the tombs we missed the day before.

This one was filled with a lot of sand.

We were checking out one of the tombs when suddenly a group of young Saudi men drove up. They saw us and instantly walked up to us, shook our hands, and had us take a picture with them. They seemed very excited to see us. As they were leaving they told us that one of the guys was a farmer and grew oranges.

So he got into his vehicle and started giving everyone oranges. It was pretty funny and we all thought it was very nice. He originally just gave us one each, but then just gave us an entire box.

We drove to the next group of tombs and then a completely different group of people drove up, instantly walked up to us with a bunch of smiles on their faces, shook our hands, and then had us take yet another group picture! This time there was no oranges, but again, it was really funny. I guess it is stadard procedure to take pictures with Americans at Mada'in Salih.

One of the best parts of being at Mada'in Salih was there was only a handful of people there the entire time. We practically had the whole place to ourselves. Mostly because many Saudis won't go there and its such a difficult place to make arrangements to get to. It will probably be the only time I go to such a significant world site with only a few people there. Here we are again at one of the Nabatean holy places. We're just messing around.While visiting one of the tombs our guide found an ancient coin, probably Nabatean or Roman. He won't be able to tell until he takes it back to be examined. Had I known ancient coins were that easy to find I would have been looking more carefully.

The whole trip was definitely the experience of a lifetime.

We left Mada'in Salih and headed back to Al Ula. There was a mountain there with an old temple place on top. We weren't able to get there because to do so, you had to climb some ropes up the cliff to reach it, and also we were on limited time. Here we are climbing the stairway up the mountain. Though we didn't make it to the temple area, we did get to a place with a ton of very old petroglyphs.

This is so much like Utah it is unbelievable. It was just like looking at a panel of petroglyphs back home.

Except instead of seeing big horn sheep, you see tons of pictures of camels.

Here is a guy riding a camel.

This one actually did surprise me because these look very close to the big horn sheep that we have back home. I asked the guide what these were and he said they might be some kind of sheep with horns, but these animals don't live in the area as far as I know. We also saw petroglyphs of lions and baboons as well.

There was also a ton of grafiti on this panel of petroglyphs, which is very annoying.

Here is the view from the canyon near the temple and petroglyphs.

We headed back to the hotel and packed our bags. We then began our drive back to Medina to catch a flight. I thought we were going to die. Our driver was probably going 100mph trying to get us to an ancient Jewish town here in Saudi. He wanted us to get there before sunset. It gets dark at 5:00 now. The dam below is the site of the ancient Jewish town. Its all we got to see of the site. Apparently people here don't like others to see it and just pretent like it never existed.

Both our driver and our police escort were driving like crazy. Our escort had his lights going the entire ride. We were swerving in and out through cars, slamming on breaks constantly. Incidentally, Saudi Arabia has one of the highest numbers of car wrecks in the world. I've witnessed more than a few since I've been here. One of the guys in our group asked our guide "what happens if you hit a camel?" I thought to myself that it was a silly question. We'd be dead at the speed we were going. If we were survived the van would likely be beyond repair. Our guide told us that if you hit a camel during the day, you have to pay the owner the price of the camel. If you hit a camel at night the owner of the camel has to pay your car damages. We actually stopped for a moment while we were switching escorts and the policeman had to turn on his sirens and herd a bunch of camels into the desert with his car so nobody hit them. He actually drove them pretty far into the desert too.

We arrived at the Medina airport. It was packed. We supposed it was due to all the pilgrims leaving Medina after the Hajj. We finally found the place we were to be at and had ourselves a nice "Thanksgiving dinner". Mine consisted of pizza, pepsi, and a slice of dry chocolate cake.

While we were eating, a security guard came up and told us that some official looking guy in an office wanted to talk to us. We weren't sure what to make of that. We sent Sam to go talk to him. The man told Sam that one of the princes of Saudi Arabia saw us walking around the airport and he wanted to know what we were doing there. Sam told the guy we were just coming back from Mada'in Salih and we were flying back to Riyadh. We were relieved. We thought maybe we were in trouble or something.

We got on the plane for a short trip back to Riyadh. Here is a view of Riyadh from our plane. It was nice to be back. It was a little less nice that we only had one day left of our vacation. But I was grateful we were able to travel as much as we were. And now it will be a lot simpler to write blog posts because I probably won't have nearly as many pics to put up!

