Houston Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Wednesday Houston—
The day started with a bus ride to the Houston headquarters of Aramco where we learned a bit about Aramco’s work. We then received an orientation presented by Pat Chichakli who had lived in Saudi Arabia for more than 20 years. While there, she taught in an Aramco operated school and so had a good amount of first hand experience about life and education in the country.
Time to eat again—we were treated to another beautiful meal. Aramco officials joined us for lunch. Brian, the acting president of the company, joined our table along with Pat Chichakli. This provided a nice opportunity for some personal conversations about Aramco and Saudi Arabia.

The afternoon began with an Aramco produced video presentation entitled “Visions of Saudi Arabia”—it was a wordless video with gorgeous pictures of the country. The remainder of the afternoon was taken up with 4 short workshops given by Saudi Alumni (previous participants in the program). These people were so excited about their trip and were bubbling over with enthusiasm. They made the experiences so real that by the time they finished I felt as though I had already visited the country.
Jerome Hoynes who teaches a unit on world religions presented ideas on how to implement the experience into the classroom. Aban Rustomji discussed ways that she has incorporated her experience into the media center. Susan Tomlinson focused on sharing the experience with the wider community and Lorelei Clark displayed her culture trunk and talked about how she uses it with both students and adults. Alma Kombargi ended the afternoon with a short language lesson in which she reviewed the correct pronunciation for the “magic words”—please, thank you, etc.
We were on our own for the evening which was consumed with last minute shopping items, getting supper and collapsing.