Sleepless in Sana'a

Oct 17

2006-10-17T15:51:00.000-07:00

Tuesday Oct 17
Today slept until nearly 1pm. Ismail called to see about class at 1:30, but told him I still didn't feel up to it. Took my medications and went down to the kitchen to eat a bowl of cereal. I figured fasting wouldn't do anything to help me get over a cold. After that I grabbed my books and headed up to the mafraj where I was going to attempt to homework, however I still really don't feel up to it due to this cold, so I just sat around and watched TV. Caught some Seinfeld, which is always great, and then some Full House. Then watched the last half of Finding Forrester, which is good because I watched maybe the last 10 minutes last night and didn't have any idea what was going on... It's too bad I didn't catch it all, it seems like a good flick. Then I went out for dinner at Palestine Restaurant. Had the usual half chicken and rice. Although this half chicken was apparently the burnt, or extra crsipy half. Ater that I went to the juice bar for a half strawberry, half orange juice mix... Figured all the extra vitamin C I can get will only help me in ridding this cold. Then I headed back to the house where I talked with Matt for a bit, and then proceeded to type for hours and hours, seemingly.

Oct 16

2006-10-16T15:50:00.000-07:00

Monday Oct 16
Slept nearly straight from 8pm to 8am... Woke up briefly and went back to sleep until past noon. I wasn't going to fast when I am sick, so I was drinking all the water I had in sight. I went up stairs to the mafraj to lay around and watch some tv. I brought my Mawaaz ("Man Skirt") to use as a blanket, and just drifted in and out of sleep upstairs. At some point the Italian guy came up and said goodbye, I guess he was flying back to Italy tonight. Seems like he had just arrived. I barely ever saw him, and honestly only got the chance to talk to him on the day he arrived, and the day he left. By the time the fast break came, I was hungry but didn't really feel like eating anything... Ended up going back down to my room for a few hours until about 8pm when I went out for the two falafels at the cheap falafel place... I bundled myself up nicely, since I feel colder than usual. Only ate one and a half of though and threw the other half on the ground (I feel so apprehensive about littering, but you just don't find garbage cans here... And I guess it is adapting to a Yemeni lifestyle). After that I headed off to the internet cafe to email my Mom so she wouldn't think I was dead, or kidnapped. At this point I barely had a voice, it was so hoarse from coughing. So I decided I needed to stop off at the Pharmacy. I just went in and told him I was sick, and give me whatever will help me... He gave me some Neo-Codion syrup a cough suppressant, and some Sedergine fizzy water dissolvable tablets for pain and flu-like symptoms I guess... I have never heard of either of them, but didn't really care as long as it helped. I was feeling pretty miserable at this point, the sickest I have been for a while actually. The medicine cost me 600 riyals ($3). After that I went to that Anti-America Tea Shop around the corner hoping that the warm drink would sooth my throat from all the coughing. Then I visited my friend at the store to pick up some milk for my cereal, so I wouldn't have to leave when I wanted to eat, as well as some orange juice for the vitamin C. Came back took my medicine and then went up to the mafraj to watch some bad English language movies, such as Black Knight with Martin Lawrence, where he gets sent back to medievel times. I did notice the medicine helped with the cough, at the least, althought I still sound like death.

Oct 15

2006-10-15T15:49:00.000-07:00

Sunday Oct 15
Woke up feeling not very well at all... My slight cough from yesterday had become a violent cough. And I had thought the cough was maybe just irritation from sitting around too many chain smoking Yemenis in a closed-off mafraj's, but I guess not... I canceled class with Faris and basically just slept. I was sleeping when I was awoke at about 4pm by "RYANNN! RYAAAN! RYAAAN!" from someone shouting really loudly from outside (I live on the third floor) and also pounding on the door knocker... It really threw me off guard, and I scrambled around trying to find my glasses. I recognized that the voice was Ismail's and I was looking at my windows fir him but I couldn't see him. I then scrambled down stairs in my pajamas to open the door, and sure enough it was Ismail. I had turned off my phone earlier, so I wouldn't be awoken. I hadn't predicted someone coming to my house shouting my name. He asked me how I was, and said we could have class at his house tonight at 8pm like last week, since he missed the lesson yesterday. I agreed, if only cause I was still have asleep and we said bye. I turned my phone on at the point, and at around 5:30 Matt called me to let him in the house because he still didn't have a key. Said his first day was alright, mostly just orientation type stuff. We ended up going out to break the fast a little later than usual. Back to the 2nd Floor Shaky place. The three Yemenis sitting at the table next to us kept gesturing for us to come join them to eat, which is also pretty common, but we just thanked them and waited for our normal chicken and rice meal. Well, turns out they just brought us one huge plate of rice, and said there was no chicken now... I also asked for tea, which I never got. So really it was a horribly unsatisfying meal of just a big plate of rice. The three Yemenis told us to go to another restaurant after this one for the chicken, although we didn't end up doing that. When they left they gave us their vegetable dish, bread and other leftovers. We returned back to the house for a bit. Sandra called Matt to invite me along to Al-Shallal tonight for her fairwell meal before she left for Germany tomorrow. They were to meet at 8:45... I said I'd go, although I was also supposed to have class at 8 at Ismail's... But I really wasn't feeling up for going all the way to Ismail's and sitting around while he chain smokes for 3 hours when I am sick with a sore throat and constant cough, so I texted him and told him I still wasn't feeling up for it. Matt headed out for Sandra's goodbye dinner, and I told him to say bye for me, and sorry I couldn't make it. Then I just ended up going to sleep.

Oct 14

2006-10-14T15:48:00.000-07:00

Saturday Oct 14
Today was a holiday, the day the British were kicked out of the south, so no class, but I had arranged to have class with Ismail at 1:30 today. I knew he wouldn't exactly be on time, and so I went to the institute at 1:45. Of course no Ismail still. I sat around out in the garden, still have asleep, until nearly 2:15 when the director noticed and asked when I was supposed to have class. He then went off and told Ahmed, the language coordinator, who then called Ismail. I think he was still sleeping. He handed the phone over to me and we talked for a bit. He apologized, but said it wasn't easy for him to get up at this hour... which I knew it wouldn't be, which is why I didn't want to arrange class at such an 'early' time. He said tomorrow, hopefully... So I just returned back to the house to get a few more hours of sleep. I didn't really mind that he didn't make it, I actually minded more that I bothered waking up at all and walking out to the institute. Then at 4 I was awoken by Matt knocking on my door. Apparently, Tariq, Hani's friend from yesterday, had just called and woke him up and insisted that we come meet him at his house at 5pm for Iftar feast again. So basically just woke up and headed out on the road... We weren't exactly sure if we'd be able to find our way back to his house so we left with extra time. We hopped on a bus heading south from the Sa'ila, to go to the Safia district/Taizz road (the only landmarks we could remember from yesterday). We were the only ones on the bus so he essentially made it into a taxi and charged us more than the normal 10 cents each, up to 25 cents each since he drove off his fixed route of the Sa'ila (even though we didn't ask him to) up to Ta'izz street. The Safia district turns out to be pretty large... and We weren't really sure where exactly they lived around Ta'izz street. But we realized they were more south from where we presently were and just started walking. We asked around, but weren't really sure what to ask for, because as it turns out the street we wanted, and thought was Ta'izz Street, was actually Abu Dhabi Street, so it didn't do us much good.... We were just lucky enough to stumble across a hotel we remembered from the night before, if only because of it's name, the "Nice Palace Hotel". We remembered that as we were pulling out from his street. So we found the street that they lived on, and then randomly some guy came up and started shaking our hands and asking us how we're doing, and that Tariq is waiting. We weren't exactly sure who he was, but we later figured out that he was one of Tariq's brothers. We then found Hani's house and his car, and he knew that Tariq lived two buildings up. So we asked some little kids on the street if they knew Tariq, and where he lived (which of course they did, because everyone knows everyone in their neighborhood here in Yemen). Then one of them lead us to the apartment where he lived, and even right up to his door. We knocked and he was blown away that we were literally at his doorstep without knowing where he lived prior to this, or calling him, or anything. He invited us in. he has a nice modest apartment. He is a newly-wed of about 2 months. We sat around for a little bit talking while we waited for his brothers to return from the souq. Apparently they all live in the same apartment. We ended up leaving and meeting up with his two brothers (no rhyming names this time) Waleed, and Hani (or Hani al-Thani "Hani the Second" since we met his friend Hani just yesterday). Then we hailed a taxi from Abu Dhabi street and headed south quite a ways. We drove by what is apparently the presidents fortress... of which all I could see was a huge, huge, huge gated area (there is even a hill/mountain inside it) with barbed-wire across the top... We arrived at the house of one of their friends. They had a nice place, with a large diwan, which was overpowered with incense, along with a entertainment center and TV. We sat around watching the horrible Yemeni station until it was time to break the fast. We were joined by many more of their friends, and I wasn't really quite sure who everyone was, and how they were related/knew one another, with the exception of Tariq and his brothers. The iftar feast was all the normal things... I was really quite stuffed. They even topped it off with dessert, which was like rawani (cake-like) but different, something I hadn't tried before, and much much sweeter. Almost too sweet, as I was only able to eat a little bit of it. This dinner was particularly good though... It was enormous too, with nearly 10 people there. I was also happy because they had Bint as-Sahn (Daughter of the Dish) which is one of my favorite Yemeni dishes, but you don't find it in restaurants, and they only cook it at home every so often because it is very labor intensive. After dinner the whole group of them gathered for prayer in the mafraj, which was a first. I mean I've been at a few Yemeni's houses when they've excused themselves for prayer, but they usually just go into the other room for prayer so I'm not sitting there watching them, but this time they whole group of 10 of them all just prayed in front of us facing toward Mecca (which happened to be facing away from us). After that we all just sat around in the mafraj talking once more... We were joined by more of their friends and or family after not too long. I don't know, both Matt and I felt like our Arabic was failing us that night, so we spent most of the night listening to them, and trying to answer questions when we were prompted. It is strange how your confidence or capabilities in a language shifts from day to day. You'd think it would be a steady climb up, but it goes up and down. Some days I feel I can express myself on almost anything my vocabulary permits, and then other days it feels like I can never find the words. Today was just one of those off days, I guess, for both of us no less. Maybe just due to a late late night, and lack of sleep. Who knows. Everyone is always interested in whether I've obtained scholarships from my school or government to study here, and they are all appalled when I tell them "the bill's on me" because it seems that all study abroads from Arab countries even Yemen, are usually financed by a scholarship. They tell me, no, Arabic is very important in the West now, especially in America, they should have to give a scholarship! I just laugh, and say, yes I wish they had to give me scholarship. Yemen is cheap. But hey, free is cheaper. They were also interested in how Americans felt about Arabs, particularly after September 11th... If there is a lot of hatred towards them as a whole. We hadn't planned on staying so late, especially since tomorrow was Matt's first day at work, and he started at 9:30 (definitely not Ramadan friendly hours), but we didn't realize that we were going all the way to their friend's house, so we were kind of obligated to staying until they wanted to leave, which ended up being at about midnight. We hopped into a bus and drove back into their part of town, where the power was now out. We said bye to his two brothers and Tariq waited with us at the corner for a bus to Tahrir. We thanked him a lot for a great evening, and promised to do it again soon, hopefully. After that we both nearly ran back to the house because we were both in dire need of the bathroom. Then we decided to go out for a cup of tea with milk from the local tea shop. I've only been there once or twice before, this time he asked me where I was from and then infomed me that "Amreeka mish tammam, mish tammam..." (Not good...) After that I came back to the house, but was starting to not feel so great. I had a tremendous headache, and had a slight cough all day. I popped two tylenol PM and soon went to sleep.

Oct 13

2006-10-13T15:48:00.000-07:00

Friday Oct 13
Again woke up at just about 4pm... Matt had lost his key a few days ago somehow, and we ran into the accountant who told us of a place where we could get a copy made... We wandered over into the direction he told us, but could find no such shop. As we were walking through Bab Al-Sabah Matt got a call from Hani from yesterday, he told us to meet him in the same place in the souq as yesterday in 10 minutes... Of course right now was the pre-fast breaking rush in the souq and you could barely move at all, let alone get all the way to another souq in 10 minutes, so we ended up being a little late. We met Hani there he took us to his car where we also met one of his brothers his brothers son, and their Dad. The dad was lounged in the back half asleep holding this 6 month old baby, I was crammed up next to him, along with Hani all in the back seat. We slowly drove to another part of the souq so they could pick up some additional food, I think, for our fast breaking meal. After that we took off down the Sa'ila, a little faster now as we were away from the crowds of the souq, and headed south to the Safia district where they lived. Outside their house we met some of their neighbors and friends, one of them Tariq had lived in the UK for 5 years while his Dad was gettings his doctorate, and spoke really good English. We then went into Hani's house and sat in one of the mafraj's while the food was prepared in the other room. We met his other two brothers... Sami, and Rami... Yes, Sami, Hani, Rami... At the proper hour we went into the next room to break the fast with the typical samboosa and dates as appetizers, in addition to some delicious pizza squares too... Then we went back into the mafraj to await the main courses. When you haven't eaten all day: "shwaya, shwaya" (slowly, slowly)... We returned to that other room after about 10 minutes where there was all the typical fast breaking dishes. Shafoot, chicken, rice, salta, etc.... They are all from Taizz in the south, so they speak different from what I am used to hearing in Sana'a (not that I am that used to it, to be honest). And they prepare the same dishes in a slightly different way, I guess. I particularly liked their shafoot... it was a little thicker, and less spicy too. The whole dinner was really good, and it was great speaking with them, because they spoke really naturally and didn't 'fake' their speech for us (which made it really hard too). I also thought since he was studying English at YALI, that he just wanted us to come over to practice his English with, but he spoke English nearly the whole time, since he was with family who didn't speak English. Their old Dad was really hilarious too. He'd always like slap his hand down on one of our legs and tell us to eat, or eat faster, or "you're good!" or other really random things. He spoke really loud, and was really really hard to understand, but was funny. He would literally just grab pieces of potato or chicken (you eat most things with your hands here) and literally hand them over to us and tell us to eat them. Or he had his own chicken prepared differently from the other two, and he'd pull off pieces of it and tell us its better... At one point grabbing the liver from his chicken and handing it to me. It was interesting to say the least. He kept telling me "Bush isn't good... You are good. But Bush isn't good!" After that returned to the other mafraj for some tea and al-Jazeera news watching. After not too long we were joined by a number of their relatives... Uncles, cousins, friends, who knows... Tariq from earlier came over and Matt and I spent a lot of time talking with him. Even though he spoke English very well, he still spoke to us in Arabic, and it was nice because he was also then able to help us out when we didn't know certain words. It was like a free a lesson. I particularly liked this group of people that we were hanging out with and talking to tonight... from government ministries, doctors, engineers, lived in England 5 years, one studied in Russia for 5 years, bank managers, etc. It was a group of pretty educated and cultured people... Quite different from the Bab al-Sabah area where I live, which is basically the ghetto of Sana'a as far as I can tell, and as far as I have heard from the Yemenis. We ended up hanging out with Hani, Rami, Sami and Co. until nearly 11:30 when we elected that it was about time to go... Hani then drove us all the way back to the institute, telling us it was mandatory, though we insisted we'd be fine walking. Irum had called Matt while we were at Hani's house and arranged to meet up with her and the girls after about a half an hour at the internet cafe. Checked my email and did all that for awhile. Matt said he was going to go make a phone call... I stepped outside after a bit and ran into Irum, Yudid and Sandra. Not long after Taha just happened to walk by and then joined up with us as well. We continued to wait around for Matt, but we weren't really sure where he went or what happened to him. Irum tried phoning him a number of times, but to no avail. Eventually we were able to get through to him, he had been at a phone shop calling back to the UK. We then decided to hop on a bus down to Hadda street to go to Funny Bunny (which I later figured out is also Starbunny Coffee, the Starbucks rip off). So the six of us just sat around in the outdoor garden seating area of this upscale cafe/eatery for some drinks. Although I ordered a cappucino, I somehow ended up with a hot chocolate, and someone else ended up with my cappucino, and I was wondering what was up with my drink... So I didn't get to try the Starbucks rip off coffee, but will hopefully again in the future. We stayed there until nearly 3:30am, just talking. It is Sandra's last few das here in Yemen before she returns to Germany for about a month, and then heads off to Azerbaijan for a 2 to 3 year job commitment. And Yudid is also heading back to Germany for a little bit because her Grandma is really sick. So yeah, we just talked for those two to three hours... We weren't really sure if it would be possible to catch a bus out of hadda back up to Maydan Tahrir, and we were all kind of standing around on the street. We flagged down one that was heading north, with enough room for three... We were calling back to the girls and Taha for one more person, but they weren't listening or something, and while we were hesitating for them the bus nearly just left without us, so we just got on. We just wanted to get out of there because it was absolutely freezing at this time of the night... Matt was literally shaking from the cold, especially with the wind whiping past us (the mini van buses drive with the large sliding door proped open) and he kept joking about just paying the guy 1000 riyals to drive us to the door of our house... Then we got to the end of the line, except it was some place that neither of us recognized or had been to before... It was a new transportation hub, right next a really big mosque. We were really confused because we had just assumed we were heading back to Tahrir, but were now in an entirely new place. We debated about taking a taxi, or walking, or another bus, and we had to ask a number of different people, but we eventually found a bus that headed north towards tahrir. It actually drove straight up the Sa'ila so it brought us closer to our house than the buses to Tahrir. When we got back, Matt gave me a handful of dates before the fast began, and I decided to call it an "early" night because I was pretty wiped out from a lack of sleep.

Oct 12

2006-10-12T15:47:00.000-07:00

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....

