The Weekend has Arrived!

Marhabben,

Hello everyone. The weekend has arrived here in Sana'a. Wednesday night is like Friday night in the states, the beginning of the weekend. I finished up my first week of classes today and am happy to say that I am making considerable progress. I have covered the possesive nouns and the tenses for verbs so I can actually start putting together some coherent sentences. I actually had my best Arabic conversation yet on my way to the internet cafe. Along the way some boys, probably about 12-14yrs old, said hello to me. So I stopped and introduced myself. I could tell they were enthused to talk with a foreign so I told them were I was going and they decided to tag along. It was about a 15min walk to the internet cafe so I got to practice on them quite a bit. There was one kid who spoke a tiny bit of english so he tried to help me out when I had trouble. Don't get me wrong, this was a very basic conversation but still it was great practice. We pretty much covered that I was a student studying Arabic at a school on Azzumar street. I was from the U.S. My family was still in the U.S. I like football and am playing tomorrow, etc. More like we traded statements back and forth.

On to other more exciting things, we have our big soccer game tomorrow. Our team actually all bought green Yemen national team jerseys so we will all match for tomorrow. We are playing on the best field in Yemen with a ref, linesmen and the works. It shall be exciting. I have no clue how good our competition will be. I'm also writing a story about the game for a local magazine that gets the students to occasionally write articles in english for them. Hopefully I will be able to report that we had a good showing.

Hmmm, what else. I have been invited to a wedding celebration which will be taking place the next two days out in the square right around the corner from the school. It sounds like there is going to be a lot of dancing and music so it shall be fun. Plus it will provide me with a great oppurtunity to practice my arabic. I think I am also going to try qat for the first time tomorrow, so we'll how that goes. While we are on the topic of weddings, something funny happened in class today. There was a question in my homework (wajib) asking if my wife was American. I put yes b/c my girlfriend is. So my teacher asked me when he was checking it if I was married. I told him I didn't but I had a girlfriend of three years. So then he asked "how many times I'd met her?". Literally meaning, had I ever even met her face to face. I told him in a subtle way that I saw her everyday. Then he obviously asked why we weren't married? It was pretty funny, sometimes I forget the immense cultural differences. I mean right now I'm sitting next to a kid playing others in some first person shooter game and he has a cell phone, but he probably will only meet his wife once or twice before their arranged marriage.

Now for answering some questions. My Mom asked what I have been eating. Well, usually for breakfast I'll have fruit that I buy at the market, mainly oranges and bananas with some dry cereal and tea or lately I've been walking down the street and getting egg and potato sandwiches for 25 cents in the morning. For lunch I always go out to restaurants nearby. Usually lunch consists of either, chicken, liver, vegetables, rice or eggs all usually served with bread. Then for dinner it is 50/50 whether I'll make pasta with some veggies from the market or go out to eat. For instance the other night I had bean dip, chicken, liver and flat bread for dinner. Followed up by some mango juice for desert and then a cup of tea. The food so far has been quite good, although I can imagine it will get a bit old. As for my stomach, it has been holding up incredibly well (KNOCK ON WOOD). Throwing up into a whole in the ground toilet would not be any fun so I'm going to try and avoid that.

Colleen asked how sleeping was going. Well, it hasn't been bad at all and seems to be improving each day. For instance, I actually slept straight through the call to prayer this morning. I couldn't believe it. I woke up at around 9am and was quite proud of myself for snoozing right through that loud and obnoxious banter.

For now I can't think of much else to report. To be honest I do still get a bit lonely sometimes, like yesterday when nobody was around in the dorm, so I went to class, got lunch by myself, studied arabic until my head was spinning (2hrs or so), then read for an hour and still no one was around. Times like those are a bit annoying, but overall everything is going great.

I almost forgot (Cicc you'll be happy to hear this after your post), I went for a run last night!!! Yah, Tommy and I went down to the local football pitch and did two miles of laps. It was really slow (Tommy is a big guy, 90kilos), about 9min pace, but it still felt good to work up a bit of a sweat. No one bother us and it felt great to run so I think I'm going to try to go over there a couple times a week and get in some 30min runs.

I also tried to upload pictures but because the connection is so slow over here it didn't work. I attempted to put up eight of them and waited 30min while it "uploaded" and finally gave up. Then I reduced the quality of one of them and tried and waited 10mins, lost my patience and gave up. If anyone has any ideas let me know.

Well, I think that is it. I pulled some pics from goggle images of Old Sana'a. All of the pics you see below are places I live right near. For instance the one of the skyline is similar to what it looks like from our deck. My favorite one is of the city and the main gate (Baab al Yemen) lit up. We are trying to get wireless in our dorm, so if that happens I may finally be able to show you guys my pics. I can't wait for you guys to see them.

Happy St. Valentine's Day to All!!!

Maa Salaama



I picked out a few pictures I found on the web that are from Old Sana'a. I have seen all of these things and live within a couple minutes walking distance from them.

http://www.yemenweb.com/gallery/lady-s.jpg

http://k53.pbase.com/o4/01/632101/1/55014510.Sanaaoldcity1.jpg

http://www.netribution.co.uk/cc/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=2066&g2_serialNumber=1

http://www.ylcint.com/photos/sanaa_minaret_sm.jpg

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.china.org.cn/english/en-whii/photo/30.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.china.org.cn/english/en-whii/30.htm&h=399&w=600&sz=70&hl=en&start=12&tbnid=H3xuCnOFpg2n_M:&tbnh=90&tbnw=135&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dold%2Bsana%2527a%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den