8/25/2007

Salaam Aleikum Everyone:

Well, today was the first day of training, which was another eye-opening experience. I had dressed up nicely under my abaaya, expecting to take it off as soon as I entered the woman's section and training started. Then I found out that the training was for the male and female English teachers, so I had to wear my veil and abaaya all day; had I known, I might have just kept my pajamas on underneath it because they're far more comfortable!

I got the grand tour of the college: it's gorgeous, although there are some glaring differences between the men and women's sections. The women's section is merely a wing of one of the buildings; instead of a high-ceilinged, marble lounge that resembles a fancy hotel lobby, the women's section has a few brightly colored chairs grouped around small coffee tables for a lounge. The men's library looks like, well, a library; the women's library is the size of my living room and contains three standard-sized bookshelves, like the ones people have in their homes that are about 6' tall and 3' wide. But there is a very colorful sofa and table in there also that look like they belong in the waiting room of a pediatrician's office. There is a gym in a separate building, complete with state-of-the-art equipment, a bowling alley, and yes, even a foosball table. Of course, there are only 2 50-minute periods when the gym is open to women; those two periods are during lunch, and, in case that's not discouraging enough, there are no showers for the women. Fortunately, in the women's wing, we have our own gym: a room with a ping-pong table and a foosball table. I'm thinking of bringing in a jump-rope, you know, just to make it really nice. We got to eat at the men's cafeteria today, which is more like a fancy restaurant than the American idea of a cafeteria. There are waiters who come running when you lift your glass, and a vast array of delicious Arabic food is available. The women have a "diet cafeteria" where they don't even serve hummus. What?! No hummus?! It wasn't open today, but I won't be frequenting it. No worries, though, if women get an itch for some potato chips or coffee, there is a little shop located outside where you can buy junk food and coffee. And there's nothing like waiting in line in 115 degree temperatures for Doritos and a steaming cup of coffee! To cool you off, there are little water sprayers spaced out around the coffee shop, which might cool you off if you weren't covered in black from head to toe. There is a single door that connects the Women's Wing to the rest of the building; the door must remain locked at all times and only ONE person has a key for that door: the Director of the Women's Division.

But wait! Here's my favorite part! There is a big, beautiful auditorium where men and women sometimes gather together for special events. Of course, when this takes place, the women cannot enter through the main door (where the men enter); instead, they file in through a side door, and partitions are put up so that the men cannot see these enigmas cloaked in black. Women have to sit in a separate section in the back, which is closed off by those 1-way windows that we use in America for police interrogation rooms. When the woman giving me the tour explained this to me and saw the look on my face, she said, "It's different. Not bad, just different." Right. Women and men are kept separate in this country with the same care a chemist takes to keep two highly reactive chemicals separate. Because if they were to mix, there would be an explosion that could mean the end of the world.

Wow! This email just got interrupted because Budoor, the younger sister of one of my former Saudi students who I've kept in close touch with, and her mother just came over unannounced! And they are coming tomorrow to pick me up and bring me to their house for dinner! How exciting! I'm kind of embarassed--my coffee table is littered with stuff, and the rest of the apartment is pretty much empty, and you're supposed to offer people food when they come over in the Arab world, and I basically have PB&J sandwiches or scrambled eggs to offer (which they politely declined), and I'm wearing shorts and a sleeveless t-shirt (as an act of rebellion, I wear as little as possible when I'm at home). Well, tomorrow is shaping up to be an interesting day!

Thank you for all your thoughts and prayers and responses. They mean the world to me.

Salaam,

Lizz