Ramadan Kareem!!

Ramadan Kareem everyone! (beautiful Ramadan). We are now 12 days into Ramadan, the holy month of Islam - a time of fasting and reading the Qu'ran. During Ramadan, Muslims don't eat or drink anything, smoke, have sexual relations, or listen to music during the daylight hours - which here is about 4:30am - 6:35pm. Because of this restaurants and many shops are closed down during the day. To celebrate Ramadan, Chris, me, and some good friends of ours went to an Iftar dinner, which is basically a huge dinner you have when you break the fast.
Here is a picture of the Kingdom Tower on our way to the dinner. Because I wanted to be true to the spirit of Ramadan, I actually did the fast as well, not eating or drinking during the daylight hours. I have to say that Ramadan has messed up my whole schedule. I have been going to bed around 4:30am and waking up at 1:00pm for nearly a week! On the day I did the fast I ate my dinner at 4:00am and then went to bed. I had to wake up at 11:30am because I needed to head to school one last time to take care of some stuff. I was definitely thirsty in the hot Saudi sun. It usually is 115-118 degrees here.
Here are our good friends who treated us to the Ramadan Iftar dinner. It is quite a huge event. This particular one took place in a hotel and fed probably around 1,500-2,000 people on this night. Not only do Muslims fast during this month but they are also supposed to read the entire Qu'ran. Families usually divide the Qu'ran up into 30 sections and read one a day. I get the feeling it is quite a happy holiday, although I'm sure you at home are probably thinking this would be really difficult.
Here are some really fancy shrimp cups with cocktail sauce. They had quite a huge supply and variety of food at this dinner. It was a very fun event. One of my favorite experiences in Riyadh. We have this cool Indian man who works at a little store nearby. I was buying candy a week ago for my students so they could have it at night. I told him it was to help my students come during Ramadan. He told me he loved Ramadan because in India his teachers would always beat him and the other students, but not during Ramadan! He said during Ramadan "We were free!"
Here are some nice desserts. Very very good. One time the subject of fasting came up in class. I told my students I might do the Ramadan fast for a few days and they got very excited about that. I told them that other religions fast sometimes also and told them of some ways that different people do it. I told them one group fasts only one day a month but they don't eat or drink for 24 hours. They thought that was too difficult. I feel like it would be easier than 30 days, but of course this is something they are very used to.
More excellent desserts. The one on the bottom right is called Um Ali (which means mother of Ali). It was probably one of my favorites. It is like a bread pudding kind of thing. I must say that driving has been a much nicer experience here during Ramadan. Usually the roads are pretty dangerous. When I started a year ago it was awful! But then the Kingdom put road cameras on the streets and things got noticeably better after that - it made a HUGE difference. My students have already gotten some tickets from them. But during Ramadan people are usually at home during the day so driving has been a breeze!
Here is the fruit table. These pictures don't really do it justice though. There were food tables everywhere! Of course it looks even better after a day of fasting.
They had these cool colored lamps all over the place. We dished up our food and then waited until the call to prayer at about 6:35-37. That was our signal that it was okay to eat. When you end your fast you do what the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) did. He started with just a few dates and some water so he could get used to food again. Then you start your meal slowly. So that is exactly what I did as well. I ate 3 dates, had some water, and then slowly ate my food.
They had traditional Saudi, Indian, and Italian food. Probably a lot of others as well that I didn't notice. There was a lot of seafood as well. This was quite the event. It is like a big party.
Here is some traditional Saudi stuff. Don't know exactly what it is.
Here we are after the dinner. It was a great night. I can't believe I only have a few days left! Everyone tells me I will have reverse culture shock when I get home to the US. I'm happy I got to be in Saudi Arabia during some of Ramadan.

The Fourth Week, Predictions, and Mall Outings

Time is starting to fly here. This has been one of the calmest and fastest weeks we've had yet. We are finally starting to get into the routine of life in Saudi. The one thing that disappoints me a little is that I can't photograph random people I see on the streets. They would be, by far, the most interesting pictures I could show any of my friends and family. Unfortunately, for some people taking pics is a no-no, especially women because that could be seen in the wrong way, even though they are completely covered in public. I have heard a few reasons for this but I don't know if either has any validity. One reason is that (according to one of the Muslim teachers I talked to) there are still a small minority of individuals who believe taking a picture of a person is stealing a part of their soul. I have also heard it is because, in Islam, you don't make images of individuals - it is just something that isn't done. Whether there is any truth to that, I'm not sure. They do blur the faces of the women in ads at the mall because a women's face (according to one of Chris's students) is only for her family, and it is to respect her. I don't want to create false rumors about this country because there is already a lot of misunderstanding in America. However, many of the people here are very modern and have no problems with pictures. My students take pictures all the time and even have some pictures of me.