Mada'in Salih, the Cursed City

I suspect that Mada'in Salih will possibly be the greatest thing I will see in this country. I loved everything about it. It is funny because when we were putting this whole trip together in Riyadh, our travel agent said "why do you want to go to Mada'in Salih? Its just an ugly desert" I thought to myself, you've got to be kidding right!? This is one of the top archeological sites in the world! Interestingly enough, the area of Mada'in Salih and the city of Al Ula (which is about 20 minutes away) were, in my opinion, the most beautiful parts of Saudi Arabia that I have yet seen.

Mada'in Salih (or "Cities of Salih") are significant for many reasons. It was created by the Nabateans about 2,000 years ago. These are the same people who built the famous site Petra, in Jordan. But the history of the city goes back many thousands of years before that. In the Qu'ran you can read about a prophet named Salih. He was sent by Allah to this city to call them to repent of their idol worship. These people (named the Thamud) said they would not believe unless Allah would call to them (or maybe create out of a mountain?) a she camel. The prophet Salih did call this great pregnant she camel to the people. But the people rejected the sign and killed the camel, and sent the camel's child screaming back to the mountain. So the story goes that the people were destroyed by lightning and earthquake. Our guide told us the prophet Mohammed said that the area was cursed and that whoever drinks the water of this region will also be cursed. It is for this reason that MANY people in Saudi Arabia refuse to come to this incredible place. Our guide also told us that in the city of Al Ula, the Bangladesh boys, and the Sudanese boys who pick dates, will have to lie when they sell them to other cities and say they came from another place because the dates are cursed and people would not buy them otherwise. Now on to the pictures:
This is our guide, who was amazing by the way. He knew a lot about the area and told us a lot of incredible stories. The circle he drew in the sand is a model of the area Mada'in Salih. He is telling us that the circle in the center is still off limits to all people because of the curse! So we could not go into that portion of the site. He tells us though that there is probably much that could be excavated there, and there are still many treasures yet to be found that people would love to find and sell on the black market.

These were some of the first tombs of the Nabateans that we saw here. There are over 150 tombs like this at Mada'in Salih. Each tomb belonged to a family and they would bury their family in that spot at death.

This is Chris and Sam looking at the burial place of the tomb. The bodies of the Nabateans were placed in these areas with their treasures at death. Today most of them are gone, but there are still some tombs with bodies and treasures in them. But we could not go inside

Me in one of the tombs.

This tomb is fenced off because it still has a body and maybe some treasure inside.

The picture above is of the Nabatean holy place. This was an area where they would go to pray to their gods. I think it functioned like some sort of temple for them.

Here we are sitting in their holy place. Our guide is explaining to us the functions of the area and their gods.

These slots in the wall are where they would place statues of their gods and pray to them.

Continuing our march through the Nabatean holy place. There was a lot to see here. Many slots in the walls for the gods, and places to ritually wash themselves as well. We saw an area where they would sacrifice animals as well.

This grafiti was placed in the Nabatean holy area. Our guide told us it means "No god but our god" , obviously placed there by a Muslim

Also located at Mada'in Salih was the old Hijaz railway station. It was destroyed during World War I by Lawrence of Arabia and his army of Arabs who fought off the Turkish empire. Lawrence was near this area for some of his battles. The old rail station still remains today.

The old train.

Here I am under the train now. I look so happy.

I thought this random lamp post looked really cool by itself with the desert background.

Back to the tombs again.

Me, Sam, and Chris in front of the tombs.

This was a common feature of all the tombs. Do you see the eagle above the door? Well its head has been knocked off. That is because this eagle represented a god to the Nabateans and so the Muslims destroyed all the eagle heads because, as the grafiti in the earlier picture said "our god is the only god" The five flowers you see in the picture represent the number of sacrifices this family would do (I think on a yearly basis) Some tombs had only one or three flowers. Five flowers meant you came from a rich family. Also, can you see the head with the two snakes at the side? This is a warning to people who enter the tomb. You can only go in your own families tomb or other tombs IF you have permission. The snakes at the side of the head mean that god will curse you if I remember correctly.

Another look at the inside of the tombs.

From one of the tombs, if you climbed up it led up the mountain. We were able to climb up to the top of this particular moutain. That is our guide waiting for us below.

Getting higher and higher.

At the top of this mountain were the remains of an old fortress build by the Ottomon Turks. You can see the old walls in the background. Far in the distance is the Kings Tomb.

Everyone enjoying the view.

This is the Kings Tomb. Probably the most spectacular of them all.

Here I am in front of the Kings Tomb. That was all for our time at Mada'in Salih on this day. We went home that night and we watched the movie "Lawrence of Arabia" in a bedouin tent, using a computer and projecter screen. It was the first time I had ever seen the movie and it was really great. There was probably no better place to watch the movie than right near where he fought some of his battles.