Greetings from Seattle (home from Saudi Arabia)

Yesterday (Tuesday) was our last day in Saudi Arabia, and it was a long one. Our flight left at 2:15am, and we had a long day of activities scheduled before that. There was no time to write during the day, so I wrote most of this email on the plane.

Monday night I was so tired that I started wondering if I had malaria or some other horrible disease (I do have a couple big mosquito bites that are making me nervous), but I did a bunch of research on the internet and learned that malaria risk is extremely low in this part of Saudi Arabia and I definitely don't have any of the symptoms of any of the diseases you can get here. So it's probably just jet lag. Tuesday morning I woke up at 4am and couldn't go back to sleep, and much of the day I was getting woozy if I stood up for too long. It's also been a lot hotter than it was the rest of the week.

Mike mentioned that the men in his two workshops looked exactly the same, but they were actually very different audiences. One thing about the men’s clothing is that it is certainly egalitarian. Everyone from the driver to the university faculty to the king wears the exact same white robe and red or white head scarf. So you can’t judge a man’s social status from his clothing or appearance. This is much less true of the women. Even with the abayas, there is a lot of variation. All are black, but some are plain and some are decorated with rhinestones and/or exquisite embroidery. And in women’s places where they are uncovered, each woman expresses her own personal style.

In the morning we went to the university and met with the vice president for technology transfer. We had been told all week that this meeting was "tentative" and this morning it was "80% sure", because apparently the VP is too important to make appointments and be expected to keep them. Going into the building, there was a lobby filled with cushy chairs and big posters of the royal family and important researchers. Then we were escorted to a crazy room filled with fancy chairs around a circular table with computer monitors (and snacks!) in front of each chair and video screens on all the walls. (I took lots of pictures of both the lobby and the crazy room and will post them soon.) Then they changed their minds and decided that we would meet him in his office instead. We sat on big plush couches and were served Arabic coffee, and we talked for about 10 minutes about absolutely nothing. Mike was incredibly charming and socially graceful, and I was mostly quiet. Then he said he needed to get to another meeting, and that was that.

Mike was giving a talk at 1pm at the men’s campus, and I was scheduled to go to the women’s campus to watch it via the videoconference system. I asked our host this morning if it would be possible for me to go early and get a tour. So after the meeting with the VP, he made some phone calls, and a driver came to pick me up. Our regular driver was busy, and this was the first time I had a different driver.

He dropped me off in front of the entryway with the one-way glass, and this time I knew just where to go and wait for whatever mysterious woman would be meeting me. She didn’t arrive for a few minutes, but I was confident that when she did, she would have no trouble picking me out from the crowd. Sure enough, a bubbly young graduate student came, recognized me immediately as the foreign guest, introduced herself, and took me to the physics department. She seemed so excited to talk to me, and to show me around. She told me she was planning to study abroad in Calgary. I told her I had been there, and her eyes got wide and she wanted me to tell her all about it.

Most faculty here have gone to graduate school somewhere in the West. Especially with the women, it amazes me that they come back. I wonder what fraction do not. I don’t know how anyone could come back to this closed-off world after studying in the U.S.

First, she took me to meet the associate chair of the physics department. Her office was large and well-equipped, but very plain compared to the offices at the men’s campus. She offered me juice and some sort of dried fruit thing, and then sat down to talk with me. She seemed shy and unsure of what to say to me, unlike the male faculty members we had met, and the conversation was awkward. Of course she hadn’t been expecting me until our host’s call less than an hour ago, and probably hadn’t been told much about who I was.

We talked mostly about what it’s like to be a female faculty member here and the opportunities for women. The women faculty have the same crazy teaching load as the men, and she was shocked when I told her that faculty at CU teach only one course per semester. She said it’s harder for the women, because in addition to all their work, they have to go home at the end of the day and take care of the children. She speculated that in my country, men probably help with the children. I said yes, they are helping more and more, and in some cases it’s pretty equal. She said here the men don’t help at all. She said that most women faculty members do have families. She has three children.

She said she took Kathy’s workshop last year, so I asked her if she used any of our simulations in her teaching. She said no, because she teaches only advanced courses right now, but she uses them with her children and they love them.

She said she was planning to go to George Mason University in Virginia for her sabbatical, and asked if I knew anything about it. I had to say that I did not.

It bothers me that no attempt has been made to have me talk with the administration of the physics department at the women’s campus in the way we have been talking to the administration at the men’s campus. The only reason I met with the chair here at all was because I asked. I should have been spending this whole week meeting with important people at the women’s campus the way we have been meeting with important people at the men’s campus. I have asked many of the women faculty members, as well as our host, whether female visitors ever come to visit and give talks at the women’s college, and if they broadcast it back to the men. They always say yes, that they get many visitors. But it doesn’t seem like it. They don’t seem nearly as well-equipped or prepared for visitors here, and I think the fact that no one invited me to give a talk or meet with anyone on the women’s campus says a lot more than their answers to this question.

Then the graduate student came back and asked me if I would like a tour of their research labs. I said I would love that. She took me to the chemistry lab, where the director showed me lots of fabulous equipment that looked very well-used. The research director was a gregarious loud woman who took great joy in showing off the lab. When she found out I was a physicist, she had someone go get a key to the physics lab, which was a small building off to the side with a few pieces of brand new equipment. She explained that the experimental physics department had just started a few months ago, and they had just bought this equipment, but did not yet have any faculty members to use it. She didn’t know what any of it was, and asked me if I recognized any of it. I explained that my background was in theoretical physics, so I didn’t know either. The graduate student, who had come with me for the tour, said that she too was in theoretical physics, and she laughingly that she had never even been to any of the research labs, even though they were right across from her building, so my visit was a good opportunity for her to see them.

I had noticed a sign on one of the doors in the chemistry lab that said, “All researchers welcome,” so I asked the director whether any of the lab equipment belonged to any particular faculty member, or whether it was shared between all the faculty members. She said it was all shared, and sometimes faculty members from other universities come to use it as well. She said proudly that they all get along so well that they are able to work together and share everything. She seemed so proud of the lab.

The director wanted me to sign some sort of guest book with my contact information, but she couldn’t find it, so I offered her a business card instead. My cards are girly and pink, yet professional-looking, and she and the graduate student were very excited about them. I gave them both one. Before I left, the director told me that her son had been studying in Pennsylvania for a year, and seeing me come from the United States reminded her of him. She got teary-eyed as she said this.

As I was leaving with the graduate student, I told her that I had heard that they had special classrooms where male professors could lecture through one-way glass. She smiled conspiratorially and said, “Would you like to see one?” I said yes, and she took me to one. A class was in session, and she told me to peek my head in. Sure enough, there were a bunch of female students taking notes, with a man sitting behind the glass lecturing. I asked whether the audio was two-way so the women could ask questions, and she said yes. She explained that there was a hole in the glass where they could pass papers back and forth.

