Unknown Biases

In school, the most prominent history we learn is of our own. As an American, we start with European history and move to American once we know enough background. Here in the Arab world, (although I'm not for sure what they learn in grade school) college history starts with the beginning of Islam. I would image most nationalities follow a similar schematic. Since they introduce us to the basic concepts so young and are constantly drilled with it, the more detailed information doesn't come as much of a surprise. Today I faced a mental battle in Arabic Heritage class.

All semester we've been learning about Islam and the Arabs, where they started, how the spread and certain hardships they experienced. However, today went from fact to opinion. For the second time in less than a month, the professor taught straight from an internet site. He posted a link on the school's website for us to be able to access it ourselves and also had it up the entire class. He treated us like middle schoolers as he had someone read it aloud and every paragraph or so he would explain something. This is the link:

http://www.load-islam.com/artical_det.php?artical_id=492&section=indepth&subsection=Islamic+history

Notice anything wrong right off the bat? If you noticed its a .com and not a .edu/.gov/.net site, you'd be right. We are criticized all of the time for using .com in research papers because you can't trust them. They are individual's sites that can have whatever information the author wants on them; true or not. The page is very opinionated, calling Spain and all of Europe around 750 filthy, uneducated and basically incompetent. One guy in my class took great offense and displayed that during class. He grew up in that area and knew it wasn't true. But the article wanted to make the point that the Arabs cleaned up Europe. Made it better in every way possible.

I was getting a little upset by this point as well. For as long as I've been studying European history, the muslims have never played a dominant role in the formation of the power that Europe became. The article lists things they brought, such as "Irrigation systems imported from Syria and Muslimia turned the dry plains... into an agricultural cornucopia. Olives and wheat had always grown there. The Muslims added pomegranates, oranges, lemons, aubergines, artichokes, cumin, coriander, bananas, almonds, pams, henna, woad, madder, saffron, sugar-cane, cotton, rice, figs, grapes, peaches, apricots and rice." (Burke, 1985, p. 37).

The article also said the Muslims brought all of the knowledge to Europe: 

     "The subjects covered by the texts [brought by the arabs] included medicine, astrology, astronomy pharmacology, psychology, physiology, zoology, biology, botany, mineralogy, optics, chemistry, physics, mathematics, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, music, meteorology, geography, mechanics, hydrostatics, navigation and history." (Burke, 1985, p. 42)

As you can also see, the author only quoted one person. I counted thirteen quotes from the same person on a three page article. Very opinionated quotes, might I add, including, 

"The intellectual community which the northern scholars found in Spain was so far superior to what they had at home that it left a lasting jealousy of Muslim culture, which was to colour Western opinions for centuries" (Burke, 1985, p. 41)

The real kicker to me was when Columbus was brought up. The article mentions the "coincidence" of 1492 when both Columbus discovered America and when the Ummayyads were forced out of Spain. The professor went on about finding the new world and the Ummayyads being too busy killing each other to be bothered. He asked our opinions and I raised my hand. I said it couldn't possibly be a coincidence since they had already discovered America many years before and Columbus didn't know it was even a new place. The prof was confused and I understood the confusion so I gave a brief explanation. 


It's unclear who actually discovered America because communication between country's discoveries was a bit lacking. Most believe the Chinese discovered it first many years before Columbus (around 1421). Even if you do give Columbus the credit for it, he thought it was India and even so, never reached the mainland, only the southern islands around the Bahamas. In 1497, Amerigo Vespucci came along in 1497 and "discovered" it. This being said, Columbus's discovery would have had no impact on the Muslim Spain. The prof, not liking what he was hearing, tried to change to "so the muslims discovered America". This irritated me even more because he was trying to make a point that the muslims HAD to have something to do with everything good that happened in that time period.


Regardless of what happened back then, and the opinions of people today, the whole thing really got me thinking. The idea what we only hear what we want to hear is so absolutely true, it's disgusting. Teachers so often only tell the facts that make things seem better for one group, or worse if the idea is to make them look bad. Had a non-muslim been teaching this class, the topic of muslim Spain would have been portrayed in a completely different way. I guess a lot of it, is to teach to the majority to reduce the risk of a complaint. In high school, if even one kid complains about biases, the teacher can get into a lot of trouble. Of course it's a lot different in college, but the same principle is there. 