Oct 11

2006-10-11T15:46:00.000-07:00

Wednesday Oct 11.
So, woke up late once again... Woke up at 2pm... So I missed class with Faris once again. I'm ready for Ramadan to be finished with already so I can get myself on a normal schedule... These sleeping patterns really mess me up. I just kinda started doing homework when I woke up since I didn't have anything else to do. Matt came back at about 5, and said he got a funny call from the director "HELLO, this is Muhammad al-Anisi, I want to invite you over to my house for breakfast" "Breakfast, oh okay, good. Tomorrow then?" "No! Right now!" The meal which you break you the fast with here is like breakfast, since it is basically the first meal of your day. So Matt basically invited me along too, we weren't sure if it was okay, but figured the director wouldn't care that much. So I ran off with him to the institute and we piled six people into a four seat car... I was crammed right up next to the creepy accountant for the ride to the directors house. He has a pretty nice house, two stories with the third being built, or to be built in the future (Yemeni houses are built layer by layer, even years later... In the student house you can visibly tell the initial building which was maybe 2 stories, and then later added on top of). He has a nice gated entrance way to his house, it reminded me more of the nice houses I saw in Dubai than a house here in Sanaa. I also thought it was interesting that carved or molded right into the concrete all over the house in Arabic was "God" "In the Name of God the Beneficent the Merciful" etc. He had some dates and samboosa's (the delicious fried triangles, with cheese this time, which I prefer) outside in his garden so we could all snack on them initially (got to start slow when you haven't eaten anything all day). There was Me, Matt, Hassan (from older guy from Spain), Ed and Ishaq from the student house, the Accountant who also lives in the student house, a two Malaysian students, along with a few relatives of the director. After we ate the appetizers, Matt and I (the only non-Muslims) went inside to sit in one of the diwans while the director lead everyone in prayer towards Mecca out in his garden. We spied out there on them from the diwan. After a bit everyone came into the mafraj to join us and we talked for a little bit before we were ushered into another diwan where there was a huge spread of food laid out. Here when you eat at someones house, you eat on the floor, in one of the mafraj's or diwans, you'll find the low couch like cushions around the room, with a plastic sheet layed on the ground, and then tons of dishes laid upon it. It seems like it is customary in most Arabic cultures to have tons and tons dishes with food, not just one plate and trays to serve yourself from, but tons of small personal sized dishes. There were literally dozens and dozens of plates for the lot of us. The food was really good, all the normal foods you'd find. Shafoot, Salta, rice, vegetables, chicken, etc. It was all really good, and nice to go to the director's house. After dinner we returned to the other mafraj to drink some post-meal tea (which is usually mandatory). And all talked while we waited for a bus to come pick us all up and take us back to the institute. Saw the director's three kids too... All pretty young. The middle child is absolutely insane. And a total brat too... Before dinner the accountant was playing with the youngest kid (8 months) and the middle child just came up and spat on him. Matt and Markus have both had encounters with him at the institute too... Matt has been spit on by this kid about 5 or 6 times at the institute... It's really funny (when it's not you). He has also thrown rocks at him (he's so young, he can barely throw, but still). He has done similar things to Markus too I guess. I am just lucky I think, as I don't see his kids there very often. I guess the director just lets his kids run amok and do whatever the please. But I don't think anyone has mentioned to him that his kid does this, and he never does it in front of his dad. So yeah, we hopped in the bus and it dropped us of back at the institute, I was running late at this point, because we were only getting back to the student house at 7:45, and I normal leave before then in order to get to my class with Ismail at 8. So I ended up being about 15 minutes late, but it was no problem of course, because we don't start until later. Today we had conversation for nearly 2 hours (in Arabic) before we actually started working from the text. Which is good, it is nice to have practice with the teacher in speaking, because they actually correct your mistakes, which people on the street don't do. Stayed at Ismails until nearly 1am. Came back to the house and messed around on my computer until late into the night as has become customary. But tonight before I went to sleep I went out to the Shaky 2nd Floor restaurant, asked them for the usual chicken and rice, but I guess no rice was to be found at this hour. He told me fasulia and chicken, so I said sure. They brought out the half-chicken (like the kind you'd buy already prepared at safeway), along with a metal plate of small meat chunks and onions, etc which you are to scoop up using hunks of bread. It was really good. Then the cashier even sat down with me at my table to talk with me a bit... Even had a glass of tea with dinner. After that I returned for some sleep.

Oct 10

2006-10-10T15:46:00.000-07:00

Tuesday October 10. Woke up at the last minute again... Maybe at 12:45. Class with Faris at 1. He was waiting for me when I got there.... Since I wasn't feeling well the day before and then was pretty busy with Markus and the group I didn't get a whole lot done, so we just decided to have a conversation day... We just talked about all sorts of things and he helped me out with new vocabulary. After class I was going to use the internet, but all the veiled women had taken it over. I have been needing to go to the bank because I apparently need to pay 14,000 riyals ($70) to the accountant in order to arrange my residency permit (to stay longer than two months) here in Sana'a. So I hiked out to the Arab Bank on Al-Zubairi... On the way this teenage Somali kid caught eye of this foreigner walking down the street and followed my for literally two blocks asking for money. I kept telling him no, sorry, I'm a student, but he wouldn't leave me alone, crossing the street with me, etc. He was making me mad so I just gave him 50 riyals (25 cents) to go away, and after I gave him that he said "No, 200"... He didn't really seem to speak much Arabic... Maybe just as much as his English, he just walked beside me with his hand out. Well thankfully he didn't follow me all the way to the Arab Bank to see me pull $200 out from the ATM, then I probably wouldn't have had an excuse. Stopped at the money exchange on the way back to get my nearly 40,000 riyals, after which I feel extremely wealthy as I've never held 40,000 anything in my hand before... Headed back to the house, but turns out I had just missed Markus as he left to the airport, so I never got a chance to say a proper goodbye. I thought I would've seen him today, but not at all. He was probably busy with last minute things. That was too bad. Matt told me he was going to meet up with Ishaq and Ed tonight to go to a different Ethiopian restaurant, and I said I'd come along since I didn't get to eat last night. He ran over to the girls house to give Iram Markus' old phone and phone number which she bought off him. I met up with the two of them at the institute and we headed out to catch a bus to Al-Zubairi. Only problem was we were trying to catch a bus during the fast break, so there was only one bus and no people around. And the buses sit and wait until they are full. And this one bus happened to be one of the few big ones that seat 10-12 people. So we waited like 15 minutes, but thankfully he left with it only half full. Matt had been to this restaurant last week with Ishaq and Ed, but got a little lost. It was a small place but nice, it had outdoor seating under a canopy with lawn furniture. They were also with a girl named Irena, originally from Russia, who I had never met before, and apparently used to study at the institute, but now works at some international organization here. It surprised me because Ishaq and Ed seem like such strict Muslims, and I had thought it might be weird for them to bring Iram along, but it was no problem... The food is different, there were two big platters (one between three people) which had huge things of spongy Ethiopian bread across the bottom of the platter, and then they put a whole bunch of different sections of food right on the bread, which acts like a plate nearly. So you break off sections of bread and scoop up different things, like vegetables, meat, cheeses, egg, etc. It was pretty good, quite a few people here say they like Ethiopian food a lot better than Yemeni, but I found the reverse to be true. It was 640 riyals for each of us ($3.20). I guess Ishaq is going to get married here pretty soon to a Yemeni girl. He has a few Yemeni friends with sisters, and he is in the process of picking his wife... He's seen a picture of one of them, but is waiting to see the other. So I guess he will be moving out of the house in December or so to get a house with his wife... He also plans on staying here for 6 or 7 more years... Crazy, yeah. So I walked out to Ismail's house, thankfully I found my way there coming from such a different direction. I was early even so I gave him a call to see if I could come up. Lessons were good... Normal dessert, and tea, and sha'ir (tea-like, but made from barley) and a new drink which is made from some sort of red flower, which ended up being pretty good. Lessons with Ismail are good, I feel like I learn quite a bit with him, and after six months I should be able to develop my knowledge of the "system" with him, and then lots of vocabulary to fit into the system with the other teacher, Faris. Only two weeks until my birthday here in Yemen... I have no idea what that will be like, probably like any other day here in Yemen though.

Oct 9

2006-10-09T15:45:00.000-07:00

Monday October 9.
Got up at about 12:40... Threw on my clothes and ran off to class. Class was okay with Faris again. But during class my stomache started acting strange, making weird noises and turning into knots. I made it through class but afterwards I started to feel more queasy... Sat up in the mafraj doing homework in between a few trips to the bathroom. I took some immodium (a necessity here in Yemen) to try and help out, which it started to do eventually. Woke Matt up from his mafraj nap at the proper hour to go get some food, even though I wasn't feeling great, I was still starving because of the fast. We elected to go to our usual cheap falafal hut since we didn't want to fill up as we were all going to be going out after Markus' class at 10 to an Ethiopian restaurant, and bowling afterwards which he wanted to do for his last night here in Yemen. Also, after class I had changed into my full on Yemeni clothes because I decided it would be great fun to go bowling while wearing a thobe and jambiya... The falafal restaurant wasn't quite open yet (they were eating) so we went to a nearby store for some drinks and started talking to a whole bunch of people. They were all really nice and some were particularly amused with my outfit. Whenever I try to order a Mountain Dew (because it has the most caffeine of the sodas) they also have a hard time understanding me when I say it correctly, because the Arabicize it somewhat, but I learned that they just refer to it as "Diw" not quite "dooo"... Anyways back to the falafal stand for two of them for 60 riyals (30 cents) and we walked around and ate them. Returned to the house, and I soon started feeling not so great again after eating. Grr... shouldn't have gone to that hole in the wall kebab stand that morning... Yeah, the immodium had helped earlier but the food made my stomach act up again so I just decided to call Ismail and cancel class today. I didn't want be forced to encounter a Yemeni bathroom, not an experience I would ever look forward to. Nor did I want to have the sudden urge to use the bathroom during my trip to his house. So I just decided it would be better if I laid in bed to let my stomach calm down because I didn't want to miss going out with everyone on Markus' last night here. So yeah I started to feel better gradually after I got it out of my system and Matt and I went and met up with everyone in front of the institute at 10. Let's see, there was Me, Matt, Markus, Sandra and Yudid (the two Germans), there was Matt's friend Iram (who I finally met now) along Markus' Yemeni friend Adel, his teacher Ahmed, and Taha (Sandra's teacher). Everyone was commenting on my Yemeni clothes, of course, and we all went off to find a bus. Ran into the homeless kid who helped me buy all my clothes and he hung around with us while we waited for a bus in the Sa'ila. Ahmed was joking around with the little kid about how I am a tribesman now, but it is necessary that I have a machine gun, and the little kid got all serious about it asking me if I want one, but that they are pretty expensive. It was funny. We piled into two seperate buses from the Sa'ila and headed out to the Ethiopian restaurant, which I think was near Al-Zubairi street, but I kind of got turned around. I had decided not to eat anything, because I didn't want my stomach to act up again so I just talked with everyone and watched them eat. It was good because we spoke a lot of Arabic between the lot of us as the teachers don't really speak much English. We spent nearly two hours there I think, and Markus insisted the meal was on him, which I thought was backwards since its his last day, he should've been on us... I did drink some a few bottles of water there hoping to keep my stomach settled, and also had a cup of Ethiopian coffee, which was my first real coffee since arriving in Yemen. It was really good, but very strong too. Also I found it strange that for dessert they brought out a huge tray of popcorn... Never had that at a restaurant before, and I'm not sure if it is typical Ethiopian or what. I also heard one of the funniest things I've heard since I got here... Matt was talking to Adel about the majnoon (crazy person) who lives on our street (or rather used to, he had disappeared a week ago, but was spotted at the girls house) I wasn't in the conversation at this point, but Matt insisted that Adel tell me what he just told him... He said he knew that majnoon and that he wasn't really majnoon, he is actually a spy for the government's secret police, and that most of the majnoon are just acting! I just started laughing there, picturing the poor majnoon who was always constantly harassed by children, 24 hours a day, getting slapped around, bandages on his head from the children attacking him, walking around playing a guitar with no strings and singing crazily (Matt's sighting), all of it as an act, and he is actually a spy. It was too funny. Immediately when we left the restaurant Matt and I started talking about it... Maybe he speaks 4 or 5 languages, maybe those bandages on his head are actually spy cameras, the dirty clothes and mangy hair fully equipped with various spy gear... I don't know, but I will never look at another majnoon the same way again! As I was leaving the restaurant there were two fully veiled women sitting near the entrance way and they just all the sudden started talking to me because of my clothes... I couldn't understand everything they were saying except "Thanks to God" "good" and the thumbs up... It just really caught me off guard because you just don't talk to any Yemeni women here, and they don't talk to you. With the exception of the (rare) woman who works in a store, or the women who pan handle for money around Tahrir square... Oh and one time when I was walking by a Yemeni woman said hello in English. It was just really strange to talk with some veiled women here, which lead me to believe that they might not have even been Yemeni, but perhaps Ethiopians (it was an Ethiopian restaurant after all) but how would I know with the veils... After the restaurant the two teachers and three girls left the four of us (me, Matt, Markus and Adel) for home, and off to Fun City for bowling we went. By now it was just after midnight, and we had to walk a bit before we could catch a bus down to Hadda street. I saw the Porsche dealership, a really fancy Sony store, another Radio Shack, the Kentucky Fried Chicken... We arrived to where we needed to be and walked out to Fun City, but when we got there it was closed. I guess they close at about 1am or so... It had taken us awhile to get there too. So we were all disappointed, but Matt and I wanted to go to Baskin Robbins because we'd been talking about it for a week or so now, so we drug Adel and Markus along. It was about a block or two (big blocks) north of Fun City. We found Baskin Robbins... turned out to be just a tiny little ice cream shack, I was expecting a normal restaurant or sit down type area, and it didn't really look like they had a lot to offer... Not to mention it was also closed. This was all really surprising since it is Ramadan right now and everything stays open really late. So we went into KFC to see if they had any ice cream or desserts... Which they didn't. But the KFC is really really nice... Nicer than the ones in the US, it is also really huge. And I saw the nicest bathrooms I've seen since arriving to Yemen... Clean, nice, new. There were even urinals, which I haven't seen here, and there was normal sinks, with a soap dispenser and a air hand dryer! It was like a 5 star environment! To think that the average and unexceptional KFC in the US is a really nice fancy treat and atmosphere here is interesting. The prices seemed to be about the same as what it would be in the US (which is really expensive in riyals). There was also "Chicky Fun Land" which I've never seen in the US, and is basically a McPlayland or whatever they are called at McDonalds. There was even a drive through too, with dozens of cars lined up at 1:30 or 2 in the morning. It was quite the experience, even though we didn't get anything there and just stared at the menu, but it felt like I was back in Silverdale or something. After that we started walking back up Hadda Street, I decided to buy a Kit Kat bar, because I hadn't seen Kit Kat before, nor a normal (okay, US-sized) candy bar here... You find Snickers at the little stores, but they are like half-sized... This street vendor had normal ones! They were 100 riyals each (50 cents) so they normal US price as well. It is a nice treat, and the best candy bar I've had in awhile. So we continued walking for a bit before we decided to catch a bus. We had to split up into two's because it can be pretty hard to get four into one of the buses when there is a maximum of six people. After a bit the couple Yemenis across from us started talking to me because of my clothes. "Oh your jambiya is good!" and about ourselves in general... We came to our stop and said goodbye, we were grabbing our change for the bus fare (10 cents each) and then they told the driver they'd pay for us, so he just took off. That is twice now that a Yemeni has paid for my bus fare, and there was that time (at the same kebab stand from this morning actually) that a guy wanted to pay for our breakfast, but we persisted in paying for ourselves that time. The people here can be so generous towards strangers, you wouldn't find that in the US very often at all. We headed back to the house, said goodbye to Adel, and see you to Markus. Then I hit the books again until past daybreak.

Oct 8

2006-10-08T15:43:00.000-07:00

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...

Photos from Shihara and other things

2006-10-08T05:41:00.000-07:00

Shihara and other things

Oct 7, 2006 - 30 Photos

Oct 7

2006-10-07T15:42:00.000-07:00

Sat Oct 7. So after my rip van winkle esque sleep, until maybe 11:30... 8pm - 11:30am! I got a call from my first teacher, Faris, didn't really know what he was talking about, I just understood that there wasn't going to be class today, and I'd see him tomorrow... Which was okay because I really didn't accomplish anything this weekend, homework-wise, because of the trip to Shihara. I just sat around at the house all day... Talked to Markus and Matt for a bit. I guess Matt's friend from his school just arrived yesterday, or the day before. Iram, she's a British Muslim of, I think, Pakistani descent. He asked if I met or saw her at the institute today, to which I laughed as I had done absolutely nothing since after dinner last night... He met up with with someone working at the British Embassy to see about an internship last night, and then went over to the Bayt at Talabat (girls house) to talk with Iram until about 3am I guess. Then as he was walking back he was like alright Ryan's still up (you can see our windows/lights from the street), and came up to my room with the lights still on, door open, clothes still on, just passed out on top of the bed. He said he tried to turn off the light for me but couldn't find the switch. It's because (in our house at least) you'll find literally dozens of switches. It is bizarre. Most of them seem to do absolutely nothing. One controls the overhead lights, and a few control the electrical sockets on the wall, but the others I have found no use for. Besides talking with them I just did a bit of homework. For iftar (the fast break meal) we went to the super friendly Salta place in Bab Al-Sabah. Like I said before, it is a whole lot of younger guys that work there, and all of them are from Ta'izz down south. The restaurant was really packed when we first got there, but somehow we always end up the last ones in the restaurant. We all had our own bowls of fahsah (salta with meat) which was strange because normally you just share a communal bowl. They also just randomly brought out some shafoot for us (the spongy ethiopian bread, with a spicy milky sauce over it). The fahsah was okay, except i kept getting little chunks of bone (or something) which was a first. As I said we were the last ones there, and they cleaned the whole restaurant, stacked all the chairs moved the tables, and then sat down on the ground to eat themselves. After we finished eating they then insisted we sit down on the ground and eat with them also... We told them No, no, khalaas (finished) but they kept insisting, so we obliged them and they ran off to get some more spoons so we could more shafoot with them. We each just had a few bites and said that was enough. I think the price was about 1500 riyals between the three of us, and is was funny as we were discussing the price and swapping money in English and one of them told us in Arabic "no, you have to speak arabic! 1500 if you speak Arabic, but 5000 for English!" They are pretty funny, so it is enjoyable to go there... But I miss the old fahsah place I used to go to, I haven't been there since before Ramadan, since the day of the election I think. It's on a side street, so I never make it down there, but I never see it open now. After that I had class at the institute with Ismail. This time I called him before I left the house so that way I wouldn't sit there for 20 to 30 minutes waiting for him. Of course he says he's on the street right now, and should be there in 20 minutes, like usual. I continued playing Spider Solitaire for a bit longer before I went to meet him. Markus also has class at night right now, at 8 o clock even... Ismail and Markus haven't seen each other since their big fight in the garden of the institute... Class was good, we spent a lot of time talking about the trip and learning some new relevant vocabulary. Then during the half time break we went to the corner store, saw Hassan, who I went to the wedding with. I haven't seen him since the beginning of Ramadan, since it isn't open during the day time... Before I'd always go there to grab something to drink or eat. We then sat in the garden, and then Markus and his teacher Ahmed came out too, they both said Assalamu aleikum, and Ismail just drank his Fanta and didn't say anything... It was strange. Anyways, we finished up the second hour of class. Got back to the house and did a lot of homework, waiting for my Mom to call at about 2am my time, for our once a week actual telephone conversation (instead of on the internet) for about a half hour.