Then we went to the videoconference room for Mike’s lecture on the educational reforms at CU. (I did take one picture of this.) It was a nice room with comfortable seats, with one screen showing Mike getting ready to talk and another screen showing his powerpoint presentation. The technology was all working, but there was no one there to listen to the talk. After a few minutes, three more women trickled in, and Mike began his talk. The women were constantly going in and out, so by the end of the talk, nearly all the original women had left, but there were 7 new women. I suspected that none of them got much out of the talk given that they all saw only a small portion of it. When Mike said that faculty members at CU teach only 1 course per semester, all the women gasped. This was the only thing in the talk that they had any kind of audible reaction to. Mike had clickers for the male faculty to use, and I had meant to bring clickers for the women, but I forgot them. However, the women did talk to each other a lot during the clicker questions. It was all in Arabic, so I don’t know what they were saying, but they seemed very engaged. They whispered a lot during the talk, both to each other and to me, asking me questions about what he was saying. During the Q&A at the end, they asked for questions from the women’s campus and one woman asked a question. Mike misunderstood her question, so I repeated it for him, and he answered (correctly) that I probably knew more about the question than him, and asked me to answer it. I did, but I have no idea how well that worked, since I wasn’t facing the women, and the men couldn’t see me at all. After that, the rest of the questions were from men. Before the Q&A session ended, someone came up to me and told me that my ride was here, so I had to leave.

One of the faculty members who had attended my workshop walked me out to the changing room by the exit, and I stopped to put my abaya back on. She asked me if I had learned how to wear it. I said was still having trouble with the head scarf, and asked if she could help me figure out how to put it on so it doesn’t fall off. Kathy (my colleague who was here last year) had told me that the women at my workshop would show me how to put it on, but I had never managed to get a lesson. And even now, she just threw the head scarf lightly over my head and said, “That will do.” So I will leave Saudi Arabia without ever learning how to wear this stupid thing properly!

Another mystery that was never resolved: there is a strange billboard here that I have seen several times. It appears to be an ad for rice, and it shows an Arab man holding his finger to his forehead like he’s just had a brilliant idea, and in the background, there is an American film director tied to a chair with duct tape over his mouth. I am completely perplexed by this ad, and would like to know what it means. I asked our host about it after I first saw it, and he said, “Oh, I think I’ve seen that. It’s just a silly ad saying that if you eat rice, it will make you smarter.” I said, “But what about the film director tied to a chair in the background?” He said, “I don’t think I ever noticed what was in the background. I don’t know about that.” This seems like too important of a feature to not notice, and I wondered if he just didn’t want to tell me what it meant. But later he pointed to a very similar ad that did not have the film director in the picture and said, “Is that the ad you were asking about?” So I think he really hasn’t seen it. I’ve been paying close attention to the ads whenever we are out driving with our host so I can show it to him, but I only see it when I am alone with the driver, who does not speak English. I tried googling various combinations of words like “Saudi billboard rice director” but could not find any explanation. Even Mike has never seen it, and jokes that maybe whatever virus I have is making me hallucinate.

Another random thing I wanted to mention: I had read all this stuff online before my trip about the mutawa, or religious police, who supposedly patrol the streets to ensure that everyone is following the moral rules. I kept looking for them, but never saw them, or if I did, I didn’t realize what they were. There really aren’t a whole lot of places where significant numbers of pedestrians are out in public, so I’m not really sure where they would be patrolling. Because of the heat, lack of pedestrian-friendly street design, and cheap gas, people drive everywhere, and you just don’t see people out walking.

The driver who picked me up at the women’s college was not our regular driver, and not the driver who had dropped me off. I was a little nervous getting into the car with this random man without our host or anyone I knew there to tell me it was safe. He took a different route than the regular driver, and my imagination starting going wild with visions of kidnapping. I still have no idea how to navigate my way around Riyadh, but I do know that our hotel is in the direction of the airport, so I kept watching to make sure that he always followed the signs towards the airport. Every time he took a turn towards the airport or didn’t take a turn away from it, I felt a little better. Eventually I started to see familiar landmarks, but I did not feel completely comfortable until he dropped me off at the hotel.

Mike and I had just enough time back at the hotel to check in for our flight and have lunch, during which we compared notes about our days. During most of this trip, I have felt hungry, but have not actually felt much desire to eat, and have had to force myself to keep eating to keep from getting weak. At lunch today I had a healthy appetite for the first time in days, and eagerly went back for seconds. I felt much better after lunch.

Then we were off for our trip to the desert. I had expected this to be some kind of organized tour. Instead, our host and his childhood friend packed up a picnic of dates and Arabic coffee into the friend's SUV, and took us to the place they liked to hang out as teenagers and young men. It was very personal and sweet, as they reminisced about the old days and shared with us what was clearly a very special place for them.

They had a friend who was a camel farmer, and we stopped at his camel farm on the way. There were many of these farms out in the desert, each of which consisted of a big tent with lots of trucks around it, a fenced-off area filled with camels, and often a separate area for goats. Camels are raised for their meat, and also for trading and speculation, since they are very expensive. They told us that an average camel sells for $1000 US, and a very rare camel might sell for $1,000,000 US. We drove up to the camel area, and the camels came up to the fence to greet us. They were very calm and docile, and if we scratched their necks, they would put their heads down and cry from happiness. One camel who was not right next to the fence put her foot in the water trough and started splashing the water around. They said she was doing this to show that she was jealous, because Mike was scratching another camel’s neck and not hers.

Then we watched a camel being milked. First they let out a baby camel, who had been kept in a separate area. The baby camel came out running and jumping excitedly, and ran around the pen a few times. They explained that she was excited because she was going to her mother. Then she went to her mother and started nursing. She nursed for a little while, and then a man came with a dish and milked the mother camel. They said this is the traditional way of milking camels, to let the baby camel get the milk started. The baby camel didn’t seem upset about the man milking her mother. She took a break and ran around and jumped, and then came back and nursed a little more.

Then we drove further into the desert. Everywhere we drove, there were piles of trash from previous picnickers. There were also lots of people driving around in off-road vehicles and places where you could rent the off-road vehicles. Many people did not wear helmets.

We found a nice sand dune and parked the car. Our hosts brought out a big fancy rug and laid it out on the top of the dune. We sat on the rug and had coffee and dates and watched the sunset. In spite of the trash, it was really beautiful, and we could see why this was such a special place for them. Our host explained that his friend knew where to find the finest dates. He said when they were both studying in the U.S. and he would get homesick, he would ask his friend to send him dates to remind him of home.

I can see why the men come back after studying abroad, but it is harder for me to understand why the women come back.

Even for the men, the bureaucracy that they have to deal with seems insanely frustrating. Our host keeps asking for our opinions about various issues he is facing in the department and in the university, so we’ve gotten a decent snapshot of their troubles. Earlier in the week, he gave us a document outlining the proposed plan of study for physics majors at his university, and asked us to look it over and comment on it. Mike and I both came to the conclusion that it’s completely insane. They’re asking their physics majors to take about twice as many physics courses as in a top-rate program in the U.S., apparently with the idea that if you want students to have a better education you should just give them more of it. The only possible result of this bombardment is that students will have to resort to rote memorization to keep up with the firehose, and will not be able to engage in any real learning. Our host was very gratified to hear this, because it is what he has been trying to tell the department, and I think he hopes that having American experts in physics education backing up his arguments might help give them a little more force.

