The students above are enrolled at Al-Yamamah University (please, no yo mama jokes), a co-educational private school located in Riyadh. It's all brand new and very impressive. They have a very western style curriculum, with the major exception that all classes are strictly segregated by sex. In the few co-ed classes, there's a partition in the middle of the room separating the boys from the girls. The students told us that the private schools are better than the public ones, which tend to use straight memorization as the primary instructional method. The boy I'm standing next to was a typical college guy, telling me that if I wanted to party I'd have to leave to country and go to Dubai. A nice boy, but a New York Yankee fan for some reason.
I gave a Chamblee yearbook to the girl, an Egpytian named Miriam Al-Sayed. The girls were asking questions about my school, and I just happend to have the book with me. It will hold an honored place in the Al-Yamamah library. She gave an eloquent defense for wearing the abaya and hijab, which included the very important "it doesn't matter if I'm having a bad hair day" rationale.
The women in our group visited the girls in their dorm, and found that they seemed very American behind closed doors- lots of designer jeans, and casual clothing, closets full of shoes and signs reminding the girls that bare midrif tops are not appropriate even in the dorm.
