Category: Uncategorized

I did a quick calculation last night, looks like I was right on the money with my budget. I estimated an approximate daily cost of 22.77 a day here. That includes rent, tuition, and around 800 riayls a day in spending money. If I stuck to that budget, I could stay here another 1.6 years… I might need it too, Arabic grammar is completely, totally kicking my ass. It’s bad enough trying to memorize all those new words, but the nouns are (usually) pronounced differently when in prepositional phrases, plurals take different form if they are the subject as opposed to the object of the sentence, when a sentence starts with a verb, that verb takes the singluar, masculine, third person form REGARDLESS of the gender or number of the subjects, it goes on and on… Each new rule is more bewildering that the last. I have to keep telling myself that of course this is hard, that’s why you have to go to Yemen to learn it… I’ll take it slow, although I doubt I could take living here another 1.6 years… Hmmm, maybe another year with a trip home to break it up a little, that’s a possibility..

Isaac

I did much better on my quiz than I though I would. I did it through a very hazy, sleepy mind. I’ll do better next time, but I’m glad to know that I can conjugate in my sleep:-)

Went to Luchiano’s house for lunch yesterday. The first laugh came when I tried to tell the taxi driver where to tell me, he had no idea what I was saying. I was a little disappointed, it was my best Arabic, with a new word in there as well. The guy I was standing next to heard me and “translated” my Arabic into something the taxi driver could understand, so apparently it wasn’t so bad, someone could understand me!

Well, it was a little different than usual. Usually, I can’t find anyone that doesn’t have to attend to couple duty on V. day (a noticeable exception being Jenny and Pete, you guys rock for eschewing the whole vday thing). I think the locals do have some sort of sense of Valentine’s though, my teacher bought a ring for his wife and “Fun City” was absolutely packed. It wasn’t hard getting a table in a restaurant, that was a first. I went to the “Red restaurant” and had a plate of meat(wings, chicken and lamb kabob, and a ground meat kabob) for dinner and then followed it up with some ice cream from Baskin Robbins. Luchiano and I then went to fun city to play pool. I won most of the games last night, mostly due to luck, but there were 3 or 4 ball sequences when my old 9 ball form came back out.

I know it’s only one more day, but I feel older. I got up this morning to take a quiz. I had gotten about 6 hours of sleep, less than my normal, but not an insignificant amount. I actually fell asleep during the quiz, that’s how tired I was. The quiz itself was a disaster, my mind wouldn’t focus, things like conjugations and even possessives were very elusive. The good news is that there are no grades, this was just a quiz to judge my progress. I may ask to take another, perhaps later in the afternoon next time…

Luchiano has invited me over to his house for lunch tomorrow. He boasted that all Italian guys are good cooks, so I challenged him… Some sort of pesto dish will be my reward:-) Mmmmmm, real food…

Isaac

I blame my friend Randy, he sent me an album (Rachmoninov piano pieces mostly) and it triggered in me an undeniable urge for new music. I resubscribed to Emusic. You pay a fixed amount per month and you can download a certain number of songs. Needless to say, I was soon at their top level. I think it’ll cost me something like 120 something dollars for the year and that lets me download 75 songs a month. That should keep me happy with my new music selection for a while…

Isaac

I am, for perhaps the first time, getting serious about studying and SURPRISE I’m making some obvious headway… The consequence is that I don’t do a lot though, so sorry for the boring blogs:-)

I went to a new restaurant, the “Red” restaurant. People had recommended it to me, when I asked what kind of food it was (Lebanese, Egyptian, Yemeni, etc.) they just said “It’s a meat place.” Well, turns out that’s a pretty good description. I had a platter that consisted of chicken wings, chicken breast kabob, lamb kabob, and some sort of ground meat kabob, along with bread and hummus. Cost around 1000 Riayls, or 5 bucks. Kind of pricey by Yemeni standards, but still not a bad deal overall.

To get there, I had my first experience with the dabobs. Dabobs are the little minivans made by suzuki (Toyota used to sell them in the states) and are a form of public transportation. They have fixed routes and cost 20 riayls each way (10 cents). You get into one and when the driver thinks he has enough people, he’ll go, picking up other people along the way. The sliding door stays open at all times to allow the easy ingress/egress of passengers. It’s a great deal. Since I didn’t know where the restaurant was, I took a cab there, it cost me 400 riyals , only 20 on the way back:-)

I will try to take some pictures of Sana’a, I realize that I haven’t done much recently. My main goals picture wise are the souk al-min, which is the largest souk here, and some of the daily life like public transport and traffic, etc. Stay tuned!

