Dear Friends

Hey there,

Thanks to everyone who sent birthday wishes and made donations to CLC in my name. I am actually very behind in emails right now (I've been busy and got a rash of emails on my birthday!) and I am planning to get back to all of you within the next couple of days. I just want you to know that your kindness has not been overlooked and it's great to have so much support even after I have been gone for so long.

I promise I will get back to all of you very soon!

Wat Tamwua

This weekend I finally realized my year-long dream of going on a meditation retreat. I am not sure if only a weekend can be considered a “retreat”, but it was all the time that I could spare. On Friday I packed a bag and headed to Mae Hong Son on a personal pilgrimage. Wat Tamwua was about an hour north of the city and an easy bus ride away. I had noticed it coming back from Pai and decided to check it out.

Wat Tamwua is a beautiful forest monestary set close enough to the road to be reachable but far enough away so that you are officially in the middle of nowhere. After getting dropped off I walked through a serene forest for about thirty minutes until I came to the place. Described in the Rough Guide as a “country club”, I don't think that the description is really fair. But I can see why it was described as such, for the place was really beautiful and seemed much nicer then simple monks should be allowed to enjoy. But it is a natural beauty that haunts the place, and one can hadly blame a monk for having good natural taste.

Right when I arrived, I met Miguel. Miguel is a Spaniard who came to spend a few days at Wat Tamwua and wound up spending more then ten days there, with no plans for leaving until his visa runs out. He and I became fast friends. His strong, friendly Spanish accent made me smile and quickly bite my tongue before I asked him if he came to the place seeking a six-fingered man.

The Monestary had a rule agaist eating after the noon hour, and I expected that this would extend to drinks, like Ramadan for Mulims. I did not-- I was brought to the main house where I met Laung Thai, the main monk, and Sanaa, a secondary Monk. Sanaa's name was really east for me to remember, Laung Thai told me with a laugh that he had his name for “a long time”, and that's how I remembered it. I had a coffee and was then shown to my room, or rather my mansion. Although there was plenty of room, I was put into a massive space with a private toilet, which was hardly what I was expecting. I was ready to move in permanently at that very moment.

The schedule was also a nice surprise. I had expected to be woken at 4, but instead we were allowed to sleep in until 7. We were immediately fed a light breakfast, after a ceremonial offering of food to the monks. Normally, monks will leave each morning with their begging bowls to collect alms-- a monk can not eat anything that is not given to him. We would gather with bowls of rice in a line and the monks would come and walk down the line as we would spoon rice into their bowls. They would say a prayer and we would head to the kitchen to eat.

There were four westerners-- Miguel and I, plus an Israeli women named Tamar and a dreadlocked Californian hippie named Adam. (When asked what country he was from he said “California”. Oh, how I don't miss America.) In addition, there was a group of women who came from Burma. None of them spoke English or even Thai, so their story I got third and forth hand from Miguel, who told me that they had slipped over the border and staying here rather then at a refugee camp. They were extremely sweet women, ranging from a little girl who looked about 12 to an older women whose teeth had long fallen out. These women would cook meals, wash, and when they were feeling generous they would let me help.

There were also two other monks whose name I did not catch. One was a little boy who was given the option of being a monk or a soldier. I felt that he chose correctly, but it's a hard decision for someone so young to make. He also was learning Thai and Miguel was teaching him enough English to greet the foreigners.

There were three guided meditations every day. In the morning we would go to the “Buddha Cave” which was a short hike up the nearby mountain, and it pictured here. There was a panorama of the Buddha's life complete with a statue of his enlightenment under the Bodhi tree. There we did standing and walking medications. In the afternoon we had guided meditations and personal instruction, and at night there was chanting and more meditation. I can't say that I had any miracles of enlightenment while I was there, but it was really relaxing. What was most interesting was learning about monastic life. Although I am not sure how authentic it was, it was probably as authentic as I will ever be able to see. I was grateful to the monks for opening their home to us and especially to me, a woman.

