Sept 16

Sept 16 The next day, Saturday, Matthew and I went to breakfast near Bab al-Yemen for some kebabs (seems like a strange breakfast to me) and I had classes of course. When I met Ismail at 1:30 for our normal class time he told me he had been waiting at the Institute for 2 hours... I guess since Marcus is gone he assumed I would intuitively realize that my class time had been bumped up two hours for this week. Oh well. I still really wanted to buy a cell phone, the guy told me he would help me and took me to the shop initially, but I hadn't seen him since. I knew the general area of the store we went to so I just started walking. First I went to make a copy of a copy of my passport which is necessary in order to purchase a phone. I remembered the Huda Supermarket which we drove by on the way to the phone stores, so I was on the right path. So I just kept walking down Az-Zubairy street hoping I would run into a lot of phone places... I found a couple stores, but after the Supermarket nothing looked familiar, so we must have turned off somewhere. I went to those couple of stores in order to ask what the cheapest used phone is and got some pretty high prices, higher than the price of that new phone we found earlier... So I just told them I didn't have my passport with me so I couldn't buy it now. Later I turned off on another main road, not even sure what it was, and kept walking. It was a really busy shopping street, lots and lots of clothes and other goods. I saw the most women at once in the this area that I have seen since arriving. It was almost a sea of black. Found some more internet cafes off of this street, as well as some video game 'cafes' and stores selling DVDs and games. I was now walking around in completely new areas, in the dark now, and not sure of whether I was headed the right way. Then this guy, Muhammad, who was walking the same direction started talking to me, and was headed for the main square so I was able to practice my Arabic with him while walking. I complained that I didn't know where to buy a cheap cell phone and he gave me his number (not that I could call) and his help tomorrow, although I didn't take him up on it. I finally returned to the house in order to start doing my homework and was then invited to join the other two Brits who live at the house, Byan and Evan, for dinner. They have been here for about 6 or 7 weeks, but left on vacation the day before I arrived. So Matthew and I joined them, along with their friend Izzy, who lives in the Bayt al-Talabat (The female student house). And headed out to one of their favorite restaurants. The whole lot of them, all four of the Brits, actually go to the same school in the UK. The three came together and Matthew is in the year ahead of them. But we went to this nice fish restaurant (An-Naseem) near Bab al-Yemen. It is basically a whole fish that they serve to you, along with bread, and beans and other things. It was quite good actually. At dinner we were also joined by a German girl named Yudid who has been here for the same amount of time as the 3 Brits, but is staying for 6 months. Whereas Izzy and Ivan left in two days, and Byan two days after them. So they whole lot of them had many good tips for me and Matthew, and many good stories. I thought a hilarious one was that they said a lot of the Suqotrans (the distant island the went to for a week) are totally convinced that America is going to invade the island (I have no idea why!) When they were with their driver he saw a large cargo ship off the coast sailing by, and claimed it was an American navy vessel for the impending invasion, despite the fact that it is visibly a standard cargo ship. And then when they were at the airport they ran into an airport employing who claimed that two Yemenia Airlines planes were American war planes and said "Zis is zee start of ze war" apparently because he didn't know about their scheduled arrival. Or maybe the American military did commandeer two civilian Yemenia jets for their invasion of Suqotra. After that we returned to the house with Byan and Ivan and they had tons more stories and tips for us. Recommending restaurants, travel guides, places to go, things to do, where to shop. Apparently it is possible to buy a custom fitted suit here for $30. At this time there was the second power outage, so we sat around in the mafraj with my flashlight lamp. Stayed up fairly late talking to them before finally heading to sleep.