What Next? Fried Chicken

I find myself never exactly sure of what exactly will be on our schedule for the day at any given point of time.  It has changed so much since our first one that now I just go with the flow and do what I'm told.  It's been a challenging lesson for me to learn, but kinda fun.  The other question that can never be guaranteed an answer is who will be driving our little bus that given day.  We have spent three days in Jeddah and have gone through four different drivers.  This poor city should have been warned about the dangers of a delegation of American women and our fearless male guardian- and all of our fury.  A quality driver is rare.  Today we did "bump" another vehicle, but such is common in the nasty traffic of Jeddah.
Our day started at Effat University, a private school for women.  It is the first one that we have seen that has a women's college for engineering.  The discussion that I had with these women was easily one of the best conversations I have had during my time in the Kingdom.  We talked frankly about feminism, women's rights, and women in society both in the United States and in Saudi Arabia.  We confronted stereotypes and how comically inaccurate they prove to be.  It's amazing what a little girl talk can do to bring world peace.  People are people, not policy.
How could we top that?  Well, fried chicken was a great way to start.  We ate take out from this regionally revered fried chicken place called Al Baik. People will fly into Jeddah to buy boxes upon boxes of it to fly home to their families in their lap.  We took our meal in the ladies room of a 300 year old house with our two lovely hosts.  It was good and tasted like home.  After lunch, we went shopping the old markets some more.  There is just so much to explore.  Shopping is just so much fun when you can barter and the goods are so varied.  We still have more to do.
We went to the opening ceremonies of an exhibition at King Abdulaziz University tonight.  It was completely segregated.  We went in through a separate entrance to watch the ceremony on closed circuit television just among us women.  I realized the benefit of the segregation when we learned a traditional Saudi dance while the men went through the exhibit.  We learned to dance, just not well.  I was certainly glad to only enjoy myself/make a fool of myself like that in front of the women.  It was nice to get to make friends with some more university students.  That has been one of my favorite things from the trip.  Now I'm crashing before another crazy (and unexpected) day!