The Final Weekend

Starting where I left off last time….

On Tuesday night, I went to watch Manchester United vs. AC Milan in the Champions League semi-final. The game turned out to be another exciting match (I’ve been spoiled since I’ve been here seeing high scoring, exciting games). I also made a bet with Larry, a student from Finland, that Man U. would win, and they did on an amazing Wayne Rooney goal in the 91^st minute, making me a 1000 rials richer.

On Wednesday evening, I headed to Pizzaiola, a Italian restaurant on Hadda Street (the gaudy section of Sana’a), and had delicious pizza. The restaurant was nice, and it was the first time since I’ve been here that if I wouldn’t have looked out the window, I could’ve been in any “Western” country in the world. After dinner, I went to the café again and watched the other Champions League semi-final between Chelsea and Liverpool, which was quite an ugly match that saw Chelsea win 1-0.

This brings us to my final weekend in Yemen. Early on Thursday morning, I met up with my teacher Adel and a couple other of his students and headed to Hamaam Koury (equivalent of a men's spa). We drove to the Hamaam which was located in the new city. When we arrived, we could’ve never guessed what awaited us inside. We went down these steps and were in this stone, underground dungeon with little windows letting in narrow rays of sunshine. First, we went into the sauna.  A stone room that was hot as hell and were instructed to lie down on the stone floor ("because it was good for us"). We laid there for about 15mins, relaxed and sweated it out, before being grabbed by one of the employees who took me into another room where he scrubbed me down with a rough cloth and hot water. I felt like a snake, the way my skin was just molting off of my body. It felt pretty good though, almost massage like, and I just sat back and relaxed as the guy used the “Kees” to scrub me down. After this he took my soap, which I had brought, and gave me a good washing and then rinsed me down with warm water.  It was an interesting experience, to say the least. I definitely would’ve come more often if I would’ve known about these places earlier. I left feeling refreshed and clean. Plus, I must admit I was a bit nervous of a grown man scrubbing me down (let the jokes begin), but it turned out to be no problem at all. And no, none of the men were naked. It was also cheap, about 3 bucks, so I was quite pleased I had gotten in a trip to the hamaam before leaving.

After the hamaam, I had two hours of Arabic with Ghaleb, then we grabbed salta together, before I met up with Crazy Mohamad (we are buds again) and went to his friend Ali’s house to chew qat. It turned out to be one of the best chews yet, because it was just Ali, Mohamad, and myself chewing for three hours in Ali’s beautiful mafraj. The best part about the chew though was how much Arabic I spoke. Ali speaks a bit of English, but made sure to only use Arabic so I could practice, and because Danny isn’t around anymore, I got to speak non-stop for three hours. The only negative thing about having Danny around when we used to chew was that he could speak better than I could, so I would usually speak less (no offense Danny if you are reading this). We talked about all sorts of things, politics, religion --a personal favorite of the Yemenis-- and other random things. On the religious topic, I must admit I was “praising” Islam a lot, but mainly just to keep Ali and Mohamad talking and interested in the conversation. We finished the chew around the evening call to prayer (6:30pm), and I went back to my room and ripped Arabic for a couple hours, aided by the qat which put me in the zone. In the evening, I helped Mohamad send an e-mail using his new GMail account, and we stopped by a wedding for a bit, but left because the music was deafening. By this point, it was getting late, so we headed our separate ways and called it a night.

On my final Friday, I did my usual thing. Woke up late, studied Arabic and then went with Ben to Club Al-Ahli for football one final time. We put together a solid team and played quite well, winning a good amount of our short sided games. Luckily, there wasn’t much quarrelling yesterday among the Yemenis, so we maintained a good flow throughout the afternoon. We played until dusk and then called it a day. I summoned all the usual Yemenis I’ve been playing with before we left, and got a big group picture of us all, which I’ll try to get up on Facebook ASAP. I also gave the football cleats I bought at the beginning of my stay to “Ronaldo”, real name Ahnab, who had become my friend over the past twelve weeks playing football together. He was quite excited to say the least and gave me a big kiss on the cheek and a hug before we headed our separate ways. The guys were quite bummed to here I wouldn’t be around anymore, but I’m sure the game will go on, although the quality of play may decline a bit without my presence (haha). To finish up my final Friday, a bunch of the students and I went to an Indian restaurant and had a delicious dinner. After dinner  an interesting episode occurred when I was talking to a new female student from Japan. She does not speak English, so we were communicating with each other in Arabic, and I found it quite cool/fascinating that you have these two people, one from the States and one from Japan, and they are using Arabic as their common language to communicate. In summary, this weekend was a great example of the things I am going to miss about Yemen.

Now, I have four days left --only three days of lessons-- before I head back to the States. I am proud to say I am staying focused, still doing 2-3 hours of studying each day in addition to my lessons. My experience here has monumentally improved my study habits, which is good thing is considering the academic challenges I will face in Chicago next year. Other than that, I’m starting to pack up my stuff and prepare for the trip home.

Congrats to Jenna on her HUGE P.R. (17:11 -5k) at Penn Relays, making me a very proud boyfriend to say the least. Also, hats off to Brink for the new Men’s Outdoor 5k record, and to Jake for breaking Brink’s record 15mins later (I hope you beat him up for that Brink, especially because it was by .3 secs or something ridiculous).

Take care everyone, the next time you hear from me, it may be in person!

Rich

Pictures here:

http://quinnipiac.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2038819&l=62502&id=24201373

http://quinnipiac.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2038821&l=cbe22&id=24201373