Oct 6 Shihara continued

2006-10-06T13:16:00.000-07:00

Friday, October 6. So they woke us all up at just about 4am to go join them for breakfast... Again I didn't get much sleep though, because me pillow was rock hard, and the blanket they provided was quite large enough. We had some new food to me, they were these little fried balls of dough, I guess, and this kind of hard flat beard, which you would dip either of into the bowl of honey. It was really good, especially the little balls of dough. Markus says they are something which is typically served at African churches. We also had some tea to go along with it. After that we returned to our room for a good two hour nap, before our scheduled departure time of 7am. So again it was the same thing, except going down, clinging for life to the back of the old Toyota pick up truck. It was amazing that this thing was even able to climb this mountain, and the other kept commenting on how amazing they now believed Toyota's were, and we decided that the next commercial Toyota films should be here in Yemen, for a truly amazing look at its capabilities! Markus decided to sit for the first portion of the trip, like I had made the mistake of doing at the end of the ascent yesterday. After maybe 15 minutes he joined us standing, and we somewhat arranged ourselves so that we all could stand. I forgot to mention that anytime any children saw us yesterday they come running up yelling "Galam, galam, galam, galam!" (Pen, pen pen pen!)... Even if they were 100s of feet away you could here them yelling for pens... It was really strange. Why they want pens so bad, I have no idea. My theory is it has become slang for Hello, hah, although that's most likely not true. We stopped a couple of times for more photo opportunities, and again it took just about an hour to descend from the city to the bottom. But then, at the bottom of the mountain the truck died (this had happened a couple times during on the way up and down, but it always started right back up after a short struggle). This time though, it wasn't doing anything... The driver said he needed some gas, and ran off to a few buildings near by and came back carrying a big container full. They pumped it into the truck and tried to start it again, with no luck... He persisted and after maybe the third or fourth time, it started back up amazingly. And here I was thinking it was doing the same thing my Toyota did just a few nights before I was supposed to leave, and had to get it towed back to a garage, although this time I didn't imagine any tow trucks or workshops nearby whatsoever. And it turns out we were literally just down the road from the hotel, about 1 minute away. We pulled back up, and the soldiers started preping the military vehicle and we met our first driver again. We asked if it was possible to pose for a photo on top their truck, but they said no, I guess you can create some big problems for photographing anything military without permission. Markus was telling us of this time in another city two years ago which he took a photo of a military vehicle and they tried to take his digital camera away from him, he was with his teacher who eventually settled the problem, but only after talking with them for half an hour. We all crowded back into what was now dubbed the Pleasure Cruiser, when compared to the back of that pick up truck. The dirt road trip back from here seemed much more comfortable when compared to climbing that mountain by truck, although it wasn't possible for me to sleep, I still tried. Wrapping my head warp over my eyes because of the sun. But it was hot, bumpy and uncomfortable. After an hour or so we made it back to the paved roads, which now seemed like heaven after everything else, and I was actually able to drift in and out sleep throughout the trip back, surprising when compared with yesterday and how horribly bumpy I initially thought the paved roads were... A woke up here and there, but basically slept the whole way back to Wadi Dhahr, which is where the palace of the former Imam is located. It is one of the other really famous sights of Yemen, it is a palace (Dar al-Hajar) perched atop a strange rock formation. So it is built nicely up into the air. Markus and Sandra had been before, but it was new to me and Matt so we all stopped to go there. The driver parked their and he also headed off to mosque since it was Friday the holy day. We paid our 500 riyals to get in ($2.50), I guess it is about 30 riyals for Yemenis! And sat around inside the palace area, with a whole bunch of strange cats that walked in a herd and kept rubbing up against each other. The were super friendly between each other, but I kept chasing them around to pet them but the wouldn't let me. They were the first thing I started taking pictures of, funnily enough, shows how much I miss having pets around. The place was absolutely dead, we were nearly the only ones there. Last time Markus was here he said it was completely packed, but we there aren't a whole lot of tourists during Ramadan, so we got lucky. They said the same thing in Shihara, normally it is really busy, but we were the only guests there because of Ramadan. We then explored the inside of the palace, which was some of the rooms still the way the Imam left them, but with plexiglas covering the entryways. The palace was built sometime around 1918, I think, and expanded in 1930, then he (or maybe his son) was eventually thrown out in 1962 by a coup, in which the republic was then formed, instead of the religious Imamate. It was pretty fascinating, and suprisingly large, most of the photos just show a shot of the one portion of the palace located highest upon the rock, which really doesn't look that big. You find many nice sitting rooms, even those for different seasons of the year. Also you find pre-historic locations carved into the rock long before the Imam, such as pre-historic burial chambers, and etc. Very interesting. We then drove the 20 minutes or so back to the heart of Sana'a, it isn't very far at all, and apparently you can get there quite easy using public transportation. He dropped us off just outside Maydan Tahrir, and we headed back to the house. This time I was eagerly awaiting the return home. Stopped to by some water jugs at the store nearby the house, and Matt and I both elected to break the drinking fast, because we were both really really thirsty. I chugged about a half a bottle of water back in my room and then just sleeped for 3 hours until it was time to eat. Matt woke me up and we headed to the Salta restaurant that he showed us from a few weeks ago. This time the restaurant was packed, and they were all very happy to see that we had returned. We had chicken and rice, which was delicious as always, and then returned home. I was planning to do some homework, but I was totally exhausted from a lack of sleep and all this travel and just passed out still in my clothes, with the lights on and door open... Slept for over twelve hours!

Oct 5 Shihara

2006-10-05T13:15:00.000-07:00

Thursday, October 5. Woke up at 7am... Finished getting my stuff together, and making sure I had everyhing I needed. Then realized I was missing my copy of my passport... Last I had it was to get a copy made to buy a cell phone here. Then I hadn't seen it since... I tore apart my room looking for it... For maybe about twenty minutes... Looked everywhere I could think of and just couldn't find it. I nearly gave up hoping there wouldn't be any problems, and then found it folded up on the ground near my bed.... We had to bang on Matt's door at about 7:30 (he was supposed to be waking me up since I knew I'd stay up late), he had gotten up earlier to get ready and then was just going to rest for 5 minutes (which we know how that always turns out). Turns out he didn't have a copy of his passport either, nor his actual passport (which are always locked up at the institute). So we just hoped for the best. We waited around for a bit for Sandra at Tahrir, and then headed out to Universal Touring Company on the west side of Tahrir. There we found a guy nearly sleeping in a white Landcruiser. Sandra and Matt paid their half of the price and we headed on our way... Got to see some more parts of Sana'a which I hadn't been to, such as the Mercedes dealership up to the north, and then we got to our first military check point just outside of Sana'a. The soldier asked where we were from and the driver just told him Germany. He let us pass, and the driver just laughed and said that Germany was always the easiest and created the least amount of problems, so we just always stuck with that for the remainder of the trip. At least Sandra was German, Markus was Swiss German, and Matt could speak German, but me... Well I have a German last name. We saw lots of different landscapes on our drive through... saw nice farms, little villages, and some areas that looked like they were so alien and inhospitable as to be from the moon or Mars. Our driver dropped us off at the gate of Old Amran at maybe around 9:30 in the morning... We walked through the city but it was basically dead right now because of the Ramadan hours. There were a lot of girls out on the streets at this time though, they were all headed to school. I guess they have school here 6 days a week, although only for 4 hours per day. The architecture here was quite different from that of Sana'a. There were lots of little kids following us around chanting Soora, soora (picture) and we dubbed them the Soora Zombies... Like Night of the Living Dead they would just chase after us chanting this... Out driver had dropped us off at one side, and drove to the other to meet us. We came out the other side of the old city (it wasn't that big, nothing like the old city of San'a of course) and a store keeper started chatting with Markus for quite awhile because he wanted to learn German. Asking if he had any books or anything that taught the language, which he of course didn't. Then we headed out again. I thought I would be able to sleep during our trip, but the roads aren't exactly the smoothest of surfaces. It was quite bumpy, despite being paved, and there were frequently large speedbumps, or sections of road that were just unpaved, and he had to slow down abruptly and cross over the dirt and rock before coming back onto asphault. Strange. I think we crossed two military check points pretty close outside of Sana'a. At the second one, they stopped us for awhile before letting us through, which our driver said was because they were waiting for us to pay them, but since we didn't they just let us go. He had told this group of soldiers that we were Germans again. After driving for quite awhile longer we came to this nice cliff overlooking a valley full of farming. There a whole bunch of children rushed out from I don't really know where (as there was nothing around us, except two small houses and one store). They all started talking to us as we took a break from the road. They were all especially interested if we were fasting. Which me and Matt, and Sandra were, but Markus got up and ate a big breakfast. We headed back out for maybe another hour on the road until we came to another military check point. Our driver hopped out and went to their shack for I didn't know what. And then one of the soldiers just came and hung out at our window. We had no idea what was going on... We thought it was another attempt to get us to pay them, and they weren't going to give us our driver back until we did. We didn't do anything but sit there, and eventually our driver came back and we headed back on the road. We didn't quite understand what the hold up was for, but then a few minutes later a military truck zoomed up behind us with a large machine gun mounted on the back of the truck, and the bed of the truck full of soldiers. It was quite strange. Markus has traveled quite a bit and never had to have a military escort, so he was pretty surprised. We joked around how it feel like we could in Iraq or Afghanistan (probably more like Afghanistan because of the terrain). We had our nice Toyota Landcruiser, which was obviously a car for foreigners (most of the cars here aren't very nice) and the military escort. The driver said it was because the government wasn't very strong up in the North, and if there were any sort of inter-tribal disputes we would have protection. We drove for awhile, through a small city, and then all of a sudden our military escort was gone... Markus and I were really confused, we asked out driver about it, but he said it was okay because there was no problems. We continued on our own for about another twenty minutes and then all of a sudden the military escort zoomed past us and started leading the way. The weather now was a bit hotter than in Sana'a I realized, most likely because we weren't at such a high altitude anymore, and you could see around us now that the landscape had changed quite a bit, there wasn't too much plant life around. It just looked like all the water had been sucked out of the area, and even the rocks and dirt was dry and cracked. It was especially unpleasant as we were fasting, and with a Muslim driver, so it would have been rude to be drinking in front of him. It was also around this area where Markus and I saw about 30-40 vultures perched atop the cliff beside the road, it was really bizarre, and a number of them circling off to the side! I was particularly amazed that Sandra was able to sleep through these bumpy roads, I wish I had been able to, although it was nice to see all the different areas outside of Sana'a. After a bit we stopped atop a hill overlooking the town of Huth. It was a nice view, and this town was more 'desert-y' than I had seen before in Yemen. Our military escort had kept going. Sandra at this point just took over the whole back seat for sleeping, and wouldn't wake up when Markus and I were trying to get back in. We debated about riding in the back but were eventually able to wake her, and Markus gave her his seat so she could sleep against the window instead of bouncing back and forth in the middle. Our military escort was waiting at the bottom of the hill in Huth, and their driver and ours starting talking for awhile, but the only thing I could really understand was "problems for us" (from the military driver and that was it, but I didn't know what the problem was... Hah, the trouble with broken Arabic. Soon after leaving Huth we turned off onto a dirt road, and soon realized why we needed the Landcruiser, we were going up and down all sorts of off road enivronments. Rocky dirt roads, hills, holes, etc. Nobody was sleeping now, the terrain was too bumpy... and I thought the roads weren't that great from before...! Now we kept boucing and slamming into the doors and windows. Pretty bumpy. Like an amusement park ride. We kept passing be a number of small villages, houses and farms... And at first the villagers weren't that friendly. Lots of little kids making strange signs and gestures at us, and chanting at us. We had no idea what they meant... But it was really funny when we crossed this group of children who were chanting and running up towards the car when Markus replicated a sign (cross your middle and run finger, and spread the others out, then rotate your hand back and forth between the palm and back facing the person) we had seen earlier, and they all just literally stopped dead in their tracks. Stopped running towards us, stopped chanting and kind of just stood with their mouths open when we passed... We have no idea what we told them, but it obviously meant something! We continued to get strange gestures and chants directed at us from the women and children (we basically only saw women and children from the point of leaving the cities, making us wonder where all the men were). But after awhile, the children became friendly again and started waving to us. Lots of children and women were out herding goats, and sometimes even a woman would wave (or perhaps she was a teenage girl, hard to tell when they are fully covered) which is pretty unusual and uncommon. Occasional we'd see a truck full of men pass by. Then at one point we noticed the military truck stop abruptly and two or three soldiers jumped out with their Kalashnikov automatic weapons thrown over their soldiers... We were like "uh-oh, there must be trouble ahead" and our driver stopped some distance away from them... And then we saw this white chicken running around a bush and these three soldiers, in full camo clothes and weaponry, chasing it around, falling down, until one finally grabbed ahold of it, and they put it in the cab of the truck. They driver pulled up alongside them, and apparently the chicken was in there before, and had escaped, perhaps they were buying the chicken when they disappeared for about 20 minutes earlier, they also told us it was for dinner that night. We continued along this bumpy dirt road for a total of about an hour until we finally arrived at the hotel lcated at the base of the mountain which Shihara was located atop. They showed us the rooms available there, and let us use the bathroom. They said we could go to the top of the mountain to Shihara, and stay at a hotel there if we wished, but that this one was preferable. Either way we didn't have to decide now, because we would go to Shihara anyways. I broke my fast early when Sandra offered me a cookie from her backpack, as well as some water... I was really starving, despite eating some cereal in the middle of the night last night, I mean normally when I fast I wake up at noon, and then eat at 6. Today I got up at 7am... and it was just after noon now.... I felt bad because right afterwards the guards were asking which of us were fasting and the driver pointed me out along with Matt and Sandra. To which the soldiers were very happy. We then loaded our bags and ourselves into our "Special Local Transport" which was just in the back of an old Toyota pick up truck... And a different driver (a local) as well as two of the guards piled into the cab. Sandra was offered a spot in the cab, but she declined and stayed in the back of the truck with us. We all situated ourselves seated around the back, and took off an an even bumpier and rockier dirt road. We were laughing at out "special local transport" which was costing us $50 between us from the trip total. But we soon realized why this pick up was necessary as opposed to the Landcruiser from earlier as we began ascending steep hills, and large rocks, with bumps and bangs ensuing. With all of us sitting on the bed of the truck it was horrible, because it would throw you around so much, so I decided to try it Yemeni style which is standing up in the bed of the truck, hanging onto the bar near the cab. It seems really dangerous, but you don't drive really fast, and you always see Yemeni's riding in the backs of trucks in this manner. It was much much better, because you could actually control yourself and not get slammed into things, or be bouncing up and down on the hard metal of the truck. The other three joined me in standing, but it was particularly cramped. We would stop at a number of different places with good vantage points in order to take pictures. I wish I could describe better how crazy this road was... It was really unbelievable. We also passed by a number of small villages too. The road was carved along the side of a cliff and was basically one way, but we would occasionally encounter another vehicle on its way down, and have to pull over enough to let them pass by. Occasionally there were sections of a former road made out of large rocks, but was defintely not intended for vehicles because it was probably more bumpy than the other portions. We kept climbing higher and higher and higher, and the views were absolutely amazing. Almost all of the mountains and hills around as had been terraced from the top to the bottom to allow agriculture, and you'd see houses, or other buildings just perched upon these cliffs. It truly felt like a place out of this world. I don't really feel like Sana'a is that strange or foreign of a place (it is a big "modern" city, where you can get almost anything you'd want), but this place was truly different, and I have never seen anything like it. I reminded me of parts of the movie Seven Years in Tibet, so I kept imagining we were headed to some place like that. After one of the rests for photo taking I elected to sit down again at the back, as there wasn't that much room to stand, and it began to make me sick. I was getting slammed up and down and back and forth so much, that it felt like my internal organs were in new places now. I weaseled my way back up to the front and made someone change places with me before I really did get sick. We arrived to the top of the mountain and to Shihara after about an hour total of driving up in the back of the pick up. The driver stopped almost immediately and the two soldiers jumped out to but some local gat grown on the terraced hill sides, while we took a break and talked to the children who were now swarming around the truck. We soon took off and left the soldiers there, and two of the kids ran after the truck and jumped onto the back to hitch a ride. Then the driver stopped the car, turned it off, jumped out and ran around the car, started yelling at the kids picked up a massive rock and threw it the youngest one (it missed him, thankfully!) and was grabbing him yelling! It was crazy, I can't believe he reacted in such a way... Didn't understand what exactly he was saying, except when he called the kid 'Himar ibn Himar!' (Donkey, son of Donkey!), which the donkey is worst, dumbest animal in the Arab world, and is a huge insult to call someone a donkey (like when they call Bush a donkey). Anyways, after that crazy outburst, and scaring us half to death, we continued driving through the city to arrive to one of the hotels (of two total). We checked out the rooms and brought our stuff to settle into one of them on the second floor. We decided that people up here seem more agressive and crazy for some reason, and that maybe being German wasn't so bad after all, and that our group would indeed just be 4 Germans. We were really exhausted from the whole trip, and just lounged around in the one room for awhile. They offered us some food, and tea, but we told them we would wait until after 6 with everyone else. The rooms weren't so bad, it was basically a small room with three mats on the ground. Sandra had once again passed out, and we had to wake her before we headed out to see the main attraction of Shihara, the bridge between two cliffs. Our two bodyguard soldiers accompanied us, along with a group of 4 or 5 kids who acted as tour guides. They walked us through the dirt roads, and to good viewpoints of the cliffs and mountains below. I'm not sure how high the actual altitude of the city is, it might be less than that of Sana'a, since we descended quite a bit before making the trek up the mountain, but it felt much higher simply because of the view from it, and the steep mountains. It felt like you could see to the ends of the earth (is that the Space Needle in the distance?" and in almost a 180 degree direction (there were building and whatnot behind us, but in front was a few thousand feet of cliffs and mountains, and then flat endless plain, which we receded into the horizon. Truly amazing. We continued our little trek towards the bridge, and made it there in maybe 15 minutes or so. The bridge is really impressive, built between two steep cliffs and a far drop. The children told us it was 350 years old, but I believe that was the original bridge, which broke, and was rebuilt maybe 100 years ago, if I'm not mistaken. We took many photos in and on the bridge. There was even a goat herder who herded past us and both Matt and I waited for the "Goat shot" when they'd all be crossing the old bridge. From there we decided to keep walking towards to the other vilage, located across the bridge from Shihara. The kids were pretty talkative and informative along the way. We had left one of the other soldiers across the bridge talking to some people, and I guess he didn't notice us leaving because he came running over finally and yelled at the kids for leaving without him. The military escort was mandatory at all times, although we did have one of the two soldiers with us. We made it to the other village for a good view of Shihara. One of the children explained that there was a Sabafon cell tower in Shihara, thus why I had a full 5 bars of service and the Spacetel folk only had 1... Hah! That's why I pay slightly more for Sabafon. From the other village we decided to keep walking up to the top of the mountain, although I was the only one who voted no on the idea, as I was dead tired (with only two hours of sleep), and starving and hungry. But we continued on, hiking up to the top of this mountain, again I was wearing sandals, but at least there was somewhat of a path here. When we made it to the top it had an amazing 360 degree view around the area. In the way direction it was nearly limitless plain from the area we originally came, and then more mountains to the other side, which surprisingly had more villages perched atop them. There was also this sort of stone rock structure, with low walls, which might have been some sort of observation area, where we all sat and rested for awhile. I asked Matt to take my photo with one of the soldiers, and asked if I could pose with his AK47 in the shot, which he happily allowed. Then everybody started following suit, posing with the AK47 atop the mountain. I guess it is a pretty normal occurence that all the tourists do though, and Ismail even mentioned it to me before we left, which is why I asked. Then we took a bunch of group shots as well, before descendin back towards Shihara. We took another break as we were descending down the man-made terraced mountain side which is used for agriculture (primarily for growing gat, it seems), and waited for a few others to catch up. There the little kid, the son of the owner of the hotel, who acted as the ring leader it seemed, took the opportunity to re-tie my head scarf since it was done improperly, at least according to Shihara standards. In Shihara we all sat around with the children and the guards on a wall of a large water pool. There the women and young girls would go gather water in buckets and carry them back upon their heads. There were a number of these water pools around the city. A few of the people who passed by gave us really suspicious looks, and then the other few were really friend, including a two guys who went down the line to shake everyones hand and welcome them to Shihara, including the two military soldiers. We then returned to the hotel to rest for a bit. I think we got back at around 5:30 or so, and at this time I just fell asleep in the room, as did most everyone else, while we waited for dinner. The family who owns it, and also lives there, woke us at the proper time and we went downstairs for food in the hotel (there are no restaurants in this city, I guess). The food was pretty decent, we had beans, chicken, rice, vegetable mix, bread, tea, and the real treat of the night was the delicious Bint as-Sahn (which I've only had once before at Ismail's house, because it isn't typically served in restaurants). It literally means daughter of the dish, but is a sort of think bread with sweet delicious honey on top (this kind was slightly different than at Ismail's). We sat around talking in the mafraj where we ate, until returning to our room for a bit. Sandra was then offered her own room down the hall, which is good, considering we only had three mats in that room. Then Markus went out with a soldier escort to go buy some water for all of us at the souq, and after that we joined the soldiers, and owner downstairs where we all just talked in Arabic for the rest of the night... Until about midnight. We told them we would take our breakfast at 4am, because Markus and Sandra realized how much more respect you get from the locals when you fast. Both Matt and I have fasted every day, but I have broke it a few times, for water in particular.