Back in Yemen, I used to complain at two of my Muslim male friends, Tamar and Derrik, about women covering. If they couldn't handle looking at women, I would tell them, then that was their problem and it was wrong to make women cover head to toe in black or spend their lives in the kitchen just because men can't control themselves. I suggested that their either wear veils over their own eyes or lock themselves up rather then doing this to the women.

In the monestary I discovered that this is exactly what the men did. Because they were worried that feelings of desire would arise, monks live away from society in groups of men and don't allow women to touch them, sit close to them, or allow themselves to be alone with a woman. Unlike my Yemeni friends, men would take the burden on themselves and women were allowed to frolic lustfully around Thailand, provided that they left the men in orange alone. I also discovered that this was just as annoying, if not more, then the alternative that I found in the Middle East.

Rather then being hidden, I was treated as a leper. And because this was their house I had to abide by their rules, which meant that many areas (the best areas) were off-limits to me after dusk. So while Miguel was able to hang out with the monks all night-- typing up translations for westerners and chilling with them in the meditation cave-- me and my feminine wiles were banished to my mansion to sulk. During the day I could talk with the monks but only if another man was present and only if I sat more then an arm's length away. If I wanted to give something to a monk (like a pen) I had to place it on the floor or give it to Miguel to hand to them. It was enough to make me think about digging out my scarf, veil, and balto just to sit among them as a big black meditating blob.

What I didn't understand is how the monks (one of which had meditated for three weeks without sleep and the other having meditated for ten hours a day for ten years) had strong enough minds to maintain mindfulness for days at a time and yet could not be with me for three hours after dark without losing control. (Especially ME, with my gray hair, sweaty, smelly clothes and bug-bitten legs.)

I am planning to go back soon. Next week I have to do a visa run (has it been a month already?) and I think that I will visit the week after. It was truly a home away from home. I just hope that I get a smaller room.

Happy Birthday to Me!

As some of you know, and as some of you have just learned, today is my birthday. I had a nice birthday, my flatmate Katrina woke me a little cake garnished with Oreos and two temple candles, and tonight we released a fire-kite. I would have taken a picture of it, but it was to dark. It was a little mini hot-air balloon. There is a torch at the bottom, you set the torch on fire, it fills the balloon and the thing floats away. He wrote wishes and blessings on it and sent it up.

As for my birthday, some of you have kindly offered to send me packages or gifts. I really appreciate it, but really I have just about everything I need here in Mae Hong Son! However, if you really want to send me something, it would mean a lot to me if you made a donation to the organization that I work with, the Ban Nai Soi Community Learning Center, to help keep the school running smoothly and help the kids that I am staring to think of as my family. You can make a donation here.

The nice thing about donating is that 100% of the money will go to the school. Any donation that you make will probably go to food for the kids (about $5 feeds everyone for a day) or perhaps will go to buy blankets and sweatshirts for the cold season that Thailand is having now. Or, maybe it will be used to buy a bag of cement that will allow the students to make mud bricks and build a new classroom so that we can help even more students next year! It might go to buy supplies, such as the new notebooks that the boys received and are showing off below. The “worst” case scenario is that it will go to pay off some debts that the school acquired when it was built. But the nice thing is that the money will go to help the school-- there is no overhead here. And every little bit that you can give will help-- CLC was initially built with only $10,000, and much of that was for the purchase of the land.

If you do give money, I won't know that you gave it-- but it would really mean a lot to me if you did. The students are taking wonderful care of me and helping them will be helping me. I am very excited about working at the school and I am very excited about how my 31st year is starting out. CLC is exactly the place that I have been looking for for the last two years.

So as a birthday present, please whip out your calculators and figure out how much money I just saved you (don't forget shipping!) and send it this way. Thank you to everyone for your support and love during this time, and I wish you all a very happy and peaceful New Year.

