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Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Charting Rudeness?

I've been working on a little data collection project during WEP, and now that it's over, I'm dismayed and pleased to show you what I've been up to for the last couple of weeks.

During all of the WEP classes and lectures I had to go to, I've been keeping track of the number of cell phone rings each day. This all got started when in the first lecture I attended there were at least 3 rings in the first 15 minutes of the lecture! I don't know if people here realize how rude they are being, but oh man are they ever rude.

The worst part is that people would answer their phones and actually have hushed conversations instead of ignoring the call or leaving the room.

So here you go, cell phone rings per hour for WEP. A few notes, I started on Saturday because that's when our work week starts and thus Thursday and Friday as our weekend have less or no data because I didn't have to go to lectures.

Also, the Sunday where there were 7 rings per hour was actually all from the same lecture. This was an especially awful presentation so the big jump in cell phone noises doesn't surprise me.

Overall there ended up being an average of about 2.2 cell phone rings each hour and 114 rings in total over 13 days, which is more than enough to be annoying and certainly enough to be rude. I'm really irritated and disappointed that there were so many distractions. Are people so busy these days that they can't turn off their phones for an hour?

Even worse than the cell phones was the sheer number of people who showed up late, but that's not at all surprising and in fact is very common. So common, that for my 9 am class this semester, only nine people out of 32 have managed to show up on time!

I'm just shocked. What do you think, am I overreacting?

Sunday, February 6, 2011

A Christmas Miracle!

Remember back in December when we were leaving for Athens and we told you how disappointed we were that we hadn't gotten mail? I guess the mail deities wanted to give us a little Christmas in February because today we got not one, but two Christmas packages in the mail today!

Sure it was a little beat up, but hey showing up is half the battle here! It took 48 and 56 days for the two packages to wander over from the US.

Honestly, after it flooded in Jeddah a few weeks ago, I gave up all hope of seeing them. I figured they had floated away into the desert.

I don't know what we're going to do with Christmas decorations in February, but since I've been working on some Valentine's Day crafts, maybe I'll try and work them in somehow. At least the color scheme works in our favor. I also can't wait to use the cookie cutters. It's one of the many cooking and baking tools I haven't been able to find on campus or in Jeddah, so we're going to have to make some Christmas shaped cookies soon.

We also got this great family calendar from my uncle, with the photos taken by my little sister. And aren't those snowmen just too cute!

Now that we're all full up on Christmas, you'll have to stay tuned to see how we meld it together with a little bit of Valentine's Day, which in case you didn't know, is illegal here in Saudi land. Oddly, or not, the government/religion goes so far as to ban the color red.

I always knew we were fugitives at heart.

Saturday, February 5, 2011

Uggg Egypt Air, but Cairo is Awesome!

Without a doubt, the worst part of our trip was actually getting out of Greece. Dealing with Egypt Air on the way out was a complete pain start to finish. We did catch a bit of a break, the metro wasn't going on strike until noon that day, so we were easily able to take the metro to the Airport instead of having to navigate the bus system again. I really wish international airports checked in based on airline instead of the specific flight. On numerous occasions, we've been stuck waiting to even check in to the flight before we even hit security or customs! After they finally started checking in for the flight, we were told that we needed to show the credit card we used to pay for the flight. Since we go cash only when we travel, and that particular credit card is vicious about international fees, it happened to be sitting in my wallet back at school, not with us in Athens posing a potential risk for theft and fraudulent charges. One of the ladies tried to tell us that we would typically have to purchase new tickets (!) but that they would kindly make an exception and take a photocopy of my passport along with my signature. This cheesed me off to all kinds of Mondays because we already had problems buying the tickets; the bank thought the ticket charge was fraudulent and blocked access, and now the airline was trying to tell me the ticket purchase wasn't legit. There is no reason they needed to see the credit card for a purchase that was made almost a month prior to the flight, when there was no issue with the departure tickets.

Next, they tried to tell us our carry on luggage was too heavy (it weighed exactly as much as it did when we flew Egypt Air to Athens!) and that Steve's backpack didn't count as a personal item! So we had three carry on items and one personal item instead of two of each. We have traveled with this exact combo of luggage through no less than six airports and have never had an issue. While it is most likely not the fault of the woman behind the counter, the fact that they are applying Egypt Air rules, that clearly didn't exist/apply when we flew two weeks prior really bugged me. So we ended up having to check one of the bags. Thankfully, they don't charge extra for this convenience, so the only loss is time spent waiting at the luggage carousel. Since the handle on Steve's luggage broke about 20 feet outside of our apartment on our way to Athens, we decided to check his and not have to deal with the inconvenience.

Thankfully, the flight to Cairo was relatively peaceful, after only a slight delay of our departure. Once in Cairo though, we got more of the airport run around. Since we had an eight hour layover, we were directed to go to a special counter an have our tickets checked. It turned out that they were checking to see if we'd made hotel accommodations, and if they had asked us, we easily could have told them that we hadn't. But alas, line waiting instead.

