World Music, truly

A world in which a boy with a black African, Kenyan father and a caucasian American mother, who grows up in Indonesia, and later Hawaii, and who goes on against tremendous - some would say improbable - odds to become president of the United States is a world that is increasingly transcends national boundaries. Whether a Boeing plane with parts from twenty countries manufactured in five nations, or, say, genome research simultaneously advanced by a team spread across a dozen time zones, the mixing and matching of people and ideas is profound, permanent.

Especially in places like KAUST, with inhabitants literally from all around this oblate sphere we live on, heterogeneity is often the norm rather than the exception. This diversity was on full display yesterday at a delightful music recital for many of the campus's younger musicians. Practically each performer was a rainbow coalition. At one performance an English boy with a Sri Lankan mother was playing Sweet Home Alabama, a hit by a decidedly southern white American rock band. In another performance, an Indian girl was accompanied by her Chinese teacher while playing music composed during a cold German winter long ago. Mind you, all this was occurring on a compound in Saudi Arabia, a land not necessarily known for its music.

Music, indeed, helps guide the way in this blurring of national boundaries and stand-alone identities. When I ask my students what they listen to, their answers often span continents, centuries, and genres.  While they may not be listening to fusion music per se, their myriad musical tastes defy simple, convenient definition. The internet allows them to virtually experience much more diversity than in previous generations, and they seem comfortable in this tech panoply. If music is the most human of expressions - the art that can touch us most deeply - then it's safe to say that fundamental expressions of humanity are alive and well in many of youngsters here.

Thanks for reading,
David    

Trip to Colorado

Greetings,

We just got back a few days ago from a glorious trip to Colorado. We enjoyed sunny, summer-like weather in the 80s and cool, Colorado spring-like weather in the 40s which included sleet and snow. We had a chance to spend the weekend in Winter Park, skiing in the spring conditions - firm in the morning and slushy in the afternoon. I have never come quickly down a firm, almost icy, slope to soupy, slushy snow that makes you jerk along and almost come to a stop sometimes. Spring skiing! We saw teenagers skiing in shorts, tank tops, and bikini tops. I tried skiing in shorts once in college and got the worst scrape up my leg when I fell in the icy snow. We all have to try it out to learn, I suppose. We also got to take bike rides and run outside in the sunshine. Staying with my parents was relaxing. Good food. Many games of Ticket to Ride. Some shopping. Lots of time playing with their Shih Tzu, Lucy.

Lufthansa is a golden airline. The travel from door-to-door was about 24 hours, which is rather excessive for a week trip, but the airline made the travel smooth and easy. We had good service and even some decent food.

We did some shopping while in Denver. Both boys needed new shoes and some jeans. After all was said and done, we needed a new suitcase as well. With a one hour layover in Frankfurt, I was not sure our suitcases would make the transition. We traveled with carry-on bags only enroute to Denver to avoid the problem of missing bags, but on our return we could no longer manage that. After the nearly one hour wait in the Jeddah airport passport control line, we were so pleased to find our four suitcases just sliding onto the baggage claim carousel. Now we are home. Back to our classes. Nine weeks to go until we break for the summer...

Thanks for reading,
Jennifer

Cycling races and travel plans

Greetings,
Some weeks ago the recreation group organized cycling races again for all who were interested. There were kids' races and adult races on a beautiful weekend morning. Logan won his race - again - and Hayden was second in his division. David won the adult race, but other friends were close by this time, as David is not training nearly as much as he was last year at this time when the South Africa Ironman was just weeks away.

We are not keeping up with this blog nearly as much as before. It's hard to know who the audience is, and I find that disconcerting. If I know that friends and family are reading, I will write stories a certain way. When I know that strangers read the blog, since it's related to the university campus where we live, it makes me write differently and share less, I guess.

It has been a long haul since the winter vacation. Though many people do not have vacations every three or four months, we do not have even any three-day weekends or breaks at all between official 'vacations'. Teaching is such an amazing job, and I am grateful to have discovered it for my career; however, it is thoroughly exhausting and draining trying to be 'on' every day for students. We are excited to have spring vacation starting on Thursday. We will fly to the United States for a week in Colorado where we hope to go skiing, despite the unseasonably warm temperatures there, and to enjoy different scenery, food, and family. All a welcome respite.

The boys are doing well. Hayden just finished basketball season, culminating in an overnight trip to Dammam for a tournament. His team is young and relatively inexperienced, but they came away winning three games and feeling quite proud. Now Hayden is playing badminton and continuing the study of guitar. Logan plays soccer and tennis, both of which he enjoys immensely. Logan just likes to play any sport and even wrote a book called "All About Sports" with photos of him playing and learning sports as diverse as skiing and ripstick, swimming and soccer. Can't imagine where these athletic genes come from!

