Back to work + Trip to Jeddah

There's not much to report from the campus this week - we're both still busy with our projects and working hard.

Last week, Felix also had his second 24-hour trip. This time to the lagoon of KAEC (King Abdullah Economic City).

This week, unfortunately, the clams are in trouble - I have to kill them in order to take tissue samples and determine the ratio of clam shell to tissue. (A task that, as you might imagine, I'm not particularly excited about...)
Last week I enjoyed an Arabic coffee with the killer clams ;-)

On the weekend, we were able to participate in another university trip. This time, we returned to Jeddah.

On this occasion, we finally found out why there are so many different pronunciations for the city here: Jeddah, Jiddah, and Joddah.

The theory for 'Jiddah' is derived from a sheikh whose name was 'Jiddah' and whose lineage allegedly extends back to the ninth great-grandfather of Mohammed.

'Joddah' means 'coast' in Arabic and 'Jaddah' stands for the Arabic word for 'grandmother', which in this case can be derived from the legend that Eve (yes, the Eve of Adam&Eve) died and was buried here.

Our first stop was the 'Al Tayibat City Museum for International Civilization' - a huge private collection.

Quite impressive, interesting and sometimes really bizarre. The original owner (today managed by his son) not only collected an enormous number of typical Saudi/Arab objects, garments, coins, pictures, carpets, etc., but somehow also everything 'Western' that came across his path in his life (at least it seemed so ;-))

In today's time (especially with access to the Internet and thus images from almost the whole world), this seems a bit strange and bizarre. A few years ago, however, this was perhaps the opportunity for local visitors to see things from 'civilizations' of other countries (in this case, of course, once again the USA). Of course, if these are then posters of Bugs Bunny, toy cars, and cheesy T-shirts from the Maryland aquarium, it seems quite strange to us ;-)

We also visited the art gallery of a local painter and took a great guided tour through Al-Balad (the old town of Jeddah, about which we wrote an entry right at the beginning of our stay). The highlight here was definitely being on the rooftop terrace of one of the old houses at sunset and listening to the call to prayer from 40 mosques, all at the same time.

View of the old town (Al-Balad) of Jeddah

In less than a month, we will be heading home - hard to believe actually...
But until then, there will certainly be a few more blog entries.

But now, greetings from us

Felix and Susann