(I know it's been a while since an update, one is coming I promise...)

First Day of Teaching

As the title indicates, today was my first day of teaching at CLC. I have three classes, one with a group of level one students who have been studying English for about five months. I am also teaching Social Studies to some level 3 students (although they are sort of false beginners, because they have never had a native English teacher before, or a teacher who can speak with much skill) as well as to a level 2 class.

My students are bright and eager and incredibly fun to teach. I like my level 1 class in particular, which is a class with eight women and two men-- a welcome change from the reverse situation that I often found at MALI. But what really won my hearts was when I asked them what they wanted to do when their class at CLC was finished in a year. I ask all my students this question, and was used to either a money-oriented answer that I got at Yemen or a totally non-committal answer that I got in Samoa. Instead, these kids spoke with excitement about going to university when their time at this school was finished. When asked about what they wanted to study, their answers varied from talk about being a nurse to studying community development. All the girls expressed a desire to return to their village or refugee camp to help their communities. Some of them talked about coming back to CLC to become teachers. And they all had a strong desire to peacefully better the situation that they were in. It was an inspiring start to the school year.

Without question, Rosy is competing for my affections as my favorite student. Rosy is an incredible girl. Only sixteen, her father started this school two years ago and then suffered a major motorcycle accident which left him incapacitated for a few months as he had surgery. He had already sunk his life savings into the school but without him there was no one to run it. His wife was willing but she spoke no English to talk with the NGO's that supported the school. So the responsibility fell on his fourteen-year-old daughter, who was one of the schools first students.

Although her father is almost fully recovered, Rosy serves at both star student and Academic Dean (and does a hell of a lot better job then the 30+ Academic Dean at MALI, I might add.) She plans the classes, sets out the schedule, coordinates the volunteers (it was her that I spoke with when I was coming up) and even schedules shopping visits into town to buy blankets and sweatshirts for the students that need them.

When I asked Rosy about what she wanted to do, she spoke with passion about the future of the school and her plans for it. Rosie plans to study education and community development at University and then turn right around and continue the running of the school. She is very aware that this school is one of the limited opportunities that people of Burmese, Kareni, Chan (and other ethnic groups that are being persecuted in Burma) have to get a decent education. Without this school, they would not receive any education at all. Without an education, they are at high risk of becoming one of the thousands of workers who slave in sweatshops, mines, or who turn to prostitution. To risk a clique, while most girls her age are covering their walls with teen-band posters and worrying about who will as them to the prom Rosy is more concerned about the future of the people around her and weather her friends are warm enough at night and are getting enough to eat. Needless to say, I have no questions about leaving Yemen and the USA and coming to this place.

And while I was working on this, I heard a chanting and went out to investigate. I crashed a Chinese class in progress that was being given by one of the other students, Parn. It was standing room only as the students eagerly repeated the sounds of the different Chinese characters. Even after 5 hours of school and 3 hours of work and chores the students still found the energy to sit down and learn yet another language in addition to the Burmese and English that they are currently tacking. I was amazed and their devotion and energy and hoped that I would be able to match it.

The Ghost Princess

Sabrina (my house mate) went on a walk today to check out the banana trees. The poor girl had been having a hard time due to the fact that she is vegetarian and for a few days could only eat the rice that was served. (I was fine with it, more food for me) Fearing she would get scurvy, she went looking for fruit or vegetables and found instead a small house on top of the hill. She was surprised to find the small, lighted house complete with a bed and came and asked me about it. I didn't know, and after seeing it, I was just as confused, so we went and asked the daughter of the man who owns this place, Rosie.

Rosie is a sixteen-year-old girl, giggly and shy as one might expect a girl of her age to be. After asking her, she quickly told us that she would explain, and that these were her beliefs and that she did not expect us to agree or believe if we didn't want to. She told us that 400 years ago, there was a Chan Princess that was married to a Karen prince. They both lived and died on the grounds that the school was built on. Although Rosie didn't know very much history about the prince and princess, she did tell us that nothing had been built on that land since they lived there because the land was haunted by the spirit of the princess. Regardless, the school was built two years ago and the founder believed that because his intentions were pure the princess would not mind.