Isaac

I got stopped on the street today for a grammar question. He wondered which preposition he should use in a certain sentence. I’ve had to think more about English grammar since I got here than I had in the decades before. Some of them have been pretty technical. With those, I just closed my eyes and told them what was the correct option. I couldn’t tell them why, but I knew that it was indeed the correct way of doing things. Of course I am now learning new grammar, and it’s making my head spin. Maybe that German philosopher (what was his name? Witgenstein?) was right, maybe we really do organize our thoughts by the language that we use. It would certainly explain why it is so much more difficult to learn new languages as we grow older. In his view, language isn’t just how we talk, it’s how we think. I’ve been thinking the same way too long:-)

Isaac

Zimbabwe is getting worse and worse. Mugabe has done just about everything to sabotage the economy and it shows. Bob was certain that once the colonial powers left, surely, surely fellow Africans would not treat the people so badly. Well Bob, it turns out that power corrupts. Zimbabwe is one of a host of African nations that have thugs as leaders and it costs Africans plenty. If you read this article from the NY times, you’ll get a sense of how bad it has gotten. Hyperinflation has crippld the economy, state run utilities like water and electricity no longer work, and the state run transportation system has ground to a halt. To add to the economic idiocy, the government sells gasoline to farmers at a cut rate. This is supposed to spur farm production. The farmers do the smart thing of course, they sell it on the black market for 10 times what they paid for it. Probably far more money than they’ll make on crops, and a hell of a lot easier. IF Zimbabwe had Venezuela’s oil money, Mugabe *might* be able to keep the place running, but only by hemorrhaging money to prop up state run, corrupt programs… If you want to see how to make people poor, take a look at the history of Zimbabwe…

Isaac

I went to the lone Pizza hut here in Sana’a today. I just couldn’t live without pizza… On the whole, it was pizza hut pizza, just a little worse. They were really light in the sauce, and they did not put any of the “all beef” pepperoni on my pizza like they were supposed to. But it was pizza. As my friend Jim Deladorie once said, “Sometimes it’s better to have two mediocre pizzas than just one good pizza.” I agree wholeheartedly, and using that logic, one mediocre pizza is MUCH better than no pizza at all. I have actually had better pizza here. There is an “italian” restaurant here in Sana’a that is pretty good, they have a brick oven and everything. If I remember, they were also a little cheaper, but they were not open for lunch… To put things in perspective, I paid 200 Riyals for my kabob dinner yesterday. That got me 5 mini kabobs, fresh bread, and a (super) small salad. In comparison, I spent over 1700 Riyals for my pizza and 7-up today. Add the taxi costs and I paid 10 times today what I paid yesterday…

Even if the food was so so, the people watching was fascinating. Like most restaurants on Hadda street, most of the women removed their veils when eating. That isn’t all that surprising, after all, how would you eat with a veil on? What was kind of surprising is that they were doing this while not sitting in the “family” section. Most restaurants here have their main section and the family section. The family section is where women can sit. I sat in the regular section since I was by myself, I was afraid that people would think that I was scoping out the chicks if I hung out in the family section by myself. Well, this place was a veritable western values hotbed in sunny Sana’a. I saw some kids that looked like they were on a date! There was no holding of hands or anything that risque, but still! I also saw a young woman being dropped off in front of the place. After the car pulled away, she whipped off her balto and flagged down a taxi. She was up to something that her parents wouldn’t approve of I’m sure:-) So an interesting, if expensive day.

Isaac

Walking home yesterday, I saw a rather comical (to me) incident in the souk. A small (12-15) herd of goats were loose, with no sight of a herder. Picture a herd of goats loose in a produce market. Hilarity ensued….

Isaac

Say what you want about Sana’a, but the weather is absolutely amazing. I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to it, especially after reading Kelly’s blog about the Minnesota weather. The temps in DC sound pretty bad too….

Got back in touch with Luciano last night. He’s the guy working at the Italian embassy. It’s good to have friends that are here long term. We’re going to go play pool at “fun city” tomorrow night, should be fun. I may also try to convince him to go back to the “Italian” place down on Hadda street. Papa John’s keeps sending me coupons in my email and it’s driving me crazy! This restaurant’s pizza was actually pretty good, but no pepperoni 🙁 I’ll take what I can get though… We’ll see if h wants to go, being an Italian, the food may just moack him…

Isaac