Oct 4

2006-10-04T13:14:00.000-07:00

Wednesday October 4. I was actually really surprised I was able to wake up at 12. Didn't think I would make it. I actually did a lot of homework last night for this class so I was really prepared. Class with Faris was good again today. He actually allowed me to talk and encouraged me to talk... And I tried to make it more clear what I like and don't like in class, so maybe things will continue to improve. After that I finally updated my blog at the computer lab at school and replied to some emails. Took me quite a long time to upload each entry, and then go back and change the date for each one so it would be accurate. First time I have posted in more than three weeks, so it was a lot of work for those daily entries. I hope to be better about updating it in the coming months. Decided to change into my Yemeni clothes for my class with Ismail. Hung around the house until we could break the fast... I sat with Matt for quite awhile in the kitchen while he ate on his chicken, bread, tomatoes and dates which he bought today. Guess he really had a lot of problems with the travlers checks. He walked around again all day, this time on Hadda Street, and again no bank would exchange them for him. He got pretty angry and walked the whole of Hadda street nearly, and then bought some food. I had some of his dates, which are pretty good actually, and he took a few handfuls in a plastic bag to take with him to accompany me while I ate. Markus had some plans with his Yemeni friend, Adel, and was going to cook him some German pancakes, I guess, so it was just me and Matt. First I went and returned my big empty jug of water to the store (if you don't you end up getting fined, maybe 5 riyals though) bought a soda, as I was really tired, and we went back to the cheap falafel stand. Bought two falafels and 2 sambosas (those little fried and stuffed triangular things) for something around 80 riyals... We walked around and ate this time. I didn't want to sit on the dirty steps with my white thobe on. Matt wanted to grab some juice, so we went to a stand on Bab al-Sabah. Matt asked what kinds of juice they had, and the guy replied Sha'eer, so Matt said he'd take that. I knew what it was, but apparently Matt didn't. After he got it, he realized it was the drink that we had at Ismail's once before (I've had it nearly every night of class at his house now, so I am used to it, but at first it does taste pretty strange). He got a nice big glass of it, and he pretty much hates the stuff, and was saying it was the worst 10 minutes of his life. I thought it was all pretty funny to be honest. He just wanted to dump it on the street to be done with it, but just kept pushing through... Ismail says it is the Yemeni beer because it is made from barley, I guess, and of course without alcohol. But yeah, it does have a pretty strange taste. I guess I have just become used to it after drinking it at Ismail's basically every night of class. After that I insisted we needed to go get some real juice, for one so he could wash the taste of sha'eer out of his mouth, and two because I still had a bit of time to kill before going to Ismail's. We stopped at the juice stand under Ali Abd Al-Mogni Street (the underpass from Bab Al-Sabah to Tahrir Square) and asked the juice stand there if they had strawberry, neither of us had been there yet, but we always walked by it, which they didn't, so we just decided to go to out normal place. I bought a dessert outside the juice shop, and got a big strawberry. One of the guy's who works there is like best friend's with Matt (and he doesn't know why), and he always gives a huge greeting. I always get some reactions from people when I go out dressed in my Yemeni clothes... People like "Yemeni... good!" things like that, it is pretty funny. After that I headed out for Ismail's, but was basically the first person on the bus, so I had to wait around for quite a bit. The bus driver and his sidekick started talking to me about the usual stuff... Where I'm from, etc. They liked my Yemeni clothes and jambiya. Class was good at Ismail's, we just wrapped up with our text about sports, doing the translation into English, and then retranslating it back into Arabic to find out where my gaps and problems are. After that I decided to walk around for a bit before I headed back to the house at around 1 or so. Did some homework for awhile, and then played on the computer... Then packed up some stuff for the trip tomorrow. I was going to get up at 7am, as we were supposed to be leaving from Tahrir at 8am. Didn't end up going to sleep until 5am, but figured it would be okay because I could sleep for some or all of the 4 hour trip to Shihara the next day...

Okay so I finally updated!

2006-10-04T05:42:00.000-07:00

So I finally updated with some day-to-day information of my life here in Sana'a. I've been writing every couple days the things I do/see/hear/etc, but just on my laptop in my room. I've just been to lazy/busy to take it to the internet cafe and post it all. There is info from September 12, up until almost now, with the exception of one day (I hadn't written anything all week, and couldn't remember do anything exceptional or note-worthy, so just left it out). So if you are interested in, you can scroll back to the beginning to read the whole thing.

Sorry for any typos, or strange things. I typically type at night, in the dark, and nearly asleep, and haven't bothered to proofread. Besides I'm here in Yemen to be spending as much time with Arabic as I can (maybe I'm forgetting how to write in English).

Ma'a Salama

(I'll try to update more than once every three weeks from now on)

Oct 3

2006-10-03T13:13:00.000-07:00

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.

Oct 2

2006-10-02T05:42:00.000-07:00

Oct 2. Monday. Got up at about 12:30... Debated about whether to wear the thobe, the ma'waaz, or my normal clothes. Messed around with them for awhile, trying to tie the shawl, and the ma'waaz (which is just a large piece of clothe that you wrap on, without a belt or anything, but you wrap it almost at your chest then roll it down to your waist so it stays on), but felt weird and just elected to wear my normal jeans and button up shirt. Class with Faris, same thing as usual. Not really sure that I want to stick with him or not... Maybe I'll give it a little bit longer. Ran into Ismail and his son at the Institute and they were disappointed that I didn't have the thobe on, asking me where the tribesman went, and saying its necessary to wear it Thursday/Friday at least (which is what a lot of them do, just wear normal jeans/tshirts from the west throughout the week, and then traditional clothes on the weekend). After that used the internet at the school and returned to the mafraj to do homework and talk with Markus. I guess it will be about $220 total or so for our trip to Shihara (one of the somewhat famous sights of Yemen, with the small arched bridge between two cliffs). This includes all our transportation to Shihara and around it. Apparently it is about 4 hours away, and requires 4 wheel drive vehicle around Shihara itself, along with a night in a local hotel. I guess the price is really good, although it seems expensive to me for just one night. But it will be nice to see more of Yemen than just Sana'a. Hopefully we can get a fourth person besides me, Matt, and Markus, so it will be cheaper for each of us. Hung around in the mafraj doing some work although I broke the fast early today for the first time when Markus offered me one of his samboosa's (a little fried triangular food with stuff filled inside). Markus decided not to get any food right at 6, and so Matt and I went to the cheap falafel restaurant again from a few days ago, grabbed 2 falafals and 3 little samboosa's for 80 riyals, 40 cents. And a small Pepsi for 45 riyals. A 60 cent meal, which we ate out on the steps outside the restaurant since they gave us to go bags. Came back and messed with my shawl and ma'waaz a little more, but still deciding to wear my normal clothes to Ismail's today. At Ismail's it was strange, we were sitting around like normal, and the all the sudden this blonde white girl comes into the mafraj from inside his house. Really caught me off-guard. I think her name is Sofia, from the UK, she studied at SIAL with Ismail for a year and half a while ago, and just returned yesterday without telling anyone in Yemen for a surprise visit. I guess she was having dinner with Ismail and his family tonight, although he didn't mention anything beforehand, so it was strange. As a foreign woman in Yemen, you do get more freedom, and more hospitality though, because you can freely interact with both men and women, so you can go where you will in the house, you could stay over with the family, etc, whereas male guests are basically just allowed in the mafraj or sitting room, and never allowed to interact or even see the women of the house (except little girls). Yeah, so I guess she is returning for maybe another 6 to 9 months, she just converted to Islam I guess about 4 months ago (after leaving Yemen) and has returned to study the religion more, along with the language. She was pretty interesting, lots of stories, but she stuck around until almost 10pm, when she left to pick up a guy friend of hers from the airport. So we got a pretty late start for the lesson, later than usual. Again the power cut off for an hour or so, earlier than usual. So now I deal with two power outages per day, one in Al-Ga'a (the former Jewish quarter where Ismail lives) at around 9 or 10 pm and then another one back at my house at around 1 or 2 am. Each time for around an hour or a little less. Well, we had our lesson until about 1am today, before I walked back to the house. And sure enough right after I got back at about 1:30 and was in the bathroom the lights cut out, and again that pocket flashlight came in handy. So I sat around typing using the battery on my laptop what I've been up to for the past couple days. Finally ate (nearly all) of my Dorito's chips from the supermarket awhile ago... Very good. Tasted like home. And now a few hours later the city is booming with the noise of "allahu akbar" (God is Great) coming from every mosque in the city to call the faithful to prayer, and to (soon) begin their fast for the coming day... The call to prayer, which happens five times a day, is obviously almost always present in the city. Although luckily for me it isn't too loud near my room. I've never actually been awoken by it, but when I stay up late like this, it does keep me from sleeping as the Mu'ezzin tends to carry on for quite awhile some times over the loud speaker. I'll just keep thinking of more things to talk about... Usually when I buy water here (I never drink from the tap, although you probably can't prevent contact with tap water from vegetables, and other foods) I get the single plastic bottles, a little larger than typical in the US... They have Hadda water, Shamlan water, or Aden water, most commonly. I don't notice any different except that Hadda water is 35 riyals instead of 30 (15 cents). This was what I did for the first 3 weeks now, so literally my desk is nearly full, and completely covered in empty plastic bottles. I don't really use my desk for homework anyways, and we have a cleaning lady (yes, fully veiled) who comes through maybe a few times a week and takes out your garbage if you leave the little basket outside the door, so I'm beginning to gradually throw them away, 2 at time or so, hah. Anyways, I recently bought the large re fillable jugs for the first time, they cost the same price, but you just have to return the plastic jug to them when you are finished with it, or they will fine you, I guess. I apparently got a smaller one, maybe just 2.5 liters, but they also have 5 liters for maybe 50 or 60 riyals I think, however not all the shops have them. So now I just keep the giant jug on my desk and refill one of the smaller bottles when I need to. Well the Mu'ezzin is still carrying on with his call to prayer, but I think I will brush my teeth and try to get some sleep, got to go to class afterall, even if I have yet to finish my homework for it... tomorrow, insha allah (God willing).

Oct 1

2006-10-01T05:41:00.000-07:00

Oct 1 Sunday. Well, I either ignored my alarm clock, or didn't set it properly, because I somehow woke up at 2pm... An hour after my first lessons started. I quickly got ready and headed out to the institute, and caught Faris as he was leaving down my street, he just said we'd do it tomorrow. I thought I could get an hour, but he was set on leaving, and I was the one an hour late... So I just went to the institute and waited to use the internet there. It is either really good there or really bad, I'm not sure why it varies though. Got in some emailing and whatnot, after that I decided to actually go walk around the city during the daylight hours, which I don't often do now during Ramadan. Then I was stopped by this 12 or 13 year old kid in Bab-Al-Sabah... He was staring at my strangely, but I just passed by. He came after me asking if I remembered him, which I really didn't at this time, I meet so many people it is difficult to remember them all. He asked me if I still wanted to buy some Yemeni clothes and jambiya and whatnot, which I want to do, although I wasn't sure about right now... He told me that his friend's dad has a shop real close by and lead me to it. Little place called Sam City in Bab-Al-Sabah. They owner, Muhammad, was very friendly, along with his son, I'd guess, Ali... Later Ali started making boxing gestures and saying "Muhammad Ali" so I'd remember them for next time. Anyways I came in and said I wanted to buy the whole shibang, all the Yemeni clothes... Muhammad speaks really good Arabic, so it was easy talking with him, especially when I know nothing about Yemeni clothes except the names. He got out a thobe for me, the long white robe they wear in the Arabian peninsula, and I put it on in the store over my jeans and shirt. Then he brought out a jambiya, the traditional dagger that most men wear here (purely ceremonial dagger), then the shawl which you can wear on your shoulders, or as a head wrap, of course he had to wrap it on me. I apparently bought a very nice wool shawl, which is 'more beautiful' than the 'average' or 'normal' shamoota (might be wrong) which costs maybe 1/3 less. Then I took my jeans off under the thobe in the store to put on the baggy white pants that they wear under it, along with a plain white tank top which should be worn under it, but I waited to put that on later. I also bought ma'waaz or foota, which is the skirt/sarong type garment that they wear here, which is traditional from southern Yemeni, but many people in Sana'a wear it too (whether they are from the south or not). Let's see, the whole lot of stuff from the store cost me about 11,000 riyals I believe, or maybe $55. Pretty expensive I think... I mean I know he charged me 4500 for the Jambiya, and I've seen them for only 1000 in Souq al-Milh, but whatever, I just thought it was best to buy it all at once. Like I said, they were really friendly though and told me to come back to drink tea with them sometime in the evening, since it's Ramadan, and to come back if I need help to tie my shawl, or buy any more clothes. Then the little kid, my new 'friend' took me to a guy selling suit jackets, which you need to wear when you have a thobe and jambiya it seems, who was just selling them off the street, draping the coats over the hand rail near the 'underpass' to Tahrir Square from Bab al-Sabah. Tried on a few different coats and found a really nice pin-stripped one for 1500 riyals, or $7.50 for a new coat. Pretty amazing. He had matching pants, but I just got the jacket. It is helpful to know that here they say as-sandal, al-jacket, al-coat, and ash-shawl for some of their clothing items, for easy. So I had the whole outfit, except the fact that I was wearing some Diesel tennis shoes which totally did not go with the outfit now. As I was heading back with my old clothes in a bag, and my new 'friend' with him, he then started asking if I wanted to give him some money for helping me... It was then that I finally remembered that I met him a few nights ago in Tahrir Square when I was supposed to go bowling but instead st around watching Yemeni dances for the elections, he was the homeless kid who spoke good Standard Arabic... Anyways all I had was 1000 bills, and some 200s so I offered him 400 riyals ($2) which he was complaining was too little, he wanted to buy food for his family. He wanted 500, but I had no 100s, so he's like it's okay we'll go exchange it, and we went to about 4 stores asking for change which none had, finally got it from a guy on the street. Yeah, so my Yemeni clothes cost me a little extra for my personal shopper, who really didn't do anything except lead me to a store and lead me to a guy who sells jackets. So I spent nearly all the money I had in my wallet, but I got a great Halloween costume now, at the least. Went back to the mafraj up stairs to find Markus and Matt doing homework and they were quite shocked at my outfit. They asked me all sorts of questions since they haven't themselves gone 'Yemeni'. Anyways, I replaced the tennis shoes with my American Eagle flip-flops, and my t-shirt with the white tank top, and we all headed out for dinner. We decided to go to the nice restaurant Al-Shallal, walking there about 15 minutes away. Immediately people in the restaurant started noticing the foreigner in full on Yemeni clothes and smiling and laughing. Asking "Jambiya?" and giving me a thumbs up. Dinner was good, had the broast chicken (fried chicken) along with really really crispy french fries, some various sauces (the garlic dip is great) and a side of bread. Normally I'd be able to wipe my hands on my jeans or something, no problem, but no-no-no when you wear a nice white thobe. After that we had to split up to catch buses (again the smallest of the buses are just 6 person mini-vans for 10 cents). Markus and I rode together and we got to talking with the Yemenis in the vehicle who were very amused that I was Yemeni now. But then the guy said "you are Yemeni, but the sandals aren't good"... So I guess my flip-flops don't cut it, I'll have to buy some authentic Yemeni sandals before I have the complete look. We got back to the bus stop area near Bab al-Sabah, and Markus noticed Matt had just arrived also, so he decided to hide behind me and see if Matt would notice me sue to my Yemeni attire, sure enough he just passed right by before we stopped him. I grabbed my stuff for class before heading out to Ismail's. As I was walking on my ow back to the bus stop plenty of people were noticing my new clothes, and I thought it was funny that one guy told me in English as I passed by "Yes, very very handsome" hah. So I crammed onto a bus and ended up at Ismail's a few minutes early. His son greeted me at the door as usual and was very surprised of course. Ismail came into the mafraj about 5 minutes later and was equally surprised. He said I look like a tribesman now. We commenced our lesson as usual, although the power strangely went out at about 9pm and we had to work by candle light for about an hour, and of course I had to adjust to sitting with what is essentially like a dress on the low cushions of a mafraj sitting room. I also found that when you arrive to a house you take off your jambiya and jacket in the diwan or mafraj. Ismail also demonstrated for me a few times how to wrap the shawl around your head. After the lesson I was expecting my usual friend Ahmed to by in Tahrir Square, but I didn't see him, I think he might be working late at night now, if I understood him right, so I decided to head to the juice stand for a big strawberry drink which I crave, and a 'meat' sandwich (which is kind of a gross mystery meat/fat, but one of the few things to actually eat at the juice stand). I was also extra careful not to drip any strawberry juice or meat onto my thobe. I then headed back to the house, and talked to my mom on my cell phone (she called me, of course) for about a half hour. The power went out while we were talking so I had to fumble around in the dark to look for my flashlight. Did some more homework and tried to get to sleep at least a little earlier than usual so I wouldn't miss my lesson the next day!

