Week 18: The Return of the King

Today just happens to be my birthday, the big horrible 29. Today is special for another reason though: King Abdullah returned to Saudi Arabia. He has been away for 3 months now because of a spinal surgery in New York and a brief stay in.....Morocco...I think. For a week now they have been putting pictures of the king everywhere and all my students have been talking about it. They tell me he is like their second father. Below is a picture of the king and I. It is very fortunate that the king returned today because I have the day off of work for the celebration. Also, the king declared that the first day of next week will also be a day off for us. I like to think of it as the kings birthday present to me.

Here is everyone lined up outside waiting for the king to pass by. You could really feel the energy from everyone in the crowd. I could tell that the people really love their king. I heard one guy shout in English, "I love king Abdullah!" I found it interesting that most of the Middle East is protesting against their corrupt leaders at this time: The president of Libya has sworn to kill everyone who opposes him(and is), Mubarak of Egypt is gone due to protesting, people are dying in Yemen and Bahrain; but the people of Saudi all come together to welcome their king home.

Here I am joining the celebration.

Everyone waiting in anticipation.

So many people were driving by honking their horns and waving flags. It was pretty crazy.

Here is Chris waiting for the king.

More excited drivers. The crowd cheered everytime these guys or women drove by.

People just kept driving by, loop around, and come back honking their horns. I like the bus with the flags.

Jets would pass by periodically to welcome (or maybe protect?) the king.

More jets.

Here is a vehicle with pictures of the king and flags all over it.

These guys waited a few hours for the king to show up. You can see a billboard with his face on it in the background.

Below is the moment everyone waited for. It was over pretty quick, but in one of these vehicles I'm guessing is the king. A helicopter was following it and they had tons of police and ambulances following as well. Quite the welcome home.

I'd like to think that everyone was gathering for my birthday and the king was just the icing on the cake. This event actually made my birthday somewhat interesting. It was fun to be with everyone.

It was a pretty good week of school I must say. I think the students in all the classes are getting a little burnt out. After all, 6 hours of English 5 days a week is way too much. As usual I continue to have interesting conversations with my students. Here is one little conversation with a student:

STUDENT: will the United States go to Libya and help the people fight President Khadafi?

ME: No, I don't think so.

STUDENT: Why?

ME: Well, we are already fighting wars, and most of the world hates us for getting involved in other countries problems.

STUDENT: But its your job to help people!

At this I laughed. Its our job to help people? Interesting to me because this particular student (along with 99% of all the people here) hates President Bush and the fact that we went to Iraq (although most of them like America and its people). He said "but Khadafi is bad and is killing his people" so we should help. As much as I would love to help people in need I don't think the U.S. will get involved too much in this one. But who knows?

The rest of my birthday was pretty good by the way. After king Abdullah passed by I went home, relaxed for awhile, and later I went to dinner at a Turkish restaurant with Chris and Jared. Not bad because I usually have pretty boring birthdays. Good times. More to come later.