Sept 20

Sept 20. Then the next day, Wednesday, was the election day here in Yemen, so there was to be no classes (three day weekend), and most businesses were supposed to be closed, I thought. We were also told that we should stay in during the elections because they weren't really sure what would happen, and tensions were high between the two groups, I guess. That was okay though, I figured I would get to sleep in, relax and do some homework. Though I was awoken that morning by tons and tons of noise coming from outside. Apparently there was a polling station right near the student housing, or there were just large groups of people congregating outside my window for no reason... But yeah, lots of annoying noise awoke me, and I even put earplugs in the night before because I figured it would be louder than usual. So I went up to the top floor of the house, about the 6th floor or so, to the mafraj to escape the street level noise and drown it out with the TV while I did some homework (or half did homework, half watched TV). This lasted until maybe 2:30 when Matt and I decided we wanted to go out and get some lunch. We went to the usual place, a fahsah (salta, a stew like mixture, but with meat) restaurant down the street near Bab Al-Sabah. We were running a little late for Fahsah or Salta, those restaurants are usually only open for lunch, I think. And they were closing up the place when we got there, so we were going to go somewhere else but they insisted we come in. The group of them, (the family I would assume) were eating out of a big bowl of fahsah and let us join in. It is basically a spicy meat stew that they make here, which you tear off small chunks of bread to scoop it up with. We ate with 2 or 3 other people while the others were cleaning everything. It was very good, and then they didn't even charge us anything, gave it to us for free... very nice. I've been there a number of times now, and it usually costs around 500 riyals, or $2.50 for 2 people, which seems somewhat pricy for Yemen. Matt headed out to the internet cafe despite the advice of his British Embassy to stay in the house the day of the election... I just returned to the house to study a little bit, and wait for my mom to try and call my cell phone at 4. She had just bought a calling card off of eBay the night before for about $0.19 per minute to call Yemen, which is pretty expensive, but it is free on my end (about $1 per minute to call from my cell phone). And it is good if she needs to get ahold of me, or so that I can talk from the student housing instead of always at the internet cafe. It worked well, no problems with it. Like I was in Seattle or something except that it was 4pm my time and 6am her's. We talked for maybe a half hour. After that Matt and I were talking with Ishaq in the kitchen who has been here for 7 months now, he is a Muslim convert from California. And he will be staying here for another 5 months. At least he knows the city and where things are. As we were talking with him Markus returned from Suqotra with lots of stories... Again saying it is an amazingly beautiful place, totally different from Yemen. But that they have absolutely nothing there, he said there are only two buildings with electricity, and all he ate for every meal was fish. He slept in a tent on the beach a few nights and in a tent in the mountains, and one night in the hotel (one of the few places with power). He absolutely loved it, but was a bit angry because he was supposed to go with the other group of Brits, but somehow or for some reason they changed their flight dates, so he was there on his own, which ended up costing him quite a bit more. He also really didn't like his tour guide that he was hooked up with (the son of the hotel owner) who would eat his food, drink his water and was constantly late... by hours. Same problems the other group had I guess. So if I ever make it down to Suqotra, I know to watch out for this guy. Funny enough at about midnight that night I got a call from Hassan, an American from my university... Last spring I took an Arabic Grammar course that was put on by the Muslim Student Association on campus, just to assist my grasp of the grammar, and Hassan who is a UW student was the one teaching the class since he had student in Yemen before and was pretty proficient. So last spring we were talking about Yemen and whatnot, but I hadn't seen him since the class ended. I emailed him right before I left for Yemen and he said he was in Yemen right now along with his brother and had been for three months, he would be staying in Sanaa for a few days before heading back to the States. We had emailed back and forth, and tried to arrange something but it didn't materialize. I finally got him my correct phone number (finally knew what it was) and he was able to call me... Anyways he apparently missed his flight, as he was supposed to leave today, and would be here in Sana'a for another couple days, so we agreed to meet up tomorrow after my class.