Sept 30

2006-09-30T05:41:00.000-07:00

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.

Sept 29

2006-09-29T05:41:00.000-07:00

Sept 29. Friday... Yawm al-Jumaa. I slept until probably about 2pm... Really late, but it was nice to get a lot of sleep... After that, I basically just messed around on my computer... Playing some games, typing in Notepad about what I've been up to lately. That passed a couple of hours, after which I did some homework in my room and also talked with Markus and Matt for a bit. Turns out Markus wasn't feeling too well today, possibly from the big feast we had yesterday, I don't know. Although I felt fine. So he was just taking it easy in his room, and didn't really want to go out to eat or anything. By 6:15 when it was time to break the fast, Matt and I went out to this little falafel place he found near Bab-al-Sabah, on the Sa'ila (the water way). Turned out to be really really good. Most of the sandwiches served here aren't like the traditional Arabic food that people are accustomed too, like falafel on a pita-style bread, no here if you get a traditional falafel or shawarma, it is served on a mini-Baguette type thing, however this falafel restaurant serves it on a pita-style bread, complete with lettuce, tomatoes, sauces, and spices. All for only 30 riyals a piece, 15 cents. Even a good deal by Yemeni standards I think. Granted they are small so you have to get two, but they are pretty good, and you can't beat the price. After that we were supposed to head out to the supermarket to pick up some juice or soda or something for the German Girls' "party" tonight. We made it to Huda Supermarket on Al-Zubairi street at about 7:30pm but it was still closed. Then we ran into Yudid, one of the German girls, and her friend, who's name escapes me, from Ireland, studying at CALES. They still had to go buy more food for their dinner party tonight, so we said we'd see them at 9. Walked all the way back to the house, and just bought about 8 small cans of soda from the local stores, we were only expecting about 8 people. So we headed back and hung out at the house until just about 8... Then we headed out for the Bayt at-Talabat (the girls house) but had no idea where it was, just somewhere amongst the Old City, across the Sa'ila, so we had to have Yudid come meet us at the Institute. We technically live in the Old City at our house, but it is among the newer part, on the west side of the Sa'ila, across the east side is where you find the real Old City, with tiny streets and cramped buildings. We made it to the girls house to whichven the entrance is strange, you have to duck through the doorway and step down, then climb up some small stairways, sometimes having to duck from the ceiling, and minding your step because each one seems to be at a different height, and not always level. Most of the doorways in the house you have to duck under or through, and even the main floor of the common room between the kitchen and bedrooms was terribly uneven. Almost wave-like. Very funny. We climbed to the very top floor to a balcony. They had a large table up there and lots of chairs (like lawn furniture, but outdoor seating is nice!) along with an amazing view across the city. Maybe even better than the guy's house, expecially from the balcony, but we have a great 180 degree view from our mafraj, and are basically the highest building in the area. Sandra was already in the kitchen at this time, and Yudid left me and Matt (Markus, being sick, stayed home) in charge of the BBQ, and she headed back to the kitchen to help Sandra with the cooking. Then Matt decided that since I am American I obviously know more about it and stuck me in charge... The BBQ was a tiny thing on the floor, but it was okay, however the problem was with the coals... They went and bought coals today, however what they ended up with was basically a bag of burnt, charred sticks... Nothing like any coal I have ever used before. Without lighter fluid, without real charcoal, just some charred sticks, newspaper and matches. I honestly didn't think it would actually light, and even if it did, that it would be hot enough to cook anything on. Needless to say it took a long time and some trial and error to actually get it hot and burning, but after about a half hour it was going decently. At about that time a whole large group of people arrived up to the balcony, let's see, there was Christoph from Germany, studying at CALES 3 months, and working at the German Embassy part time, there was Luca, from Italy also at CALES for three months, along with his wife, the Irish girl who also works at a hospital here, there was here colleague from work, Muhammad, a doctor originally from Palestine, and his sister, didn't catch her name, along with her Iraqi friend, she has lived in Yemen for 10 years, and there was also Michael from Switzerland, who was older, studying at CALES also, but speaks Arabic very well as he lived in Israel/Palestine for three years. So all-in-all there was 10 of us out on this little balcony. We all talked for quite a long time, which was really nice to meet and hang out with some other Westerners once-and-awhile. We just talked about Sana'a, what we are studying, about the difference between the schools, etc. All the while I continued nursing the BBQ, having to blow on it constantly to keep it hot and get it hotter. Eventually food started coming, starting first with appetizers of all sorts, lots of various types of salads and vegetables, at this time I threw the potatoes on the BBQ (hot enough after about an hour of work), it was really quite delicious. Then we had lots of shrimp, really good French bread, the potatoes, along with the chicken which we heated up on the BBQ. There was a lot of food, it's hard to remember everything they had, but they threw a great feast. After everyone was finished we all grabbed dishes to take down to the kitchen, and then we all sat up in the mafraj. Their mafraj was okay, maybe not even technically a mafraj (I think it has to be on the top floor), but the seating area isn't as nice as ours, although they do have some cool posters of President Ali Abdullah Saleh hanging up. I obtained some posters of him awhile ago just before the election, but I still have yet to hang it in my room, or up in our mafraj, in the future, hopefully. So in the mafraj, we all just continued talking, and they had tea available and sweets too, but I just had some cookies. After about an hour or so in the mafraj the whole group of us took off to leave Yudid and Sandra with their huge mess and tons of leftover shrimp. I'm not sure how much they spent on everything, but they were very generous to host all of us like that. It made Matt and I feel dumb for bringing only 8 small cans of soda, there wasn't enough to go around, and it had to be divided amongst paper cups. I was also amazed at how much stuff they cooked, considering I haven't cooked a single thing here (unless cereal counts!), and they said they'd be throwing another get together again on October 3rd to celebrate German-something or other day, complete with German food I guess. I'll look forward to it if it actually happens. After that I returned to start doing my homework for the following day. I couldn't sleep though and stayed up really late, even for Ramadan standards, then the sun started coming up and made it even harder to sleep.

Sept 28

2006-09-28T05:40:00.000-07:00

Sept 28 Thursday. The next day I was awoken at noon by Markus who wanted to see if I was going to come along on this village trip he was going on today. I agreed since it would be nice to get out of Sana'a for a little bit and see something new. Matt opted to stay home because he wanted to do homework. So I joined Markus to meet up with his friend Adel (who use to be a teacher at SIAL) in Tahrir Square, as well as the German girl, Sandra. We took one of the buses to the very end of Hadda street in the south. And then started our trek on foot up through this town, and then into the mountains... I had no idea there would hiking involved and had just worn my normal sandals, which definitely wasn't the best choice of shoes for navigating up all these dirt and rock paths, and climbing over things, and avoiding prickly bushes and the like. There were a ton of cactuses around too... We weren't really sure how to get where we wanted to go, so we kept following this trail up the hill. Along the first path there were these two twin puppies just sitting there, and they turned out to be really friendly and started following me up the path. I stopped to pet them for a minute and then continued on the way. The kept following for awhile but their little legs couldn't keep up with us and they fell behind. Later we encountered a teenage boy up on the mountain trail along with his donkey, so we asked for directions to a village, and he showed us the way. Markus was joking around with Adel about the donkey and the guy offered to let him ride it... He tried for a bit, having to duck under cactuses and so forth, but quickly fell off. Then the guy hopped on his donkey and just took off up the steep rocky path with no problems. It was pretty funny, and the donkey is surprisingly fast. He had to stop and wait for us to catch up, and then encountered a friend from the village, and offered the donkey to Markus for a second try. This time he was able to successful ride the donkey up to the gate of the village. I would've tried to ride it, but I knew that I would have fallen right on my head or something, especially on that path we were on! We walked through the village and found a really nice view (by now we were nearing the top of this mountain) down onto Sana'a and the surrounding area. You could see how truly large the city of Sana'a is, at the points where I thought it stopped it actually kept sprawling. Also remember that the city of Sana'a itself is already at an elevation of 7,000 feet! We sat for awhile at the top, and then decided to continue on our quest of finding the city of Bayt Bous which was supposed to be even nicer.... We continued walking along a mountain road, however this time it was at least flat, and not just up hill. After walking for another 30 to 45 minutes we came across another village. It was really nice, there was a little waterfall there and river going through it, possibly from a spring. Lots of little stone houses, and stone streets, it reminded me of an old Italian village, if not for all the garbage and litter everywhere. It seems to be Yemeni Culture to throw your garbage where ever, whenever. In Sana'a it is dirty too, but you always see street cleaner people going around sweeping up everyone's trash. But this is doesn't appear to happen out in the smaller villages. Again we got directions from a group of people toward Bayt Bous and continued on our way. We encountered a mother dog and about 5 puppies on the way. Two of them come up to us, and Markus threw them one of his cactus fruits to see if they would eat it, and surprisingly one of them did. We continued down the street, and then ran across a bus dropping off some people, and asked if we could get a ride to the old village of Bayt Bous. We drove through new Bayt Bous, which is now a part of Sana'a, and started driving very slowly back up the mountain... I didn't think the van would make it. We kept having to stop and ask people on the street which street lead to Old Bayt Bous. We eventually found our way there and he took us to the end of the road literally. The trip cost us 200 riyals each, or about $1 as it was pretty long, and they usually run along pre-set routes. There was a little lake or body of water right below us, and little kids were jumping in and swimming, and yelling up to us on the cliff "Sadeeq! Soora!" (Friend! Picture!) wanting us to snap photos of them swimming, however I didn't bring my camera with me because I just thought we would be going to some little town on the outskirts of Sana'a, nothing special. But I did regret not bringing it! The city of Bayt Bous is perched up on an opposing cliff, and is now an old nearly abandoned city, however there were a few Yemenis around, herding goats and sheep. Walking around with kalashnikov rifles, and gathering things from the nearby area. We walked into the old city, which is almost like the Roman Forum, full of ruins, however many of the buidlings are still standing. We could venture into old houses, which were like mini-skyscrapers just like Sana'a, with many floors, built out of mud bricks, rocks, and logs. From the tops of the houses there were amazing views of Sana'a and far drop from the cliff below. It must have been a pretty safe and secure city perched high up, and easily defendable from all sides. We just explored the old abandoned houses and streets for awhile. It was really impressive. The stairwells and doorways were very small, you'd have to crouch in order to pass through the doorways and continue up the stairways. Some of them now had holes in the floors and ceilings that had crumbled and fell. But you could still discern where the kitchens were, and so forth. We saw a wheel in the entryway of one of the houses and I guessed it could have probably been the first wheel ever invented... hah. After that we began our trek down from Bayt Bous, and encountered a Yemeni who began talking to us, whether we were fasting etc, and then invited us to his house for the fast breaking meal. We politely declined and said we would just go to the gillave and eat. He pointed us in the direction of the best path down the hill, and we continued on until we reached this large body of water between two hills and held there by a giant dam made of rocks. We sat on top of this dam for a bit talking to Yemenis and enjoying the peace and quiet of the area and the beautiful scenery with the lake and surrounding hills and mountains. Then as we made our way down from the dam to the road below, we ran into the same guy who again invited us to his house for food, he really insisted that we come, so we figured why not, and joined him on the walk back to his house. Although there was a van stuck in the rocky dirt road, so we stopped to try and help him push it out, along with a bunch of other Yemenis. But it wouldn't budge, and it was a one lane road to leave this area, blocking in other cars. But there was a big truck and they chained them together to pull it out of the rocks just as we were leaving. I also saw a really strange bug, it looked like a praying mantis, or stick bug, just hanging out in the rocks. Anyways, we walked out to this guys house, which was just at the edge of the new Bayt Bous (located below the cliffs of the old city). I wasn't sure what to expect going to the house of a villager in terms of what his house was like or what we would be eating. But he had a huge sitting room, probably 3 times bigger than any (of the two) I've seen before. And we sat around talking waiting until the proper time. Tons and tons of food was brought out... We started with dates, of course, and some vegetables with dip, there was a delicious soup, Salta of course, Yemeni-style Pizza, bread, rice, meat, spaghetti (just the pasta, not the sauce), fresh mango juice, fanta soda, complete with a jello like dessert and tea. Another huge feast. We ate with him, a few of his relatives and his three sons. The food was very good, and he was very nice, to just invite in some random foreigners to join him. Oh and when we got there Sandra was asked if she wanted to join his wife, so she went off to the women's party for the time. After dinner we continued to sit around and talk for awhile, until about 7:30 and then his relative even drove the fours of us out of the city of Bayt Bous to the bus stop back into Sana'a. We made it back near Tahrir Square and then the four of us decided to stop at that juice shop and Sandra bought us all a drink. We sat around talking again for another hour or so, about all sorts of strange things... about Frog Juice that they drink in China, and more. Then we finally made it back to the Bayt at-Tulab and said bye to Adel and Sandra. I bought a Mountain Dew for the caffeine, because I was feeling pretty tired from that long hike and lack of sleep. Saw Matt again, I almost didn't recognize him because he got his haircut today but ended up nearly getting it shaved. I also got two calls that evening from who I can only guess was Ahmed... After that Matt and I headed out to the internet cafe to email and Skype my Mom, however I got a bad mic and I couldn't talk. It always works best when I bring my own microphone. After that I went on my own to the juice stand once again and got a large strawberry drink this time, as well as trying one of their fruit salads for the first time, which was really good, but was much much bigger than I expected, and I wasn't able to finish it. When I was walking back at about 2am, the power was once again out in the Old City so I had to walk back in the dark, luckily I have my little pocket keychain flashlight, which comes in handy often here. Got back and played my favorite game of Spider Solitaire for awhile before finally going to sleep.

Sept 27

2006-09-27T05:40:00.000-07:00

Sept 27 Wednesday, woke up early in order to finish up the homework I wasn't able to last night from the power outage. Got the majority of my sentences written before class with Faris. Right now, I'm really not that pleased with my class with Faris. Basically it consists of me listing off new words from whatever we are reading, and him asking me which words I don't know, and explaining them in Arabic. However it still isn't 100% clear so I still have to look the words p in a dictionary after class before I can write sentences. So basically I can do the exact same thing on my own, without him. I'm thinking about switching teachers, or seeing if we can work something better out. I'm not sure yet. After class I went back to the house to do my work for Ismail before dinner, and did some other reading up on the mafraj. Today in class Matt asked about traditional Ramadan foods and what we should order, since I was told that you never eat fish during Ramadan it is very strange. So he had a whole list of foods to try and we went to the Palestine Restaurant near Tahrir, he listed off a few of the things, which they had, and they brought out more things in addition to it. We had a ton of food to eat. There was Shafout, which is a sort of wet spicy bread (which sounds really gross, but is pretty good), along Fatih Tamar (maybe) which is this cake like food made from dates, but it isn't sweet like a dessert, along with lamb, rice, bread, and more, complete with dessert too. I was really stuffed after this meal, and we couldn't even finish everything they had given us, it only ended up being $5 per person, which is really expensive here but we had a ton of food. After that we thought about tea, but decided it just wasn't possible after that meal and headed back to the house. Again I went off to Ismail's, they offered me desserts again, but I said it wasn't possible after that meal, but they still brought them... I only ate one though, there was no way I was going to eat two. Then a friend of Ismail's came over from another school CALES, who is also a teacher, and they were talking about CALES and SIAL. I guess 6 teachers have left SIAL recently for CALES because they are unhappy with the administration there. I haven't run into any problems, but it is a 'family' business and he doesn't exactly employ the best people for the job, just his cousins or other relatives. The teachers are good though, it's just the rest of the staff that's a little 'slow'. We got into out normal delayed start after his friendleft and after he prayed and watched a little TV. Lessons were good. I headed off, and once again, Ahmed was waiting for me in Tahrir square. He is beginning to drive me crazy. I was pretty tired too because I didn't sleep as long as normal, so I only talked to him briefly, told him I was tired, but I needed to use an internet cafe first. Then he insisted he knew a faster and better internet cafe, so I went along with him and he used a computer too. I tried to call my mom using Skype there but it was so loud from the street outside that I could hardly hear, and I think it was cutting out a little bit too for my Mom. So I just signed out and went back to the normal cafe. Of course he came along with me, but didn't use the computer, he just sat in a chair nearby and waited while I Skyped my Mom for about 20 minutes. Very strange. So I left and then headed back home, finally saying goodbye to Ahmed, and him basically planning to have us see each other again on Friday, so I just agreed. Despite being so tired, I wasn't really able to sleep very well, and ended up just staying up really late playing Spider Solitaire on my laptop.