He also wanted our opinion about what the entrance requirements for the physics major should be. We didn’t even understand the question at first, so he explained his problem. Apparently all the best science students want to go into engineering and medicine and many of the ones who don’t make it into these majors go into physics. Physics is a popular major for weak students because with a physics degree they can become a high school physics teacher, and high school teachers are well-paid here. But then they end up with all these physics majors who don’t really like physics, and can’t actually cut it in the classes. Many of them fail their classes over and over again, but they just keep taking them until they barely pass. Because the Saudi government pays for them to go to school, they don’t have a financial incentive to drop out if they are failing, and if they eventually pass all their courses they can get a job as a teacher, even if their transcript is filled with failed and repeated courses. It is also nearly impossible to expel students from the program due to poor performance, and there is a lot of pressure from the administration to accept more students because for some reason it helps their reputation to say they are educating more students, even if the students are failing their classes. It took a long time for Mike and I to wrap our heads around this problem, because we just couldn’t imagine having too many weak students wanting to be physics majors. In the US physics has such a reputation for being hard that even strong students are afraid to major in physics, and if students keep failing they quickly drop out because it’s too expensive to keep going to school if you’re not passing your classes. And you’re not going to get a job if you’ve failed classes in your major. Our host said he had proposed requiring that students must get at least a C in their first semester of physics and calculus to be admitted to the major, and it was rejected by the university. He asked us if we thought this requirement was reasonable, hoping for ammunition from the Americans, and we said we thought it was more than reasonable.

The government and universities do not spend money wisely here. Before I came here, I imagined that there was just tons of money flowing freely and the university was just pouring money into all of its programs. So I have been surprised by how many times we have suggested educational reforms and have heard that it’s a great idea but it’s just too expensive. How can any good educational reform be too expensive when they are pouring so much money into fancy new buildings and equipment that no one uses, and flying people on business class? I mentioned this to our host and he said it’s even worse because there is lots of corruption, so even less money gets to where it’s supposed to go. I’ve been thinking about the misuse of money a lot this week, and hadn’t even considered corruption. What a mess! We asked about the business class tickets, and learned that flying business class is the university standard for faculty. I asked wouldn’t they rather fly coach and have a lighter teaching load? They said of course, but it doesn’t work that way. If they saved the university money by flying coach, the university wouldn’t redirect that money in any useful way. Apparently the standard of business class was instituted in the old days when PhDs were very rare and they wanted to treat them as special privileged people. Now that the universities are filled with faculty with PhDs, the policy remains.

After the desert trip we went back to the hotel to freshen up, and then went out for a traditional Saudi dinner with our host and another physics professor at a restaurant where you sit on the floor. The restaurant was designed to look like a traditional mud building, filled with old artifacts. These “old artifacts” included old TVs, radios, and other electronic equipment of all kinds. It was an odd mix.

Dinner was amazing. We had camel meat. They teased us for eating camel right after petting the nice camels, but I appreciated having more connection to my food. The meat had the texture of beef and the color of chicken, and was much lighter than red meat. It was delicious.

After dinner we went back to the hotel to shower and pack and then our driver picked us up at midnight to go to the airport. When out host first told us that we had hotel reservations through Tuesday night, even though our flight left Tuesday night and we clearly wouldn’t be sleeping there, my instinct was to say we could just check out Tuesday morning and save them some money. But after a long day, I was grateful to be able to come back and rest at the hotel and take a shower before our very long flight.

Our driver, who had been expressionless all week, smiled warmly and shook our hands when he dropped us off, with an expression that seemed to say that he had really enjoyed our visit and he wished us a safe journey.

We had to go through a couple of security gates at the airport, and get a final search before we got on the plane. At each one, there was a doorway marked “female search” where I would go through two curtains and find a woman with a metal detector who would pat me down and then send me on my way.

Most of the passengers in the airport looked like they were Indian or Pakistani, probably laborers going home to visit their families. All menial work here is done by foreigners.

As we went through the airport, it gradually started feeling less and less like Saudi Arabia. I wasn’t sure when it was appropriate to take off my abaya, but since most women, even the westerners, were still wearing them, I left it on until I got on the plane, at which point I quickly ripped it off. Entering the plane was like entering another world. The flight attendants and the vast majority of the passengers were wearing western clothes. All the western women had removed their abayas. I was so grateful to be on that plane. Looking at my boarding passes and passport, the thought came to me that these are two of the most valuable documents in the world, and not just because my plane ticket was so expensive. So many people would give anything for the documentation to be able to come to the U.S., and now I have a better understanding of why. I am so grateful to be home!

My flight was long and exhausting, and I am sick and tired and jet-lagged, but I am home, and very happy to be here!

Sam

Greetings from Saudi Arabia, Part 7

Yesterday after my workshop, I spent the rest of the day in the hotel catching up on work, trying to stay awake, and skyping with my family. My workshops are in the morning and Mike's are in the evening, and he leaves before I return so we don't overlap much these days.

Today was the workshop for high school teachers, most of whom do not speak English, and there was a translator. This morning Mike handed me a CD of my presentation half-translated into Arabic. It was a little tricky not knowing what was on my own slides, but I had a printout to refer to, so it went OK. I went a little early and got the IT lady to help make sure the right software was installed on all the computer, and we had no technical problems today! We had about 20 participants, and the room was so crowded that I couldn't get to the back of the room to help people, which was frustrating, but OK.

My translator was a stylish 24-year-old who was eager to talk to me and had a million questions. She asked me how long I was here and what I was doing, and said, "You must be bored here! Would you like me to take you out tonight and show you around?" I said I would love that, and we made plans for her to pick me up at the hotel and take me out with her friends. She asked what I wanted to do, and I said, "Whatever you like to do for fun." She explained that on weekends they have wild crazy parties until 4am, but since it's a weeknight, things will only be open until 11:30pm and it might not be quite as much fun.

Throughout the workshop there were a lot of communication problems, and I wasn't sure how well the translator (or whoever translated my slides and handouts) was doing with the translations. She spoke English very well, but she had no background in science, and I suspect that she was misunderstanding a lot of what I was saying. She also seemed to be saying things in a rather confrontational way, because several of the teachers seemed very angry with her. There was one clicker question that every single one of the teachers got wrong, and I had trouble believing that the teachers' understanding of science was quite that bad! We had a really good discussion about it afterwards, and they all said they understood it when I was done, but I was never sure whether they had gotten it wrong due to a misunderstanding of the concept or a language problem. There was another question that most of them got wrong, and I'm quite sure that was a communication problem. At the end, when I asked them to design activities for how to use the simulations in class, the first three groups I talked to were actually designing new simulations, and again, I wondered how clear the translator's explanation had been. I had a few conversations with groups through the translator that just dragged on and on, and sometimes she got into arguing with them without translating to me. When I asked her what they were saying, she said, "They're just saying the same thing again and I'm telling them the same thing you told me before."

Aside from the communication problems, the workshop went really well. The teachers were really excited about the simulations, asked lots of questions, and designed some pretty good activities. They were frustrated that they weren't all translated into Arabic, and that there weren't enough simulations in some of their subjects, but overall they liked them.

And my theory about Saudi women speaking quietly has completely gone out the window. Over breakfast this morning, Mike told me that at lunch yesterday he sat in the men's section by himself, and there were two Saudi women dining together in the family section who were talking and guffawing so loudly that it would be considered rude in the U.S. Most of the high school teachers spoke in normal voices, the translator projected quite well, and when the high school teachers did talk too quietly, the translator chastised them and insisted they speak up. I guess female faculty members are just shy.