Shortly after this, the people living at the school started to have bad, violent dreams. One of the volunteers actually woke to see a woman with long, black hair pull open her mosquito net and then disappear. After this, the family decided that something had to be done. They built a small house for the ghost of the princess to live, as well as a small house on the left for her servants to care for her, and a house on the right for her soldiers to protect her.

In the house is everything that the princess might need. There is a bed, and a mirror because the princess was very beautiful and would probably like to look at her. There is a bow, because her prince was a hunter and seeing the bow would remind her of him. And every Tuesday (unless she is menstruating), Rosie will go to the house and leave an offering of food, tea and water, but no meat-- the princess doesn't eat meat. Around the house are bricks which Rosie told us were 400 years old-- from the time that the princess lived. Like most spirit houses in Thailand, the house is built on the best piece of land. It is on the top of a hill where one can see the fields of rice and other plants, the river, and the mountains beyond. The view and the house compete to be the most beautiful thing there.

To get to the house, there is a gate that is guarded by tiger and something that we think is a giant. Rosie said that it was a “big person” with large teeth, and used her fingers to show us, looking like she was describing Kyle Bannoff, the rabbit from the Cave of Eternal Peril, with its “nasty big pointed teeth.” Whatever it is, if you cross the gate with bad intentions, then the tiger or the lion will cause you to have bad dreams. One person went through the gate on a motorbike and quickly had an accident, and so I guess that sometimes the tiger and the giant work in more direct ways.

The night, I had very bad dreams-- in one dream I was in an argument with another person that became so fierce that I actually screamed at the person using my actual voice and woke myself up. Later, when going to the gate, I stumbled and hurt my toe just as the gate came into view. This made me worry-- was I a bad person? Were my intentions not pure? I got to the house and explained to the princess that I was only here to help and got back unhurt. Hopefully we have reached an understanding now and and Princess will send me good dreams tonight.

Nai Soi Village

The owner of the school sort of ticked me off today-- there was a “Children's day” celebration and I was under the impression that he was going to be with his son who attends one of the local schools. At around 11:30 I finally noticed that the population of the school went from about 20 to about 5. I noted this in my journal and then went off to investigate. The kids that were left told me that they had gone to town on “Children's day” and that they were all off doing competitions and having a good time while we (the new volunteer, Sabrina, and I) were left with nothing to do. Sabina showed up yesterday. She's from Germany, and she is really neat. I am glad that we get along because we are going to really be depending on each other! We already have a few trips planned and I think that her being here will make this experience a lot more fun. (Don't worry Sonia, you are still my main bitch.) I was ticked because I would have loved to go.

Now I had gone to “town” the day before-- “town” being just two small shops and a school and no one who could speak English. I had told the owner of the school that I was going and he let me go reluctantly. However, later he had a change of heart and decided to send a student after me on a motorbike. The student found me just as I was coming out of the first shop. I went back with her and told the owner that he didn't really have to send students after me, and that I was capable of walking a kilometer by myself. He told me that he was worried about my safety. I thought, but did not say, that if was so concerned about my safety then perhaps he should have sent an extra helmet along with the students who went to pick me up. Ironically, riding back with her without a helmet was about 100 times more dangerous then just walking home. I was told that there had a been a teacher who was killed-- I found out later that not only was she Thai, she had been killed in the other side of the country. Being told that I couldn't walk alone in this area was ludicrous after Chicago, Yemen, and even Samoa (where the dogs would attack you. Here, they can't be bothered to even raise their heads.)