Sept 26

2006-09-26T05:39:00.000-07:00

Sept 26 Tuesday, today was actually a holiday, September 26th, the day of the Revolution of the Republic, when they overthrew the Imam. So there was no class officially today, and the institute was closed, but Ismail and I agreed to meet anyways at his house in the evening. I slept in later than normal, and just did homework all afternoon up in the mafraj along with Matt and Markus and waited until 6pm for food. I guess we left early for food, because the streets seemed to be deserted and not much was open. Markus didn't really feel like going to a restaurant, so we looked for the little sandwich carts they usually have on street corners, but none could be food. He elected to go back to the house and wait for awhile, for the crowds to die down and more stuff to open since he wasn't exactly starving (he eats at the house in the day), but me and Matt just wanted to eat anything, so we hopped into the nearest restaurant on Bab al-Sabah street and again ate chicken and rice, the same meal from yesterday. It was even better actually. We sat up on the second floor, and it was really rickety, actually felt like it could just fall down... Matt was shaking his leg at one point and the whole second floor shook. People were looking over at him like he was going to bring the whole place down, it was pretty funny. Then we went drink some tea, and Matt was trying to kill some time so he could go to the internet cafe, so we then went to the juice stand and picked up some desserts just outside to go along with fresh juice drinks. Back to Ismail's for the normal routine of eating desserts, watching tv, him praying, and us beginning over an hour late. Today we even had an additional dessert along with the (very different) baklava and cake like food, there was a really delicious custard with fruit mixed in, and nuts on top. I ended up staying even later than normal, until about 1am, because we got to talking about politics and whatnot (in English though, by the end), and I took off. Sure enough as I passed through Tahrir square Ahmed was waiting for me again... We grabbed some tea, and sat around and talked for awhile again. He is particularly interested in how he can work in the US, and how much money you can make there. As is true with a number of people when they find out that I am American, "How can I work in the US?" I guess he moved from his city Ibb about two months ago to Sana'a for a job, and really doesn't know anyone here, except another friend from Ibb. He makes about $5 a day here for 6 hours work, I think, or about $100 per month. So when he found out that minimum wage in Washington is $7 something an hour, and you could make $50 day he was very impressed. All the Yemenis know that you make a lot more money in the US, but they don't seem to realize that everything costs much more too... $1.50 for a haircut here, $15 in the US. 10 or 20 cents for coffee/tea, $3 for a mocha. $5 for multi-course meal/feast and probably at least $20 for the equivalent in the US. We talked until about 3am this time, and I finally headed back to the house, however the power was out in the Old City like usual, so I walked back in the dark. I wanted to finish up some homework but the power was out so I just went to sleep.

Sept 25

2006-09-25T05:39:00.000-07:00

Sept 25 Monday, same old same old in the beginning. Class from 1 to 3, sitting around doing homework afterwards waiting to be able to go out and get something to eat... Finally the time came and we went to a fairly large restaurant over by the bus station up to Hasaba. Had some typical chicken and rice, which was really tasty. We were joined at out table by another guy, he looked like a foreigner, but we didn't really talk. Then outside the restaurant we got to talking (in Arabic) that he was a Russian who was studying Arabic in the east in Hadramout. And funnily I asked him if he knew Hassan's brother, and sure enough he did. He was in Yemen for another week or so before he returned to Moscow. That's one thing about being a foreigner in such a strange place like Yemen, you get to meet all sorts of random people from all over the world, for whatever reason. In a place like Florence, Italy, you'd probably never really talk to other foreigners or tourists just because there are so many its not a big deal at all seeing them around. Then we headed to a different tea place near our usual one, but the tea just wasn't as good, more bitter. We talked to some guy briefly who welcomed us to Yemen. And then this woman fully covered started talking to us, but we didn't know what she was saying, we started walking down the street, and then all the sudden she started running after us saying "come on, come on" in English, and then she just went on her way... I have no idea what it was all about, but I think she was the first crazy woman we've encountered. I grabbed my stuff from the house and headed out to meet up with Ismail, but as I tried to cross Tahrir Square everything was blocked off. They had the square surrounded by military and weren't letting people past. Then I was spotted by my 'friend' Ahmed from the other day, who seems to now think that we are 'brothers' and he lead me to another way to go, but it was still blocked by guards, he talked to them for a minute, and they asked to see my passport, which I of course don't have because the school has taken it. Ahmed did most of the talking, and then they guard started walking me through, leaving Ahmed behind. The square was basically empty, but they sat up some sort of VIP seating area in front of a stage, and then the guard offered me a seat there to watch whatever it was (I had no idea what this was all for at the time) but I said no that I had to go to my teachers house, and I needed to just walk to the old Jewish Quarter, he understood and let me go through. Finally made it to Ismail's about 15 minutes late because of the events in Tahrir, but it wasn't a big deal because we of course didn't start until after 9pm. Everything was as usual, with desserts, tea, water and his son bringing us everything. I stayed until about midnight again and then luckily for me I ran into Ahmed on my way back... He had also called me about 6 times during my lesson, thanks to Markus giving him my phone number. He thought I went to the ceremony because he told the guard I wanted to see it, thus why he was offering me a seat for the event. I guess it was just some boring speeches by ministers anyways, so nothing really worth watching. So of course I am obligating to sit and talk to my 'friend' for awhile. Matt passed by, and got caught by Ahmed for awhile too, but was lucky enough to get away with a good excuse. Then we went to the tea place to grab a cup of tea and we talked for quite awhile. I mean he isn't that bad too talk to, he speaks all in Arabic and I can understand him pretty well. He is just a little weird. I ended up talking to him until about 2am, when I was able to escape to get some juice and food before I returned to the house to do homework until about 4am.

Sept 24

2006-09-24T05:39:00.000-07:00

Sept 24 Sunday The next day I slept in quite long until about noon, and then went off to my class with Faris at 1pm. After that, well there's not a whole lot to do during the daytime now because of Ramadan. Normally at this time I might go to the internet cafe, to get something to eat, or whatever, but it's not really possible now. So I just go back to house to study or watch TV or something during the day time. Hung around until about 6pm, and then me, Matt and Markus went to Al-Naseem restaurant that I had been to before with the Brits, in order to break the fast, it is located about 20 minutes away walking by Bab al-Yemen. The restaurants are always packed now right at 6:15 or so and Al-Naseem was no exception, the (fairly) large restaurant was full so they had set up a tarp on the ground in the street in front of it for more people to sit... Even the tarp was full but some Yemenis noticed and gestured for us to come sit by them. I ordered some of their good fish, as did Matt, but Markus was still boycotting things that come from the sea because of his trip to Socotra where he ate fish and only fish for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for five days. Then we decided to grab some tea and go sit on top of Bab Al-Yemen, but the top of the gate was closed, apparently due to Ramadan hours, so we sat on near the gate, drank or tea and ate some sweets from a nearby cart. There was a 'majnoon' (crazy) that kept coming up and talking to us, then we saw more, we decided that there must be a majnoon convention in the Old City tonight. There are quite a few crazy people around. They are harmless really. There is one who lives on our street, and he is constantly surrounded by packs of children who are always harassing him, and bothering him. There are always about 5-10 children around him at any given time, I have come to the conclusion that it is because of this that he became crazy... But the children always point him out to me when I walk by and say 'majnoon' and then he yells out "heeelllllooo" to me in English, and says some unintellgible things. We returned back to the house, and I got my stuff ready for class and headed out to Ismail's house. At first when I got there he said we'd watch about 10 minutes of Arabic news... but instead he turned on some English movie on MBC4 and started watching that... Then about 25 minutes later he went to go pray, then dessert was brought out. We finally began the lesson over an hour late. So even though I go to his house for lessons, it is still as though he comes late, because we don't begin until much later. I ended up staying until about midnight that night, and he did have an actual lesson for about 2 and 1/2 to 3 hours. I got back to the house and stayed up pretty late that night doing homework, so it was pretty productive.

Sept 23

2006-09-23T05:38:00.000-07:00

Sept 23 Saturday. I woke up at 8am the next day (Ramadan now) and the streets were dead. Quiet. Very strange, especially right outside my window! I walked out to the school but sure enough the gates were locked as I had figured. So I went back to the house and slept until 11. Went back to the school and ran into my first teacher, luckily he was free so we had class right then. The hours of lessons were supposed to change, I knew this before, but we hadn't arranged particular times for class. We tentatively agreed on 1-3pm for tomorrow, after I arranged something with my other teacher. I met Markus in the garden who also has class with Ismail (the other teacher) and who had called and waited for him for a few hours now... I hung around too because I needed to arrange my time with him. He finally showed up at maybe 3 or so... Then said we'd be having class from 8-10pm during Ramadan... So late. During Ramadan Muslims are supposed to fast from food, drink, etc during the daylight hours, or from about maybe 5am to 6pm. But most Muslims here "cheat" out of the majority of the fasting by completely altering their hours. The whole life and hours of the city changes during Ramadan. Most Muslims here wake up at about noon, fast until a little after 6pm, and then stay up until 5am or so, eating again just before they go to sleep. Thus the need to change the hours of class. The hours of all the businesses change here during Ramadan, since it is a majority Muslim country, but fasting for a Muslim in the US would be totally different, and more difficult, I would imagine. So I had decided to observe the fast during Ramadan myself, at least for most days, partially due to the fact that no restaurants or shops are open for the majority of the day. So by 6pm I was really starving... Matt (who was also fasting) and Markus (who did eat breakfast) and I hopped on one of the larger buses, so we had to wait about 10 minutes because they don't leave until they fill every seat, so they just idle there and yell the destination out the window at people walking by, it is an interesting system. So we went to a nicer restaurant in the north that I went to with Markus on my first day in Sana'a, called Al-Shallal (the Waterfall)... The place was completely packed though and were turned away from the upstairs level, and the main level. We tried the side entrance and were at first turned away along with some other Yemenis, but we were then invited back in and took the elevator up to the sixth floor, which we didn't even know existed. It was a little nicer than the rest of the restaurant with nice tableclothes and place settings, and menus even (most restaurants don't seem to have menus, you just tell them what you want, or you know what they offer). It was also a little more expensive than the main levels, but still reasonably priced. There also weren't very many people at all on the 6th floor, it was mostly empty. They brought some dates, which is the traditional food they break the fast with. I ordered the Broast, which is basically fried chicken along with french fries. I tried some of the the ketchup for my fries, and it was probably one of the grossest things I've tasted... Where's the Heinz? The food is really good at Al-Shallal, and even better when you are starving. Afterwards I grabbed some Baklava and another little dessert from the stand outside. I like the baklava here in Yemen, better than the Lebanese-style, but the best I've ever had is still from that Iranian restaurant in Seattle. After that we just walked back to the house, both Markus and I were feeling a little upset in the stomache, maybe from the sweets we both ate, or maybe from not eating all day and then eating a bunch. We headed back to the mafraj for a bit before I had my night class with Ismail. After how late he was today to meet Markus and how late he typically is, I decided I would go a half hour late... I called first because I still didn't think he'd be there and to my surprise he was there waiting for a half hour he said... So I rushed over there and we commenced class. At this time just sort of reviewing grammatical issues, and discussion. Then my Mom called, as we had planned, but I hadn't exactly planned on being in class at that time, so we agreed to talk later. Ismail and I planned on meeting for tomorrow at his house from now on, and he would throw in a bit of free additional time as well. I headed back to my room and hung around for a bit, waiting for my mom to call me back. Except that when she did the connection was really bad for some reason between us, and so we just decided to try again tomorrow. It was sort of breaking up and acting strange, possibly from one of our cellular connections. I tried to stay up later in order to do some homework and get myself into Ramadan time, but ended up going to sleep early still (by Ramadan standards).

Sept 22

2006-09-22T05:38:00.000-07:00

Sept 22 Friday, I was able to sleep in relatively late. Got up and ate some of my Corn Flakes again, but after that it was a big homework day for me though. The most I've actually sat down and done since I got here. I worked for hours out of the Al-Kitaab books and from other assignments which my teachers gave me. I worked basically all day in my room, and then Matt and I planned on grabbing a bite to eat at 5:30, so we headed out to the Old Town to the same open-air restaurant we had gone to last week for the tasty ganem. We found it pretty easily. This guy kept trying to sell me a jambiya, the traditional dagger, while we ate. For only about $5, I would've bought it, but I don't really know anything about buying a 'good' one, and I figure I have 6 months here to figure it out... The food was good just like last time. Although we didn't have a lively conversation with any Yemeni's like last time, which was a lot of fun. On the way back from the Old City to the student housing we did get a bit lost, I got all turned around and wasn't sure where a familiar street was, so we had to ask a number of people to get going in the right direction. Matt had decided that he was going to go to the internet cafe tonight to Skype some people instead of the bowling alley, but I was trying to make it to Tahrir Square on time, but getting lost delayed me. I made it there about 10-15 minutes late and saw neither Markus, nor Ben. I waited around there for another 10-15 minutes and then walked around for a little bit. I saw where one of the other schools is, Yemen Language Center, and headed back to Tahrir. This little kid started talking to me, he actually spoke Standard Arabic somehow, so I was able to understand him. Some other guy started talking to me also and then just gave me a handful of mini-bananas, it was strange, I ate two of them and gave him the rest back. Then in the middle of Tahrir Square a festival was starting in celebration of the elections, I was told, with all sorts of traditional Yemeni dances from all different cities and regions of Yemen. I began talking with many people around me, people really become interested when they see a foreigner speaking Arabic. I made a few friends that night, I suppose. After the dances I said bye to most of them, and then hung out with a 20 year old named Ahmed, from the south for a while longer. He gave me is phone number and told me to call him and whatnot, although I wasn't planning on it... Also the Islamic holy month of Ramadan was confirmed to start tomorrow (it depends on the sighting of the moon, since Islamic months are based on a Lunar calendar, not on the Sun/Solar). And on my way back the markets became really busy with people even though it was after midnight, due to Ramadan.

Sept 21

2006-09-21T05:37:00.000-07:00

Sept 21 Thursday, first day of the weekend, but I arranged with Ismail to have class again at 10 that morning. I woke up at about ten and started to scramble so I wouldn't be late, but then remembered that I was meeting Ismail who would definitely be late. So I ate my breakfast and drank some juice and got to the institute at 10:30. The crazy old groundskeeper had to let me in, since the gate to the institute was locked. The institute is walled off, inside there is a nice small garden, and the building itself, with seating areas around the garden for study or whatever. Then there is an outdoor 'kitchen' with a roof, and a bathroom, as well as a small shack built up against the wall in the garden. It is really small, but I guess that this groundskeeper lives there in that little shack. I'm not sure what his story is, he seems a little crazy. Maybe a relative of the director. He waters the plants in the garden and locks up the place as well as feeds a number of cats who are always in the garden. I can't really understand him when he speaks... Anyways, I sat in the garden and then Ismail called at 10:30 and said he's on his way and would be there in about 20 minutes. So of course he arrived at 11. We had class until 1 though, and it's nice to have class six days a week, it keeps me very busy. After that I rushed off to Bab Al-Yemen which was the one spot where Hassan and I could find to be mutually known, he called me again and said him and his brother were running about 20 minutes late, so I wandered up into Souq al-Milh to buy something to drink. It was funny this little kid just took it upon himself to get me my drink. He took my 40 riyals and went from store to store to buy find it. I was a little mixed up on direction so I asked him where Bab al-Yemen was and he walked me to it and said bye. Talked with someone selling stuff on the street for a little bit and then saw Hassan and his brother walking through the gate. It was really strange to see a familiar face from UW all the way on the other side of the world. Very strange! He stood around chatting for awhile and then Hassan realized he had forgot some clothes in the taxi they took which he had just purchased. We went over to the place where the taxi dropped them off and they were optimistic that he would return, and sure enough about 10 minutes later the taxi driver pulls up hanging the bag of clothes out the window for him. He said that once they had left a camera in a taxi here and the came right back and returned it also. After that we debated about where to go to eat, whether to go 'authentic Yemeni' or to a nicer sit down restaurant. We opted for a nicer sit down restaurant on Hadda Street, and took a taxi down there. They knew a nice Lebanese restaurant and treated me to a great meal. Turns out that Hassan was just here for three months but his brother would be staying in Hadramaut in the east for another year, so he gave me his contact info in case I ever traveled over to that part of Yemen, then I'd have someone to show me around and everything. They dropped me off back at Tahrir Square and set off to try and sort out the situation with his missed plane ticket. It was good to see a familiar face here in Yemen though. Headed back to the house for a little and at 7 I went to the internet cafe to call my Dad for his birthday, he wasn't home then so I left a message. Haven't been able to talk to him since I arrived, communicated via email and whatnot, but it is difficult to coordinate times. Then at 8 I met up with Markus and Matt in Tahrir Square near this strange changing color light column (I has told it might be intended to be a palm tree) and we were soon joined by Ben, an Aussie who is working at Yemen Language Center in exchange for Arabic lessons and other perks and I had been reading his blog back in Seattle, and Frank, a Brit also from Cambridge in the year below Matt who had been here for about 2 weeks. We had planned on meeting up and heading out to dinner together, so we walked out to the northern part of Hadda Street to a restaurant that had been recommended to Ben by others. It was a pretty good restaurant... My fish was great, and the juice drinks are always amazing here. I thought the menu was really funny though because it had English translations of things such as "Pipsi Can" "Frying Meat" "Wet Bread" also "Wet Brea" and other strange things... But the food was good. It was fun meeting up with some other Western students, since there are so few at my school, SIAL. After that we parted ways and planned to meet up the next night for some bowling and pool at Fun City.

