HAPPY 2010!

Happy New Year Everyone! This is another holiday not really celebrated in the Kingdom. Why? Because they follow the Islamic calendar which is based on 12 lunar months or 354 days. The first year of the Islamic calendar is the Hijra when the prophet Muhammad emmigrated from Mecca to Medina. Each numbered year is designated either H for Hijra or AH for the Latin anno Hegirae (in the year of the Hijra). A limited number of years before Hijra (BH) are used to date events related to Islam, such as the birth of Muhammad in 53 BH. The current Islamic year is 1431 AH, from approximately December 17, 2009 to December 6, 2010.

It was a relatively quiet week in the office since students are on semester break and many faculty are away. We have some temporary staff in to process all of the documents coming in for applicants and I hope to start the slection process this week!

Yesterday I celebrated the last day of 2009 on a boat trip out to snorkel in th Red Sea. I didn't really know anyone going on the trip but made some new friends. Tatiana and her husband (faculty member) whose name I don't remember from Moscow and their daughter and son-in-law who were visiting from London. There was a big Slavic group. And another big New Zealand or Aussie group (those British colonized people all have the same accent to me.) And Lilliana from Mexico who was most recently working at Stanford. She was by herself too and had been before so I followed her lead on mask and flipper fitting. There were about 40 of us all from KAUST and we left from the Marina on campus. It is not really complete yet but KAUST has hired a water sports company out of Dubai to implement and oversee all of the marina and water sports. Eventually there will be boat charters, sailing, snorkeling, diving etc. I am ready for the beach to open myself! It took us about an hour to get out to one of the reefs. I should have taken more pictures of the boat but it is very nice- lots of space, an indoor area with couches and cushions, big tv etc. A nice galley where they served coffee and pastries in the morning and then sandwiches for lunch. I just needed a margarita and I would have said it was perfect.
They set out an area for swimming and one for snorkeling. All of the equipment was provided though I think if I am going to be here for several years I may invest in my own mask and fins. And more appropriate swimwear. I had second thoughts about snorkeling because they give this long speech about how some of the coral and fish are poisionous and dangerous- you can burn yourself or cut yourself... I decided to be really careful and just not get too close. There were several guides who took us out in groups of ten to the reef. I was very comfortable once I was in the water. I stayed close to the guide so I wouldn't get lost and because he was so cute! He told me he likes his job because he likes helping people. The coral was not as colorful as I had seen from some of Paul's pictures from a trip he went on earlier. But there were lots of fish and I did see a mantra ray. It was fast and near the bottom of the sea so I didn't get a picture. I had looked at a guide they had on the boat of kinds of fish and coral but I wish I knew more about what I was looking at. In my spare time I will take a course ;-) Right after my Arabic classes. A lot of people went swimming or just enjoyed the sunning. One couple brought a kite and there was a family who went fishing. It was a great way to end the year.
A little bit about the Red Sea-- It is a seawater inlet of the Indian Ocean and lies between Africa and Asia. The connection to the ocean is in the south through the Bab el Mandeb strait and the Gulf of Aden. In the north, there is the Sinai Peninsula, the Gulf of Aqaba, and the Gulf of Suez (leading to the Suez Canal). There are extensive shallow shelves noted for their marine life and coral. It is the world's northermost tropical sea and one of the most saline bodies of water in the world-- this I can attest to-- it was VERY salty. Though not as salty as the Dead Sea... The Red Sea is a rich and diverse ecosystem. More than 1200 species of fish have been recorded in the Red Sea, and around 10% of these are found nowhere else. This also includes 42 species of deepwater fish. The rich diversity is in part due to the 2,000 km (1,240 mi) of coral reef extending along its coastline; these fringing reefs are 5000-7000 years old and are largely formed of stony acropora and porites corals. There are about a dozen different theories for why it is named the Red Sea so that discussion will be for a future blog post. Credit to Wikipedia for the Red Sea and Islamic calendar details... and now hopefully you all want to visit so you can snorkel in the Red Sea too!!