I never did get my tour of the women's campus. They told me that everything closes at 2, so we wouldn't be able to see anything after my workshop. They said we might be able to go during the break, but then things ran late and there wasn't enough time. I'm still hoping I can get a tour tomorrow if I get to go to the women's campus to watch Mike's talk broadcast over the videoconference system.

There is a room at the entrance to the women's campus where women put on / take off their abayas and head coverings and wait for their rides. Yesterday I was surprised that the room had windows to the outside, but today I figured out the secret... it's one-way glass, so the women can look out and see if their rides have arrived, but no one can see in.

I was feeling very excited about my night out on the town, but then had a bit of a downer when I got back to my hotel room and found a newspaper with an article about how the cloud of ash has returned over a big chunk of Europe and many flights are being canceled. At least so far, the cloud has not reached Frankfurt, and planes are still flying there, but it's very close, and I'm not excited about the prospect of getting stuck here. Then I got more bad news, a phone call from the translator saying that she can't go out tonight because her mom is sick! I was so looking forward to my night out on the town!

Sam

Greetings from Saudi Arabia, Part 6

At breakfast a woman wearing a face covering walked by my table and whispered a single word in my direction, but I couldn't hear what it was.

The driver picked me up at 8 this morning and took me to the women's campus for my workshop. It took about 40 minutes to get there from the hotel. The campus was surrounded by a tall stone wall, with a guard outside the entrance. Our host had told me that there was a woman there who would pick me up, but he didn't know her name. The driver made a call on his cell phone when we got there, then received a called, and gestured for me to get out. There was no one there to greet me and I was a little nervous about leaving the car when I had no idea where I was, where I was going, or even the name of the person I was supposed to meet. I asked him if someone was coming to meet me, but he doesn't speak English, and just continued to gesture for me to leave. So I got out of the car and went to the gate. As soon as I got inside, I saw a woman there waiting for me, and I couldn't believe I hadn't figured it out before: she was not covered, so she couldn't come outside, which is why she waited just inside. Inside the gates, everyone was wearing western clothes with no covering.

The campus was like a third world country compared to the men's campus. If I hadn't seen the men's campus first, I don't think I would have thought it was bad at all. It was perfectly functional and there was nothing really wrong with it. But it was dingy and plain, with no architectural beauty whatsoever, no trees or decorations, no views, no beautiful plazas in which to study. The room where I gave my workshop was well equipped with computers, but very small, without enough room for people to actually sit at all the computers. It made me want to cry after seeing the beautiful architecture, spacious offices, lush trees, flowing fountains, open plazas, and expensive equipment at the men's campus. And the men don't even know what it's like here because they can't go inside. It makes me think of "separate but equal". I imagine it's easy to fool yourself into thinking things are equal if you don't really have access to what things are like for others.

Today was the workshop for faculty and grad students, and tomorrow will be the workshop for K-12 teachers. Some women came late and others left early, so I'm not sure exactly how many attended the workshop. It seemed like on average there were about 8-10 women in the room. Most of them were chemistry faculty. There was also one from math, one from science education, and two grad students from physics. The faculty all spoke excellent English but the grad students could barely speak English at all. One of them wanted desperately to talk to me, and she tried so hard, but I just couldn't figure out what she was trying to say. The math professor (who got her PhD in Boulder!) helped translate for her, and I finally figured out that she was doing education research with our host giving the CLASS survey about student beliefs about science to students here, and she wanted to know if we were doing the same thing at my university. I told her that they were at CU, but I was not personally involved in that. I suspect she wanted to say more, to discuss it with me in detail, but the language barrier was just too much.

We had various computer glitches (the computers didn't have the latest version of Flash installed and my clickers suddenly stopped working), but otherwise the workshop went well. None of the participants had ever used PhET simulations before and they were all very excited about them. I had them use clickers (voting machines to select answers to multiple choice questions) to demonstrate how we use these in our classes to encourage student interaction, and asked them all to write a clicker question using a simulation. They liked the clicker questions, but they all wanted to know how they could use them without clickers. I explained how you could have students vote by raising hands or using colored cards, but they wanted to know if there was a way to collect student answers online through a website. I told them you could use google docs to make a survey, and they all wanted to know more about that. It was a complete tangent from what the workshop was supposed to be about, but they all seemed so interested in this that I led them through the whole process of making a google doc survey and entering a clicker question into it.

For the faculty workshop, our host had insisted that we have a part of it be about teaching them to do education research using the sims. In theory, some faculty here are supposed to be doing education research as part of their new education center. In practice, it seemed pretty far-fetched to me, given what I've learned about faculty teaching loads, the fact that all these faculty already have other research fields, and the kinds of basic questions they had been asking me during the breaks about what education research is. So I asked them if any of them were in a position to do any kind of education research. They all said no. So I told them that I had been planning to spend the last half hour having them design research projects, but it seemed like it might be more useful for them to work on designing activities to use the sims in class instead (they had been very excited about the activities and asked lots of questions about these). They all begged for more work on activities, so I had them do this.

During the break, I talked to a pregnant woman who is one month further along than me. It's her first baby. I asked her if she was planning to go back to work after and she said she'll take 2 months off and then go back to work.

There was one woman who was a grad student in math, who was supposed to be just helping out with the workshop, but was really interested in what I was doing and wanted to participate. I told her it was fine with me. I talked to her for a long time during the break. I asked her if they have much interaction with the men's college. She said yes: When there are speakers or lectures there, they use a video-conferencing system to broadcast them here. Some female students have male advisers, and sometimes the men even come over here to give lectures. I asked how that worked, since everyone here is uncovered. She said they have a separate section, where the male lecturers can go. I asked, "So then you are covered when you go over there?" She said, "Oh no! They have a special lecture room with a one-way window, so we can see the lecturer, but he can't see us." I said I would like to see more of the campus, and she said she could show me around if I finished my workshop early, but I needed to leave when my driver showed up. I asked if we could have him come later, and she said she would have someone call and ask him. But then he showed up early, so I had to leave without a tour. She said maybe tomorrow.

I also learned that she has two children, age 3 and 6, but her family lives on the east coast, a couple hours from here, so she has an apartment here and only gets to go home and see her family on weekends. She talked about wanting to study in England. We started talking about abayas, and I asked her why women had to wear black. She said it's just custom, not religious (the same thing our host said), but here if you wear any other color people will look down on you. She said if she went to another country she would wear something else, and in England she would not wear covering at all. It seems to be a common thing for people to say here that the clothing is "just custom" and it's what you do here, but in another country they would wear something else. They say it so casually, as if to say that they are not attached to it at all, that it doesn't really mean that much. And yet, no one defies it.

Another thing about the women: they speak so quietly that I can barely hear them. I have been to other countries, for example Uganda, where people just speak more quietly than Americans (partly because they tend to stand closer to each other than Americans). But in Uganda everyone speaks quietly, and they know how to project if they are speaking to a large group. Saudi men do not speak particularly quietly at all, but the women, even when they are asking questions in a lecture, use a voice so soft that I have to go up to them and put my ear right next to them, and even then, I only catch half the words, even when they are speaking perfect English.

After the workshop, everyone put their abayas back on and headed out. My host, who never did introduce herself, led me through a waiting room to another gate, where my driver was waiting.

