Our first trip out of the Kingdom was a professional development conference on assessment that we were told, coerced, influenced to, asked to, decided to attend. It took place over a weekend, so we weren’t thrilled over the prospect, but it seemed like an interesting and valid opportunity to develop our trade. We got our re-entry visas, booked our hotel and flight, and got ready to roll. Shannon and I were both asked to attend so we got to share a room in a nice hotel.
We were whisked away immediately after school on Thursday into a bus. After hopping on our flight, and a quick one hour jaunt to Bahrain, we landed and checked into our hotel. The hotel was nice and had a nice view of the city. One thing I have to say about Middle Eastern cities that I have seen so far is that they get creative with their architecture. The view from the hotel provided ample opportunity to appreciate the creative shapes incorporated in the buildings.
After we checked in, we went down to a restaurant in the hotel. We met up with a lot of our colleagues where some folks decided to partake in the one thing most forbidden in the Kingdom; eat pork. Bahrain does not have many of the same practices that many consider restrictive due to cultural differences in habits. While we were there, we noticed that aside from our contingency of teachers, the rest of the guests at the hotel were one of two types. There were many Saudi men, in their traditional thobes and red checkered scarves, partaking in libations in an environment where it was allowed. The other type were bikers. There must have been some sort of biker events going on that weekend in Bahrain. I lived in Florida for a while, this looked like a small version of Bike Week in Daytona Beach, but the bikers were almost exclusively Arab men. It was an interesting experience, and a diverse set of customers for sure.
The first day of the conference flew by and that after, we hopped in the car of a coworker who had previously lived in Bahrain for 3 years. We listened as he drove around, pointed out significant landmarks, and pulled up to a shawarma place on the side of the road, where they brought us delicious spicy shawarma. To those not familiar, shawarma is a shaved meat burrito of sorts, with potato, sauce, and veggies rolled up inside of a tortilla like wrap. Eating regional food always reminds me of the interconnected nature of all people and cultures. In my experience, nearly every culture has some form of burrito/shawarma, empanada, zatar, pierogi, etc. People know what they like! Give me bread with cheese, potato, and meat stuffed inside. I want to be able to hold my meal in a portable vessel! Anyway, unrelated, and I digress.
That night, we went into the city center with a different group of teachers that we hadn’t known well before. In a school as large as ours, with everyone as busy as they are, and preordained cliques of teachers forming early with each wave of new teachers who come through year to year, we don’t get to know everyone very well. Since 32 of our teachers went to the conference, it was a good opportunity to have a bunch of us in one place. We got to know some teachers well over the trip.
The next day, we caught a ride with the same teacher instead of taking the hotel bus to the conference. We figured we’d get a few extra minutes at breakfast, and have the freedom of not being squished on a bus with 100 other teachers. Of course, we got caught up in Bahrain traffic and showed up to the conference fifteen minutes late. We pretended no one would notice and snuck in the back of the workshop room. When we pulled up, we saw another car of our teachers showing up. About 10 of us were late in total. We locked eyes with their car and everyone simultaneously knew that if we beat the other group, we wouldn’t be the MOST late to show up. We fast walked through the school campus and I opened the door, hoping to sneak into the back room of our workshop. It was inevitable that we would be noticed, but I tried to be as sneaky as possible, hoping that maybe I could get to a seat just in time for the decision makers at our school to notice the people sneaking in behind me. Well, out of the 30 people in the room, 20 or so were from our school, and 10 of us were late. We were noticed. I felt bad, and was embarrassed. I’ll be sure to remember that feeling the next time I have some students try to sneak into my class late. These things happen.
After the conference, we toured the city/island/country a bit more. We went to a local mall and wandered around, where we saw more “forbidden” things such as movie theaters, Christmas holiday displays, and even a “winterberry tree.” It was a cool cultural experience to see the city and check out more of the region.
We found our way to the airport, having foregone any semblance of weekend rest, grading, lesson planning, or leisure time. We piled on to our plane, with about 25 of our teachers. I quickly fell asleep due to exhaustion, in an effort to combat the inevitable exhaustion to come the next day. It was just a short flight back after all.
I woke up just in time to hear about a slight “delay in landing” of no more than five minutes. We landed and walked through a relatively empty airport. Not thinking about it, we gave our re-entry visas to the appropriate officials, and we were quickly waved through the customs inspection line.
When we got our bags and got outside where we were to wait for our bus, one of the teachers told us that the airport was under attack. Let me say that again. The airport. That we were standing in. Was under. Attack. This is a jarring thing to hear. This, of course prompted a universal checking of phones, and as phones were connecting to our local cell phone towers, we were all hearing a symphony of pings from our text messages.
Background context. This blog is not the place to outline the complexity that is the web of drama that is geopolitics in the Middle East. However, the necessary context for this scenario is that Saudi Arabia and the current group in governmental control of Yemen, are at war. The war has been going on for a while. Even this scenario is more complex than that, without figuring in the alleged role of Lebanon, Iran, and other parts of the region. So for the sake of this story, in response to the ongoing war, the government of Yemen fired missiles at the airport in Riyadh, where we were standing. The goal was to attack a civilian target as a part of the ongoing war. So we were in the middle of it. The aforementioned delay was due to the fact that the Saudi government was in the process of shooting down the missile, thus delaying our landing. Apparently, the missile was successfully shot down. Shrapnel from the mid-air explosion landed in the parking lot area of the airport. There is a lot more to the story than that, but for the sake of this blog, and of our experiences, that is all that needs to be said.
Sufficiently freaked out, we got on the (by this time, LOOOOOONG overdue bus) and went back to the compound. It was late, and we were tired, so despite the fact that you could technically argue that we had, moments before, been in the middle of an act of war, we showered and went to sleep for the next night. Needless to say, my Global Politics class was significantly more interesting the next day as school went on as usual. It was a crazy trip, and a story that will probably live long in the pantheon of our overseas adventures.
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