Sept 20

2006-09-20T05:37:00.000-07:00

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.

Sept 19

2006-09-19T05:36:00.000-07:00

Sept 19 Tuesday was again classes as usual, nothing extraordinary. I found a little kitten one the street near the student housing amongst some kids. Petted it for awhile and told the children that I wanted the kitten and they picked it up and gave it to me. It was really friendly. First friendly cat I've encountered here in Yemen. All of the cats and dogs I've seen are really wild and just roam the streets scavenging for food. I wanted to take the kitten but I didn't have anything for it, and wouldn't have been able to make it to the supermarket to buy the litter and food for awhile. Haven't seen the kitten since then. Returned to the student housing in the evening and went up to the mafraj to hang out with Bayan and Matt. We watched this really strange reality TV show that I have never heard of before called "Starting Over", we couldn't tell if it was supposed to be a joke, but I don't think so. We all had a good laugh from it, it is 3 years old I guess and just airing now on Arabic TV. We get a lot of old shows, Dharma and Greg, Frasier (I can feel like I am back in Seattle), Friends, Seinfield, etc. Then for dinner we all met up at the institute... Me, Matthew, and Byan to meet up with Sandra and Yudid (both from Germany) and her teacher Taha all went out to a Syrian Restuarant on Al-Zubairi street named Al-Sham. We decided to go for the "Touristic Menu" which included soup, appetizer sampler, main course, tea and water, and dessert for about $5. The food was really good, good lentil soup, good shwarma although I was expecting s shwarma sandwich like I would eat in Seattle, but it was a plate of food. The appetizers were good. We were joined for almost the entire meal by the owner of the restaurant, a Syrian gentleman who has lived in Sana'a for 30 years now. He spoke English really well, along with French as he worked in Paris for a number of years. Then I guess he worked for a dutch company installing radio equipment for the airport in Sana'a and never left. He has never returned to Syria either for he says his government will graciously host him in a "5-Star cell for the rest of his life". He told lots of really corny jokes in English throughout the night... Then left us alone for the main course to go host other guests. It was a nice large restaurant with fish tanks full of goldfish, and a little fountain, as well as canopy like structures above as if you were outside. Then later he returned for the dessert and tea time and the conversation got a little more heated when him and one of the German girls and Bayan started to discuss politics and religion, particularly Islam. He was very hilarious still though because he wouldn't let anyone talk, he would always put up his hand and say "Excuse me, excuse me, let me talk!" and then continue... We stayed there quite late and then headed back. I split off to the internet cafe to use Skype, but then returned to the mafraj at the student house to hang out with Byan more on his last night, as well as Matthew.

Sept 17

2006-09-17T05:36:00.000-07:00

Sept 17 The next day, Sunday, not a whole lot happened, classes as usual. Met an older Spanish gentleman studying Arabic at the institute. He is a Muslim and on a year long sabbatical. He has traveled to practically every Arabic country it seems like. He is on crutches and so he lives in the institute instead of the student housing. I was supposed to meet Ismail at 10:30 I guess, but he didn't show up until about 11:30, I guess because transportation was all messed up because of a huge pre-election rally they were holding for Ali Abdullah Saleh which had over a million people I guess. It was the last of the big public displays by either candidate before the election. So I was pretty starving by this point and went with him to a nearby restaurant for some pretty delicious sandwiches. One was a 'cheese' sandwich, which sounds strange but was pretty good. After class I went back to the house to take a nap for a few hours, then Matthew woke me up knocking on my door. We decided to go out to Huda supermarket to get provisions. I bought some peanut butter, jelly, Doritos, milk, Corn Flakes, and orange juice so I'd have at least a few things around the house. Then we grabbed some Yemeni "shwarmas" which is meat inside a little mini-baguette type bread. Not exactly the same thing. After we dropped off groceries we were invited to join the other foreigners for Izzy and Ivan's last night in Yemen at the juice bar at 8. So I first went to the internet cafe to respond to some emails, and then just broke down and went to cell phone store to buy whatever the cheapest one was. Got a used one for about $50 again, more expensive than the new one I could've got, but I just wanted to get one. All in all to register with the company Sabafon and buy the card it was about $70. Then I joined everybody a little late because the process of buying it took longer than expected. Had a really really excellent fresh strawberry juice drink for $1.50 for a large, and just talked to everybody again. After that we returned to the house and up to the mafraj, the Brits seemed to be quite amused by Oprah and Dr. Phil and other American shows of this nature on satellite. The next day was class as usual, and more of the same... Walking around and exploring on my own, doing some homework. On my way back I stopped at a little store near the house to purchase some water and the store keeper and I talkedfor a long time, about Yemen, about the upcoming elections, about all sorts of things. He was very pro-Ali Abdullah Saleh, and even gave me a few stickers which I guess I ended up forgetting there because I haven't seen them since. He was really nice though, 20 years old or so. So I always go to his store now when I need something. We also watched videos of the pre-election rallies of Bin Shamlan and Ali Abdullah Saleh... Saleh's rally was enormous, there was supposed to be over a million there and it sure looked like it. People do seem to genuinely like him, from the majority of people I talk to here.

Photos

2006-09-16T05:58:00.000-07:00

Yemen

Sep 16, 2006 - 4 Photos

Sept 16

2006-09-16T05:36:00.000-07:00

Sept 16 The next day, Saturday, Matthew and I went to breakfast near Bab al-Yemen for some kebabs (seems like a strange breakfast to me) and I had classes of course. When I met Ismail at 1:30 for our normal class time he told me he had been waiting at the Institute for 2 hours... I guess since Marcus is gone he assumed I would intuitively realize that my class time had been bumped up two hours for this week. Oh well. I still really wanted to buy a cell phone, the guy told me he would help me and took me to the shop initially, but I hadn't seen him since. I knew the general area of the store we went to so I just started walking. First I went to make a copy of a copy of my passport which is necessary in order to purchase a phone. I remembered the Huda Supermarket which we drove by on the way to the phone stores, so I was on the right path. So I just kept walking down Az-Zubairy street hoping I would run into a lot of phone places... I found a couple stores, but after the Supermarket nothing looked familiar, so we must have turned off somewhere. I went to those couple of stores in order to ask what the cheapest used phone is and got some pretty high prices, higher than the price of that new phone we found earlier... So I just told them I didn't have my passport with me so I couldn't buy it now. Later I turned off on another main road, not even sure what it was, and kept walking. It was a really busy shopping street, lots and lots of clothes and other goods. I saw the most women at once in the this area that I have seen since arriving. It was almost a sea of black. Found some more internet cafes off of this street, as well as some video game 'cafes' and stores selling DVDs and games. I was now walking around in completely new areas, in the dark now, and not sure of whether I was headed the right way. Then this guy, Muhammad, who was walking the same direction started talking to me, and was headed for the main square so I was able to practice my Arabic with him while walking. I complained that I didn't know where to buy a cheap cell phone and he gave me his number (not that I could call) and his help tomorrow, although I didn't take him up on it. I finally returned to the house in order to start doing my homework and was then invited to join the other two Brits who live at the house, Byan and Evan, for dinner. They have been here for about 6 or 7 weeks, but left on vacation the day before I arrived. So Matthew and I joined them, along with their friend Izzy, who lives in the Bayt al-Talabat (The female student house). And headed out to one of their favorite restaurants. The whole lot of them, all four of the Brits, actually go to the same school in the UK. The three came together and Matthew is in the year ahead of them. But we went to this nice fish restaurant (An-Naseem) near Bab al-Yemen. It is basically a whole fish that they serve to you, along with bread, and beans and other things. It was quite good actually. At dinner we were also joined by a German girl named Yudid who has been here for the same amount of time as the 3 Brits, but is staying for 6 months. Whereas Izzy and Ivan left in two days, and Byan two days after them. So they whole lot of them had many good tips for me and Matthew, and many good stories. I thought a hilarious one was that they said a lot of the Suqotrans (the distant island the went to for a week) are totally convinced that America is going to invade the island (I have no idea why!) When they were with their driver he saw a large cargo ship off the coast sailing by, and claimed it was an American navy vessel for the impending invasion, despite the fact that it is visibly a standard cargo ship. And then when they were at the airport they ran into an airport employing who claimed that two Yemenia Airlines planes were American war planes and said "Zis is zee start of ze war" apparently because he didn't know about their scheduled arrival. Or maybe the American military did commandeer two civilian Yemenia jets for their invasion of Suqotra. After that we returned to the house with Byan and Ivan and they had tons more stories and tips for us. Recommending restaurants, travel guides, places to go, things to do, where to shop. Apparently it is possible to buy a custom fitted suit here for $30. At this time there was the second power outage, so we sat around in the mafraj with my flashlight lamp. Stayed up fairly late talking to them before finally heading to sleep.

Sept 15

2006-09-15T05:35:00.000-07:00

Sept 15 Let's see, the day after the wedding, Friday, I went around with Matthew for a little bit, he needed to pick up some things because he didn't bring a whole lot. However, this was my first Friday in Yemen and I forgot that a lot of places are closed around noon because of Friday Prayer, but I helped him find what I could. We returned to the house so he could start his placement test for SIAL, while I went up to the mafraj up stairs and watched a couple of English movies on TV while I did some homework. Later in the evening we decided to go walk around and explore the Old City. We walked all around it and actually didn't get too lost. It is just a maze and labyrinth of small streets and lots of shops. Very nice though. I do enjoy the heart of the Old City near Souq al-Milh (The Salt Market, although they have so much more than that) because it is much more quiet and peaceful than near where I live, towards the main square. So after a little bit of exploring around and looking for a place where Matthew could buy a towel (we couldn't find one all day) we kind of worked up an appetite and went to this "nice" open air style restaurant in the heart of the Old City. We ate something called ganem, which was this almost sort of salsa concoction without being very spicy along with bread and kebab, if I remember right. During dinner we sat next to two Yemenis who wanted to talk to us foreigners. They were really suprised that I was American and wanted to talk to me about what Americans thought about the Middle East, and etc, etc. It was really good practice, but really difficult too. We sat down on some steps in the Old City then this guy passing asked if we knew "Tim, he has lived he for 20 years"... Referring to the author Tim Mackintosh Smith whose book I was reading in Seattle. He said he lived right around where we were. And it seems like everyone knows him or know about him. My teacher, Ismail, worked with him a number of years ago. Then we headed back to the house.

Sept 14

2006-09-14T05:35:00.000-07:00

September 14 Thursday. I got up really early to go out to an internet cafe, but it seems most of them don't open until later but I found one and was able to use Skype okay to call my mom. Then I ate some more "cake" for breakfast, more like a plain muffin actually. The day before I was charged 125 riyals I think, which I thought was expensive for Yemen, maybe .60 cents. And then yesterday I was only charged 25 riyals, or maybe 12 cents. I'm pretty sure it was the same guy too... Then I went off to my lesson at 9:30 but Isma'il didn't show up then (he has a reputation for being the best teacher, but also always being late) so after about a half hour I started walking back to the student housing when I ran into a new student named Matthew from the UK who just arrived today. He was with Abdul Karim getting a tour of the school, etc, but since it is the weekend most people weren't around at the school, ie the director. So I was just hanging out on the street watching packs of wild cats and talking to the children. Then I ran into Matthew again after he finished at the institute, so we talked for awhile. He has studied Arabic for two years at Oxford, I think, and is planning to stay here for 10 to 12 months. Then all of a sudden Isma'il came walking down the street, we weren't even at the school... He apologized for being late, the water at his house wasn't working so he had to wait for it to be repaire, I guess. So we had our lesson for an hour, and Isma'il invited me, Matthew, and Marcus to lunch at his house. We took a tiny, cramped, and very hot bus out to his house in the old Jewish quarter. We had a really delicious salad to start with, and then bint as-sahn, which is this sort of sweet bread-like concoction, it was very good. Along with rice, salta, some beef and potatoes. We ate with his two sons. So we sat around in his mafraj for an hour or so until his friend came and me and Matthew went along with them to another house where they were having a gat chew. They were a bunch of teachers and government officials, so it was a little easier talking to them and understanding their Arabic since they are more educated in standard Arabic. After about a half an hour there me and Matthew headed back to the student housing and I got ready to go to the wedding. Went and met Hassan at his store, he was all dressed up in the long white thobe, and jambiya (the dagger), and suit jacket. And he introduced me to a lot of his friends, and relatives before going to the actual wedding. The actual wedding consists of really loud music, lots of traditional dancing with the dagger. They had fireworks, and some foam they were spraying on everyone. And the groom was really dressed up. It is strange though because they push me right up to the front with the groom to have my picture taken with him and I don't even know him nor did I talk to him. I did have my first encounter with someone who really didn't like Americans, or at least American politics. I couldn't understand exactly what he was saying but knew it wasn't positive towards Americans. His friend or relative that was with him kept telling me to ignore him "he's not educated!" And then when he started listing off things "Afghanistan.... Iraq..." his friend just took him away. And that was that. This wedding took place all outside on the street, and then everyone goes to this large tent they set up, which is made to be a big mafraj, sitting room, where people can continue chewing their gat. The power cut out briefly so we all sat in the dark for awhile. Then as we were leaving the wedding we ran into one of Hassan's friends who is studying at a university, and studies English at an institute. He was very good with English, and his Arabic was very intelligible to me. So we sat on this overpass walkway talking mostly in Arabic for a long time. This stranger that neither of them knew even stopped for awhile to talk and listen when he noticed this foreigner speaking Arabic. Except he was really difficult to understand so, Hassan's friend Abdulla, would have to slow it down and make it more understandable for me. The other guy wanted to know all about elections in America, how they are different from Yemen, what do we think about the elections in Yemen, etc. They also both were emphasizing how killing is not Islamic, and that Osama is not a real Muslim. Anyways, I plan to meet up with Abdulla again, I think he can help me a lot with my Arabic since he can speak the spoken and standard Arabic and help me understand both...

Sept 13

2006-09-13T05:34:00.000-07:00

Sept 13 Wednesday Today... Got up really early at 6:30 because I wanted to try the Skype-to-phone thing again, maybe when it is less busy in the morning. But the 'good/fast' internet cafe wasn't open... The first class was good, we reviewed from yesterday and covered some more news headlines. After class I went to the store near the school to buy some water and talked to the teenage kid who works there a little bit. His names Hassan and he's really nice, when I thought I didn't have the right amount for the water he said "no problem, pay me tomorrow" then a guy, Abdul Lilah, who lives near the store was walking by and started talking to me in English. He almost didn't believe me when I told him I was from America... That seems to be somewhat common, most people are just surprised that an American would come here, I guess. He asked me how I liked Yemen, and I told him it is nice but that I don't know where anything is, and then he offered to take me to buy a cell phone after my next class. I went back to the student house and went up to the mafraj, the sitting room at the top of most of the houses here, and watched some Arabic news while I did my homework. Went to my next class which consists of half an hour of conversation and then analyzing a text for meaning and grammar. He is a pretty good teacher from what I've seen so far. He seems to know what he is doing at least. Then he offered to have class with me (also Marcus too, but individually) tomorrow, even though it is the weekend here. Maybe the institute pays him more, but I don't think I will pay anything additional. Means more homework of course. After class I returned to that store to meet Abdul Lilah, but Hassan said he wasn't there right now. So instead I hung out at the store for a little over an hour talking with Hassan about Yemen, the elections, soccer, and whatever. Even he says that Isma'il is the best teacher at the institute, and I guess Isma'il is the father of one of Hassan's friends. They know everyone in their neighborhood. Who they are, where the work, lots of things. Then Abdul Lilah showed up and he drove me out to get a cell phone in the electronics area. He was with his uncle and cousin and they were on there way to a wedding. We found a cheap phone a Nokia for about $50, but I had to have a copy of my passport to activate it, which I didn't know. But he said he would take me to the store again tomorrow, and then we would go to the wedding of one of his best friends. Hassan invited me to the same wedding earlier when I was with him. At least with one class tomorrow, and a wedding to go to in the evening I won't be too bored on the first day of the weekend.

Sept 12

2006-09-12T05:32:00.000-07:00

Sept 12 I had my first day of classes today (Tuesday). I got up bright and early at around 7am, which is really really early for me. It is really cool because my room faces east so I got to see the sun rise over the large mountain to the east. And my room has the famous stained glass windows at the top which project all sorts of colors onto the walls of my room when the sun shines through them. I still don't really know where to go to eat breakfast or what to eat, and yesterday I just went straight to my first class at 8am. My first class is 2 hours long with a guy named Faris. He is a good teacher from what I can tell so far. He speaks almost entirely in Arabic, he went to Al-Azhar university in Egypt, which is one of the best universities in the Arab world. He is originally from Ta'izz, a small city south of Sana'a, so he speaks a different dialect than that of Sana'a, but he speaks in Standard Arabic basically all the time. It looks like we will divide the two hours between my book from the University of Washington "Al-Kitaab fii Taallum al-Arabiya" for the first hour, and then reading from daily news articles and media. He focused on journalism and media at Al-Azhar, so it is right up his alley. I get out at 10am, and have a three and a half hour break between classes, so I went an internet cafe and was able to call my Mom with Skype, although it was 12:30am in Bremerton... Whoops. But it worked okay for Skype-to-Skype. I returned to the school and chatted with Marcus and my other teacher Isma'il and found out where I could get I haircut... So I headed out for the main square Tahrir and found a barber shop. With my basic vocabulary and hand gestures I was able to tell him what I wanted. He was a funny guy, he was singing the whole time, and many people seem to just hang out at the barber shop and they were talking to me, asking where I'm from, how much a haircut is in the US, do I like Yemen, etc, etc. The haircut turned out pretty good, especially given the language barrier, and it only cost $1.50! So cheap. So I returned to the school for my next class, but I made the teacher Isma'il take me to a restaurant so I could get some food. I still feel ackward going to a restaurant alone. He took me to a small place near Bab Al-Sabah (Gate of the Morning?) and I ate something like the famous Salta dish, except with meat added. It was pretty good, you dip chunks of bread into the stew like concoction. Then we returned to the school to have the second hour of class, which was basically a introduction of what my expectation are, what his methods are, etc. Then I basically wandered around on my own, to a tea shop, to the new part of the city. Tried to call my with skype-to-phone but it didn't work very well... It kept cutting out and breaking up. Well, I tried to find another way to call, using a normal telephone, but I guess it is about $1 per minute to call the US. Very expensive. And then the power cut out for the first time for me. I guess this is a somewhat normal occurance. So I decided to go to sleep early.