On the way home, we got stuck in a traffic jam which, as far as I could tell, was caused entirely by people deciding to ignore the stoplights at a major intersection. The whole intersection was filled with cars, all pointing in different directions, locked in so that no one could get anywhere. They were all honking, but it wasn't doing any good. It was the first time I saw our driver get impatient. Even then, it was a pretty mild display of impatience and irritation. Finally, some random guy got out of his car and starting directing traffic, and things cleared up enough for us to get through.

I am already sick of Saudi Arabia. I am feeling stifled and oppressed, and am dying to get home. At the same time, I feel so lucky to have had the opportunity to come here and to see things that few others have seen. This is a very closed country, and not many westerners can come here. Of those who do, most are men, and the only part of Saudi culture they ever see is the male culture. Western men are not actually asked to change their own behavior much when they come here (aside from abstaining from alcohol), and they are also not allowed to see much of the inside of the culture. Because of this, I get the sense that their experience is more superficial. Mike doesn't notice as much as I do, and a Canadian man I met in the elevator was surprised that I was wearing an abaya and hadn't even thought about what a western woman would need to do to visit this country. I may not be allowed to go to cafes or sit in the men's section at a restaurant, but I get to see the private places where only women are allowed to go, places that even Saudi men cannot see. *And* I get to visit the men's campus and discuss important things with important men. I have gotten a rare glimpse, a perspective few others share, and I am very grateful for that. Being here has also made me very grateful for the freedom I have at home.

Maybe I'm just grumpy because I've come down with a terrible cold, which is probably affecting my mind more than I realize.

Sam

Greetings from Saudi Arabia, Part 5

Another exciting night out on the town on Riyadh! I decided I would try wearing the head scarf this time, and see if I got any less stares. The problem was it was pretty hopeless trying to keep it on, especially when it got windy. Later, at the mall, I saw a woman adjusting her head scarf and carefully watched her and figured out a trick that helped a lot. It still fell off after that, but not nearly as often.

I mentioned the unveiled female newscaster to our host, and he said it was probably not a Saudi TV station, but maybe Lebanese. That makes way more sense. Then he added, "But who knows? Women have many different preferences even in Saudi Arabia." Yeah, right.

First we had a tour of old Riyadh, visiting Al Masmak Fort, which is an important cultural symbol because it was taken by the king in the battle that was the turning point of the reunification of Saudi Arabia. Until quite recently, there was entire old city made of mud, but most of it was torn down to make way for new construction, and all that remains is the old fort and a tiny piece of the wall.

Then we went to the old market, which is a big block of stores that sell incense, incense holders (both traditional and electric), and traditional men's clothes. There were almost no customers at the market. I asked our host about this and he said that business is declining because most people shop elsewhere now.

Then we went to Kingdom Tower, where there is a very tall modern tower, and a shopping mall even more giant and upscale than the one we went to yesterday. At the mall, our host excused himself for a few minutes to pray, and I decided I would go check out the "Ladies' Kingdom", the top floor of the mall where only women are allowed. There was a (male) guard at the entrance to ensure that no men went there, and a sign warning that no photography was allowed. Inside, it was mostly women's clothing stores and cafes. All the women who worked at the shops were wearing western clothes, just like they would wear if they worked at a mall in the U.S. The women shoppers still had on their abayas, but many of them had removed their head scarves. Outside of the Saks 5th Avenue store there was a sign that said, "Ladies only. Please remove your face covering for security reasons."

Then we took the elevator up to the top of the tower, where there is an amazing view of Riyadh.

Chivalry appears to be entirely absent in Saudi Arabia. I have not noticed any evidence of men trying to be especially courteous to women in any way. They are not unkind, but women are definitely expected to fend for themselves. Waitstaff at restaurants and hotels are often very courteous to guests, opening doors, carrying your luggage, and taking your plate back to your table for you at a buffet. But they do this for everyone, and if anything, Mike gets this treatment a little more than I do. So I was a little surprised going to the top of the tower and the elevator operator said, "Ladies first!" However, I quickly realized that this was not actually courtesy, but a way to keep the women separate from the men in the crowded elevator. Getting into a crowded elevator first just means you're crammed into the back and you're the last to get out of the elevator. Oh well.

Then we went to dinner at a very fancy restaurant which our host kept telling us apologetically was not at the top of the tower but "only" on the 77th floor. We met three more physicists for dinner. They were really nice, and we had a great talk about physics and physics education.

The restaurant was very western (the menu advertised their French chef), and there were no private seating areas or barriers between the tables. There were still separate sections for men and families, but you would only know that by seeing who was sitting where. I did notice that although there were way more customers in the family section, the men's section was on the side of the tower that had a much better view. The restaurant was nowhere near full, which had been the case everywhere we've been. I keep wondering if we're going places at odd times because it never seems like there are enough people to justify the size of things, but when we ask our host, he doesn't say that it is more crowded other times.

A woman wearing a face covering sat at a table near her, and I watched her with fascination to see how she would eat. She delicately lifted her veil up just enough to put her food underneath it and into her mouth.

We left the restaurant at 10:40pm, and the mall was much more crowded than it had been at 7:30.

Mike pointed out that 100% of the young children here wear western clothes. It's true. Most adult men wear white robes and all adult women wear abayas, but the young children never do. I've seen a few older children wearing traditional clothes, but usually only partially, and the girls start wearing abayas around 10 or 11, but often unbuttoned and without a head scarf.

Another random note I keep forgetting to mention: Last night we drove by a construction site with a big sign advertising the towers they were starting to build there. They looked just like the twin towers in New York. A little creepy.

My workshops start tomorrow and I've got to get up early, so I'd better sign off.

Sam

Greetings from Saudi Arabia, Part 4

I slept for 10 hours last night and am finally feeling normal and adjusted to the time.

This morning we had a tour of the university that is hosting us. It goes without saying that a tour of the university really only means a tour of the men's campus. The women's campus is a 35-minute drive away, although they will be moving it to right next door in a couple years. I was literally the only woman on the whole giant campus. However, I was surprised how not a big deal it seemed to be that I was there. Everyone shook my hand and interacted with me in essentially the same way they interacted with Mike, and nobody looked at me funny. People stared at me a lot more at the museum than at the university.

I suspect the reason it's not big deal is because I'm a westerner. If a Saudi woman showed up at the university, it would be much more controversial. At dinner last night I asked our host if it was true that technically he should not be dining with me because we are not married or related. He said it was true, but people were much more lenient with westerners. I asked if it would be more of a problem if he dined with a Saudi woman who was not his wife and he said, "Oh yes!"

