The Help Center, the Mall, and Great Dinner Conversation

Today we began the day with a trip to the Help Center, a center for children with disabilities. This is a center that was begun by a wealthy Saudi family because they witnessed Saudis having to send their kids to special schools outside of the country. This cost for sending your child to this center depends on how much you make, and they said that they never have had to turn anyone away because of money. It is a state-of-the-art facility that would be the envy of any special school. A bunch of us brought books as gifts, and I was able to donate a copy of Unexpected Indiana to this school’s library. You can see a picture of the outside of the school below.

After this inspiring visit we went to the office of the Saudi Gazette. We toured the building and then met with staff members from the paper. We had a panel discussion about Saudi Arabian issues, and about press censorship. We learned that press censorship has gotten much better over the past 20 years, but that newspapers are still censored (on a scale of 1-10, an opinion I heard was that Saudi Arabia was a 7). I don’t know if that is entirely true because there are still very taboo subjects that you can’t write about in Saudi Arabia.

Then we had a very nice lunch on the Red Sea where we heard a speech about current Saudi-American relations. After our lunch we were taken to a new huge mall and we had an hour to shop. I didn’t buy much, but I did take some interesting pictures that I wish to describe below:
First, you can see Barbie vs. Fulla. Barbie Dolls are banned in Saudi Arabia because of the obvious issues with Barbie’s dress, shape, and other connotations. So, Saudi Arabia has their own doll, Fulla. You can see in the picture below a Barbie vs. Fulla display.

Now, you can see Fulla herself, with her indoor clothes on. She could never wear these clothes outside.

Now, here is Fulla in her abaya for outside business.


Another wild sight was these packages:




Did you guess what happened? The women on these packages were blacked out with a marker because they didn’t have on an abaya outside. Interesting….

Also, here is a display made for other parts of the world that have the face blurred. I am not sure exactly why they do this, but it was everywhere.


And, here is a view of the sunset and the “tallest water fountain in the world” from my window. Saudi Arabia does have immense beauty. especially if you have the money or special treatment (I have the latter) to experience it.

Dinner tonight was at the fabulous Hilton Hotel, and was preceded by a discussion with Dr. Suhair H. Al Qurashi, president of Dar Al-Hekma College. This scholar was really amazing. In fact she had just returned from the UN, traveling with the King of Saudi Arabia, presenting to people like Condoleezza Rice. After the discussion we had dinner, and at our table were two really outstanding young Saudi women. These were two who had really worked hard and were succeeding at business and education in Saudi Arabia. It was very interesting to talk with them, and to learn about their views of the current status of women’s rights. Kholoud Attar was one of the women, and she has started her own design magazine here in Jeddah called Design. The magazine is beautiful, and is a real groundbreaking idea here in Saudi Arabia. The other woman was also named Kholoud and she had studied gifted and talented education as an undergraduate student, so she and I also had a very good conversation about GT and its current status in the US and in Saudi Arabia. This was certainly my best evening of conversation with Saudis yet, and it was because of these outstanding guests at our dinner.