In class this week I was teaching my students about speaking in the future tense. I had them write three predictions they had about the future. One of my students said, "predictions are bad" I thought maybe he misunderstood the word and thought I was talking about fortune telling, which is considered witchcraft and is against the law. I asked him why and he said "because the future isn't good, we might have a war with Iran." It seemed that a few of my students seemed to think that war would be sometime in the immediate future. One student said he hoped Israel would no longer be here in the future. Most of them predicted common things like "I will have a wife" or "I will speak English." Very simple things. One of my creative students said "Dinosaurs will rise and eat people" although his spelling was quite bad, but I liked that he was trying. One of the funniest predictions was a student who said he would go to America in two years. I asked him why he would go to America (thinking he was going to study there or something). His English wasn't good enough so he was quiet. Suddenly another student said "He wants to go and be a terrorist" -- Suddenly my face turns white and I look completely shocked. The student then realizes he made a bad mistake and said "I meant TOURIST! TOURIST!" Suddenly the whole class breaks out into laughter and so did I. It was one of the funniest moments in class. Another teacher said that students in his class had also gotten those words mixed up, although I think its more bad pronunciation than anything else.

Well its another weekend, and I've just been enjoying my break. Yesterday we went to the Hayat Mall. Visiting the mall is one of the biggest past times to do here in Saudi and on the weekend it is completely packed! The Hayat Mall is probably one of the biggest malls I have ever been in. I took some pictures of some of the women's dress shops so people could see. There were literally 15-20 stores just for women's dresses right in a row. Remember though, that women do not wear these dresses in public. Only with other friends during parties and stuff.

Saudi's are definitely night people. We went to a gigantic food court at this mall with an amusement park inside, and it was completely full of women and children at 11:00pm. The malls don't even close until about 2:00am on the weekends. Many of my students go to sleep at 5:00 or 6:00am and then wake up at 2:00 or 3:00pm so they can come to school. I ask them what they do and they mostly say that they watch T.V. although I've heard some play video games or late night Football (Soccer). I think the reason people stay up so late is out of habit. I heard that in the old days people mostly slept during the day because of heat and then stayed up all night. It sounded like a reasonable answer.

So that is how things are so far. I've been reading the Qu'ran lately and many other books that have been given to me by Saudi students and faculty. I feel like I'm learning a lot about the culture and religion here which is good because that is one of the reasons I wanted to come here. I only have 5 more days of teaching before we begin the Hajj vacation, which I will write more about next week. Salam (Peace).

The Second Week

To further continue the chaos and disorganization of our teaching situation here, the powers that be decided to pull me out of a class I had been teaching for over a week and give me a brand new class of students to work with. I was disheartened when I walked up to one of the new students and said "how are you doing?" only to have him stare back at me in complete confusion. So with them, I started from scratch - which is fine because I've actually really warmed up to this new class. But what really lifted my spirits is when I discovered my old class got together and had written a letter to my "academic coordinator" to try and get me back. This is the letter they wrote, and I include all the spelling and grammatical errors they made:

Tus 19/10/2010
To M.r ******
We hope the rturn of happiness to back Mr. Mark to tech English grammar; Mr Mark started with us and we want to complet with us, M.r Roony is good but prefer M.r Mark
Thank you
students class 30

I hate using this word, but isn't that completely adorable!? I laughed when I read it, but really it made my day and made me feel like maybe I'm doing, at the very least, an adequate job at teaching. Also, remember that my students are 20-25. It is a funny thing when you teach adults a language completely foreign to them. Because they are only able to communicate on a very basic level it makes them seem like they are children. In fact, many teachers have referred to them as kids and then corrected themselves remembering that they are actually adults (I myself have done the same thing a few times). I remember taking French classes in college and feeling like a little kid when all I knew was a few adjectives, nouns, and verbs. Oh, and by the way, that letter was actually pretty good considering their current knowledge of the language.

Saudis are a fascinating people. Judging by how things are at my school nobody seems in a rush to get anything done. There is not a lot of organization and the college we work in is so dirty its pretty horrendous. The reason being that the contract they had with the old cleaning crew ran out but they don't seem to be in a rush to hire a new crew. It literally took a week and a half to find a key to open the door to what is now our office, but they have yet to supply a badly needed printer, copier, etc. They say things will be done in a few minutes, but I have learned that could be anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour....possibly more.

