Oil Wealth

Day 5-Oil!!!

Wow! Look at this picture I took!

We were lucky enough to get close to this giant oil-pumpin'-machine! This is pretty much the biggest in the world! I'm surprised none of the workers chased us away from thier property! Oh well, it wasn't like we were going to steal a few barrels of petroleum anyway!

Hey, did you know that "Petroleum" actually means "rock oil" in Greek? That's probably because it is found in rock formations under the earth's surface!

Here's a list of other countries and how much oil they produce...

In Millions of Barrels Per Day
Saudi Arabia......................................................................10.72
Iran.......................................................................................4.15

United Arab Emirates........................................................2.94
Kuwait..................................................................................2.67
Iraq.......................................................................................2.01

Here's a map showing where some oil reserves are located...

Oil Reserve Locations:(open link if you can't read this)

"We're ariving to the airport," my dad said.

"Yeah! We're going home!"

Gotta go, bye!

Climate

Day 4 (contd.)-Climate

Hi, I'm blogging again, just felt bored with nothing much to do so I decided to show you what the weather is really like here.

Right now it isn't so bad; a little hot but mostly mild and it looks like we might be getting some rain clouds...!

But if we were out here in the middle of July... whew!... we would be suffering from heat stroke right now! Here are a few weather charts I found over the internet...

[Left: Temperature Chart (Current Temp.); Right: Average Rainfall]

Since it might be hard to read these because of how small the text is, I'll explain a little more...

Temperature Chart: Saudi Arabia: 10-20° C; Oman: 20° C; Iran: 0-20° C; Iraq: 5-15°C; Jordan: 10°C; Syria: 5-10°C; Turkey: 0-5°C;

Rainfall Chart: Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Jordan, Iran, Syria, and Oman have an average of Under 10 Inches of rain. Turkey has an average of 10-40 Inches of rain.

Mountains and Plateaus

Day 3-Zagros Mountains

Hey look at all these cool pictures I found over the internet on my laptop!

Wow! They're huuuuuuuuge! And the mountains are too! Anyway, here are some facts about them...

Location: Western Iran

Formation Due To: Tectonic Plate Colision

Height: 3,500 miles

Meaning Of The Name: Zagarthians/Sagarthians, an ancient tribe that used to inhabit the mountains.

Name Of The Highest Peak: Zard Kuh (4,548 miles)

Well, looks like it's getting dark, we're going to camp out in the desert again I suppose. More hotdogs!

The Tigris River and Euphrates River

Day 4-The Tigris and Euphrates River

Today I woke up a little early, so I decided to surf the internet on my laptop and learn a little more about the Middle East. Here's some pictures of a couple rivers and an ancient civilization that used to be there...

Mesopotamia-This ancient city known as Mesopotamia (land between rivers), also known as the "Cradle of Civilization", is said to be the first form of civilization in the world! It is located between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.

Tigris River- It's original name, which is Idigna, means "running water" or "the swift river" in Sumerian. It is about 1,200 miles long and joins up with the Euphrates River, forming the river called Shatt al-Arab, which flows out into the Persian Gulf.

Euphrates River- The Euphrates River's Greek name, Phrat, means "fertilizing". The other half of the name could be (Persian) Feret or (Greek) φέρω (pronounced [fero]), which both mean "to carry" or "to bring forword". It is 1,728 miles long and flows into the Shat al-Arab, which then empties out into the Persian Gulf.

Middle Eastern Deserts

Day 2-Syrian Desert

I woke up at 7:00 am and had breakfast, which was some orange juice and a couple energy bars. Then we packed up camp and set out to the Syrian Desert.

6:00 pm

"Are we there yet?" I asked?

"Not for another our," said my dad.

It's a good thing we brought some gas with us or else we would have been stranded by now. We had to fuel up twice already! Oh, and the reason why it's taking so long is because this desert is huge! I read that it was 250,000 square miles! It would have taken two days to get there if there had been a speed limit! I'll bet you my dad has the fastest off-road jeep in the world!

6:55 pm

We're here! Finally! It had taken about 12 hours but we did it, we've reached the boarder between the Rub al-Khali and the Syrian Desrets! Here's some pictures!

(We passed by some civilization as we traveled!)

"Sorry, but we're going to have to go home now."

"Whaaat?!"

"Remember, there's a war going on in Iraq, and we are completely cut off from the Zagros mountains. Sorry."

Oh well, I guess I'll just have to tell you about the Zagros mountains as we go back through the desert!

Rub al-Khali Desert

Journey through the Middle East

Day 1-Rub al-Khali Desert

Today we are heading over to the Rub al-Khali Desert, the largest desert in the world. We will be crossing through Saudi Arabia to get to it. I've checked the weather today and conditions will be perfect today; Since we are here in the middle of February, the temperature is 25 degrees Celsius!

We're here! I took a few pictures of the sand dunes as we entered.

You can see them get taller as we go further into the desert!

Here's a little slideshow I put together for you to see!

We've arrived to a good place to set up camp with plenty of resources, near a camp of nomads! We offered them to join us for dinner whenever they felt like it. They politely turned down the offer. Tonight we're going to roast hotdogs over a fire, my favorite!

Tomorrow we'll head on out to the Syrian Desert, more sand!

Another blog posted by one of Mr. R's 7th grade students...

Hi, it's me Ethan again, only this time im going solo. My friend Sebastien got his scheduel changed. So anyway, now Mr. R has me and the rest of the 7th grade making anoth blog, this time it's about Asia.
The project name is Middle Eastern Odyssey.

Note: All materiel posted after this is not really information from me traveling through the desert... it's just part of the assignment to pretend that I'm on a desert trip!

PS- Not all posts are in order!