Thanks for reading though I am not actually sure if anyone reads this. Our updates have been so sporadic and sparse. With our lingering stay in Saudi Arabia, we hear less from people at home as well. Lives move on and are busy.

Cheers,
Jennifer

International Week

Greetings,
We celebrated International Week at our school this week, culminating today in an International Parade with students and their families representing countries as diverse as the United Arab Emirates, China, South Korea, Canada, Malaysia, Uruguay, Ukraine, Chile, United States, Australia, Germany, France, Finland, South Africa, Egypt, Palestine, Jordan, India, United Kingdom, and, of course, Saudi Arabia. It was a wonderful celebratory week with various foods cooked and brought by families, ethnic foods at lunch (including tortilla "crepes" with chicken), chocolates for Valentine's Day, and country anthems played each morning.

Thanks for reading, Jennifer

Delayed Updates

Greetings,
We have certainly been delinquent about Evans of Arabia of late. Apologies to anyone who has been looking for updates. We are never really sure how many people there are, other than our parents who sort of are supposed to read our news ...

In short, since we last wrote this is what has happened:

• We celebrated American Thanksgiving with many friends from all over world, including the US, and enjoyed our best and most delicious Thanksgiving here yet.
• Hayden competed with his friends in the second annual dodgeball tournament - and his team won.
• Logan's elementary choir sang in the school's winter concert, and he played the marimba.
• We went to Austria for our third annual Christmas ski holiday - and close friends from Portland met us there. We skied, enjoyed our same apartment, consumed delicious food, went sledding, and listened to Michael Buble's Christmas album daily. Fantastic and festive!
• The third annual 5k fun run was held in January and all of us ran in the 'race'.
• We have just finished grades and report cards - a many hour process.
• We have been to Jeddah to renew Logan's passport which required a half day off of work for Jennifer and David and an early departure from school for Logan. Both parents and the child have to physically appear at the consulate with all IDs, including Logan's original birth certificate FedEx'd from Colorado. All seemed to go well. Now we will be set for Hayden's next year.
• Another outing just last night to Afghan souk with friends from England who, sadly, are heading home in March. They needed a final carpet purchase and ended up with two lovely ones!
• Boys are engaged in sports and music, school and friends. 

We will try to write more regularly from now on! Thanks for reading, Jennifer

Floating on the Dead Sea

Greetings,
Over this last Eid al Adha holiday in early November, we headed to Jordan. In a nutshell: what an amazing country! Walking through markets in Amman, people asked where we were from and always answered back, "Welcome to Jordan." One man stopped us, showed us the addresses in Chicago and Miami where family members lived, and insisted on buying us falafel sandwiches at his favorite shop nearby, so enthusiastic was he upon meeting a certifiable American family. We saw men and women driving, shopping, working, walking and talking - together - and we always felt safe and appreciated.

After a first day in Amman, we drove to the Dead Sea, about 30 miles away, with a stop along the way at a place purported to have been the sight on the Jordan River where John the Baptist baptized Jesus Christ. Archeological evidence, written stories, and oral pilgrim accounts have been used to support this hypothesis. Amid careful but discrete security measures, we walked to what remains of the river - now a narrow strip of water - just 25 feet of largely agriculturally-diminished water - separating those of us on the Jordan side from those on the West Bank side. We were most likely at the ceremonial sight of an act that would change the world forever, humbled and awed. At more than 400m below sea level, and more than nine times saturated than the ocean, the Dead Sea has always caused us each to doubt - doubt the idea that people actually can float and read a magazine simultaneously - but it really is true. It is impossible to sink or dive beneath water level. The free mud, and the salty, mineral-rich water in the sea, leave skin feeling smooth and clean. We stayed at one of the few resorts along the sea's banks that allows people to access the beach, but the boys spent much of their time in the swimming pool, playing on the water slides. "Swimming" in the Dead Sea is really just floating; water in the mouth or eyes is to be avoided at all costs!

Next we headed to Petra where, once again, we were amazed and astounded by the rugged, timeless beauty and the raw, exposed history. We had heard that Petra was amazing, but to actually explore its many canyons, hike up its meandering paths, and wander among the beautifully carved rocks was considerably better than we had expected. Like many archeological sites in that part of Jordan, Petra is in fact a fusion of Nabataean, Roman, Byzantine, Crusader, and Islamic cultural legacies. Once a choke point on the historic Silk Road due to its unique geology, Petra had gradually outlived its economic significance as sea trade routes opened up. Camel caravans that had once come through by the hundreds each week, each paying the pricey tax to gain through passage, gradually came less and less often, and with this fall-off went Petra's fortunes. And so for a 1,000 years essentially, what we now know of Petra gradually filled up with sand and was toppled by earthquakes. Only by chance did hardy non-locals in the 1800's hear tell of a fabled city carved into rock in the middle of the mountains, a sight until then secretly guarded by the local Bedouins who lived in that region. The first European to see Petra was fluent in Arabic, dressed as an Arab on pilgrimage, and snuck in by pretending to go in order to perform a sacrifice.  Nearly discovered, he almost didn't make it out. Thankfully, it has gotten a bit less perilous to visit the place today.