So I grabbed Sabrina and dragged her with me to the village. She insisted that we tell someone that we were leaving, so we obediently found and adult that couldn't speak English and told her where we were going, and she smiled at us and waved us off. In town, we had a giggle as the “dangerous” townspeople first looked surprised to see us then waved eagerly. Sabrina told me that being so close to the border was a dangerous spot, according to the web, but according to our own four eyes it looked about as hazardous as my living room. A helicopter did buzz by, however, to warn us that we were only 10km from the border in an area that was one of the larger smuggling zones for heroine as well as being under the jurisdiction of more then one impromptu army.

Sabrina bought laundry soap and I found instant coffee (the mornings here are feezing!) and we wandered a bit more, looking for our kids. We didn't find our kids, but we did find a Thai school that was having a celebration. There was a dance competition, which consisted of a bunch of little asian kids hopping around. Another game included a orange eating contest of some sort, shown here. Sabrina was immediately approached by a little girl who first gave her name as a series of unlearnable Thai sylables, and miracously became “Mary” when it became clear that we didn't have the skills to master her name. Our 11-year-old guide took as around and introduced us to the teachers and showed us her classroom. Hopefully, we will be able to teach at the Thai schools at some point. I, for one, would be very interested. They had Buddhism as part of their curriculum (which both horrified me as a libral who believes that religion should be kept out of the school and fascinated me as a budding Buddhist) with a poster that showed different historical images of the Buddha and diagrams showing how to pray, or whatever you do before a Buddhist statue.


We had an impromptu English lesson, where Mary showed us her name and my own in English and Thai. After seeing the students struggle with “Sabrina”, I am glad that I have a short, easy name (although I wish it wasn't the same name as the Korean dictator). After that, we came home where we were glad to find that we weren't missed.

A Bermese-Thai Scattergood!

(Sorry, no pictures yet, something is screwy with my camera and it deleted all the pictures that I took this morning.)

I got my placement! I decided to go for something a little more remote, and remote is what I got. I have been asked to be a little vague determining where I am, but it is safe to say that I am about 10 km from the northern part of the border. I am near a small village and I am living in a community school which reminds me a lot of Scattergood Friends School, my high-school boarding school. The place caters to students who very not able to attend high school due to either their lack of funds or their status as an illegal resident. The founder of the school wants to give these students a real chance, so he teachers them different trades and encourages English so that they will be able to get a job in either a different country or in a government office. There are about 32 students and ten teachers, and I am even getting another westerner who will come tomorrow to split my students with.

I have a little room in a mad-brick house. Mud-bricks are made of up sand, clay and cement (People tend to drop the ends off of words so it took me a while to realize that he was saying “cement” and not “semen”, which gave me some interesting and disturbing pictures in my mind). The school will allow people to supply the sand, clay and cement and will make the bricks for them, selling them at 3 baht a pop (about 1 penny, I think. I still haven't quite figured out the exchange rate around here.) There's also a garden, numerous amounts of cats and dogs who are well-treated, and a field of rice-paddies that surround it, complete with picturesque burmese tending them.

To get here, I had to take a very long and sickening ride of Mae Sot to Mae Sariang. We rode in the back of a pickup that had been enhanced with a roof and two benches that ran along the sides. After 6 hours of this, I hopped gratefully into an air-conditioned bus that took me to Mae Hong Son. Upon arriving in the nearest large city, I was met by three of my future students who rode up on their motorbikes looking like they had just flown in from a recent Anime movie. The two girls wrestled by duffle onto theirs and the boy took me on his. They had helmets, but had neglected to bring me one which made the forty-minute bike ride to the site a bit terrifying. After about ten minutes I managed to calm down enough to enjoy myself and watched the dizzying display of stars above my head as we zoomed through the night. The only sign of human life was the well-maintained road and the constant stream of signs that warned of a sharp left, a sharp right, or a zigzag ahead. Fortunately my driver was a very competent biker and got me here okay.