Although it's not just internet sites with strong opinions vs. fact. I recently read a book called "Why we Suck" which is just that; why America sucks. It's a great book, very funny, but I wouldn't recommend ever quoting it in a relevant situation. Another book I'm currently reading, call The Essentials of the Islamic Faith begins the very first chapter with the quote "The existence of God is too evident to need any arguments." Now this certainly may be a majority's opinion, but certainly not a fact that can be used in an argument. 


I guess to sum up what I'm trying to say, is that I've never seen first had the result of "we hear what we want to hear" when it comes to education. Obviously this happens in social context all of the time, but when we think about higher education I, personally, have always been under the impression it's all fact. I guess I've been proven wrong.

Week with the 'rents

So this past week my parents came for a visit. They were supposed to get in Wednesday night, although because of technical difficulties in the plane, their flight was cancelled, then cancelled again, then roughed through London, they didn't get here until the wee hours of Friday morning. After they napped for a bit, I finally got to see them. They said it took 4 hours to get from the airport to their hotel in Diera (I'm pretty sure I can walk that in about 30 minutes...) and about an hour to get from their hotel to campus. Driving here is insanely difficult. Roads are almost as crazy as the drivers. Here is a recap of the week they were here:

Friday:
They finally made it to campus and I showed them around for a bit. There was nobody here; the campus was literally deserted. The only people we saw were a few other exchange students. We ate on campus then headed out. Because their luggage was lost somewhere between Pittsburgh, Atlanta, London and Dubai, I took them to Carrefor to get some essentials. Hoping they wouldn't get their luggage until after 24 hours so they would get some reimbursement, they each bough some soups and clothes to get them by. Their luggage, to no surprise, showed up just before that 24 hour mark the next morning.

Saturday:
We were going to go to Abu Dhabi on Saturday because it was one of the only full days we would have. The parents had other plans. Because the maps were so off (roads are built and changed here on a daily basis - but who told them to bring the gps and not rely on maps?? I couldn't imagine who would recommend such a thing!) they went back to the airport to rent a gps to go along with the car instead of said paper maps. This along with not waking up till noon put us not leaving Sharjah until around 3pm. Not gonna work. So we decided to find something local to do. I suggested the old souq in Sharjah, the gps had different plans. We ended up at the Corniche in Dubai, which worked out. We walked around a bit, then went to the marina to see some old ships, found the Dubai spice and textile souqs, ate some arabic food and called it a day.

Sunday:
I had class at day and a steel design midterm until 6:30 so I didn't get to see my parents on Sunday. They did some tours and saw some stuff on their own though. I couldn't comment on exactly what they did since I wasn't there..

Monday:
After my classes, the came to pick me up and we headed back to Diera for a dinner cruise along the Dubai creek. It was pretty nice. They served the traditional arabic picnic foods: lamb, chicken, rice, hummos, salads, and a bunch of other stuff. The entertainment was... unique.. to say the least. The dude in the dress spinning, I've seen before. The other 3 - nope - and never want to again. The first was a belly dancer with a costume that made her stomach the face and had fake arms the moved as she did. The second one was just awkward. It was a guy in a costume bent over so it looked like 2 ppl dancing together. Finally was a white horse. Your typical two guys in a horse costume. It attacked me. And it hurt. End of story. Check my facebook for pics, there are too many needed to post on here.

Tuesday:
After classes tuesday, my parents were supposed to pick me up and then take me to the Sharjah souqs. My professors had other plans for me. I had another midterm the next day and a ton of homework so I had to cancel my plans to study. Bummer.

Wednesday:
Wednesday was basically like Tuesday except I wasn't planning on going anywhere with them. They planned a desert safari that left before I finished classes. So they went without me while I stayed home and did homework.

Thursday:
After class Thursday, they came and picked me up yet again and let me pick dinner anywhere I wanted (although I do believe they vetoed the Burj Al Arab). I chose Medinat Jumierah. Its a very nice place. Like a little modern yet very traditional resort complete with it's own souq, river, abras, hotel and everything else that goes along with that. I chose a restaurant called Times of Arabia; it was rated 5 stars and served traditional food. I enjoyed it and I think they did too. Although they keep saying "it's good but I don't know what I'm eating!" After dinner and walking around for a while, I went back to their hotel with them and spent the night.