From Petra we headed back north, this time taking the Desert Highway, instead of the Dead Sea Highway we had been driving heading south. We spent two final nights in Amman but enjoyed the day in the ancient Roman city of Jerash. This is another outstanding historical site with substantially intact remains of temples to Zeus and Artemis, Hadrian's Arch, a large oval plaza, and a long colonnaded street which once housed a market along its sides. Upon entering the site, we passed the hippodrome (built between the first and third centuries A.D.) and were enticed to watch chariot races and a depiction of the power of the Roman Army.

Overall, it was a wonderful trip with fond memories and much history.

Thanks for reading, Jennifer and David
      

A trip to the Afghan Souk

Greetings,

One of the new teachers at school, a woman who - with her family - came from Denver actually, asked if I could organize a trip to the Afghan souk because she had read about it on our blog last year. So a few weeks ago a group of people from school traveled by bus to the Afghan souk in Jeddah. Because of traffic on a Thursday night (like a Saturday night in the West), it took nearly two hours to get to the actual area in Jeddah. The Afghan souk is really a series of shops on a narrow street in an Afghani region of the city. The one way street is always jammed with cars trying to get to someplace else; in addition, there are cars parked helter-skelter on either side of the street - some angle-in front parking and others attempting some form of parallel parking. The "sidewalks" that line the street and are in front of the shops vary in dramatically in height and stability, so 15 women in abayas but no head scarves stepping up and down these sidewalks and swerving into the road when necessary makes for quite a sight, I suppose. The little side streets are mostly dirt, strewn with garbage and roaming mangey cats. At the start of the street was a fruit and vegetable market, set up in carts and temporary tables; the ground was covered with dried fish remains, which we all stepped in on our way back onto the bus at the end of the evening, prompting the driver to ask if anyone had perfume. In this area, we have found two amazing Afghan shops. The first, with just carpets, has doubled in size since I was there two years ago, and is well-lit and comfortable. The Afghan men who run the shop welcomed us into their shop, immediately started helping us with carpets, and offered us sweet tea. These knowledgeable men can swiftly toss carpet after carpet from a 50-carpet stack, describing each and watching for the interest from the customer. They had silk Persian carpets, Islamic prayer carpets, wool carpets, and blended carpets - all handmade, of course. They could describe why one carpet might be more expensive than another by showing us the small knots per inch on the back of the carpet. Nearly everyone in our group enjoyed sweet tea and purchased at least one carpet.

The other shop, the one I have written about before, has an entire front room dedicated to carpets and then several back rooms filled with antique furniture, and some newer renditions, mirrors, carpet-covered ottomans, and random food-serving items from India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. I found an old Indian cherry wood coffee table that I liked. It looks like a intricate small old door set down into a door frame, laid flat, and attached to four legs. A sheet of glass sits above the actual wood table top and is set into the frame. I negotiated the price with one of the owners, and then asked if they could clean the table and get the glass for me. "No problem," they insisted. Next I asked if they could deliver it to me on our campus about 70 kilometers from Jeddah. "No problem," they said. I gave them a card which gave our location in Arabic, their eyebrows went up, and suddenly I realized that it might be a problem. Another man who seemed to be 'in charge' came over and they discussed my situation for a long time. Finally, he turned to me and said, "No problem. But you will have to pay 200 SARs ($56) for the delivery." I said that was fine. On the card with our campus address, I wrote my first name and my cell number. I asked what I should pay him at the time, and he waved his hand, saying, "No problem." I left the store. I was not sure if I would ever see the table, but I hadn't paid any money, so I was not too worried.

art on the coffee table

Three days later, I received cell phone calls while I was in my classroom. I
could not understand the person on the other end of the phone, so I gave my phone to my student, Abdulrahman, and he translated back and forth for me. It turns out that it was one of the Afghan men from the shop, waiting at the gate, with my table! I borrowed a friend's car, drove out to the first gate, apologized for not having an abaya, and went to the visitor center parking lot. There was a small truck with my table. The man lifted the table into the back of my friend's car, refusing any help from me, accepted the payment for the table plus the delivery, and left.

Later our friend delivered the table to our neighbors' garage, since we were not at home, and we reclaimed it finally that evening. It is now one of the main places that Hayden works on homework and Logan works on his many art projects. It reminds me that a person's word can mean so much, a commitment to sell and buy, and to follow through on an agreement. No receipts or papers or agreements in writing were ever considered.

Thanks for reading, Jennifer