To many Arab Americans and Americans in general, the country of Saudi Arabia is known only through scattered news stories or pictures and second-hand stories of Islam’s holiest site, Mecca.

Mohamed Nehme (wearing tie), a senior at Michigan-Dearborn and the president of the school’s Lebanese Student Association, talks with members of Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Higher Education. Photo courtesy of Mohamed Nehme

But many of the other aspects of the country such as the culture, education, and architecture in the cities and towns aren’t quite as well known.

This summer, Mohamed Nehme, a senior at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, had a chance to experience some of the best sights, sounds, and company Saudi Arabia had to offer, however, through a trip that was fully paid for by the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations starting with his arrival at King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on June 6 of this year.

Nehme, who serves as the president of the Lebanese Student Association at UM-Dearborn, was selected as one of just nine participants in the United States after applying through the Model Arab League at school of which he is also a member.

He admitted that his knowledge of the country was a bit a lacking compared to that of other countries in the Middle East region going into the ten-day trip.

“I had no idea what to expect going in, I thought it’d be all sand and desert and the majority of it is, but the cities are built magnificently, they’re so beautiful, and they have the cleanest streets, I was so surprised by everything there,” he said.

Included on the itinerary were visits the U.S. embassy, trips to state-of-the-art industrial centers and institutions of higher learning, and dinners with U.S. consulate generals and Saudi billionaire Abdulrahman Al-Zamir.

Nehme talked about the hospitality he and his eight peers received.

“The government treated us like royalty, and the people treated us with great respect,” he said. “The main objective was for us to go there in order to learn and build a stronger relationship between Americans and the Saudis.”

Part of the vision of the trip was to continue the process of exposing American students to Saudi Arabian culture, which the country has started focusing on recently. Nehme said that thousands of students are sent to America every year to learn English and to study in various American disciplines.

“They want us to understand them as much they understand us,” he said.

Education has been a big focus of Saudi Arabia recently according to Nehme, as he learned at his visits to places such as King Saud University in Riyadh, a new $20-billion institution of higher learning that was named one of the top 230 universities in the world and is also part of the government’s 26% expenditure plan on schools and education.

Nehme also visited King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in the city of Thuwal.

 “It was one of the most amazing technological universities I’ve ever seen, they’ve spent so much money on it and everything runs so well,” Nehme said.

“In 50 of 60 years, they’re going to run out of oil and as reinforcement for that, they are spending a lot of money on education.”

Politics were also an important topic of discussion during the group’s travels, and after speaking with government officials, Nehme came away with a more detailed understanding of the political leanings of the country.

He said that officials spoke about their affinity for other Arab countries in the region as opposed to just the United States and its other Western allies. Officials also spoke about how much they wanted to help bring about a solution for peace in occupied and blockaded Palestine.

The highlight of the trip for Nehme, who was the only Muslim and only Arab American in the group, was his side visit to the holy city of Mecca on June 14, which took place while his peers visited Effat University for Women in the city of Jeddah.

“Seeing the Kaaba, that experience alone was the best experience, you know, you just have to go and see it for yourself, it’s so much bigger and so much more beautiful than you see in pictures,” he said. “It kind that stops you in your tracks, it’s like an out-of-body experience,” he said.

While the visit was an enjoyable one and an eye-opener for Nehme and his peers, there’s one thing he didn’t care for quite as much: the heat. The temperature during his visit to Mecca was 117 degrees Fahrenheit and temperatures climbed as high as 120 degrees during his visit.

But Nehme considers himself richer for the experience and hopes other people will have take advantage of their chances to do the same, especially those who visit to make the Hajj.

“I recommend that they visit the rest of Saudi Arabia, to go there and be educated for themselves and to experience the different identity of it,” he said. “It’s completely different and everyone has ignorance when they look at somewhere they’ve never been but this is a way to overcome that ignorance.”