Off to China

OK, in about twelve hours I fly out of Dubai and on to Beijing. Thankfully, the Friendship Hotel has finally arranged to send a driver, although who knows if they're actually show up. I just relearned a grant Arabic phrase - bukhra insh'allah - it essentially, means tomorrow, god willing, but the actual meaning is more like - who the hell knows? Anyway, Internet connectivity might be a bit dicey, especially once I get into central China. I'll post when I can. I'm sure it will be fine in Beijing, which is supposed to be lousy with Internet cafes, but pictures might be iffy.

If you want a good burger . . .

. . . be sure to try the Intercontinental Hotel Dubai Festival Village. Granted, it's not my usual choice, which tends to focus on places like the Turf Club in Cincinnati or Mike's Bar and Grill in Franklin, Indiana, but I had a great burger last night through sheer exhaustion. I was at the conference all day and then took the bus back to the hotel, worked out, and then went for a swim. By the time that was over it was around 8:00 and I was thinking about grabbing a shower and going out to get something, but just didn't have the energy (I'm not sleeping very well). So, I just ordered a burger by the pool. It turned out to be fantastic - nicely cooked, with cheese and lots of grilled onions, some veal strips masquerading as bacon (as is the tradition in the Middle East), and a fried egg on top, The egg reminded me of my fraternity days, when Scudder-generated egg burgers were all the rage. Of course, this is the problem with foreign travel - my normally healthy life style goes straight to hell. Of course, I suppose the burger should have been good, because if you throw in a Coke and a tip it was around $30 - welcome to Dubai.

Dubai

OK, I've made it safely to Dubai, although I don't think I'll be posting much from Dubai. This is true partially because I'll only be here two days before heading on to China, but also because it's not a place that I find very interesting, which is ironic because it's the first international location I visited seven years ago and it's also the place I've visited the most (seven times). I think it's mainly because I'm a historian and there's not a lot of history here. That said, it's fascinating in its own way - and I suppose I would enjoy it more if I were younger and had lots of disposable income. It's also a perfect location for my Global Modules network because it is a society literally transforming itself, and one that, for all of its modern trappings, still is deeply conservative in other ways. I'm sitting at Zayed University for the Global Studies Conference, feeding off of the university's free wifi. Zayed is one of my foundational partner schools of the Global Modules network and they have been remarkably supportive of me.

City Centre

Right across from the hotel where I stayed in Kuwait was the City Centre, which featured a lot of stores featuring traditional clothes, but which was also a little center of western consumerism. My favorite place, of course, was the Krispy Kreme Doughnuts shop (you can't get Krispy Kreme in Vermont - and do you really need any more proof of what savages Yankees are?). It's right around the corner from the McDonald's, Burger King, Nathan's Famous, Pizza Hut and Baskin Robbins - I boldly walked past the Dunkin Donuts.

GUST PIctures

Let me see if I can post some pictures of GUST, the Gulf University of Science & Technology. At the top I've included a picture of the split level library that is open to the atrium - again, the floors are segregated by sex. It's right next to stairs and there is a screen between, which makes it more difficult for the guys to look up the skirts of the girls as they walk upstairs.

GUST

I visited the Gulf University of Science and Technology (GUST) here in Kuwait City today. During a presentation I gave last fall in Fez, Morocco I met Ray Weisenborn, the dean of Arts & Sciences at GUST, and he discussed extending the GM network to Kuwait - this is pretty typical, which is why I give so many papers at conferences overseas (including four on this long trip). Anyway, we ended up running a GM with Mark Olson from GUST this semester on divorce in Kuwait and the US. The university is interesting in that all the classes are segregated by gender (a recent phenomenon caused by the election of more Islamist members to parliament) and we actually divided up a couple Champlain classes by gender to match up with the GUST courses, which was a real teachable moment for our Vermont students. The men and women even, technically, have separate wings and even floors of the library. I say technically because they mix fairly freely in the central area and the eating areas. At the same time the women dress in a more "western" fashion than any Arabic school I've ever visited. At a place like Zayed University in the UAE all the girls where the traditional black abaya and hihab - same with Sultan Qaboos University in Muscat, Oman. At a school like the University of Jordan you have a rough division into thirds - completely traditional, completely western, and somewhere in between (western wear and the hijab) - but even here the western wear would always be jeans. Here, on the other hand, you'd have a similar division into thirds, but the western students were actually wearing dresses or skirts and showing a fair amount of skin (as with Jordan, there has been a steady growth in the number of students wearing thw traditional wear in the last few years, although it's hard to say whether that is because of a growth in faith or as a result in a changing sense of fashion).. It's a strange mix because it's also a country which is pretty conservative in other ways - including a complete ban on all alcohol - causing many ex-pats to brew their own on the sly. I'll try and post some pictures later.

Kuwait Rock City

OK, I've made it to Kuwait City without too many problems. I'm not a real big fan of Kuwait Air Ai the food was pretty sub-par and the crew seemed to always have a chip on their shoulders about something - it's like once you got beyond a certain point they were OK, but that their initial response was to over react to every question or request (as if they were intended as an insult - of course, it could also just be the horror of dealing with ugly Americans on a daily basis). Of course, it might have just been the fact that during all quiet moments they played elevator music versions of "You Were Always on My Mind" and "You're the Wind Beneath My Wings.". On the London-Kuwait trip I sat next to a nice Indian woman named Jasmine Singh, who grew up in Kuwait and is a Sophomore at Iowa State University. Kuwait, like the UAE, has a large subcontinent population.

Ray Weisborn and Mark Olson from the Gulf University of Science & Technology picked up at the airport. Then they took me to Applebee's because it was convenient. Kuwait has a ton of American chain franchises, including a series of the largest Burger Kings I've ever seen. I'm staying at the Ritz Salmiya which is pretty nice, although there is no pool or exercise facility, so I should have worked through the painyesterday and lifted weights - I have missing workouts. I'll know more tomorrow about Kuwait when I might it over to GUST.

London Stalling

OK, so my direct flight to Kuwait wasn't so direct. We have a brief layover in London before the plane goes on to Kuwait, although we have to get off the plane with all of our carry-ons and then get marched on this long trek through Heathrow, including a trip through security (?). Very strange. My theory is that it's just to make us walk past the duty free shops again - or as a direct order from Starbucks. Next stop, and I mean it this time, Kuwait.

Getting Started

The journey of a thousand miles always seems to begin with a trip through JFK. No trouble so far. I'm checked in for the first long flight of the trip, and the good folks at Kuwait Air gave me a bulkhead seat (which will be much appreciated on the 13 hour direct flight from NY to Kuwait City). It always helps to get to the airport early, be especially charming, and sprinkle the conversations with the few words you know of the language of the airline - in this case, lots of shukrans and insh'allahs. That said, the folks at Kuwait Air could not have been more pleasant. Beyond attracting more looks than normal - I had a nasty bike wreck the other night, but nothing that four hours in the emergency room and 15 stitches on my face and two hours in the dentist chair this morning reconstructing the front tooth I broke off (I look slightly less like Frankenstein now) couldn't fix - there's been no trouble. I just finished a plate of tortellini that just about reached the level of institutional quality (I guess Burger King was the better choice). The next stop is Kuwait City where I'll be met at the airport by two professors from the Gulf University of Science & Technology, which I really appreciate because it will be my first trip to Kuwait. The only problem is that they want to immediately take me out to dinner - I leave JFK at 9:45 tonight and arrive in Kuwait City at 7:00 pm on Wednesday evening, so it makes perfect sense, although I'm going to have to rally. The journey of six weeks . . .