This blogging is time consuming! It is Friday but feels like Sunday since the weekend here in the Kingdom is Thursday and Friday. So wonderful on a Wednesday when you think, Wow! It is already Friday. But on Friday you are thinking, gosh, tomorrow is Monday. I think this will take some getting used to as well. I know it was only my first weekend here but already I was off on a trip to the Empty Quarter or in Arabic Rub' al Khali. It is the largest desert (not dessert) in the world-- 250,000 square miles, and is the second most oil-rich part of the world. Because temperatures get up to over 130 degrees F and the dunes are as high as 1,100 ft, it is uninhabited. Shaybah is a large crude oil producing site in the Rub' al Khali. It was established and built by Saudi Aramco in the 1990s. All of the materials for the site were transported over 800 kilometers. About 1,000 Aramco workers live here (see, my living situation could be much worse!). They are currently producing 750 billion barrels of oil per day! Now I am sure you are wondering how I got there and why I went... Since Saudi Aramco has been very involved in th ebuilding of KAUST they have been sponsoring trips there for students, faculty, and administrators. Being the adventurer/explorer that I am I jumped at the opportunity. Of course it meant staying on campus for the weekend (I stayed in Paul's house which meant he had to go stay with a male friend since me staying with him is not allowed... he is a single male and I am a single female). This meant I got to enjoy Mexican night in the cafeteria on Wednesday/Friday! About 140 of us boarded buses for the Aramco airport Thursday morning for a chartered flight to Shaybah. The flight is 2 hours! We finally arrived in Shaybah at 4:00 in the afternoon. Sunset is at 5:00 so we were immediately taken "uphill" so that we could experience the desert sunset. It was out of the movies. So beautiful! The sand was incredibly fine and red! I brought four empty water bottles and can't wait to fill a pretty glass jar with my Empty Quarter sand. Everyone was taking pictures and racing up and down the dunes. We were advised to come off the dunes as soon as the sun set or risk facing snakes and scorpians. We were served a typical Arabain meal of grilled lamb or chicken with hummus, tabouli, babganoush, pita... oh and sparkling grape juice. This was my first "class trip" so I was fascinated by the cultural dynamics amongst the students. Yes, they hang out with their similar cultures (group from the Philippines playing cards on the plane, all of the Mexicans cheered when the flights landed) but they genuinely are interested in learning from each other. I sat for dinner with two Saudi girls and a girl from Jordan. They were just as interested in why I would move to Saudi Arabia, was I having any trouble adjusting to their culture, as I was about how they felt about being pioneers in their country. Now week two begins!
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