It is easy to tell who is really commited to learning English in our classes. They are the students asking questions and seem very excited about learning. They come on time and stay through all 6 hours of classes. A very large number of students are frequently late to class, but like I said, I think that is more because of the way their culture works than anything else. Also, many students do not show up on the last day of the week, which is Wednesday for them. They always go places with their families, or go to the football match (or at least that is what they tell us). We literally lost almost half of our student body yesterday because of a football match between the KSA (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia) and Iran. One thing that I discovered only two days ago was that our students are getting paid to go to school! I had no idea. I thought they had all scrimped and saved to have this opportunity. That also explains the attitudes of a smaller portion of our students. The other day I asked one of my students who speaks really well "Abduraman, are all of the students understanding me? there seems to be three or four who just don't understand a word I say" Then he tells me "yes, some students only come here to get a certificate" So basically, show up, get paid, and get a certificate. But really, I feel that is a smaller number of students. Many have genuine interest in learning English so they can qualify to come study in America. I truly hope they are successful. I wish you all could meet them. Many of them are very nice and seem like they would be a lot of fun to hang out with outside of class.

My second week was very smooth compared to my first week. I am able to prepare my lessons a little faster than before and most of the nerves have left. Again, there is still much that I and the rest of the teachers hope to change soon, and I'm hopeful we will be able to do so (for our sakes and the students) That is all for now.

"The Experience"

The weekend was a welcome break. Our weekends are Thursday and Friday because Friday is the Islamic holy day; the day they go to pray at the mosque. It was the perfect weekend really. It was the perfect mix of relaxing and site seeing. I slept in, we went shopping, and then we went to Faisaliah Tower, the second tallest building in the city. We had to pay 35 riyals to go up, and when we got into a very futuristic tube like elevator you had to hit a button labelled "the experience"

which I thought was kind of funny. But the button was telling the truth. The view from up top was pretty incredible. We were able to walk around the tower (underneath a giant globe which contains an expensive restaurant) and view the city which went as far as the eye could see on all sides.

We stayed on top for quite awhile. We got some amazing pictures of the city and watched the Saudi families come up and look around. A group of young boys came up and started dancing and doing Michael Jackson's moonwalk which I thought was pretty awesome. Being on top of the tower was the first time I had actually felt wind since being in Saudi. It was a cool wind too which was even better because it can get pretty hot here. The best part was around sun down when the call to prayer went off. For those of you who don't know, when it is time to pray, a call goes out from the minarets of the mosques in the city. Its hard to explain the sound, but it is like a person singing, but I'm not sure exactly what they say (perhaps someone reading this can comment and enlighten me). Anyway, because we were on top of the tower we could hear the call to prayer from all sides of the city and it just echoed and echoed forever. Those were the types of experiences I wanted to have here - something unexpected and new. Its those moments that engrain themselves in your memory forever. We waited until the sun set and the city lights came on and then we went to the mall located on the bottom floors of the tower.
At the mall we walked into a music store. Last year I started taking piano lessons and unfornately had to stop after 5 months due to my guiding job. I was hoping I would have easy access to a piano here, but no luck. So we walked into a piano store and I asked the man who worked there if it was okay to play a song. He said it was so I sat down and started playing the one song I know. There were some women wearing abayas there with their children listening to me play (abayas are the black robes that women cover their whole body with in public). When I finished I got up and one of the women said to me "don't stop, it was very beautiful." I have to say I was like a deer in the headlights when she said that to me. I had fully expected to never hear a women address me at all for the next year so it was pretty stunning. It kind of made me nervous. Like it was some kind of trap - I thought maybe the Mutawa (religious police) would jump out and arrest us or something. I kindly thanked her and sat down again and started playing. She said a few more things to us, but we were so awkard about it, the conversation didn't last long. It was the first time a woman had spoken to me in over two weeks. It is interesting to me that a small basic conversation with a woman should cause so much nervous feeling in someone. But that is how things are here I suppose. I definitely would never talk to a woman here out of fear. Interestingly enough, when we go to malls we pass a very large number of dress shops. I'm not talking basic modest dresses either, they are sleeveless and very flashy. I wondered what in the world a shop like that was doing in Saudi Arabia. Apparently when women get together with their other women friends they dress up - like REALLY dress up, the whole works. The fanciest colorful dresses you can imagine with a lot of jewelry. Of course, that is something I'll never see here but it is a fascinating part of the culture to me since I only see the eyes of women in public. Sometimes I don't even see that much because some women's eyes are also covered.

There was a lot more to the weekend than just that, but it was very relaxing and very needed. I was able to recharge and get ready for my second week of teaching (which is going well by the way, but still more chaotic than I would like). I will write about this week's teaching in a few days. For now, I'm heading to bed!