Category: Uncategorized

Went to the supermarket and while I was there I heard Barber’s “Adagio for Strings” over the music system… Not exactly great shopping music. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the piece, think of the climatic death scene at the end of “Platoon:. Beautiful music, but not what I expect in a supermarket. On the way home, I swear I saw Rosana Dan Danna from SNL. In Yemen of all places…

Yemen does have some wonderful grapes. I saw a bunch and I had to have them, they’re beautiful and they are perhaps the best tasting grapes I’ve ever had. I’ll post pictures later on, they really are that amazing…

Isaac

So as I learn new words, I try to keep the part of speech in mind. Is it noun, and adjective, adverb, etc. My teachers have been very good at explaining these sorts of things to me, but Abdul Summit (my new teacher) just blew my mind. I noticed that he had a noun where I thought an adjective should be in a sentence. He said, “Oh, but nouns can modify nouns, so can prepositions…” That blew my mind, but sadly, it also made some things make sense as well. Sentence structure is both very loose and very precise at the same time. I’m floundering along and absorbing things bit by bit….

Isaac

It has actually been rainy here this last week. Cloudy days and rain for a short time 3 or 4 of those days. It’s a nice change. We haven’t had any real heavy rains yet, but it’s enough to disrupt my laundry…

Had my first class with my new teacher. It went well, if this is any indication I should do well with the new guy. I’m going to have a mini “Easter Break”, it’ll be good to take some time off. Maybe I should go somewhere….

Isaac

OK, finally got the rest of them up, there’s even some wooden boats for you boat people!

Isaac

There’s another problem with the network so all of the pictures are NOT uploaded, again. I’m giving up for today, I’ll try again tomorrow.

Isaac

OK, the rest of my pictures should be up shortly. I’ve noticed the fact that all of the pictures I have taken have been snapshots as opposed to “serious” shots. Part of that is due to equipment limitations. The little digicam I have Simply cannot cope with the really wide dynamic range that I routinely see. That together with high noise at high ISOs makes some shots impossible. The bigger reason is that it just isn’t a priority for me. I’m actually having fun recording where I’ve been instead of trying to “accomplish” something. Part of me is really glad I left the huge photo system back home…

Isaac

Woke up yesterday morning and we had no water. As I left, they were filling a reserve tank. I came back several hours later and there was water! Brown water, but water… What the hell good is it to have water that you can’t use? later that night, the internet across the entire city went down….grrr. The water today is only slightly brown. It never smelled, I assume that it was due to oxidation in the tank outside, but still, ewww!

Isaac

It was an interesting trip, but things worked out rather oddly. The plan was to drive to Zabeed, look around, spend the night and then go to Houdada early next morning to see the fish souk.

Michael (my remaining housemate) out of the blue asked me if I wanted to go to Houdada tomorrow. It’s a smallish fishing village on the Red Sea. Sounds good to me, we might also go to another village nearby and make it a two day trip. We’ll have to see if he can arrange a car and driver on such short notice, but I’m optimistic, he’s been here many times before and knows a lot of people in these sorts of jobs. With any luck I’ll be swimming in the Red Sea this time tomorrow!

Isaac

Mmmmm, Michael took me over to a Chinese place today. Next to Mexican food, this is what I have been craving the most. I ordered spring rolls, chicken fried rice, chicken with cashews and some white rice. I expected to take home the extra but I ate all of it instead. I even ate a fair amount of his food! Man was it good, a really nice change from my usual stuff. What else is going on… not much really. I better hit the books, class today was a disaster…

Isaac