That's All Folks

It's back to reality (or as close as it gets to reality living in Berkeley...). After travel that lasted over 34 hours and spanned three countries, 4+ airplane meals, and a selection of over 100+ movies to make it all worthwhile, we've arrived safely back in the United States. It's been three weeks filled with the contradictions of the old and the new blending themselves to form an experience that none of us will soon forget. Thanks for taking this journey with us.

OMG, we're off!

Feasibility Study - done!
Presentation - done!
Spending our last few riyals on two crepes - done!

We're on our way home!

Work hard, play hard

It may look like from all of our posts and photos that we just play all day, but that couldn't be further from the truth! Soon after we finished the workshops, we began finishing up our feasibility study for the MBA program. After interviewing faculty and employers, conducting focus groups, entering collected survey data, and translating financial statements from Eastern Arabic to Western Arabic numerals, we put together a comprehensive paper documenting our research, program recommendations, and financial analysis. Tomorrow, we'll present it to the Dean of the school. Wish us luck!

But I did want to write about a fantastic trip last weekend! We were able to go snorkeling at a local private Jeddah beach. I had heard about the amazing coral reefs of the Red Sea, but experiencing it first hand was something else... My prior snorkeling experience is limited to a sixth grade trip to the Florida Keys, but this was exactly like Finding Nemo but in real life! We snorkeled along the edge of the beautiful reef and all these amazingly colorful and gorgeous fish swam all around us. It was a wonderful and magical experience. Since we didn't have an underwater camera with us, I chose an Internet photo which best represented the experience.

Only 2 more days!

We've been a busy bunch this week wrapping up our feasibility study! 60 pages later (plus a 108 page appendix), here we are, seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.

Not much to add...oh, except I met a Prince today. In the gym. I was sorely underdressed.

And we're having a big fat party in September. All you blog followers, we expect to see you there!

Signing off for now,
Jedi

Corniche Art!

Depending on whether we're heading south for downtown or north to the ritzy malls, we ride past many of the artwork for which the Jeddah Corniche is famous. Deb has already posted about our self-guided walking tour of part of the Corniche last weekend. I wanted to share some more photographs of the strange and beautiful statues we've seen during our stay in this city. Here are some of my personal favorites.

In the middle of a particular roundabout, there are four hanging lanterns. At night, these lanterns light up beautifully with special stained glass designs. 

This structure reminds me of Super Mario Brothers. I wonder whether anyone has ever tried to scale it.

Being a city by the sea, Jeddah offers many maritime inspired art and architecture. Here's another roundabout center piece. 

We presume this is an office building... 

Who made these structures? The truth is out there... 

Perhaps we should stay out of the midday heat....

This self-photo preceeded the octopus sighting (whose red color I'm convinced meant that it was fiery mad about us lurking over its quivering mass), so it can't be blamed on the motion of the sea or the after effects of seeing multicolored creatures swimming all around us. Perhaps it could have been our four days of workshops or our excitement to be eating dinner at the normal Saudi time (11pm).

We eventually managed to pull it together for at least the semblance of a decent photo.

Sighted: Octopus!

We went snorkeling today and saw this! Alas, I had no underwater camera, so this is what he would have looked like if we had gotten a photo. Our octo-friend was undulating on a rock...not really sure what that means, but the Red Sea sure is a comfy place to be!

Success!

Today was the last day of the Women in Entrepreneurship Workshop, and we’re sad to see it end. The portion we were teaching actually ended yesterday with a session in leadership and project management. We had a lot of fun creating exercises for the women and going through them together. We had the group do a “Trip to the Moon” exercise. For you Haasies out there, it was very similar to Desert Survival, but for some reason, we felt that a desert survival game just wouldn’t translate well in Saudi Arabia! Talking about leadership, such a culturally sensitive topic, gave us the amazing opportunity to hear about the challenges these women face on a daily basis. We ended the workshop feeling like we had learned just as much from them as we hope they learned from us.

For today’s final session on social entrepreneurship and the challenges Saudi businesswomen face, the pressure was off, and we were lucky enough to enjoy the session from the audience. The speakers were incredible and the day ended with closing words from Dr. Suhair, certificates for the participants, and a BIG cake, decorated with the Haas logo no less (pictures to come). As another treat, we had a closing dinner at a beautiful open-air restaurant by the water with some of the DAH administration and workshop participants. We sat on grand couches with lots of pillows and traditional décor and had a real taste of local food (pictures of this to come as well). Just one problem – we were the only ones in the restaurant - again. Sure our usual 6:30PM dinners are a little early for Saudi tastes, so this time we held out until 9. But it wasn’t until we were leaving at 11PM that the place started getting crowded and the music turned on (on a weekday). Our conversation with our driver on the ride home was reinforcement that our time schedule just isn’t aligned with Saudi culture. When we told him about walks we take along the waterfront at 12 noon on the weekends, he advised us to learn Kung-Fu in case we run into any problems in an abandoned city that doesn’t wake up until 4PM. But tomorrow is Wednesday, which equals Friday for us, so we’ll see what our next (and last) weekend in Jeddah brings. Hint, there could be some Red Sea snorkeling involved.