The Importance of Being Energetic

I have been preoccupied recently and thus I've been paying far too little attention to the blogging aspect of my extremely exciting life. Don't let this give you the impression that nothing has happened.

I've been doing a lot of thinking recently, and I'm sure most of my thoughts have been both insightful and fascinating, but unfortunately I didn't write them down and so they have gone the way of late-night dreams and the names of my highschool classmates. Some highlights occur below:

- So many of these 'girls' have children! The number of women who take off for maternity leave and get the professors to postpone their exams is just insane!
(And they still tend to dress the way 13-year-olds dress in the states - rhinestones and platform shoes)

- Remembering names which are unfamiliar is really, really hard. I've had to 'trick' these girls (whose names I should really know by now) into putting their cell phone numbers and their names into my phone, so I can go over them later and memorize them.

- Professors tend to give in to student demands a lot more than they do in the states, and the girls tend to make silly demands. For instance, the last three days in a row in two of my classes professors have had to bribe the students into working at all by promising that they'd get out early.

- Cell phones are the only reliable method of communication. Without one I would be doomed to wander the corridors aimlessly forever, never knowing what is happening or where anybody is. Nobody checks their school email and nobody posts things in a central location. In fact, there really IS no central communication. And despite this, people seem to know how to get to things through word of mouth... everyone but me. I remain the least well-informed person on the campus. But at least now people recognize the problem.

- I still haven't figured out how people do the research for their research projects here. Remind me to do that....

- People are nice. I enjoy them. The girls are nice, too, although it's kindof tough to connect with a lot of them still. But at least they're warming up to me and I can actually have conversations now.

So those are just a few of the many things occuring to me regularly. Now on to the more prosaic aspect of my blog. I'm still insanely busy, although I've been putting off actually doing anything to rectify that situation. Instead, I went to a Western-produced version of "The Importance of Being Earnest" with a bunch of the professors and admin, and it was great. The actors were hilarious, the group was clearly enjoying itself, and it was generally wonderful to get out and do something normal. When your life is totally abnormal, normalcy is like a breath of fresh air.

By the way: Pride. Effat was on CNN the other day, although not mentioned by name, when Nick Roberts had a segment on how women can now officially study engineering in Saudi Arabia. That's right: Effat is the only school offering an engineering degree to women. And D is one of two students in that degree! Yessir, I know one of the first two engineering students in the kingdom! I am going to be famous one day!

Or... she is. But I'm going to take total credit.

I've also managed to land myself a paying job (!!!) working for Mrs. West on this accreditation stuff, although I should probably start actually doing something useful for her before I start patting myself on the back. And what interests me as much is the fact that more and more Saudi girls have been coming up to me asking for help with their English. I figure I'll give lessons in return for making them listen to me mangling Arabic, and we'll see how that works for all of us.

So, while my life is still busier than I can handle, that's clearly an improvement over the first bit of time where I sat around doing nothing. At least now I can safely and happily say I won't get bored. And with luck I'm now involved in some really really interesting things. Other things to keep your eyes out for on these pages include future plans for thesis researching (I've had some ideas) and the journalism club (no ideas yet, but I'm gonna start whipping these girls into action soon) and the ping pong championship (more practice tomorrow at 10am - the coach expects me to win, and as such has been getting me to practice every free moment).

So that's about it for now. I think sleep may be in order.