Oct 12

Thursday Oct 12
Let's see first day of the long 3 day weekend... Slept in late of course, until nearly 4pm. Went out to the souq down the Sa'ila with Matt. Ran into this guy named Hani who started talking to us quite a bit. He works in the Ministry of Human Rights here, and is studying English at YALI, so he jumped on the chance when he saw a few foreigners walking through the souq. He was probably especially excited when he found out that we were American and British no less, most of the foreigners seem to be German, or maybe Italian. Anyways he took Matt's cell phone number and promised to call soon... It is funny because Matt usually always goes by Matthew when he introduces himself to Arabs, maybe due to the fact that 'maat' (basically the same) means 'he died' in Arabic. Well, after that we headed out to the friendly folks' restaurant near Bab Al-Sabah for some salta. Of course they just randomly threw in some shafoot in addition to the rest, as has become customary. I know that shafoot is particularly common during Ramadan, but I'm not sure if it comes with everyone's meals, or just gets tacked on to the foreigners dinners... Matt and I wanted to use the internet but we still had to kill about 30 to 45 minutes until the internet cafes reopened at around 7:15pm. Matt worked in the British Foreign Office in Abu Dhabi last summer I think, and had told his contact there he'd be coming to Yemen, she put him in contact with her colleague at the British Embassy here in Sana'a, so Matt met up with him last week. He didn't have anything for him at the British Embassy, but he put Matt in contact with one of his friends at the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. Matt met up with them and landed a 3 month internship with UNHCR... Very cool. Anyways, he wanted to pick up some nice dressy shoes for his new internship position, so I accompanied him to the shoe store while we killed time. Matt is a really tall guy, and has big feet to match, so he had quite a bit of problems finding shoes in his size. The first place we went to had a pair in his size, but he really didn't like the style. They were really persistent though and literally bagged the shoes and put the bad in his hand, and dropped the price from 3000 riyals to 2000 ($10), he was only finally able to get them to relent when he told them he would go to the bank for more cash and then return. We went to a different shoe place near Maydan Tahrir. He ended up finding a pretty nice pair of dress shoes for 2700 rials ($13.50) and I also just asked them for a nice pair of sandals that would go well with a thobe... They handed me a light brown pair of sandals. "Gental Man" Sandals, no less. I had problems initially because I had no idea what my European shoe size is, I had to get Matt to assist me in that regard. I wasn't really sure about them, because I hadn't shopped around whatsoever for sandals, and probably could get a really cheap pair from the street vendors, but again they had boxed my "Gental Man" Sandals in their "Gentel Man" box, and bagged them up for me. Cost me 1700 riyals ($8.50)... at least I talked them down from 1800. After that we hung around for Ebharnet Internet Cafe to open, but it still hadn't reopened. We noticed a different internet/phone shop across the street that neither of us had used before, so we decided to give it a shot. Pretty good speed, and really cheap. Basically about 1 riyals per minute. or 1/2 cent per minute. They are all really cheap, but you do find some cheaper than others. I finished up after about half an hour, and left Matt there while I went to the juice bar for the usually big strawberry juice drink and some baklawa desserts. The two baklawa desserts were 50 cents, which is a little expensive compared to some places. And the large strawberry juice drink seems to be one of the more expensive regular purchases I make here, at $1.50. After that I returned to the student house and ran into Ed and Matt. We talked for awhile in the stairs near the kitchen... Then I decided to change into my Yemeni clothes to go lounge in the mafraj while doing homework. However right before I made it to the mafraj the power cut out here, quite early in the evening too. Matt was up in the mafraj too at this time, happily enjoying Al-Jazeera when it suddenly cut up. We sat around debating what to do for awhile. I went and got my laptop so we could listen to music while we talked... My laptop battery doesn't last that long, just over an hour or so at the max. So it eventually cut out too before the power came back on. Also I killed the batteries to the flashlight that I brought with me a few weeks ago when I accidently left it on all night, so all we had for light now was my little pocket flashlight and our cell phones. The power returned maybe not more than a half hour after my laptop died, and al-Jazeera popped back on as well. So I ran back down stairs to grab my books and started studying from the newest chapter from my Arabic book. Both Matt and I studied for many many hours upstairs... I actually got a ton of studying in, wrote a lot of sentences, and so forth, until about 3:30am, when I decided to go grab something to eat. Matt said he couldn't be bothered to go out to a restaurant at this hour, and sat upstairs with his bag of dates. I went back to the 2nd Story Shaky Floor Place from the night before... I asked for the same thing, the fasulia which I liked so much... But was then served some sort of gross bean-cake-thing, which I actually do think is fasulia, but both of them were supposedly fasulia. It was basically just beans mashed up into a disc like shape, and you'd scoop it up with bread... it was kind of luke warm, and not really all that appetizing. One of the few Yemeni foods I really didn't like. Didn't end up finishing it all, didn't think I could, and still keep it all down. It only cost something like 75 cents at least. I returned to the mafraj and Ed was also upstairs with Matt, so we sat around talking about traveling in the Middle East and the like for a bit before Ed went off to pray. I continued doing homework while Matt chanel surfed through Arabic Music stations. He soon went off to bed and I sat up stairs for another couple hours before I went back down to my room... I didn't feel all that tired because of waking up at nearly 4pm, so I ended up playing games on my computer until nearly 10am before finally deciding that I need to go to sleep....