Oct 8

Sunday Oct 8
Today, woke up at around 12pm as per usual. Class with Faris was okay again. At the beginning of last week I was pretty near ready to just completely drop class with him, but now I am at least satisfied. One additional problem is that he gives me nearly too many words, and meanings... The synonym of the word we are studying, the opposite, additional meanings for the same word. It is really good for building my vocabulary, but it can be overwhelming at times, honestly. After class I just headed back to the mafraj and joined Markus to do some homework for Ismail's class. We (half) watched some crazy programs on Arabic TV... Like a strange learning English game show, where they'd be giving a sentence, and then have to reconstruct it properly using a different word... Like "I last saw him 2 years ago (since)" and they'd have to say something like "I haven't seen him since 2004" or etc. I think it was a game show... who knows. We were soon joined by Matt for his afternoon nap in the mafraj. Matt and I debated about going to KFC and Baskin Robbins tonight to break the fast, but Markus wanted to go to Al-Shallal (again..) one more time before he left Yemen. It is a nice restaurant, but I've already been there three times before this, and I've only been here a month! Oh well. And we wanted to join Markus on his night before the last night in Yemen for dinner, so we all trekked off to Al-Shallal. So let's see, we ordered three (half) chickens, rice, salad, bread, and drinks... Then we ended up getting one (half) chicken, one rice, and a potato/veggie mix... So we had to order the additional chicken and rice. We decided that when you order here, at least for foreigners, they just kind of zone out and figure you can't speak the language and then just bring you whatever they feel like that is partially related to what you ordered. It is strange. Not the first time they completely change what we've ordered. So now the running joke is to guess what we will actually be given compared to what we wanted. Also we were quite entertained trying to guess what the story was of this group of men sitting in the back of the restaurant... There were maybe 6 of them and they were all wearing nice white thobes, and checkered head scarfs, and etc, and armed to the tooth with huge Ak47s over their shoulders, pistols at their sides, and utility belts which I wouldn't be surprised if they were full of grenades. And when they left, they went one at time, with a few minutes in between each. They were really cracking us up though, we guessed they were the 'hicks' of Yemen, or a group of tribesmen come in for a nice dinner at Al-Shallal, or a group of jihadis just returned from Iraq and just needing a good meal from Al-Shallal... Who knows. They obviously weren't military though, they wear particularly uniforms usually. Even though this is a country of 60 million guns (for only 22 million people) you really don't see the average person carrying an automatic weapon in the street. Occasionally, but pretty rare here in Sanaa, I mean I see them everyday but usually on the shoulder of a soldier or military police. It was just particularly strange to see about six guys ready for war here in Sana'a, let alone in Al-Shallal (which is decently nice). In any case dinner for the three of us (which we didn't finish all the rice or veggies) was about 1400 or 1500 riyals ($7.50). We then headed back to the house, and at a different little corner shop we stopped to get some candy and drinks. Similar thing as before, I asked for a Mountain Dew, we pulls out a Canada Dry cola, I say no, he pulls out other random drinks I've never even seen before, so I just ended up going with the Canada Dry. Also ate a Metro candy bar... Kind of like a Milky Way, not exactly as good, but not horrible either. It is made in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, as with all other forms of candy and drink, it seems, in the Middle East. I had a missed call from Ismail, and I kept trying to call him back but the call just wouldn't go through... Tried about 5 or 6 times. It is because of the different cell phone companies, they have really poor connections between one another. I have Sabafon and (everyone else it seems, after I bought it) has Spacetel. So Matt just let me use his (Spacetel) to call Ismail (Spacetel) which went through on the first try. I talked to his son, which can be hard, but I gathered that I should come at 9pm instad of 8. So I did an extra hour of homework/messing around before I gathered my things together and headed out to Ismail's house. Class was good, we continued working on the text about Health, what is health, etc. We are in the fitness and wellness group of texts, before this sports, soon to come nutrition, etc. Portions of it are really beneficial, although I can't imagine how often I'd use some of the vocabulary, particularly things like javelin and track and field, and etc. After class with Ismail I went out to the juice stand for my normal giant strawberry drink ($1.50), and then not long after I got there Markus and his friend Adel randomly showed up and joined me. We ended up sitting there talking until past two in the morning. Adel used to be a teacher at SIAL so it is good sitting with him as you almost get a partial lesson for free. We learned some strange words that arabic has, such as they have a verb (a single word) which means "to stay up late into the night talking" or "to stay up late in the night walking". Very different... We came back to the house and I stayed up late (thought not talking or walking) as usual trying to do some homework for the next day. Tonight I actually decided to go out and grab a bite to eat before I went to sleep because I was so starving before dinner that I could barely concentrate on the homework that I was attempting to do. At 4 I headed out, ran into Ed (or his Islamic name Mehdi) and Ishaq in the kitchen making some sandwiched before the fast, asked them if anything was still open now and got conflicting answers from the both of them... Turns out some stuff was indeed still open, about half of the normal amount, and not many people out either, but I went to the little kebab restaurant (it defines the expression a hole in the wall) which I went to the first week I was here for breakfast with Matt. Talked with a guy who was eating there also about my studies and Yemen, and he was happy that I was fasting. I got about 7 little balls of kebab and a tomato-y mixture along with a salad, and some bread to scoop it all up with. Ended up costing me 220 riyals (20 for the two pieces of bread) or $1.10. Then went back to my room to sleep...