Oct 3

Tuesday, Oct 3. Got up at the last possible minute for class... I just really don't want to get up in the morning now. Ramadan has really messed with my sleeping patterns. Before Ramadan I was on a good schedule, a normal schedule even, of getting up at 7am, and going to sleep by 11pm. Now... Sleeping at maybe 6, 6:30 and waking up at 12:30. Not enough sleep during that time period either, so I've been pretty tired lately. Class with Faris was better today. We just decided to everyday focus on the Al-Kitaab book, which I was hoping to finish the part II, and III before I leave here, but we will see, for one hour a day, and the other hour on Media Arabia, or newspaper Arabic, primarily working from the (old) book Let's Read the Arabic Newspaper, which is actually pretty good, because it comes with translations in the back, and helps build up a basic Media vocabulary, and then after finishing this book, I hope to move on to real recent news articles, and perhaps other materials as well. He always assigns a ton of homework that there's no way I will complete all of it that night (in addition to the homework from my other teacher), but it is better to be overworked than under. After class I tried to wait around to use the internet at the school for free, but it had been taken over by a bunch of veiled women, so I just went down to the school's garden and sat under the terrace talking with Matt. I guess the other night he played soccer with the local kids out on the street by our house until 2am. Said he made more of a connection with a few hours of soccer than 3 weeks of talking to them and trying to get them to like him. I thought that was funny. Also talked to Yudid, and she invited us from the Bayt At-Tulaab (Guy's house) to come over to the Bayt at-Talabaat (girl's house) again to 'celebrate' German reunification day with some good ol' German food. Also talked to Ismail, and requested that we meet at 7:30 instead of 8, and actually start at that time, for only two hours, since we needed to go to the travel company for our weekend trip, and I wanted to have some of that German food. After that I headed back to the house and sat up on the mafraj to do some homework, I had to write a little essay about different types of sports for Ismail. Markus had just headed out to his new teacher Ahmed's house (no more Ismail for him, I guess) to break the fast there, for a huge feast, no doubt. Matt was laying around in the mafraj sleeping, and I woke him up at the time which I look forward to most in the day (6:15), the time when I am able to go to a restaurant and stuff myself. Today we went to the same chicken and rice place in Bab-al-Sabah with the shaky floor that feels like it will collapse. Same thing of course, chicken and rice. It's really good there though and only 500 riyals ($2.50). There was this group of really strange Yemenis that came in after us. They sat up on the second floor also, and one of them wanted something really bad, couldn't tell what, but instead of going and asking for it, or waiting for someone who works to come around he would just yell down "Ya muhassib!! Ya Muhassib!" (Hey, accountant/clerk) and stomp on the floor. Hey couldn't get his attention, so he just kept doing it over and over. Of course, this is the floor that feels like it may collapse, and I thought he might very well bring it down. Matt said "Do you reckon people'd be killed if this floor collapse?" I figured we'd be likely to survive on the second floor, but wasn't sure how the people below would fare... I had to hurry back to the Bayt-At-Tulab to grab my books and whatnot, then run off to Maydan Tahrir to catch a bus to Ismail's area. Well, I didn't have to catch a bus (van), but it is just easier, and usually quicker. Although they all run on the same sort of system, apparently. They sit around in a central location, wait until they've filled every available sit (no matter how long it takes), and then drive off on a set route. When you come to your destination you yell to the driver "Alla Jamb!" (on the side) he pulls over and you give him the 20 riyals (10 cents). I left less than 15 minutes before I was supposed to be at his house, and made it there only a few minutes late. Maybe it isn't the most efficient transportation, but it does seem to work pretty well. So we actually did start class early, since he knew I need to leave at 9:30. Just a quick (mandatory) dessert before we started. The Yemeni desserts are pretty good, but they are different from the normal Arabic sweets (just like all their food is). A good one is rawaani, a sort of soft, light cake, hard to describe, but from Sana'a I'm told. Ismail is obsessed with it, he'll have like three pieces at a time. The lesson today was particularly good, with us discussing types of sports, but beyond what was mentioned in the article, then him testing me orally on vocabulary, and then running through necessary grammar points of the Arabic 'system'. One of the nice things about Arabic is that it is pretty systematic, you can begin to guess at words and meanings with pretty good accuracy because of the system, and even the irregular aspects have their own system... With Ismail we work from his program which he says he has developed over the course of 20+ years through working with the Peace Corps and beyond that. Maybe I mentioned it before, but he had his own institute for Arabic a long time ago.... After north and south Yemen were unified people kept talking about civil war, civil war, so he held back from starting a school for years... Then after three years of unification and no problems he decided to start it. Civil war broke out 4 months later, which would obviously scare off any customers and he ended up losing a lot of money just months after he started. But anyways, his teaching style is really good, and I'm learning quite a lot, and as he says why not work out of his program while I am here, something which I wont find in universities of books in the US... Why not. He is particularly focused on translation and accuracy of meaning between the languages. So we finished up at 9:35 and I power walked (I know where to catch the bus to his house, but not from his house-one a one way street) back to Maydan Tahrir to meet up and go to the travel company. I actually ran right into Markus just as I was coming into Maydan Tahrir. Apparently Matt was occupied trying to open a bank account and couldn't make it, so it was just us right now. We had to prepay 2 days before departure. So we went to Universal Touring Company, negotiated to pay our half of the fee ($57 each), and sat around for quite awhile while he made reservations/registrations on his computer. to pay the $114 (they quoted the price in dollars) between the two of us, it was funny because we used my $100 bill, and 1500 riyals from Markus, then Markus gave me $43 worth of riyals to make up the difference. Apparently we leave at 8am on Thursday. I hope I can wake up. After about a half hour there we were finished and we headed out to the girls' house for German Unification Day. I thought there would be a lot of people there like last time, but it turned out to be just Sandra, Yudid, Taha (their teacher, or teacher of one of them), and me and Markus. They had cooked a ton of food, like last time, except for about half as many people. Matt was supposed to show up, and I called him, but apparently he was having a ton of problems trying to exchange his travelers checks here. Which is what I heard before I left, so I opted not to bother with them. But he went from bank to bank for hours trying to exchange them, and they all told him no. He was trying to open an account with Tadhamon International Islamic Bank so he could have easy access to all his money from a local account. Anyways, we all sat up out on their balcony again, with a sweeping view of the city... There cooked meatballs, vegetables, a sort of sticky-mashed potato ball (unique to Germany I think, because I've never had it before), along with breads and assorted other things. Then we all went down to their mafraj for some tea and desserts. I had a crepe like pancake with nutella on it, which was really good. We just sat around all talking in Arabic (since Taha was there, or else it would have English) for hours, until about 2am. I was really suprised with how much I could understand, and all the various subjects we could talk about. It's nice to know that my Arabic has improved since arriving here. After that they loaded all of us down with leftovers, the pancakes, potatoes and meatballs, and we headed back. I came back to my room and finally organized my binder, by subject matter. I've been so disorganized these first few weeks, and after that did homework until about 6:30 in the morning. It was so bright outside that I took my shawl and tied it around my eyes so I could sleep.