It's like college all over the world

Do you remember what it was like when you first went off to college? Perhaps, if you're from the USA, it might have followed the paradigm of leaving the tearful mother and proud father behind at your old house and possibly old hometown to discover the adventurous freedoms of the knowledge/new people/alcohol laden world that is the American college scene. What a reckless, happy and unforgettable (except those one-too-many nights with one-too-many drinks...) four years, you sigh nostalgically. Enter graduate school: a specialized and perhaps melancholically dry experience where your new classes have fewer students and more math, and your Thursday night hang-out has been cut back to one bar and one early & responsibly self-imposed curfew - for you are becoming a mature adult now (at least you tell yourself; a new mantra that sinks in through those ongoing grad years).

Which is exactly what I wanted before I came to KAUST. What I've experienced in the past ten days is like no other "academic" experience ever before - what many universities herald but hardly understand and barely offer: diversity. Several nights thus far I have played football (soccer) - the universal unifier of foreign cultures - with peers from sixty countries. I can name for you at least one late-night footy player from Nigeria, Sudan, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Canada, Ireland, South Korea, Hong Kong, China, the Philippines, Mexico, Colombia, Argentina... and that's just what's coming to mind right now...

At KAUST, internationalism isn't some sad mini-celebration - some Caucasian cause for recognition of Roberto, your school's lone South American citizen, via the baking and sharing of intercultural cupcakes. At KAUST, you will find yourself, as I did, truly embedded into the culture, listening to traditional Saudi Arabian folk music (from around Jeddah) at some school-wide party -


& riding camels used by the bedouins of the desert for centuries (not the same exact individuals of course, for camels live only 40-50 years unless they are smacked by Saudi buses), now decked out for celebration -


& even joining in some Saudi sword dancing, totally free-form, with your similarly confused and bemused companions.


While surely, this cultural incorporation may occur in any part of the world at any foreign school, the key to my point about KAUST is that while you may have been falling off a smelly but charming dromedary last week while waving a sword and wearing traditional Hijazi Imma/Immama headgear - tonight, on walking back from the library, you'll find, say, 20 of your Mexican companeros dancing merengue and salsa in discovery square for Pepe's cumpleanos, and indeed you'll find yourself joining in - until 3:30 in the morning, perhaps - doing the macarena and learning how to jump and swing to new beats you never would have heard before were it not for Angel's apropos mp3-picking and the encouraging cheers of Berenice la hermosa...


(Unfortunately, you'll have to wait for more photos of those shenanigans until Damien of Argentina/USA/Mexico posts them on facebook...)

A final note explaining the coupling between true diversity and the unfettered years of undergraduate zaniness? And sans the typical rigor associated with graduate education? Well friends, as long as KAUST labs/marine facilities/dive safety office remain incomplete, and the concept of "original research" and daily lab work lay dormant and misty, the international 20-something is left free to wax romantic about the wonders of having friends from sixty or so countries - sixty or so styles of experiencing the joys of youth - and the wonders of the college years live on.