First we stopped at the headquarters for the Riyadh Techno Valley, which is a science park designed to create commercial applications of scientific research. It is still in the process of being built, and for now, it seems that their main thrust is propaganda and public relations. It was clear that we only stopped there because it was on the way to the physics department, and nobody there had been alerted about our visit. The man who let us in apologetically said, "We didn't know you were coming, we aren't prepared." In spite of this, the appearance of two westerners was enough to launch him into full propaganda mode. He asked for our business cards, and must have been surprised that I had one and Mike didn't. He took us to an amazing room with huge plush chairs, and giant LCD screen, and big posters all over the walls about how great they are, and asked us to sit down so he could give us a powerpoint presentation about what they were doing. He described the massive science park they were building, saying it would be "exactly like Silicon Valley." While we were watching the presentation, an Asian man in western clothes came in and took pictures of us, and then another man came in and served us tea. The presentation ended with him telling us about the first invention of their center, a device to track children as they go to school so their parents can know where they are at all times. He pointed to a prototype of the device encased in glass on the desk, and a life-size color poster of the graduate student who invented it on the wall, and explained that the graduate student had been given his own business to develop it. I started to ask how it worked, and he said he didn't really know. As we were leaving, they brought us each a little gift bag, filled with glossy brochures and a big plastic desk calendar. I wish I had taken a picture of that room, because there's no way my description can capture how over-the-top it was.

Then we went to the physics department. We met with the former department head, and chatted with him about teaching and how to reform education. He took us to see a room filled with fancy expensive new lab equipment for the faculty. I don't know enough about lab equipment to judge for sure, but my impression was that there was some pretty incredible state-of-the-art stuff here, but it was a random hodge-podge of things from all different fields, and it wasn't clear what anybody was actually using it for. In fact, there was no one in there actually using the equipment. It was quite different from my experience visiting research labs in the U.S., where most of the equipment is parts that have been put together by hand in a huge mess covered with wires and aluminum foil, and there are several grad students hard at work no matter what time you visit.

Then we went to visit a couple freshman physics labs. These looked very much like freshman physics labs in the U.S., with students working in small groups around a piece of equipment taking measurements and writing in their lab notebooks. The former department head encouraged us to ask the students questions, and I thought both he and Mike engaged in way too much quizzing the students, pointing out all the things they didn't understand, and criticizing the lab instructor for focusing too much on getting the right answer and not enough on sense-making. Of course they were right that the lab was not a very good one, but it wasn't any different from the average lab in the U.S., and it isn't the students' fault they don't understand much given the learning environment they're in, and it doesn't do any good to just show up and criticize them about it.

Then we went back to our host's office and talked more about education. We learned that faculty there have to teach 3 classes a semester and are still expected to do world-class research. Faculty at a research university in the U.S. typically teach 1 class a semester, so this is a huge teaching load. I also learned that our host's children's school starts at 6:30am, and this is in a culture where people eat dinner at 10pm. He said he often only sleeps 4-5 hours a night. Now I am even more grateful for all the time he is spending with us. It sounds like a very hard life for the faculty members here. And I thought it was tough to be a tenure-track professor in the U.S.!

Then I had to go to the bathroom. I had noticed that there are, for good reason, no women's bathrooms. So I asked and let them sort it out. Our host made a phone call and asked me to wait, and after several minutes, the former department head came back and escorted me to a men's restroom, where he and another faculty member stood guard outside. I had noticed that in many places there were two restrooms right next to each other, but both were for men. Omar told me that one of them used to be a women's restroom, because they used to allow female masters students, but they had banned them in 1990. He said there is no consistent policy on the role of women, that it is always swinging back and forth like a pendulum.

Then we walked through a huge covered outdoor walkway to the administration building, where there is a huge atrium. I did take some pictures of this, which I posted online, but I'm not sure if you can really see the scale and magnificence from the pictures.

Most men here wear white white robes and a head scarf, but it does not seem to be a requirement, and there is definitely a substantial minority, among both the the students, who wear western or some other style of clothes. One student in the lab looked just like someone you'd see at a hip alternative club in the U.S.

Then the driver took us back to the hotel where we had lunch on our own and a few hours to rest.

The driving here is another interesting thing. I have traveled to a lot of places, many of which have some pretty crazy driving. But I have never seen anything like the driving here. People here require much less personal space for their bodies, and the same applies to their cars. The drivers are always completely calm and never seem to get angry or impatient, but they are constantly maneuvering through situations that would scare the living daylights out of any American: coming within inches of other cars as they change lanes, driving through the shoulder to pass a bus and needing to do it quickly before they hit the car parked in the shoulder right in front of them, constantly being cut off, and nobody really paying attention to where the lanes are supposed to be.

It occurred to me at lunch that when we were at the restaurant last night, all the women who were seated in the open section were wearing head scarves that did not cover their faces. I realized that the women who do cover their faces would have to remove their face covering to eat, and this must be another reason that they have the closed-off sections for dining.

At lunch, Mike pointed to the television, and on the Arabic news station, there was a female newscaster who looked like an American, with her head completely uncovered, with long stylish brown hair and a lot of make-up. I don't understand this society at all. What is acceptable seems very inconsistent and context-dependent. I suppose all societies are like that, but it's easier to see from the outside.

Greetings from Saudi Arabia, Part 3

This afternoon we finally got to leave the hotel! Hooray!

Our host told me that western women usually don't wear the head scarf here, and that's OK, so I took it off for the rest of the day. As much as I hate it, I'm not sure I actually preferred being out without it. People stared at me a lot, and I felt very out of place. I saw a few other women, mostly western, but some Arab-looking, who didn't wear any head covering, but it was rare. Most women cover their hair but not their face, but a substantial minority cover their face as well. A few even covered their entire face, without even a slit for eyes! The material is thin enough that you can kind of see through it. I have not yet seen a woman in a burka; it's always an abaya and head covering.

At one point, our host asked me if I liked the abaya, and I blurted out, "No, not so much." I realized when he asked whether it fit, that he was not asking me whether I like wearing an abaya in general, but whether I was satisfied with the one he had bought for me. I was embarrassed for being such an ungrateful guest, and tried to make things better by saying, "It's very beautiful, but I'm just not used to it." He graciously said, "I completely understand."

We went to the National Museum, where there was an exhibit on Man in the Universe, and then exhibits showing all of Arab and Saudi history. It was very interesting, and interesting to see their particular take on things. I expected the first exhibit to be a creationist history of science, but I was wrong. It was in actually very scientifically accurate, showing Hubble Space Telescope images and dinosaur bones, and talking about things being millions and billions of years old. There was also a quote from the Koran about the world being created in six days and a lot of talk about things being "created", but all phrased in a very careful way that would not be offensive to a scientist (or at least, was not offensive to this scientist). I learned a lot about the history of Saudi Arabia. Most visitors to the museum were Saudi families. Many of the children stared at me.

As we were finishing with the exhibits, the call to prayer sounded. Our host excused himself for a few minutes to go pray, and Mike and I went to find bathrooms. There was a big section out in the open for the men to pray, and a closed-off section outside the bathroom for the women to pray. They don't all have to pray at the exact same time, just within a certain window, and the women's prayer section was sufficiently crowded that they had to wait their turn. The bathroom was also very crowded, and I had to wait a while. One woman with slits for her eyes, who was standing only a few feet from me, stared right into my eyes for a couple minutes while she waited for the bathroom. She looked angry. Other women smiled at me. Others tried not to stare.

My favorite part of the museum was the courtyard. There was a huge courtyard filled with trees and fountains, and families just hanging out having a good time. Friday is their day off, and the sun had just set so it was finally a reasonable temperature outside, and everyone was out enjoying the weather. Each family had laid out a rug, and people were sitting and talking, and the kids were running all over the place and splashing in the fountains. The children here seem so free! The adults much less so.