First Post

2006-09-12T01:51:00.000-07:00

Asalaamu aleykum! I have arrived to Yemen in one piece!
Things began very smoothly, my mom drove me to the airport at 3:30am on the 6th. The flights went fine, and everything went as planed. I arrived in London not too long after. I had about 16 hours in London, and since I bought two seperate tickets it was necessary that I pay to have my luggage held while I left the airport. It was about $12 per bag. Then I found my way to the "tube" or the subway system and made my way to the Baker Street area without any problems. It cost me $8 one way from Heathrow. London is a very expensive city. I was able to meet up with my relatives outside of Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum as planned at 10:30am. We did the wax museum which was fun... Got my picture taken with Tony Blair, George Bush, the Beatles, etc. Then we hoped on a double decker bus to drive through the city and see some of the sights on the way to the Eye of London. The huge ferris wheel on the Thames River. It had really great views from there. Then we hoped on the bus again to see the sights and head towards a place where we caught a cruise down the Thames, which was also very cool. The weather was great in London, by the way. And then we caught a taxi to the famous Harrod's department store where they bought me a few gifts to take with me to Yemen (some English biscuits and a keychain). Then I eventually headed back to the airport to await my Dubai departure. I really liked London a lot. It is a beautiful city. Reminded me of Paris. But in English. And really really expensive for everything.
No problems with my flight to Dubai, I fly Emirates airlines, which was really nice, I thought. Good food and service. I slept basically the whole way through the flight to London and also the flight to Dubai. Only waking when the brought around the food. In Dubai I was able to meet up with my friend Abdulla at the airport at our agreed upon time. He brought his friend Muhammad who served as driver and tour guide for the day. He had a really nice car too... We drove around watching the movie Crash on DVD while seeing the sights. Interesting. We picked up some breakfast from a Lebanese restaurant, but many things were closed that day because it was Friday (the holy day like Sunday). And they don't really like to be outside of some place that is air conditioned for very long at all... Nor did I. The heat and humidity is incredible in Dubai. As soon as I stepped outside the airport it hit me like a ton of bricks. Thankfully everywhere is air conditioned, they are even planning on making air conditioned bus stops. We saw all the big sights, the "old" souq (old for Dubai) and all the new projects they are building. The man made Palm Islands in the desert. Saw the beaches, the seven star Burj al-Arab. Then we went to a few different malls. Mercato, a really extravagant and beautiful Italian themed mall. Then to Ibn Battuta Mall (he was the Muslim Marco Polo but traveled much further) which was also highly decorated with different areas of the world (ie one portion is China, Tunisia, Egypt, Iran, etc). This mall was even complete with three Starbucks, so it was truly like I never left home. Then we went back to Abdulla's house and watched some TV and they went to the neighborhood mosque for Friday prayer. Then two more of Abdulla's friends came over and we had a really big meal, too much really! Then all of us hit the road again so they could show me around. It is a really amazing city. Very different. So modern, and so mixed. There are many Europeans, Hindis, Muslims, etc. You see a European guy wearing a Speedo on the beach one second, and then another a women fully covered in black except her eyes and carrying a Coach, or Fendi purse. Very strange.
Anyways, I was supposed to fly out n the 9th at 7am, but someone in my super tired, jet lagged state I misread the time and thought it was actually 9am departure. So I woke up at 6:30 to catch my flight and soon realized that I was totally wrong and couldn't make my flight... It ended up being okay... I had a $150 charge to reschedule my flight. But the first available was September 11th. So I had to stay in Dubai for two more nights. Thankfully Abdulla was gracious enough to let me sleep at his house for that time. We didn't do a whole lot those next two days, went to the mall, say an American movie at the cinema, went to an internet cafe, watched TV, played Playstation 2. Really it felt like I was still in the US (until I stepped outside, of course). All in all it is a very safe place, you can use English any where, in fact even the Arabs need to know English in order to do anything.
So thankfully I made the flight this morning. Abdulla's driver took me to the airport, and he came with also. The flight was pretty late taking off, at least an hour. It was a very crowded flight too. This flight was a little scary at times... Fine until we came close to Sana'a and all of sudden there was quite a bit of shaking and turbulence. And we as came down to land (we were almost touching the ground!) the pilot abruptly pulled up and back into the air to circle back around again a few times before making another landing... Apparently there was another plane going to land. I don't know it was very strange and I've never experienced that before. Then comes customs... I thought that since I had obtained a scanned copy of the visa that I didn't have to wait in the Visa line, so I just went directly to customs... They are extremely slow and after about 30 minutes they told me I had to go to the Visa line, where I waited for another half an hour to obtain the original copy of the visa and then returned to customs... They were chatting me up in Arabic, happy that I was coming to study the language. By this time I was literally the last person out of customs on that flight. Then I found Osman from my school, he had a sign that said "SIAL" so it was easy. The airport is extremely small, so everything is easy to find and get around with. Osman was pretty friendly and we took a short drive to the school. There I met the director and talked with him for awhile so he could get to know me (speaking all in Arabic, of course) and what I am looking for in terms of my studies since it is one-on-one. Then I was to take an Arabic placement test so they could get an idea of my level. It took quite awhile actually, and there were some things that I wasn't familiar with. While I was taking my test a guy came and introduced himself, a fellow student here name Marcus from Switzerland, and he offered to show me around after he got out of his class and I finished my test. He took me to the Student Housing and I was able to pick out my room. The place is pretty nice, I have a wardrobe, a small desk, and bed... Bathroom down the hall with western style toilets which is a good thing. There are only 5 people living here right now I guess. Another American who I haven't met, Marcus, and two Brits. Very small, many of the students elect to stay in hotels or their own apartments since it is so cheap. This seems fine though, it is only around the corner from the school.
After I dropped off my stuff he showed me around the new part of town a little bit, exchanged some money then we took a bus out to one of the nicer restaurants. Got some pretty good kebabs, with rice and Arabic bread. All in all it was about $3.50 for both of us, and he insisted that he pay since it was my first day in town. During our ride on the "bus" (actually a small van that they fill with people) to the restaurant we were talking with a Yemeni university student who studies English, and practiced our Arabic, then at the end he insisted that he pay for our fare which was very nice of him. In US dollars it is about 10 cents each. We headed back towards the school, and he took me to his favorite tea house. A tiny hole in the wall, but with pretty good tea. Everyone is pretty friendly, expecially the children. I can't walk from the student house to the school without at least half a dozen or more "Hello!" "How are you?" "Asalaamu Aleikum!" And most Yemenis don't even really notice us walking down the streets, I thought maybe because I am a foreigner I would attract a lot of stares and strange looks, but not at all. Doesn't seem like the even notice, unless they want to sell me something.
After that I had to return to the school to meet with the director again and discuss money and class schedule. He was running late though so I talked to one of the teachers here, Ismail, who is supposedly the best one here, and who will be teaching me for two hours per day. He talked to me all in Arabic again, and said I was advanced and "why did you come to study Arabic? You are done, very good!" Of course it's not true, but hey, it's nice. Eventually meet with the director after I explored on my own for a little bit. I guess I will be meeting with Faris from 8am to 10am, and Ismail from 1:30 to 3:30. At least for now. Then I went out exploring on my own again, trying to get my bearings, find an internet cafe, etc. Sana'a is a really, really busy, lively and active city. Very noisy too. There are people everywhere. They drive really crazy, basically wherever they feel like and they honk the horn for anything... To give a warning to pedestrians, to say hello, to get other cars to move, whatever. So there is constant noise from cars, children, people. I didn't want to venture too far though and end up lost on my first, and as I was headed back to a main square I heard someone yelling my name, Marcus who was hanging out with a Yemeni friend of his in the square. So I joined them for a little bit. And since it was my first day in Yemen his friend insisted that I go see Bab al-Yemen one of the main gates to the Old City of Sana'a. We got there and it is pretty impressive, again it was a very active area. Then we were invited in to a shop to see a camel turning a wheel to make oil... The first time I have seen a camel, I think, at least not in a zoo. He was busy eating though, and wasn't working then. I thought it was like a tourist trap and they would invite us in to look at it and then ask us for money when we left, but surprisingly no, and then the boy took us to a place where we could climb on top of Bab al-Yemen to sit and hang out. Again, no charge, just being hospitable. Neither Marcus nor the native Yemen had ever been up there, so it was a first for them too. Marcus has been here for three weeks now, and had studied here two years ago also. We just hung out on top of Bab al-Yemen for awhile, watching the people and talking in Arabic.
Then they wanted to go to a cafe in Old Sana'a... Old Sana'a is a 500 year old maze of small streets and alleys and many things for sale, again very busy and alive. Well, even with out native Yemeni leading the way we didn't find a cafe, and ended up lost and went in a complete circle accidently which lead back to Bab al-Yemen. It is that confusing there! He lead us back to the student housing which is just between the Old City and the new. Marcus had homework to do, and I really, really needed to take a shower. Our bathroom is okay. It is a hand held shower head, just like I had in Italy. The water runs really hot though... we don't have very strong cold water.
Yeah, so I am typing all of this from my laptop in my room and will be able to save it and send it at an internet cafe tomorrow...

A Few Things Before I Leave

2006-08-08T01:18:00.000-07:00

Well, I will be leaving for the airport in about 6 hours... Leaving the house at 3:30am, with my flight leaving at 7:30. Got a nearly 4 hour flight to Chicago, then a 3 hour layover. Then about an 8 hour flight to London where I arrive at about 6am local time. Then I am hoping to meet up with a few of my relatives in London that morning... Supposed to meet them on Baker Street in front of Madame Tussauds Wax Museum. We'll see how that goes... Then after a 16 hour layover in London I fly via Emirates Airlines to Dubai, where I chose to layover for about 24 hours to meet my friend from UW's English as a Second Language program, Abdulla, who will show me around all over, I hope. Then I fly out of Dubai the morning of the 9th, and arrive in Sana'a after a couple hour flight. At the Sana'a airport I am supposed to be met by representative of the school, Osman, who will have the original copy of my visa (they emailed me a scan of the document a few days ago) and will escort me to the school/housing.

A few days ago I met up with Gary (check out his blog) who recently returned from 5 months studying at CALES in Sanaa. We met at Starbucks in Seattle for at least 2and half hours, and he gave me lots of valuable info. I think it's really great to be able to talk to people who have studied in Yemen, because there is such a lack of resources about studying in this country. However, this seems to be changing as there are a number of blogs on the topic. Here are a few to look into if you are interested:

Gary (linked above) from Seattle who studied at CALES for 5 months

http://mkohlmeier.blogspot.com/
Mike from Omaha who studied this summer at CALES

http://arabicstudent.blogspot.com/
Ben who recently arrived to study and work at YLC

http://isaacc7.livejournal.com/
Isaac will be studying at CALES in October

http://www.xanga.com/mdkuehl/
Will be working at YLC for 2 years

http://polyglotpoetry.blogspot.com/
A Student at YLC, I believe

http://followkim.blogspot.com
Kim from Seattle area and teaching English at MALI for two years while also learning Arabic

"English Tom's" Blog, traveled to Yemen in October 2005

Janet taught English with AMIDEAST in 2005, I believe

Becky of Arabia studied for a little bit at CALES

There are some more blogs I know, but that is all I have links to at this moement.

Got to get back to packing... More when I arrive.

Airline Tickets

2006-08-08T01:05:00.000-07:00

I actually bought my tickets awhile ago, but I initially had a lot of problems finding a reasonably priced ticket to Yemen, so I thought I would write a little about it. For me, I found that buying two separate tickets for the trip ended up saving me a couple hundred dollars compared to buying one full ticket. So I ended up buying a Seattle-Chicago-London ticket through Kayak.com (which is the coolest airfare search online) and then a London-Dubai-Sana'a ticket from Emirates Airlines. Buying directly from Emirates saved a few dollars, but they also had more flight options, and I elected to take a flight with a 24-hr layover in Dubai for about $30 more than a short connection because I will be able to meet up with my friend Abdullah who is studying English here at UW and will be returning to visit family between quarters. So hopefully he will be able to show me around to all the big sights and scenes in Dubai, and I am really looking forward to visiting it. Also with the two separate tickets situation it allows you to coordinate long visits at the intermediate city if you should so choose. However you do run the risk of having part of a flight delayed and then running into problems arriving in time for your other ticket, which I am hoping to avoid by allowing loooong layovers in London. But hopefully the flights will go smoothly, no luggage will be lost, and the SIAL staff will be waiting for me at the airport.

Maps of Sana'a

2006-08-07T02:48:00.000-07:00

I wanted to test out Picasa's BlogThis! feature, so I thought I'd throw up a few maps of Sana'a which I discovered while searching high and low for them, including attempting to search for maps in French, German, Italian, and Arabic. There truly aren't very many good maps of Sana'a available online that I have been able to find. But here are the best of the them. I know the Lonely Planet series guidebooks have some decent maps street maps for most of the larger cities in Yemen, and even mark out the major Arabic schools in Sana'a. If you utilize these maps, with Lonely Planet, and even Google Maps satellite imagery, you should be able to get a pretty good feel of the area before you arrive. At least, that's what I am hoping to be true...

Arabic Resources

2006-08-04T03:15:00.000-07:00

Just wanted to post some general Arabic resources to help anyone who is looking for new materials to work with:

Download Arabic Cartoons and Arabic Films using torrent software (I recommend uTorrent)... Great way to get authentic materials, particularly the cartoons which are in Modern Standard Arabic, or some of the many movies from Egyptian cinema if you are working on understanding spoken Arabic. As for the cartoons/children's programs, I particularly recommend the shows Iftah Ya Simsim (Arabic Sesame Street in MSA) and Hekayat Alameya, which has short animated stories from almost every culture, and are particularly helpful becuase they primarily consist of narration along with small sections of dialoge (in MSA).

In my classes at the University of Washington we use the Al-Kitaab fii Tallum Al-Arabiyya series of books like many other universities, and one of the favorite ways to get in extra study time is to burn all the audio from the DVDs (primarily the example sentences and stories, and listening excercises) included with the books (or if any other books include DVDs) using a program such as DVD Audio Extractor (which was free at one point) and then loading all the files into iTunes and onto my iPod, which allows me to listen while I walk to class, while I work, or wherever I am. Furthermore, my listening abilities aren't excellent at this point, so sometimes I slow down the playback speed to increase my comprehension, and then re-listen at a normal rate, or even faster. You can do this quickly and easily with a program like Audacity (free). Or with iPods you can turn the files into Audiobooks which allow variable speed playback at the touch of a button, although it is a little more work.

I also use a great flashcard program on the computer called VTrain, which is probably the best flashcard program out there. It schedules how often you review each card, for example you get Card X right, then you won't be quizzed on it until 1 day later, if you get it right again then in 2 more days, then after 4, 8, 16, 32, so forth... So it continually refreshes your memory and if you can't get it correct it starts all the way at the beginning again. You can advance the cards far enough so you only review them once in two months, or once a year, etc. Check it out, it has many more great features and they are continually improving it. The only pain is inputting all your vocabulary lists. It costs $19, but I think it is very well worth it in order to keep from losing your vocabulary over time...

A few book resources which I think are pretty good which I just kind of stumbled across and which aren't as widely known as the big name Arabic textbooks. One is Business Arabic Intermediate by Raji M Rammuny, and also Business Arabic Advanced (no beginners book). I've looked through this book and it seems well put together and complete with a story following a man who obtained a job in Saudi Arabia. Another one is Let's Read Arabic Newspapers by Howard D. Rowland, which has about 100 actual Arabic newspaper articles, with comprehension questions in Arabic, key vocabulary words/phrases not found in the Hans Wehr Dictionary and at the end of the book a translation of each article and answer key.

More specifically if you are planning on traveling to study in Yemen, there are a few good resources (which are important regardless if you want to speak Yemeni Arabic, because you still want to be able to understand what they are saying). Firstly there is Sbahtu! A Course in Sana'ani Arabic by Janet C.E. Watson which serves as a nice intro to the Sana'ani dialect with realistic situations based on theme. Another book by the same author is Wasf Sanaa: Texts in Sana'ani Arabic, which has extended texts (and the English translation) taken from actual dialogues about many different cultural aspects. And finally another book by Janet C.E. Watson is Social Issues in Popular Yemeni Culture, which features excerpts from a popular Yemeni radio show (and the English translation of course) which obviously deals with social issues but also with references to popular sayings, poetry and and religious sayings, with dialogue, debate and arguments between the two main characters. She also has another book on Syntax of Sana'ani Arabic although I haven't actually looked at. But, all of these books seem relatively hard to get ahold of, so I recommend using a local library and their Interlibrary Loan service (which is how I get ALL of my books). However the best part about these books is that you can easily acquire the accompanying audio in MP3 format (transcribed in the book) online in order to really develop your ear for Sana'ani Arabic, which is what I am attempting to do.

More to come.

Ahlan wa Sahlan

2006-07-28T03:15:00.000-07:00

Welcome to my newly created blog...

Currently I am a student at the University of Washington and am planning on traveling to Sana'a Yemen to study Arabic at the Sana'a Institute for the Arabic Language. I plan on using this blog to provide information about my preparation and hopefully will update it regularly while there in order to keep family and friends up to date on my activities, as well as providing an insight to others interested in studying in Yemen, as there is a serious lack of resources about this topic.

A little more info about my experience, I started studying Arabic in September 2005, although I originally began studying the Middle East in general in Spring 2003 while in community college, eventually deciding to major in Comparative Islamic Studies in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations after I transferred to the University of Washington September 2004. I have experience studying Japanese (1-Year College Level) and Italian when I studied abroad in Florence, Italy during Spring Quarter of 2004, (which was an amazing experience), so I do have a little background in learning languages--even though I have forgot most of the other two. Back to Arabic, for 1st Year we had a class of around 20 people with a graduate student teacher from Jordan who wasn't too bad, I guess. Then this summer I enrolled in Intermediate Second Year Arabic, which attempts to cover what would normally be 9 months of material in just 9 weeks, with class for 3 and half hours every morning. The professor is Libyan and is a really good teacher, as he is actually trained to teach unlike grad students, and our class only has 7 people. The class is definitely intense and very demanding, but hopefully this will provide me with a solid foundation before I go to Yemen...

More to come soon...