Weeks 20 and 21: Semester End

I remember thinking in my first few weeks of teaching here that this semester would go on for eternity, no end in sight. Here I am today starting my second semester of school. Its weird. Towards the end of the semester the weeks seemed to fly by and things got much easier for many reasons. They were good weeks. I had a lot of interesting conversations with my students and I feel like my understanding of this part of the world has increased greatly, though I think I could never truly understand their feelings unless I was one of them. When you live in another country and work on a daily basis with people from another culture your mind really begins to expand.....and sometimes it hurts. Sometimes, no matter how much you try to wrap your mind around something, some idea, some thought, your never going to get it, and in some ways, I'm happy about that. This experience has been both good and bad in various ways. One thing confirmed to me again though, is that people really are very similar in some of the most important ways, no matter where you are in the world. Below are some pictures of the last days of this semester. I think its funny that some of the most smily Saudi's rarely smile in pictures. I don't know if that is a cultural thing or what. Some of them look so serious in pictures...almost scary, but really they smile quite a bit.

These two were with me from the beginning. I had my class changed so many times I think I taught almost every student in the program at one time or another. Thank heavens this won't be the case second semester.

For the last day of class we reviewed a little for the final test, but mostly we just brought and ate food.

Some of the students made traditional food from their hometowns. Very good.

The student above is great. He truly loves to learn about everything, which is one of his greatest qualities. I think he will go far in life.

Eating with some of my old students during a break.

More of my old students.
Charles, teaching the students. This is the second to last day I believe. Working hard.

Here is as many students in my class I could gather together for a group picture. Its very difficult to get them all together on one day. I will miss them. Luckily we had a week off in between the semesters plus one day the king declared as a holiday (I love when he does that). Its been a LAZY week. I will be moving schools for the new semester. I'm staying in the same city, but now I will be working at Chris's school, which should be nice, though I will miss the old one. Stay tuned.

KAUST

While we were in Jeddah we spent some time with some friends at KAUST (King Abdullah University of Science and Technology). I liked this sign, above, that we saw at the University. KAUST is a University separated from the actual city of Jeddah, its about an hour out of the city. It is a gated school, protected by security, and you can only enter if you know people there. Luckily, we did. The family below hosted us as we toured KAUST and we were very grateful for it. They even bought dinner for us! Its nice to have friends in high places. Thanks again P family if you are reading this.

Here we are entering the University. It sits along the coast of the Red Sea and it wass so amazing I'm doing a blog post just on this place. All students and faculty live at KAUST. The University is practically its own city. The University itself is fairly new. King Abdullah had this place built as an international school with the intent that someday it would be one of the greatest international Universities in the world. My impression of the place was very nice.

Here are some of the beautiful homes at the University. As far as manmade structures in Saudi go, this place was the most beautiful and the most planned out. There was absolutely no garbage anywhere and beautiful parks there as well. It was surprising to see such a place here.

More sites of the University with along the Red Sea. It was a very beautiful area. The people who live here have this nice beach to play on everyday if they wish.

Here we are on the beach by the Red Sea.

I love this shirt. One of the girls was wearing it. Its Hello Kitty wearing an abaya. Perfect for Saudi Arabia.

What really sets this University apart from everywhere in Saudi Arabia is that people aren't required to wear abayas here. Also, women can drive on campus. It was also very surprising when I saw a woman riding a bike wearing shorts - something you would never see anywhere else in the country. KAUST is also the location of 1 of 2 movie theaters in the country.

I know this might seem like a pretty boring blog post, but if you had spent time in the country you would know how incredibly different this place is compared to everywhere else here. They have the most expensive equipment for learning and its also very artistic and unusual in its set up. AND CLEAN!

Here is one of the campus mosques. Very beautiful as always.

That is basically all I have to say about this place. Again, it was pretty cool.

A little campus boat. THE END.

Jeddah Adventure and Week 19

Because of the king's holiday we decided we should use this rare opportunity to travel while we could. We had been meaning to travel to Jeddah at some point in our stay and this was a great opportunity to do it. Jeddah is considered the most liberal city in Saudi, which is still extremely conservative by U.S. standards, but still cool. We rented a car and headed out. Me, Chris, and Jared on our way. This trip to Jeddah took us about 8 hours westward to the coast. Jeddah sits right along the Red Sea.

Classic Saudi landscape. When you get closer to the coast the region becomes much more mountainous.

Heading down down down.

When we got the city Taif, it was evening. We had to drive downward for a surprisingly long time to get to the coast.