Sarah, I am afraid that I am not going to be seeing you here. A huge cockroach found its way into my bag about five minutes after I put them down. The bugs here are terrifying... the cockroaches have angry yellow stripes down their backs and there is a spider in the corner with two legs sticking out and that's enough to keep me away from that part of the room. But, I also made friends with a little yellow and white cat who slept in my blankets curled up with me last night. I told him that he could stay provided that he took care of the bugs. Which he does, the problem is that he keeps killing the ones outside and bringing them in to eat them. We're going to have to have a little talk.

Love It Here!

(This is an old blog entry, but I haven't had a chance to get to a computer. Also, you will notice that the pictures have nothing to do with what I am talking about. Sorry about that. But Sarah always bitches when I don't include pictures. The pictures of just of the temples that I saw, except for the first shot which is of a fruit stand.)

I have been in Mae Sot for about two days now and I really like it a lot! It is a trendy little Thai town that is made up of about 80% Burmese. It's gotten to be a very popular hangout, mostly due to a book called “Restless Souls” that was released a few years back and sent people running to this town. Because of this, it has a lot of nice restaurants, hippie-ish guest houses yet still a lack of any English, probably because the majority of the people who live here are Burmese and having enough of a problem just learning Thai.

Compared to other counties that I have been to, this country has a lot of dignity. People don't honk at you, people don't run out of their houses to scream “welcome” at you (which sounds endearing, I know, but it gets annoying really really quickly. The streets are clean which is a miracle considering that finding a garbage can around here is a challenge within itself.

People wear helmets when riding their motorbikes, although not everyone does which tells me that wearing a helmet is recommended but not the law-- and which also tells me that a lot of people here think about their health and think ahead.

Another thing that I found in Mae Sot (actually, I found many of these) was a bookstore. Although everything was in Thai and Burmese, I wandered in one for a while picking up the translated copies of Harry Potter and flipping though Thai comic books before I realized why the site was so odd to me-- I haven't really seen a bookstore in the last two years that didn't sell only religious texts. There was a rather sizable religious area in one of the stores, but it was obviously secondary to the main use of the place. I have seen many people reading in coffee shops and on buses. I am looking forward to teaching students because I think that it will be much more fun and challenging. I have been told that my students will have issues with critical thinking, but I am finding that hard to believe compared to me previous students.

Finally, there are three temples (wot) in Mae Sot, but they have actually been a bit of a disappointment. They are beautiful, but the places are not very well kept up. One of them is actually a major traffic point between two major areas of town, and I have only seen one person actually there to use the temple grounds as something other then a tunnel, and I wasn't sure how he was managing to concentrate with all the motorbikes wizzing by him. The temples are pretty dirty, with the statues covered with dirt and bird feces. I was tempted to head over with a cloth and some water. I am also a little shy around the temples because they are the homes to numerous Monks who are not allowed to be around women. I feel bad stomping around on their home knowing that my presence might make them scurry into hiding.

Safe in Mae Sot

Sorry, no pictures yet, I have been just wandering around and getting oriented. (Get it, "ORIENT-ed"? Ha, ha.)

So I am no anthropologist, but I think that I can safely say that Thailand is a lot different from Yemen. It is less organized but a lot cleaner. The big difference is that it seems to be be a lot more productive... other then mothers who are sitting around watching their children, everyone is doing something. Gone are the qat chewers, and the only people who seem to be partaking in the local and plentiful beer are the older male tourists. There are women everywhere, including women scooting around on the scooters that everyone rides here. If I stay in Bangkok (please remember that upon arriving in Sanaa I immediately decided that I was going to reside there) then I have got to get one of those bikes!!

Unlike Sanaa, NO ONE speaks English here. Before going to Yemen I studied Arabic very hard and frankly it turns out that I wasted my time. Most of my attempts to speak to the shopkeepers in Arabic were rewarded with an answer in English. Here, it is the opposite. Although I know not one word of Thai, I have not met anyone who is able to respond with more then a "yes" or a "no", even at the more touristy places like the bus station. All the signs are in Thai and the words are mushed together so it's impossible to even learn from the bilingual signs, apart from the first letter. This has been the more disorienting thing that I have had to face since I got here.