Friday:
Finally we went to Abu Dhabi. We first tried to go to the Emirates Palace, but we tried to go in the wrong entrance and they wouldn't let us in without reservations. So we gave up on that idea and headed to heritage village. It was alright but I wasn't impressed. It was basically just like an outside museum that recreated what Arabia looked like before civilization. We walked around for a bit after that then headed to the Marina mall to eat. Dad wanted American food, so we ate at Fuddruckers. Of course, it was a good meal LOL. Then we went to find the Sheikh Zayed mosque. The gps was being retarded and wouldn't give us directions at first but we eventually got there. I wasn't impressed by it. Of course it was also Friday so we (as non-muslims) couldn't go in. So we had enough and headed home. Of course neither way was a direct trip (not for lack of trying). We took several accidental detours but eventually made it.

Saturday:
Saturday was an IXO trip to the top of the Burj Khalifa. I bought my parents tickets so they could come up with all of us. I had to buy them online several days early because they are always sold out the day of and usually the entire next day as well. It was pretty nice. Cool to finally see that observation tower, but looking out into Dubai, I was kind of disappointed in the view. I was also disappointed that we didn't actually learn anything about the building itself. I met and had lunch with one of the head engineers of the Burj before I came to the UAE and I learned much more from him than I did actually being there. I know they don't need to bore everyone with all those facts, but to most people, simple facts are interesting, not just to engineers. After coming down, my parents, Irfan, Caitlin and I had lunch at a restaurant in the mall. After eating, and before the check came, my mom and dad had to leave to go catch their plane. We said our goodbyes and they left.

They arrived back in the states about a day later; luckily they didn't have any problems going home.

Thats a pretty basic outline of their week here. There are plenty of pictures on my facebook and if you don't have a facebook but would like to see them, feel free to contact me and I'll send some your way.

Peace out!
:-)

Spring Break in Istanbul!

I guess this is where I'm supposed to write about my trip and all the cool things I saw..
Well the stories begin no further than customs in Turkey. Britton and I went straight through, Irfan wasn't so lucky. They went through his passport with a magnifying glass making sure it was legit; asked him tons of questions like where he was from, where he "bought" his passport and where he parents were from. After about a half hour, we went back over to him to see what's going on (this is after the 8 armed guards left him). They asked if we were with him and obviously said yes.. so they took our passports too. After taking Irfan into the back and interrogating him some more, including asking him to sign a blank paper to compare the signatures, they let us go through. An hour after that mess began, we grabbed our bags and found the driver that was taking us to the hotel (this is all at around 1am, btw)

The hotel was pretty nice.. really small though. But for the price, cleanliness and proximity to everything, the size was OK with me. The Hagia Sophia, Blue Mosque, Basilica Cistern, metro station and many other things were only about a 5 minute walk down the street.

Because of our late arrival, the next day we got a pretty late start. We had some really good local food and walked around this nice little park (that was an accident, we were looking for the Basilica Cistern). We finally made it and realized it was hiding in plane sight. Basically, it's an underground water basin kept to make sure the church (later turned into a mosque) above it had water. I'm not sure of the exact story of it, though.

We did some shopping; looked at some nice carpets and Irfan fell in love with a baby lamb leather jacket. This begins my new addiction to Turkish apple tea. Everywhere you go, they give you turkish tea. Usually they just give it to you unless you're in a cafe or something, then you obviously order it. Its delicious and I ended up buying a few packages of it to take home.

The next day we went to the Hagia Sophia (pronounced hi-ya sophia). This place was pretty amazing. I didn't read too much about it, so I couldn't tell you much, but I do know it was originally and orthodox patriarchal basilica, later turned mosque, later turned museum. This place is amazing! It's so absolutely beautiful and you can spend hours in it looking at all the architecture and calligraphy.

Of course on this day we also walked around the streets, ate some amazing food and just had a good time. We were standing in this courtyard when we ran into one of the guys that sells the leather jackets Irfan was looking at. They talked some prices and we went back. After some more negotiation, they were still on different pages about the prices and we left empty handed. 