When we left the museum, we drove through a part of town where there was lots of traffic and pedestrians everywhere, weaving in and out of the cars. I noticed that all the pedestrians were men, and that there were no women out at all. I asked our host about it, and he said this was the part of town where the workers from Pakistan and India came because they had their traditional restaurants here and they have Friday off. He said these workers come to Saudi Arabia temporarily to earn money, and don't bring their families with them.

Then we got to a much more upscale neighborhood, with almost no pedestrians. I saw a tower and asked our host what it was. He said, "Oh, let's go see it!" and drove the car over to the tower. It was the Al Faisaliyah tower, which our host said was the second (and lesser) of the two great brand new modern towers in Riyadh (we're going to the first, Kingdom Tower, tomorrow). To get to the tower, we walked through a giant shopping mall. I had been curious about the shopping malls, so I was glad we did. As we walked in, I heard people screaming like they were on a roller coaster, and I asked, "Is there a roller coaster in here?" Our host said, "I think there's a small one downstairs." And sure enough, the whole downstairs was an amusement park. The upstairs was the most upscale shopping mall I've ever seen. Most of the stores were filled with designer women's clothes, and most of the customers were women, but only men worked at the stores. I had noticed from looking at women's ankles as they walked, that some of those ladies are wearing some pretty incredible western clothes underneath their abayas. I even saw a lingerie store, not at the mall, but out on a main street, with mannequins in lingerie in the windows. Apparently there are no modesty rules for the mannequins!

The tower itself was not that much more exciting up close than from a distance.

There are no buses or public transportation here, no bicycles, and aside from the Indian neighborhood, no pedestrians. Everyone drives. Our host said gas is only 45 cents a gallon here, which makes driving pretty attractive.

After that we drove around a very large famous street, which is called Desalination Street because the headquarters of a desalination company is there, but which is informally called the Champs de Elysee of Riyadh. The meridian was filled with palm trees with lights covering their trunks, and on both sides were giant fancy restaurants with lots of neon signs, many of which were western chains (Applebees, Johnny Rockets, etc.) Our host said usually the traffic is too bad to drive down this street, but there was a big soccer game tonight, so the streets were quiet.

The American city that Riyadh seems most similar to is Las Vegas. Of course the two cities are complete opposites in terms of how people dress and how they entertain themselves, but they are similar in that both are huge sprawling cities built in the middle of the desert where vast wealth leads to incredible excesses in architecture and rapid expansion. The architecture here reminds me very much of Las Vegas, with huge brightly lit towers and elaborate facades imitating the architecture of every other culture in the world. I mentioned this to our host, and he agreed.

We went to a very fancy Lebanese restaurant for dinner, with the most beautiful elevator I've ever seen. In the restaurant, there was a small "open" section, which was like an American restaurant in that there were a bunch of tables all in the same room, and then there were vast corridors of tables surrounded by wooden barriers that didn't go all the way to the ceiling but completely enclosed the tables, as well as completely private rooms. Apparently most people like to eat in privacy. I insisted that we eat in the open section, because I wanted to people watch. There was one group of 5 women dining together, and two (separate) young couples. They looked like they were enjoying themselves.

I think that's about as much as I can write before I collapse from exhaustion. I had no idea I'd be writing so much about this trip, but it's really helping me decompress a bit.

Sam

Greetings from Saudi Arabia, Part 2

I am posting pictures of my trip at: https://mckagan.shutterfly.com/823

I never did manage to get back to sleep this morning, but Mike woke up early too, so I put on my abaya and head scarf and we went to breakfast at the hotel restaurant at 8am.

All restaurants have a separate men's section, where men dining without women or children sit, and family section, where everyone else sits (families and single women). Technically Mike and I should not be eating together, since we're not married or related, but they tend to be more lax with westerners, and I think people just assume we're married if they see us together. When we arrived at the restaurant, they directed us to the family section. I had read about the separate sections and was prepared for that. What I was not prepared for was the dividers separating each table in the family section from the others, so you couldn't interact with, or even see, the other families.

I get the sense that there are a lot of institutionalized ways here to separate people from one another, to make sure that people don't interact in ways they're not supposed to. Every block of homes that I've seen has a giant concrete fence around it. Flying in over the desert, we saw isolated little compounds of houses in the middle of the desert, surrounded by huge flood lights. I asked our host about these, and he thought they might be homes for the royal family.

On the other hand, children seem to be given a lot of freedom. There was an adorable little girl at the restaurant, who was maybe 2 or 3, running around happily babbling in Arabic to Mike and I, and nobody stopped her. Later, we saw three teenage girls in the courtyard. They were wearing abayas and head scarves, but they had their abayas unbuttoned and were wearing jeans and t-shirts underneath, and their head scarves kept falling off (mine does too! I have not yet learned how to wear it properly). They were running around taking pictures of each other with their pink iphones, having a great time.

The restaurant was buffet style, and women were allowed to get up and serve themselves. It was an odd assortment of western and middle eastern foods, and I tried a little of almost everything.

I saw one woman at the restaurant wearing the full covering with only a tiny slit for her eyes (even smaller than the slit for the woman I saw at the airport), and she was also wearing black gloves, even when she served herself at the buffet! That creeped me out a bit. There are quite a few western men staying at the hotel, but I have not seen any other western women. Also a lot of Saudi guests, both men and families. Other than the teenage girls, I haven't seen any women alone at the hotel.

Inside the hotel, there is a beautiful courtyard filled with trees and birds, so Mike and I sat outside and worked there until it got too hot. I walked around the courtyard a little bit first. There was one building containing a play area for kids, with arcade games and pictures of Mickey Mouse on the walls. On the map of Riyadh, there are a TON of theme parks all over the city. It makes sense, since there is no entertainment in the sense we tend to think of in the west (movie theaters, nightlife, etc.), that they would have a lot of wholesome family entertainment. Also in the courtyard, there was a restaurant with outdoor seating and a pool I'm not allowed to use. With the heat here, I am definitely going to be resentful about not being allowed to use the pool by the end of the week! I'm also not allowed to use the gym. There was also another pool that was only a few inches deep, I guess just for show. As the day got hotter, I started thinking there is something seriously misogynistic about making the women wear all black in the desert, while the men wear white robes. If the point is just to cover the women, why not cover them in white? Questions I never thought about until actually sitting in the hot desert wearing a black robe...

Riyadh is one of the few cities in the world that is not near any natural water source. Usually when that happens, there's some really interesting political reason. I don't know the details, but from what I've read, most of the city has sprung up relatively recently. In the parts I've seen, which isn't much, there is construction going on everywhere (see the pictures of the view from my hotel room). They are also making huge investments in education (hence my trip!), and I see almost as many universities as theme parks on the map. One is called "Prince Nayif Security Science University". I'm guessing "security science" is a euphemism for military.

This morning as I took a very hot shower, I wondered where the heck they get all their water from out here. We are hundreds of miles from any water source, so they must have to pipe it in from somewhere very far away. I kept thinking I should try to take a fast shower, but after my long day of traveling, I just couldn't help enjoying it for a long long time. Later, as I saw a man use a hose to clean off the stones in the very large and already quite clean courtyard, I realized the futility of my attempt to conserve water in the desert.

Once it got too hot to be in the courtyard, we went back to my room and worked until lunch. It was such a relief to be able to take the abaya and head scarf off!