But, it can't be too bad since I made it to Mae Sot from Bangkok, a trip of 7 hours. Here I seem to be the only Westerner and yet no one seems to notice me, which at first was really nice but I am starting to get a little lonely. Gone are the cat calls, the "hey babys" and people attempting to show off what little English they know in hopes of getting my attention. A few little kids said "hi, hi" with smiles and a mother at a restaurant that I stopped at encouraged her daughter to say "Good morning" to me but that's about it.

So other then the language barrier I am very impressed. Would you believe that there is a limited amount of bugs? The weather is hot and muggy but I am in my Samoan clothes so I am fairly comfortable. There are yellow-robed monks wandering around everywhere and three temples in town, but they appear closed. I did find the Muslim area of town and had a laugh at the girls wearing colorful headscarfs jetting around on scooters, looking quite different from the black ghosts of Sanaa. I have to admit that seeing the Arabic text on the mosque gave me a feeling of comfort, at least I could catch the word "Allah".

Anyway, I just wanted everyone to know that I am safe and sound. I am going to get some more sleep and then I will write again soon.

OK, So I lied

Ok, so the last post wasn't actually the last post from Yemen, you get one more. Who'd have thought that the Yemen International Airport would have free internet access and I have about two hours to spare.

So for your enjoyment, here is one of the last pictures of me and Sonia together, taken with a camera cell phone which emplains the quality. The guest house went for rather boring to very boring when the cable went out with 2006, and so we were forced to go to Derrik's to watch TV. Afterwards we had a send-off at the Hawaii club so that I could smoke my last shesha.

As for my trip, so far so good. Although I was overweight by about 19 kgs, they didn't seem to notice or maybe decided it wasn't worth it to try and communicate this to me with our shared vocabulary of 20 words. The women did point at my bags and say a few things but I just blinked and smiled and she shrugged and booked them to Bangkok. (Hopefully the baggage handlers who have to read the label know more English then she did.

I should be on a plane in about two hours. I will write when I get to Bangkok!

Goodbye, Yemen!

(The title is a play on "Goodbye, Lenin!" although that is sort of hard to catch, I realize.)

This is my last post that I will entering from Sanaa, Yemen. If it's not, then I am going to be really, really, really pissed at Gulf Air. The last few days have been a whirlwind of packing, lunches and quality time with my soon-to-be ex-roomate Sonia (who, contrary to how I like to paint her in my blog posts, is a very kind, gentle, caring, sweet, and cute person and is NOT a little bitch princess) as well as my cat, Shouf, who has already ditched me for a life of chasing moths in the garden.

Sonia actually talked me into getting my eyebrows done, which is a feat that others who might consider themselves greater then her have never been able to accomplish. Tonight we are going to have a send-off shesha party tonight at my favorite place, the Hawaii club, and I have one more goodbye lunch to get through. My baggage tips the scales at 30Kgs (only 10kgs overweight). I am good to go and I am both excited and terrified. Considering that I don't have a job, this is the scariest step that I have taken since I walked into my boss's office at Microsoft and told him that I was going to some place called Samoa.

I am going to miss this place, sort of. I have learned a lot here and most of all I am grateful to MALI for pulling me out of Samoa and giving me this chance to move on. By the way, if you are going to be working at the Modern American Language Institute in Sanaa, Yemen (MALI) then please shoot me an email and I will tell you all about this place.

Wish me luck and I will post as soon as I can get to a computer in Thailand...

(And yes, Sonia, I love my eyebrows.)

Part I: Mandering in Marib

This blog entry is part of a three-part series that I will be publishing in piecemeal as I write it.