For the third day, we decided to take a pre planned tour with a tour company. We saw a company in one of the areas we were in a lot and picked out one that looked good. It was an all day tour that picked you up from your hotel and provided lunch for 65 Euro/140 Lira/ $110. We started at the castle of 7 towers, which, mom, close your eyes for the next sentence, is a liability waiting to happen. It was really cool to see it, though. It's not a castle, its a fort, I'm not sure why they insist on calling it a castle. You can go up on the walls where the guards would be, but there are no railings or walls to keep you from falling off.. nor are there railings on the flimsy staircases going up or down (don't worry, we only lost a few people at that stop)

Next was the Chora museum. Not too exciting, just a small church with a lot of mosaic artwork. There was a small cafe outside and some more shops, but nothing extravagant happened here.

Then onto Pierre Loti Hill. We parked the bus and took cable cars to the top of this incredibly steep hill. It had a great view and we took some pictures then went into a cafe for some turkish coffee and tea (are you beginning to see where my addiction came from yet?).  

Next was lunch; more turkish kabobs. Then the Rustempasha mosque; just another mosque. The next stop was the spice bazaar. We only had about a half hour to walk around inside and told specifically to meet back at 2:20. There were only 6 of us to begin with and 3 of them didn't show back up. We waited for a bit longer but had to leave them behind because next was a Bosphorus cruise that we couldn't miss. The Bosphous river connects the Black sea and the Sea of Marmara (basically the Mediterranean to the Black sea). This was nice to just sit back and watch both the European side and the Asian side with a tour guide who could tell us about all the buildings on either side. 

That pretty much sums up that day. Busy, but a lot of fun.

The final two days consisted of meeting up with Caitlin and Irfana (each on a different day), going to the grand bazaar (some serious bargaining was going on there), the Blue Mosque, and the Topkapi Palace. 

So after a great 5 days in Istanbul, we headed home. Unfortunately this meant we got back to our dorms at around 8am..  So I slept most of the next day :-)

All in all it was a great trip, and one of the best spring breaks ever. Definitely worth the expense! 

As always, there are tons of pictures on my facebook, so check them out! If you don't have a facebook, I can send you some if you'd like!

Ma'a salama! 

 

I just wanted to experience Sharjah's hospital!

After a great competition in Dubai, I spent the next few days in the hospital. I've had an abscess in my lower back for a few days, and stubborn me waited until the pain became unbearable to actually see a doctor about it. I finally did late Saturday night. I saw the dorm nurse and she immediately took me to the health clinic and called a doctor. She gave me some pain killers, antibiotics and told me to come back first thing in the morning.

The next morning (Sunday) right upon entering the health clinic, I was reexamined. Anna was called and I was promptly put in an ambulance and taken to the hospital. The "emergency surgery" was going to have to wait a few hours for insurance to be taken care of. This was such a nightmare. My primary insurance back in the states, although an international plan, would not cover it up front. In my state of pain, I didn't care to pay. I would have handed them cash if it would have moved things along faster. But alas, we waited, made phone calls, and found out the MexEx insurance (the student insurance that we had to buy through ISEP) would cover everything upfront.

A few hours later, I was laying in a very nice private hospital room waiting for the anesthesiologist to knock me out. Before I knew it, I was waking up in the middle of the night covered in bandages, pain-free and slightly loopy. The doctor finally came back to talk to me in the morning and told me exactly what was going on. He said he drained two mugfuls of fluid from the abscess and that it was the largest abscess he's ever seen in his 30 years of surgery. I felt slightly accomplished. He also said I really should have seen a doctor a lot sooner.

I spend another 2 days in the hospital (3 days total) just laying around. Anna stayed with me the entire first day (God bless her and everything she did for me! :-) ), then she brought Caitlin, Irfan and Britton the next day, and her and Caitlin came to bring me home on Tuesday. I was so grateful for them coming, it really made me feel a lot better about everything. Linda sent a beautiful arrangement of flowers and someone sent a fruit bowl and smaller flowers, but they didn't have a card, so unfortunately I don't know who they were from.

