Sept 17

Sept 17 The next day, Sunday, not a whole lot happened, classes as usual. Met an older Spanish gentleman studying Arabic at the institute. He is a Muslim and on a year long sabbatical. He has traveled to practically every Arabic country it seems like. He is on crutches and so he lives in the institute instead of the student housing. I was supposed to meet Ismail at 10:30 I guess, but he didn't show up until about 11:30, I guess because transportation was all messed up because of a huge pre-election rally they were holding for Ali Abdullah Saleh which had over a million people I guess. It was the last of the big public displays by either candidate before the election. So I was pretty starving by this point and went with him to a nearby restaurant for some pretty delicious sandwiches. One was a 'cheese' sandwich, which sounds strange but was pretty good. After class I went back to the house to take a nap for a few hours, then Matthew woke me up knocking on my door. We decided to go out to Huda supermarket to get provisions. I bought some peanut butter, jelly, Doritos, milk, Corn Flakes, and orange juice so I'd have at least a few things around the house. Then we grabbed some Yemeni "shwarmas" which is meat inside a little mini-baguette type bread. Not exactly the same thing. After we dropped off groceries we were invited to join the other foreigners for Izzy and Ivan's last night in Yemen at the juice bar at 8. So I first went to the internet cafe to respond to some emails, and then just broke down and went to cell phone store to buy whatever the cheapest one was. Got a used one for about $50 again, more expensive than the new one I could've got, but I just wanted to get one. All in all to register with the company Sabafon and buy the card it was about $70. Then I joined everybody a little late because the process of buying it took longer than expected. Had a really really excellent fresh strawberry juice drink for $1.50 for a large, and just talked to everybody again. After that we returned to the house and up to the mafraj, the Brits seemed to be quite amused by Oprah and Dr. Phil and other American shows of this nature on satellite. The next day was class as usual, and more of the same... Walking around and exploring on my own, doing some homework. On my way back I stopped at a little store near the house to purchase some water and the store keeper and I talkedfor a long time, about Yemen, about the upcoming elections, about all sorts of things. He was very pro-Ali Abdullah Saleh, and even gave me a few stickers which I guess I ended up forgetting there because I haven't seen them since. He was really nice though, 20 years old or so. So I always go to his store now when I need something. We also watched videos of the pre-election rallies of Bin Shamlan and Ali Abdullah Saleh... Saleh's rally was enormous, there was supposed to be over a million there and it sure looked like it. People do seem to genuinely like him, from the majority of people I talk to here.