If you are here at KAUST you know that WEP stands for Winter Enrichment Period. They have made this point very, very clear. They have gone to the extent of having signs all over campus defining both enrichment, and rich. There are many banners that must be about 20ft x 30ft all over, just to remind you that it is the Winter Enrichment Period. There is even a huge banner on the entrance to the gym, and they have painted the sides of the buses to say “WEP” accompanied by some strange multicolored outlines of people that seem to accompany all of these signs. Even beyond the signs, they went all out to make this an enriching winter, inviting top researchers and professors from all over the world to teach one or two week long intensive courses. My first course was taught by Nick Trefethen, a professor from Oxford who wrote the book for one of my classes last semester. Then there was a week full of people working on nanotechnology research in a broad spectrum ranging from improving efficiency of solar cells, to designing nano-capsules which enter cells and destroy the cell if they are cancerous. Most of these presentations were way over my head, but it was still fascinating stuff.
The recreation department also went all out for WEP and has been hosting WEP sporting events almost every night. I have gotten to be in tournaments for golf, bowling, ping pong, pool, basketball, tennis, and a 5k, and there are many more to come. It has been fun to get a chance to enjoy all of these things at KAUST while most people actually have time to enjoy them. Last semester it seemed that whenever people had any free time they would go traveling, but most of the time they just never had free time, so I think this period is great for the KAUST moral. Two of the students I’ve been hanging out with a lot are named Ahmad and Idris. I am trying to convince them to get summer internships in California, but they had to suggest to me that in light of certain events, it might not be the easiest thing for two young adult males, one from Nigeria and the other from Yemen to get visas to go from Saudi Arabia to the United States. I think that they are only better off than my Mexican friend who has spent his vacations in Iran and Syria. One of my other Mexican friends was already having trouble getting to the states. He was staying just south of Arizona and was going with his girlfriend and some other friends to the Packers vs Cardinals game. For some reason he thought that they just needed one visitors permit per car instead of per person. When he didn’t have the proper forms they checked his passport, and when they checked his passport they found his Saudi visa… pretty soon he was in a chair all by itself in the middle of a room with a one way window. Fortunately after a long wait and calls to Washington D.C. he was able to make it to the second half of what turned out to be a great game.
One of the coolest days I’ve had hear was last weekend when a group of about ten of us took a trip out to the desert. I know you’re probably wondering, “Isn’t the whole country, and for that sake the whole region a desert?” It is, but it is still nice to get out into it- away from all the noise and lights. We weren’t exactly in the middle of nowhere, we where still pretty close to the road and about half way between Jeddah and Mekkah. We brought rugs and rolled them out on the sand and just kinda lounged around chatting most of the time. Then we prepared some chicken and kabobs on a couple small grills we had brought. After dinner we made a camp fire and stayed late into the night just sitting around talking.
Beyond playing in all of the sports competitions I’ve gotten to learn a couple new ones. My friend Eric from UCSB taught me how to play squash. It’s a lot like racket ball, except the ball doesn’t bounce as much. Much to my excitement I also got to play cricket. My confusion in the rules was only compounded by the fact that most of the conversation was in Urdu or Hindi, but I was told before the last bowl (pitch) that it was the last one and if we got them out we would win. They bowled it for a strike (or whatever the appropriate equivalent is) and so we won and everyone cheered enthusiastically. I think it would have been a little stressful if I knew what was going on, because a lot of people were getting pretty heated over some calls, but as it was it was a lot of fun.
My one unfortunate discovery was that the walls in the student center are thin sheets of plaster. I discovered this playing ping pong. After hitting a shot I was running towards the wall, so instead of stopping I tried jumping off the wall. A moment later half of my leg was inside the wall. It didn’t hurt anything other than the wall, but I quickly had about ten students surrounding me and we were all laughing pretty hard. I got it taken care of the next day. I went with one of the student council members to talk with some important guy and had to explain to him that nobody had gotten mad and punched a hole in the wall, but rather I was just a klutz.