The hospital, for the most part, was really nice. The room was great, had a nice flatscreen TV, even had a fold out bed. It was kept very clean; a woman must have come in twice a day to clean it. The nurses were friendly (some didn't speak very good english and we had a few "lost in translation" moments, but most everything got across ok) until one kicked me out.. literally. On tuesday morning, the nurse told me I would be able to leave in about 1-2 hours, so I called Anna. Her and caitlin arrived and we just waited. I was waiting for someone to discharge me so I could leave. Well one of the nurses walked in and literally, almost yelling, said "what are you still doing here?!" We all just kind of stared until I said I was waiting for someone to release me. She said she was waiting for me to go to the cashier before she would bring my medication and I could go. Not something I'm used to in the states. So I had to change, go downstairs, check out, then come back, before they would remove the needle in my hand and let me go. Every time I saw her after that she would explain how there is a breast cancer patient waiting for my room and I was supposed to leave hours ago! Well.. no one gave me any instructions! How was I supposed to know what to do?

So anyway, I came back to my dorm and spend the next day just laying around and relaxing. Now I'm stuck doing make up work and trying to catch up everything I missed. So everything is ok now, and I'll return to classes on Sunday.

Hopefully that was my first, last, and only trip to a UAE hospital!

Whoever said I can't build a bridge...

This past Saturday was the American University in Dubai's 3rd annual wooden bridge competition. I was asked if I wanted to participate around the 2nd week I was here, since I'm a member of ASCE. I said why not, and was put onto a team with three members who have competed before. We worked for many weeks drawing, designing, and testing in SAPP (a computer program that shows stresses). Once we agreed on a design we went straight to work. We printed a 1:1 scale CAD drawing to place the members on and cut the wood beams to their right lengths, cut the gusset plates out and began the gluing process.

Once the trusses were done, we put in some bracing and voila! We have a 2 meter long wooden bridge! Below is my team and our bridge.

A few days before the competition there was some disputes over where the three points of loading would be. The original instructions we're unclear and interpreted differently between schools and groups. So they sent out a few emails in successive days trying to explain, however, in the process, explained it incorrectly. In the end, they decided to just do a one point load to make it fair to everyone. This is what the loading device looks like: 

If you're interested and would like to know how it works, ask me in person one day, because I could spent the next 3 hours trying to explain it. 

When we first finished the bridge, looking at it, I imagined it holding somewhere around 200 pounds at the most. I mean its a wooden bridge! When we got up to the loading deck for testing, I couldn't have been more surprised. While watching from the side, I heard a loud snap after a few minutes. I thought it was a member. It wasn't. The metal rod snapped inside of our bridge! They stopped the loading while everyone was chanting "break that bridge!" to add a 2nd metal rod and continued loading. It held 1710lbs! (776kg) and weighed only 5.6kg. 

Scoring is done by dividing the load it carried by the weight^2.

We were well in the lead when we went and there were only 8 of 23 teams left. Until one of the last University of Sharjah teams went and carried 35 more kgs than our. We were bumped into 2nd place were we finished. Now bad for being open to the entire UAE. Definitely a great first experience for me. When I go back to Marshall, I'd like to see if we can incorporate this into either the curriculum or just have out own competition some day.

Among my souvenirs

Oh what a weekend..

Thursday night
I went out with one of my IXO friends. She took me jet skiing first which I thought was pretty cool. It was a lot of fun (and cheap!) to just ride around the Sharjah creek (its not like a normal creek, more like a bay). Afterwards, however, wasn't so much fun. The indian worker tried to accuse me of crashing the jet ski, obviously trying to take advantage of me being a foreigner and just make some money. I didn't crash and no one hit me. So he and my friend argued in arabic for a while and he wouldn't give us our IDs back. Finally she called the police because we just wanted to leave. The three of them talked and talked and talked and again, he tried to take advantage of the situation by speaking to the police in Hindu, since neither of us could understand. The police explained that they get calls like this is all the time and because it's easy for them to use and old scratch over and over on different people. Finally the police made him give us our IDs back and told us to tell him we were going to the police station, but really just leave. So we did.
Then we walked along the beach for a while, got some coffee and dinner, then I took the metro home and she went to her home in Dubai.