We went back to the same restaurant for lunch. They had a huge spread of middle eastern dips, all of which were very good. The hot food had a large variation in quality. There are a disturbing number of dishes containing what look like little hot dogs, although they can't be pork (there are stern warnings against smuggling pork, porn, or alcohol into the country).

When families come to the restaurant, the wait staff rearrange the dividers between the tables to surround them completely. I'm surprised how much this bothers me.

I'm surprised how much the abaya and head scarf bother me. When I heard I was going to have to wear it, I thought of it as a fun novelty, and really didn't think I'd have a problem with it. I've never thought much about the state of women in the muslim world, and if I did think about it, I had pretty neutral thoughts: I sure wouldn't want to live that way myself, but that's their culture. But now that I'm here, I can't stop thinking about it, and reacting to it at a gut level. I rip the thing off as soon as I get back to my room. Maybe I'll feel differently after my workshop, when I'll have the chance to actually get to know some Saudi women, instead of just observing them from a distance as these hidden disembodied beings.

I've read that the king of Saudi Arabia has really started making a push for tourism in the last few years, and is trying to open the country up to outsiders. (It is now possible to get a tourist visa if you're with an official tour group - it used to be impossible under any circumstances.) Apparently, his idea is that by letting outsiders in while keeping it a very traditional Islamic state, he will give the world a shining example of a wonderful modern country that still maintains Islamic law, and this will help people appreciate how great it is. With me, being here is having the exact opposite effect. I'm getting less and less tolerant.

Sam

P.S. Lucy's dad sent me the following update about her:

Today Lucy woke up and said "Mama?" with a questioning look, like there was something she was forgetting. I told her "Mama is in Saudi Arabia" and she was satisfied with that and was ready to go about her day. Tonight while we were hanging out she told me "Mama adiaba", which I helped her with "Mama is in Saudi Arabia". She liked that and is getting better at pronouncing it, although she still has a ways to go.

Greetings from Saudi Arabia, Part I

Dear friends and family,

I just arrived in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and am already so amazed that I would like to share some thoughts with you all.

The Saudis flew me on business class, which was quite an experience. On both flights we were served an absolutely delicious three course meal, followed by amazing coffee and chocolates. The seats reclined into nearly horizontal, although I didn't get a chance to fully enjoy that feature since I didn't sleep. Business class was nice, but I would have rather flown coach and gotten the price difference in cash. (My plane ticket cost over $10,000.)

I left Seattle at 2pm Wednesday afternoon, and arrived in Frankfurt, Germany in the morning very tired. It turned out I was sitting next to the mother-in-law of my colleague, and we had a nice talk during the flight. I had a 5-hour stopover in Frankfurt, and decided to try taking the train into town, although I had not had time to do any research into the city ahead of time. The train system was incredibly confusing, and I had to ask for help several times before I figured out what to do. I found that when I asked people for help, they gave me polite, short answers that technically answered my questions but did not actually help me quite enough to figure out what I was doing. A couple times it turned out I was talking to Germans from other parts of Germany, and they were just as confused by the Frankfurt train system as I was. But I managed to get downtown, and had just enough time to wander around and get lost. I had a map, but the street names changed every block (one street had a different name on the left side and the right side), and the abbreviations used on my map were different from the ones on the signs, so it didn't help much. Also, the streets were so windy that it didn't work to just remember which direction I had come from. I saw a pedestrian mall, a couple nice little parks, a beautiful medieval tower with a fast-food restaurant in it, an old church, and a great little farmer's market with lots of vegetables and meat for sale, as well as beer and wine sellers with people sampling the wares out in the plaza in the middle of the day. I was hoping to see the river, which according to my map was only a few blocks from the train station, but I never found it. I eventually found the train station again and even figured out which train to get on from the schedule, which I was very proud of. While I was waiting, a German lady from Hamburg asked me which train to take the the airport, and I was able to tell her! She talked to me all the way back to the airport, telling me stories about her friend's computer problems and every other detail that was in her mind. She assumed I was from England, and told me to have a nice flight back to England.

Then I headed to my gate for the next leg of the flight, to Riyadh. I met my colleague Mike at the gate, who is coming from Colorado to give workshops with me. He will be teaching the men and I will be teaching the women. Mike and I were both deliriously tired, and probably far too loud on the plane for the polite Saudi company. By the end of the flight, we couldn't stop laughing about the lemon-scented towels. (We arrived around 9pm in Riyadh, and it seemed best not to sleep on the plane so we could adjust to the time change.)

At the gate in Frankfurt, I saw a woman wearing full covering, with only her eyes showing. I realized I had never actually seen this before in real life, and I was surprised how viscerally shocking I found it, as I told myself that I had better get used to it. I have always been bothered by the tendency in European countries to ban covering women, and thought that women should be allowed to be covered if it's part of their culture. But when I actually saw it in real life, the core of my being revolted at the way (in my perception) this woman's dignity was being taken away. She was traveling with her husband and daughter. The daughter, who looked like she was about my daughter's age, was wearing a short-sleeved shirt and a mini-skirt. I noticed several other little girls, and covering them seems to be a gradual process as they grow older. The youngest girls were all wearing western clothes, often tank tops and short skirts, and no head covering. As they got to be around 9 or 10, they were still wearing western clothes, but now they had long sleeves and long pants, and they wore head coverings. Most of the muslim-looking adult women on the plane wore head coverings, but I saw only one with the full face covering. I was surprised how many women on the plane were wearing western clothes that were less conservative than what I was wearing.

When we arrived at the airport, I was surprised to see guards with guns, and a giant luxurious fountain with so much water flowing that the air felt humid, in spite of the fact that we are in the middle of the desert. Aside from the men with guns, and the clothing people wore (most women wore black gowns and head coverings, most men wore white gowns and red-and-white checkered head scarves), the airport felt exactly like being in an arabic-themed hotel in Las Vegas.

I was the only woman in the "business visitors" line at immigration. They did check my passport one extra time, and not Mike's, but everything went smoothly and easily. Our host met us at the airport and took us to the hotel, where we finally got to sleep. The trip from the airport to the hotel was mostly on a busy road, after dark, on the outskirts of the city, so I haven't gotten to see much of Riyadh yet.

We arrived Thursday night, and Friday is the holy day, and almost everything is closed Friday morning, so we are "free" until Friday afternoon, when our host will take us to the National Museum. We're not sure if we're supposed to leave the hotel on our own, and it doesn't look like there's much around here anyway. We will probably spend most of the day Friday preparing for our workshops, which are on Saturday and Sunday. Given how much they paid for our plane tickets, we definitely feel an obligation to do a great job on these workshops!

At the hotel, our host gave me an abaya and a head scarf. An abaya is a black robe that covers your body, but not your head, which all women are required to wear in Saudi Arabia (although it did not seem to be a problem that I was not wearing it at the airport). From what I have read, it is not technically required to wear the head scarf, although it is recommended. When I got to my room, I tried them on, which felt very strange. I was surprised how thin the abaya is. The front is held together with just a few tiny snaps, so I think it will matter more than I realized what I wear under it.

I fell asleep OK, but woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't go back to sleep. By the time I checked the clock, it was 5:30am, but it seemed like I was awake for awhile before that. Writing to you has been nice. I think I'll try to go back to sleep now before the day really begins.

Sam