The Kingdom of Bahrain

At my new college we have a really cool Saudi guy in charge of the program. He called a two day holiday last week because the rest of the colleges weren't going to school so why should we? Luckily for Chris, these holidays fell on his birthday (both Chris and I got a random day off for our birthdays, pretty cool). We decided that we would rent a car and drive to the island kingdom of Bahrain. When I told my students I was going to Bahrain they were very nervous for me. They said "don't go, it is too dangerous" but I told them I thought we would be okay. As many of you know almost the whole Middle East has been conducting some major protests causing some major issues in many countries. Bahrain has had a number of protests in the past few months which caused some deaths and Saudi Arabia even sent some military help. As far as we knew at that point, things had calmed down quite a bit. Here is a map of Bahrain. This tiny island is its own country. We could drive across the island in 30 minutes, and it would probably only take a little over an hour to drive from top to bottom. A causeway connects Saudi Arabia to Bahrain. Drinking alcohol and other vices are illegal in Saudi Arabia, but not in Bahrain. For this reason there are some Saudis who love to go to Bahrain and party (including some past students I'm guessing). It bothers me that when I tell people here I am going to Bahrain they assume we are going only to drink alcohol and be with women. I think many people think this about Westerners. Little do they know that I don't drink alcohol or do that other stuff.
After a drive through the hot desert we neared the coast and then crossed the causeway to Bahrain. Above we are crossing the Persian Gulf or as the Saudi's say, the "Arabian Gulf." We got some uncharacteristic cloudiness and rain almost the whole time we were there.

Leaving Saudi Arabia. It is nice to get away every now and then.

One of the first things we did when we arrived was go to the movie theater at the City Centre. They don't have theaters in Saudi Arabia so this was very nice (funny that they don't have theaters but you can watch any movie you want on TV, the internet, or just buy them in the stores). When we took this picture of me at the theater (above) some people from Lebanon came up and said "you live in Saudi, don't you?" At this we laughed. Only people who couldn't go to a theater in Saudi would want a picture of actually going to one. They were some very nice Labanese people. In America I never cared to go to the theater that much. But now that I can never go I find myself wishing I could go all the time. We watched two movies over the few days we were there: Source Code, and The Kings Speech. The latter was excellent, Source Code was okay. After the movie we were lucky to find a great hotel.

We began our next morning with breakfast at the hotel and a drive around the city. Here is one sight of the city above.

Here is Jared walking around the Arad fort. This fort was built as protection in the 13th century, but if you dig deeper it is one top of a settlement that dates back to 2300BC. Dating back to a civilization called the Dilmun. That is probably new to everyone reading this, but if any of you are familiar with the Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the world's oldest epic stories, it mentions the Dilmun island and compares it to paradise. The epic even mentions a man who lived there who sounds an awful lot like Noah. The man who lived here, says the epic, survived the great flood by building a boat and obtained eternal life. Gilgamesh went on a journey to find this man so he could live forever, but when he finally obtained what he needed, a snake came and stole immortality away from Gilgamesh.

Another pic of the city. I was very impressed by the architecture here. It was a very nice city. Oh yeah, this city is Manama, the capital of the Kingdom of Bahrain. It is weird to talk about it as a separate city from other cities because it is such a small country.

After our little drive we went to the national museum to get some history of the country. We learned a lot about the Dilmun people.

Here is a picture of the souq (outdoor mall)

I liked these. These are bobble head Arabs. I should have bought some but I didn't.

So were crazy protests happening while we were there? No. We didn't see anything out of the ordinary except for a ton of armored vehicles and tanks placed around the area (Pearl Square, which was recently destroyed, or so we heard) where the protests had taken place. However, in the evening traffic was practically non existant. It was strange to drive around a capital city with very little traffic. We had heard there was a curfew and that explained why we saw

only a few people out at night.We took a tour of the Grand Mosque in Manama. Here is Chris and I. This was Chris' birthday.

Here is the Isa cultural center. Isa is the Arabic name for Jesus, who they revere as a great prophet.

Inside the Grand Mosque. We took a tour of the mosque and had a very nice guide from Pakistan.

The man in the white thaube is doing the call to prayer as tourists watch. In the past the prayer callers (called muezzins) used to climb the minarets and yell out the call to prayer. Now, because of technology he can just use a microphone and it will sound out through the city.

The chandelier of the mosque. Our guide told us that it took 25 million dollars to build this mosque.

Looking out the window of the mosque while our guide, Suliman, answers our questions.

Out the window we saw one of the one of the king's palaces (above). One boy in our group asked if the king lives there. Our guide said he only goes there maybe once a year, to which Chris responded rudely, "well that is a waste" which kind of made me laugh because its kind of true.

More city.

Here is a picture of the king on one of the buildings. This is something I've seen in every Middle Eastern country I've been to. Always they have very big pictures of the king everywhere. Also, you can see the KFC colonel below. They love chicken here.

Here is one of the coolest buildings in the city. It has propellers. I was kind of hoping the building would lift of the ground and fly away. Very beautiful.

We wanted to go find the Tree of Life. It was about 45 minutes to the south. We passed Isa Town on the way (Jesus Town).