Friday
Spent the morning and early afternoon doing reading and some homework. A little bit of lounging around. Then around 5, went out with some new friends. Sarah, Jumana, Noor, Zeena, and Farah have really taken me in are showing me around the place. First we went to GBK which stands for something about burgers lol Then we went to see Hall Pass, which is incredibly funny and met up with some more of their friends. Then just hung out a while around Dubai. Unfortunately, we were late coming back, but only by a few minutes, so we didn't have to sign. Once we got back, we all went to Jumana's room to just hang out a bit longer. I ended up not leaving until around 3:30 but didn't even realize it was so late. It was a great day, and I had a blast!

Saturday
Today was another great day. We were supposed to go to falafel for brunch but the other girls didn't actually wake up until around 2 since we were up so late. So we left around 2:30 and went to this nice local restaurant and I actually hate hummus and falafel and drank mint tea. I didn't have a clue what to order, so we just ordered a few different dishes and just shared everything. It wasn't too bad and the falafel was pretty good. Not something I would crave, but not bad to try. If you know me, you'll know I'm a pretty picky eater and don't usually try new things that look like this, but I was feeling adventurous. We then went for ice cream and hung around this little park, but I can't remember the name of it.

All in all, a very nice weekend. I really don't want to go to classes tomorrow. Weekdays always ruin the weekend. But only 5 days till the next one!

Peace out!

Arabian Nights

I've had Arabian Nights stuck in my head all day. Good theme song for the day though, because I finally got to go on a desert safari! :-)

We got picked up at AUS in two land cruisers. Thinking we would take these to the desert then get in some smaller jeeps, we all piled in - 8 people in each. We first stopped at this little market where some of us bought head scarves, some bought knives, some just got water. Then we were off. There was so much anticipation, because literally, we could just drive off the road anywhere and go dune bashing because we were in the middle of the Arabian Desert the entire time. At one point, we started slowing down. Unsure why, we all just looked around and thought we were just gonna cruise off the road but soon realized there were about 20 camels just a walkin' down the center of the highway! The road we were on was your typical Montana, flat, high speed limit but everyone goes way faster because you get so bored driving on it, road. And there are these camels just nonchalantly walking along. Funny thing is, is they were all single file. I'm yet to see just a bunch of camels walking not in line. Weird.

We didn't get into smaller vehicles, but after feeling the V8, I wouldn't want to. That was a pretty incredible experience. I've been 4 wheeling many times; jeeps, trucks, ATVs, slid around on ice. Nothing compares to this. It wasn't quite as intense as I was expecting, but just the feeling was totally different. You could slide like you were on ice, but have the hills like going on dirt. Not to mention the amazing scenery.

After about 20 minutes, we stopped and had a chance to get out and take pictures. And probably the engines needed to cool off a bit. Here are some pictures from when we stopped.

After some more riding, we finally arrived at this "camp site". I'm not exactly sure what to call it, but thats the term I heard them use. They had camels for us to ride, hookah, henna tattoos, abayas and candoras to try on, dancing and lots of food! We obviously started with the camels because who doesn't love camels?? We couldn't ride them long or very far. And they only had two. But it's ok, because they are still awesome!

Then we smoked some hookah, walked around, tried on some abayas and candoras and waited for dinner. They gave us some appetizers first, and since it was dark, I couldn't really tell what it was. But I was feeling courageous and just ate it. It was really good. Something fried and some type of roll. I think Anna said it was an egg roll? Whatever it was, it was good until Danny opened his mouth. I'm still not sure if he was lying or not, but he said to watch out because there is some liver mixed in and you have to make sure to squeeze out the bile first. I lost my appetite.  

Finally the belly dancers came out and so did our food. Dinner was delicious. Lots of different pastas and meats. I think there was chicken, lamb and camel? Again, I'm not sure of what I was eating, but it sure was good!

So we all piled back into the land cruisers and cruised on home. 

So you think the desert - always hot, right? Wrong. Once the sun went down it was cold. To be fair, it was a chilly day, but still. I wish I had a jacket! Might be the last time for a while I think that!

Arabian nights
Like Arabian days
More often than not
Are hotter than hot
In a lot of good ways

Arabian nights
'Neath Arabian moons
A fool off his guard
Could fall and fall hard
Out there on the dunes