Mohammed Saleh, MA’03

I was posted to our Embassy (Bahrain) in New Delhi for one and a half years (Feb. 2007-August 2008) and just moved to our Embassy in Beijing, China, as first Secretary.

Beijing is a great city and I feel privileged to be here in this fast, progressing country. I witnessed the Olympic Games, which were something incredible in terms of the arrangements and the performances of the world champions. I was amazed! I always remember the good days I spent in New York during my studies in the UN Programme. My kind regards to my professors and friends in New York.

Three months later...

Happy Thanksgiving to your respected family, you, and all our friends in the LIU UN Graduate Programme. As promised from before, I am attaching a picture of myself in front of Tiananmen Square in Beijing. It is now almost three months since I arrived. I am very much enjoying my time here. It is quite an experience being in a different country and culture. The people here are very nice, forthcoming and extremely peaceful. There are two major difficulties facing foreigners here, namely the food and the language. I managed to overcome the first difficulty as my wife is an excellent cook and a great housewife. To overcome the problem of the language, I started studying Chinese because you cannot survive in Beijing without the basics of Mandarin. The Chinese language in general is not that difficult. The difficult part is writing because they don't have letters like many other languages and instead have characters for each word or name. I call writing Chinese "Mission Impossible!!"

In my spare time, I am writing about the UN. I just concluded a book, which is under publication under The UN and 21st Century's Challenges (in Arabic). I have another project which is about Bahrain's role in the United Nations since joining in 1971.

I am very thankful to all my professors at LIU, who through their knowledge and experiences have helped to enrich my life. I would like to extend my kind regards to all of them as well as to my friends at LIU.

Mohammed Saleh
Beijing