Sept 30

Sept 30 Saturday. The next day, I was quite thankful when I recieved a text message from Faris that morning saying "Hello Rain sorry cant come tody. I am sick" so I just slept as long as I could... Woke up started doing some studying and homework for my class with Ismael in the evening. At 6:15, me, Matt, and Markus (now feeling fine again) went to a little restaurant in Bab-Al-Sabah that Matt had been to before and who were really nice, I guess. We were the only people there besides a lone soldier or police officer, which was kind of strange consider it is Ramadan. We had to wait a long time to get our food, but we were finally served up some salta, along with some strange concoction called Fatih, I think, which consisted of basically everything they had, bread, beans, whatever, into this steaming mix of food. If was similar to salta, but full of stuff, and really thick... They said it was exclusive to this restaurant, I'm not sure how true that is, but I didn't find it to be very good. Really the first Yemeni food that I've tried and didn't really want to it. It was just two much of a strange mix of things. Along with some shafout, which seems to be especially common during Ramadan. The whole staff then sat down and ate right along with us, the three of them. They were all young guys, about our age, and it was good practice speaking in Arabic. Of course I said the strange Fatih mix was "Tammam" (okay/good) when they asked me about it. I guess they were able to sit down and eat along with us from the giant bowl since they didn't exactly have a lot of customers at the moment. We hung around and talked to them for awhile longer, then I had to go get ready for my evening class. The whole thing cost the three of us only 400 riyals, or 2 dollars. Which is again really really cheap, and when I later told my teacher the price he told me it wasn't possible in Yemen. I guess it was so cheap because they ate with us, perhaps. After that I headed out to the school to meet Ismail there, the first time we have had class at the institute instead of his house since Ramadan started. Of course Ismail was about 20-30 minutes, as per his usual style, and we wrapped up with the previous text. Since Ramadan started Markus has had some problems with Ismail, because he essentially got squeezed out of Ismail teaching him. It's really Ismail's fault because during Ramadan he can't make it to work before maybe 3pm, and he was supposed to be meeting Markus at 12... However he has other students to meet too, in the afternoon and just me in the evening. So since Ismail is somehow physically incapable of coming to work by 12 or even 1 or 2, Markus essentially got dropped from Ismail's schedule... He was very upset about this because he's been with Ismail for 2 months now, and has about 2-3 weeks left here and wants to finish his program with him. Ismail has 4 students now (in order of seniority, or time with him) Daniel, Markus, Me, a new Korean girl... So by some luck me, Daniel and the Korean girl still get classes, and Markus doesn't. He had to arrange for a new teacher, and I feel really bad for him. Anyways, I told Markus I was meeting Ismail at the institute tonight, so he decided to show up when my lesson ended to see if he could squeeze in a lesson (the institute owes him hours anyways), but Ismail was already late to meet a friend for Ramadan... Markus got pretty angry because Ismail never had any time for him this past week and kept promising him that they'd meet. They were arguing in Arabic, and then Markus said something about him not being a good Muslim, or he had to miss lessons because of Islam or something along those lines which really offended Ismail who now started yelling, leading to the crazy groundskeeper coming out of his shack to see what the commotion was, and then Markus storming off and slamming the gate. Drama. But I feel really bad for Markus, he should finish the program with him. Especially considering that I go over there nightly and sit around from 8pm-12. In any case I went back to mafraj at the house. Matt came up and played his PSP games, I did homework. Later after Matt went to sleep a new Italian student came up. His name is Daniel also I think, and he's about mid-20s. I think he's just studying Arabic part-time/for interest. He's been to Yemen 2 years ago with YLC but just for a month, and studies Arabic part time at the University of Trieste. So he's just returned for another 20 days only, because that's only the time he could afford to take off on holiday. He seemed pretty clueless about Ramadan though, he asked if the school served breakfast (YLC did and does), and asked where I eat at in the mornings... Well, of course nothing is open for breakfast now during Ramadan, which I told him. "Oh, so just coffee then, I guess" Nope, won't find any coffee either now... not until about 3 or 4 pm do the shops start opening to sell food for breaking the fast. I think he'll be here during Ramadan only, not sure though. I continued doing homework up in the mafraj until the nightly power outage, after which I had to guide myself back down stairs with my handy pocket flash light (a must when living in Yemen). I continued doing some homework by flash light until the power came back on after an hour and a half or so. Another late night for me, couldn't sleep.