We got completely lost looking for the tree of life, which is weird because the country is so incredibly tiny. Most of what we saw out here were oil refineries (which is how the country makes a lot of its money.) Why is this tree, known as the tree of life so special? Well, its about 100 years old. But if you look around it is in the middle of the desert with no other trees around. Legends have sprung up about this tree. In the epic of Gilgamesh this island was described as paradise. Some people say this tree is a remnant of Eden. I read that the people can't explain why this tree has lived so long out here.

Here I am getting some of the fruit.....except it didn't really have any.

The last thing we did was head to one of the ancient cities located in Bahrain. The above picture is the Qal'at Al-Bahrain. This city has been rebuilt a number of times throughout history. This fortress isn't as old, but the city itself goes back to the times of the Dilmun making it somewhere around 4,000 years old.

Inside the Qal'at Al-Bahrain.

More excavations have uncovered more of the ancient city. They have found a great number of very interesting artifacts that date far back including silver coins from the time of Alexander the Great, Greek statues, and snake bowls (snake skeletons found in bowls that were offered as sacrifices to their gods). The island itself has numerous burial mounds and ancient temples as well - some temples they believe are dedicated to the old Sumerian god Enki, the god of sweet water (also mentioned in the Epic of Gilgamesh).

Here I am in the fortress, one of the rooms.

More foundations excavated from the ancient city.

Outside the fortress.

I like this pic. It is Chris standing on top of the ancient fortress overlooking the modern city of Manama. Bahrain is a very interesting place. We spent 2 days and a night in the country. It was very interesting to visit one of the countries experiencing the protests going on. I watch the news and hear about some pretty tense situations in this country, but we didn't come across any problems here. Many of the people we did see in the malls and other places seemed very happy. I feel like we got to see more culture here. We even went to a Catholic Mass here, just because we could. The people there were very nice as well as the people in the Grand Mosque. After this, it was back to the deserts of Saudi Arabia.

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.

Weeks of Revolution: 15, 16, and 17

It has been a crazy month for the Middle East. With the ousting of Hosni Mubarak and protests erupting in many of the Middle Eastern countries such Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, Yemen, Iran, and others people have asked me if things are okay here in Saudi Arabia. The answer is yes. The political situation here in Saudi is much more stable and for that and many other reasons I would be very surprised if the people here were to start anti-government protests. My life has been so unaffected by the protests in the other countries that I might as well be back in the U.S. watching it all unfold on the news. It is pretty cool to be in the center of it all as it goes down though. I wonder if this will result in a major revolution for most of the countries in the Middle East? I do know that the other countries here are tired of corruption and injustice that occurs in their governments. During the Egypt protests my students told me that this was a good thing because Mubarak is a bad leader and steals money from his people.

When I got back from my Oman trip things were pretty crazy as I suspected they would be when I left to go to Oman. Classes had been rearranged somewhat and a few of our temporary teachers quit which was frustrating. Things did go back to normal again 5 or so days later so I'm back to my normal classes again. I had gotten very tan in Oman and when I returned one of the students said "Teacher, your skin is so dark!", I said, "I know, do you like it?", and he said "No" Which I thought was funny. It is interesting to me that people in America spend a lot of time making their skin darker when many other cultures try their best to make their skin whiter. Here I get the feeling that lighter is better.

A few days later I was trimming my beard but I forgot to put the part on my electric razor and took a big chunk of it off on accident. For that reason I had to shave off the whole thing. My students, who had only seen me with a beard, were completely shocked. When I arrived at school I said hello to the first student I saw and he said "hello, what is your name?" as a joke. One of my students saw me and just started laughing uncontrollably. At the first of the semester my students were guessing I was 35...some even said 40. Now they kept saying "you look so young teacher!" Another student said "Now your head is too small for your body" Saudis have no problem pointing out if you are fat or not. Its funny how cultures are so different when it comes to that.

On one of my weekends my students invited me to go and hang out with them. We drove around town, saw some sites and other stuff. We also went to the Kingdom Tower. I had been there many times but had never gone to the top. So we decided we were going to pay a small fee to get a view of the city.
It was pretty fun hanging out with my students. It was also another way to see that in many ways Saudis in their young 20's are very much like Americans in their young 20's.

Here we all are with the city in the back.

Beardless me and student. My beard is back again now though.

Me and another student in the car.

After the Kingdom Tower and walking around town a bit we went to one of my students homes. A lot of the homes here in Saudi have another smaller building for guests. This prevents men and women from mixing together. It had a fireplace, a tv, and other things as well. A nice little place to hangout.

Just talking about life and the Egypt protests. This was the day before Mubarak resigned I think.

Here I am with a student from a different class. During our breaks I get to know the other students a little better. Although at this point, I think I've taught almost every student in the school. They love to take pictures and make the teachers wear their kefia's and other stuff. For the student above I put my tie on him which everyone thought was hilarious. They don't wear ties here.

I call these things kefia's from past experience but that is not what Saudi's call them. I know the name but have no idea how to spell it. The students love doing this to me. I think they would love it if I showed up at school one day wearning a thaube.

Here I am eating with some of my students from a few months ago.

Here I am with about half of my students. Good times.