So what is this picture above? Its kind of blurry but I had to put it on here. As we drove to Jeddah there were signs pointing to Mecca as well. Only Muslims are allowed in Mecca because it is their holiest city. We took the road to Jeddah which goes around Mecca but in the very center of this picture you see a tower pointing above the horizon. This tower is the Mecca clock tower (the tallest clock tower in the world) and it sits right next to the holiest mosque. So even though I can never go to Mecca, I can say that I have seen it from a distance. You should google that clock tower by the way. Its very beautiful.

From here on out my pictures aren't in order. This was found in the Red Sea Mall in Jeddah. They put up papers for people to sign welcoming the king back to the country. Here is a picture someone drew of the king.

Here is a picture of the older part of Jeddah. There were many shops and people around. Jeddah is an extremely crowded city. It was probably the most unpleasant driving situation I've ever had in a city.

In the older part of Jeddah there were many old and run down buildings, but they actually looked really cool. It was interesting to see.

Here is a nice mosque in Jeddah. Jeddah actually has flooding problems from time to time. In the past few years they have had floods that have taken lives. The people are trying to change the roads so that flooding wont be so damaging in the future.

The word "Jeddah" actually means grandma. Why name a city grandma? In Islam they believe this is the place where Eve (of Adam and Eve) died. They even have a burial spot here dedicated to her. We tried to find this place but couldn't (it was difficult to find anything because driving was such an issue).

More sites of the city. Along the Corniche, they had many ususual and weird looking sculptures. Something you would never see in Riyadh.

Walking along the Corniche next to the Red Sea. It was very very humid, something again, we don't have in Riyadh.

At the Red Sea Mall they had art on the walls, yet again, something very different and somewhat liberal for this country.

In the Red Sea Mall they actually played music in the stores, something we take for granted at home. We probably don't even notice the music at home. Here it is kind of extreme to play music in public.

A woman painting in the mall.

Here is a cat restaurant in the city.

King Abdullah car! People got very excited about his return. Flags were everywhere and still are today.

Jeddah is home to the tallest fountain in the world. This thing was pretty amazing. You could see the fountain rising above the tall buildings in the city. We often used the fountain to find our way around the city.

Another pic of the fountain on the Red Sea.

Red Sea Mall.

Chris and I infront of the Mecca gate. Jeddah is very close to both Mecca and Medina, the two holiest cities in Islam. During the Hajj, when people do pilgramage to these cities, they fly into Jeddah first, I imagine the traffic being some of the worst in the world during that time.

Children playing in the street. There were children everywhere in this city playing in the streets.

Me inside another interesting sculpture.

A beautiful mosque along the Red Sea.

Here we are at juice world. They had real fruit hanging from the ceiling of this shop. It was pretty good, but I think it would be really annoying to have to change the fruit when it goes bad.

We saw another cool place in Jeddah, but I'll do a different post on that. When we got back from Jeddah it was back to school for us. Luckily it was a four day week and it flew by. I can't believe this semester is almost over. I remember sitting outside my school in the first month of teaching and thinking "how am I ever going to survive this?" Now the end of the semester is close (of course I have to do it all over again, but its nice I made it this far)

The Match

Football is an extremely popular sport for this country. I think I mentioned that whenever there is a game many of my students don't even bother to show up to class. A few weeks ago my students invited me to a match at the stadium. This is the football stadium in Riyadh. We went to watch the Al Hilal team (crescent moon) which is the most popular team in Riyadh. My students tell me that the royal family puts a lot of money into this team to make sure they are the best. There is another team called Al Nasr, I have maybe two students who love this team. They are made fun of quite a bit for that. When one of my students learned I was going to the match he said "don't go, its too dangerous!" My student who said this is afraid of everything though. I call him my superstitious student. I told the students who invited me that one of the other students said it was dangerous. They told me it wasn't, but that I should sit in between them just in case. (Just in case what?) Anyway, I felt pretty safe there. When we walked in the stadium they had laid out the prayer rugs and many people were there praying, wearing their team's colors and facepaint. I asked my students if people pray for their team to win. They said:

Student 1: Yes, some people pray for their team to win.
Student 2: But I think its stupid to pray for that. You should only pray for important things.
Student 1: Well I love Al Hilal so I'm going to pray for them!

Here I am in between my students. Everyone is wearing the colors of Al Hilal. My students bought me that scarf so I would fit in (which I didn't, I was the only American there and everyone was staring at me). A few people who I had never met before asked if they could take a picture with me. Of course I couldn't refuse.

Everyone cheering for their team.

Here comes Al Hilal. When the 90 minutes finished it was a tie: 2-2. But Al Hilal managed to win the game in a shootout. Everyone was extremely happy, it was like they won the most important game in the season. Here is the shootout below.

It was close. Everyone thought they would lose and people were leaving, but they came out on top.

My students and I after the game. Afterwards they took me to Mac (McDonalds) with two of their friends. It was a good night.