Often KAUST seems like any other university, and like any other university many students and I are studying in the library. Every now and then, however, we get reminders that we are somewhere very unique. One of these instances was about two minutes ago, while studying in this library, a large group came on a tour of the library. It is not entirely unusual here, as every week or so a group of people walk by and you get to experience feeling like a fish in a tank as people watch you study while being told that the library is a place where students study. This tour was unusual though in that it included a member of the U.S. cabinet, Steven Chu, the secretary of energy. It included one man who looked familiar, and asked me about myself, noting from my t-shirt that I was from Orange County. I asked him where he was from and he told me that he was from Washington, but that he was from the consulate here. That’s when I figured out why he looked familiar, and realized he was the consulate general. Also among the group was our school’s president, an Aramco vice president, and the Saudi oil minister.
