Fun and Love at the Park

Last night I was invited to the Park by my Arabic teacher, Jamila (means beautiful).  It was a very unique and very Yemenese experience.

 

"That's great Kim,", you interrupt, "but why don't you show pictures?"  Well, two reasons.  The first is that I forgot my camera.  The second is that I would not have been allowed to take picture even had a brought a camera.  I wished out loud that I wish I had a camera, and Jamilia turned to me and asked "Why?"  She said it in the same way she might have if I wished that I had brought my cell phone while on an airplane.  It was the same "duh" response.  Turns out that it is not allowed to take shots in that setting.

 

Which is a big shame because it really was a site to see.  There were at least a thousand woman there identically dressed in their black baltos.  Most of the women did not cover their faces and so it was a real party and the only men around were the ones running the rides.

 

The rides were a disaster waiting to happen.  Among other things that were probably put together-- and being run-- by men chewing and high on Qat, the local stimulant drug that all men chew.  There were two rides that everyone but me went on, the first was something where you sit in a car and go around in a circle and the second was one where you sat in a swing and went around in a circle.  When the ride stopped, the woman would run up the the "safest" possible moment to grab their vehicle/chair, sometimes jumping on while it was still moving and pulling the former occupant off.  Then everyone would fight over the ride and finally the guy running would get bored and start the ride and everyone would run away to avoid getting kicked in the head.  A good time.

 

I had to leave a bit early to work on lesson plans, and outside the main gate there was a crowd of about 200 men looking worried and waiting for their wives to come out.  THAT would have been worth capturing on film!!

Politics Break

The latest bill to be passed in the House was named "Declaring that the United States will prevail in the Global War on Terror, the struggle to protect freedom from the terrorist adversary."

It's a non-binding resolution that will reenforce America's committment to the wars in Iraq and Afganistan, and God help the man who votes against it (such as Jim McDermott, my hero.)

Yes it passed, 256 yeas to 153 nays.

http://www.congress.org/congressorg/issues/votes/?votenum=288&chamber=H&congress=1092

The only thing that gives me hope is that this shows how desperate the goverment is getting.

Finally, some pictures!!

Went to the national Museum of Yemen today with my class and finally got some pictures taken. You can view the link here:

http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=e1iyj8p.jbxrfs1&x=0&y=-tmupbc

Note: if it asks you to log in, take a closer look. There should be a link that allows you to view photos without logging in. Look for the link below the "Sign in" button that says: View Photos without signing in

There are also only 16 of them rather then the 50+ albums that I usally make you go through. No pictures of me, tho! (Pretty ironic considering that for the first time in a year and a half I finally have a fast connection where I can upload 300 pictures in the blink of an eye.)

A Day In My Life

So what is a day like for me? Pretty busy, actually, and here’s my schedule.

I wake up at around 6:30 AM. (Actually, to be fair I am woken up at around 5:30 to do yoga and stretches and review my lesson plan but more often then not I just hit the snooze and go back to sleep.)

When I do make it up, I take a quick shower and have my tea and oatmeal. I have to be out of the house by seven to catch the taxi to work. MALI pays for a car to take us to and from the gas company where I work.

Once there, I have about a half hour to get my lessons together and get to my eight-o-clock class. I love my class. I have 14 students six days a week for about four hours a day. We spent about half of that working through the book and the other half working on activities. My students are there from 8-4 and they get pretty burnt out when they are in intensive learning settings every day. So I try to have a lot of games and other things to stir things up a bit. As I said before, when I am doing my job right it’s more like I am babysitting then anyone else.

Right now the schedule is a bit brutall; we have class from 8-12:30 then another class from 5:25-6. I don’t mind too much, as that extra time lets me do work such as planning lessons and working on the internet during that time, but by the time I get back to MALI I am pretty exhausted. I have an Arabic class from 6:30-7:30, and last week I just had to break down and cancel the thing because I was exhausted and hadn’t studied. Basically I am away for 12 hours a day and still need to find time to eat and study.

That is my schedule from Saturday to Thursday. Friday is my day off, and unfortunately it’s everyone else’s day off as well and so all the jobs are closed (Friday is the Muslim holy day.) But at the same time it’s nice to have a day where I can’t do anything. I get out early of work early on Thursdays and generally go shopping at this time. There is a store called Shamil Al-Hairi that I love… especially coming from Samoa! It’s basially the Fred Meyers or the Wal-Mart (depending on your region) of Yemen. I love to go there and just wander around the beauty product aisle, marveling that there can be so much different types of shampoos and soaps (especially for a population of woman who have shown there hair to probably only about a dozen non-family members, if that!).

A lot of ex-pats here complain about the lack of variety of goods, about the people and about the general decrepit state of the country. But coming from Samoa, it all looks great to me. We have at least ten different types of ethic restaurants in this town, including Chinese places and Korean. We even have a Pizza Hut! The only thing that really gets to me is the taxi drives who blow their horns for every occasion, including giving a honk when approaching intersections to warn any unseen pedestrians or motorists. A good idea, you might think, until you stand on a street and it sounds like the middle of NYC traffic jam 24/7.

I live with three other girls: Becky, Miriam and Sonia. They are from America, Australia and France respectively, so we are a pretty diverse group. We have what can best be described as a college dorm type setup—we each have our own rooms which serves as a living/sleeping/studying area and then we have a common kitchen and room that we share. This means that in order to hang out all I have to do is walk out of my room. The walls are made of concrete which makes them a bit challenging to hang pictures on but makes each room a virtual sound vacuum. I have different hours then the other girls so I even get a few hours all to myself after I get back from work.

Right now I don’t do much outside of work, mostly due to the fact that I am learning Arabic and can’t speak to anyone outside of my house and work. But I have made a few friends and we enjoying touring the local restaurants and hunting around the dozens of stores. Fortunately most of my friends already speak Arabic (giving me hope that I can learn it) and they can do most of the translating for me.

I know that I am still in my “honeymoon” stage with Yemen right now, but I am still in love with this country. No, no pictures yet, I will try to get some up soon I promise!!!

Bowling, Yemenese-Style

Marty (with the green bowling ball), Marium, Becky, Tali (smoking), Zamzam, Cyanne (in front in the veil), Tim, and I'm the whore of Babylon on the right.

Arabic

Not much new, most of my time has been spent learning Arabic and teaching.

The format of the class turns out to be the same format that was used during the Samoan training for the Peace Corps, except that my students are more advanced in English then I every dreamed I would be in Samoan. I like to think that they have a bit of a head start having grown up with English all around them which I didn’t hear my first Samoan words until shortly after I discovered the existence of the country.

Here is some of the Arabic that I have learned:

صبح الخير! أبا كم
أبا أمريكية
أسكن في اليمب الآن
أتكلم أانجليزي, و ادرس عربي

Hello! I am Kim. I am an American. I live in Yemen now. I speak English, and I am learning Arabic.

OK, so I have a way to go. But I am learning pretty quickly. It’s actually been really tough not being able to speak Samoan. Very few people on the street speak English, and I have found that in my head I have two languages: English and “not English”. Imagine if you suddenly couldn’t use 90% of the words that you had in your vocabulary. It’s pretty annoying! But the other teachers here speak quite naturally and quite fluently and I so I have hope. Also, Arabic is a lot more constant rich then Samoan, and I find that it’s easier for me to pick out the words that I know.