Emmalee in the Desert

a time lapse video of our drive from KAUST to the Red Sea Mall in Jeddah.  Thank you to my friend Logan for driving and sharing the video with me! As you can see in the video above, when we leave (or return to) campus we go through two separate checkpoints. KAUST requires you to be registered in some way before entering campus (it feels similar to visiting the army base in Seoul). Employees, students, and residents have kaust id cards that you need frequently for campus life (checking into the gym, running the copy machine at work, getting in and out of campus, etc.)  So what's kaust life like? It's so unique that sometimes it seems unfair to say that I live in Saudi Arabia. As you may have seen in recent news , women will soon be able to drive in the kingdom. In my previous blog post I talked about how shops and restaurants close during prayer times in jeddah (and the rest of the kingdom). Both of these things don't really impact life in KAUST - I can drive he...

No this is not an alphabet post, but it IS a post about the building blocks of muslim life in Saudi. AKA how I interact with Islam on the daily. First of all, I want to say that am an outsider and a learner - I am in no way an authority on anything except my own experience. This is really about how I encounter Islam within Saudi Arabia - this is not about any other country and I acknowledge that peoples' experiences in different cities or workplaces will be different than mine. Second of all, if you're curious about Islam/Muslim faith, here are some resources I've enjoyed or have been recommended to me: The Secret Life of Muslims  - a web series coproduced by Vice, using short episodes to talk about issues, share a perspective, and talk about muslim life.  If The Oceans Were Ink  - a book recommended to me by Maren over a year ago before I knew I'd be moving to a Muslim country. It took me a while to read but every chapter was informative and enlightening. This...