After nearly 24 hours of traveling, I was completely exhausted by the time we got to the school. But the welcoming crew at the school (the Royal University for Women, or RUW) was worth the wait: NesQuik cereal, jams, honey, and white bread were on the counter, and a stick of butter, cheese, and milk in the fridge. Such a nice, generous gesture and a hilarious combination of food. I slept well, and don’t think jet lag has hit me hard, though I have had some trouble forming sentences. Hopefully the rest of this post is comprehensible.
Today we went to the Bahrain Petroleum Company (Bapco) club for lunch, and went shopping a little bit. The best part of the day was the conversation we had with Parsa (RUW’s Director of General Studies) and his wife, Rana, who teaches at RUW.
Parsa and Ranna are Iranian (they refer to themselves at Persian), and have been our tour guides/care takers so far. When Parsa heard about the survey Lisa is administering at class tomorrow (a qualitative research survey for students’ pre- and post-ideas about what leadership is, and how they perceive leaders, and what leadership qualities they see in themselves, etc.), he mentioned that Lisa need to be clear about what kind of leadership she is referring to: leadership in the work, or leadership in the home.