So how do you comfortably kill eight hours in Cairo's airport? VIP lounge is how. It was $25 each for us to get in, but it was completely worth it. We easily would have spent that amount on food while in the airport, so there was no doubt that for a long layover, it was money well spent. We even had great comfy couches, but sadly only 30 minutes of free internet. I really wish more airports had free or ad included internet access instead of trying to charge for it. We're getting ready for our Spring break trip, and hopefully we can avoid flying Egypt Air through Cairo, but if we have to at least we know where to spend our layover.

The layover passed quickly and the flight from Cairo to Jeddah was uneventful. We even had our taxi waiting for us when we got through customs!

*Catch up on our entire Athens adventure by checking Our Travel Page, or our Greece tag.*

Catch up on the rest of our adventure:

Athens Day 1

Traveling Back to Saudi Arabia

Small Math Problems and 4 Modes of Transportation

Restoring Faith in Traveling

Playing the Ethics Card

Changing Perspectives on Cash v. Debit

Friday, February 4, 2011

Athens: Day 12

This day in Athens was Abby's Birthday, and she decided that she wanted to go to the Sunday Flea Market. The flea market was packed with all kinds of people, most of whom looked more Middle Eastern than Greek. The flea market was a huge sprawling area, where you could buy anything from old faucets, to porn, to flip flops, to porn, to bootleg dvds, to porn, to a dentist's chair, to porn, to video games, and electronics. Did I mention that they had porn? There were some vendors that had dozens of milk crates full of porn on VHS and DVD, right alongside Dora the Explorer coloring books. I'm not sure who would feel comfortable buying porn in public, but I suppose it is different there, as they had porn at newsstands too. Another strange item for sale was piles of partly used prescription drugs. Needless to say, you could get almost anything here!

There was also artistic murals painted on the buildings nearby. We had read about how the graffiti in Athens was supposed to be beautiful rather than just vandalism, but this was the first time we saw graffiti that wasn't actually vandalism.

They even had a robot mural!

One we fought our way out of the crowds of the flea market, we visited Kerameikos. This large archeological site contains a cemetery, part of the ancient city wall, and two important gates. Within the ancient wall was a potter's village with the remains of a few kilns. At the small, but very well displayed Kermikos Museum, we learned all about the area. The wall was quickly built after the Persians sacked the city in 480 BCE. In order to speed up the construction many funeral monuments, which were readily at hand, were used in the construction of the wall. Many of the pieces in the museum were recovered from the base of the wall.

Steve at Kerameikos.

I have no idea how they cut these stones so accurately, they interlocked very tightly with no mortar. This wall was alongside an ancient road that passed through one of the gates at Kerameikos.

Yet another adorable little church, maybe even the same one as we saw from above earlier.

A stone arch on the grounds.

Steve admiring one of the ancient walls.

Inside the Kerameikos museum they had a huge stone bull on display in the courtyard of the museum. The courtyard was glass enclosed and just fantastic! It would be a great addition in a house.

Steve peeking around one of the ancient walls at Kerameikos.

*Catch up on our entire Athens adventure by checking Our Travel Page, or our Greece tag.*

Catch up on the rest of our adventure:

Athens Day 1

Traveling Back to Saudi Arabia

Small Math Problems and 4 Modes of Transportation

Restoring Faith in Traveling

Playing the Ethics Card

Changing Perspectives on Cash v. Debit

Thursday, February 3, 2011

Athens: Day 11

We had a very relaxed day in Athens on this day. We decided to revisit one of our favorite areas, and see Socrates prison in the daylight. We climbed around for a bit at Philopappos hill, stopping at Socrates' Prison, and to play on some very randomly placed monkey bars. This time the gate was unlocked at the "prison", which was probably a house, and probably had nothing to do with Socrates. The small caverns were used to protect ancient treasures and artifacts during World War II, when there was a huge concrete bunker in front of it to add to the protection.

Don't worry, the door isn't actually locked.

Trying to escape from Socrates' Prison.

Protip: Photoshop Steve into awesome fight scenes for flying kick action!

Acropolis, with the Odean of Herodes Atticus in the foreground.

The elbow patches really are sexy, aren't they?

A small tomb carved into the rock, we can't remember the name of it.

This little church, the Agios Dimitrios Loumbardiaris, had interesting masonry. Much of it was recycled from ruins in the area.

One thing we haven't mentioned was the street performers and peddlers. It was hard to find a historic monument without a young foreign man selling splat tomatoes and splat pigs on a little wooden panel. Everywhere we went there was the ubiquitous whack of a tomato or a pig being annihilated to demonstrate to every passing tourist that it was "very good product", "very high quality", and "good materials". There also seemed to be fierce competition for the best place to set up shop, often there were two or three young men within meters of each other, showing how the tomato will re-form every time he throws it against his little wooden panel. Occasionally there would be musicians, performers, or living statues. The musicians were usually on accordion, but we did see an excellent jazz trio on trumpet sax, and flute.