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.
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