Now that classes are finished Sonia and I decided to take an adventure in Marib, the kidnap capital of the world. Joining us again was Thameer, who was the one who escorted us through Al-Houdada. Marib was recently the target of an attack on oil interests, and it's sister kidnap consort, Shebwa, recently housed two French hostages (who were released without harm.) Therefore, foreigners are not allowed to enter Marib without an armed escort. To get around this, Sonia and I had to don niqabs (the cloth that covers the face) and go as two nice little devout Musim sisters. Sonia, who could speak passable Arabic, was often mistaken as his gentle sister while I was his illiterate, mute, deaf, and slightly retarded deformed sister.

Our first stop was Marib, where we stayed with my student, Hussein. Hussein's family was building a new farmhouse, where we stayed the first night. As you can see from the picture, Sonia was not particularly happy with the digs. The mattresses were bug-eaten and the air was filled with mosquitoes. In addition, there were some pretty impressive knuckle-sized ants that we practically had to jump over to avoid. The farm, however, was beautiful with a friendly dog and a very charming camel. We had to stay at the farm because Hussein's family was building a farm and didn't have space for us at the tent city where the rest of the people were staying until the farm had a roof.

Marib is also known for the famous Marib dam. Although not very impressive to see, the dam itself if very old and one of the first dams built. It is still in use today, and was recently renovated. Although this is the most touted thing in Marib, it was basically a large pile of rocks with water on one side and road on another. For more damn Marib Dam pictures click here.

After Marib dam we visited Belquis Palace and the Sun Temple. The Sun Temple was closed, but we manged to sneak into the Palace (also closed, but as adventurous and retarded Yemenis they let us in. I was a touch disappointed to see that there was a gated viewing platform, although I was also happy that they were taking the time to preserve the monument. My disappointment vanished when Thameer hopped the rail and started wandering around. I quickly followed him.

Balquis Palace was brought to Yemen by a Genie who transformed it to the place to prove to it's owner that he was indeed an all-powerful Genie. I will bow out to Google if you want the full history on this place. This is a pillar with some impressive carvings that can be found all over Hadromont. You can find more pictures of Belquis Palace and the Sun Temple here.

My student, Hussein, generally wore the YLNG uniform of a grey shirt and black pants, but for this trip he donned a traditional scarf, balto and jambia that most men wore and picked us up from Sanaa looking like a young sheik. To protect the jambia (a curved knife worn at the waste) from sand and rain, men will oven pull their white robes over the instrument, giving the unfortunate image that is seen here.

Marib is famous for guns and camels. I will get to the guns in a minute, but first let me talk about the camels. They are not used much for riding, the only camels that I saw were either standing around or doing work like this one. This poor camel is grinding sesame seeds. The reason that this one is wearing a hood is so that he can't see that he is actually walking around in circles all day. He spends his time plodding forward, looking for a way out of his eternal darkness. In addition, I was able to ride a camel. For pictures of camels, click here.

One can not go to Marib without seeing a gun, and one can not spend any time with a man who has a large gun without eventually asking to fire it. Everyone in Marib carries Guns-- it's "An Eye for an Eye" mentality in that city (another reason that foreigners are not allowed) and everyone carries a large weapon to protect themselves. Hussein's father was recently killed, and both him and Jabber (another student that showed us around) actually had people after him. Hussein's cousin, Abdullah, proudly showed us the bullet marks that we on his house. Sonia beat my ass when it came to shooting a tin can from the top of a sand dune (although I kicked her ass when it came to taking a picture of it.

The highlight of Marib was Old Marib. This was a town built 3,000 years ago and is currently in ruins. All the houses were built of of mud, straw and logs and most of them are still standing. Some of them we were able to crawl inside. Sonia and Thameer were wimpy about going into a building that was 3000 years old and made of mud but after I led the way they reluctantly followed. I pointed out that if it had help for so long it would manage for another fifteen minutes. Sonia was unconvinced. The man who owned the place came up and told us first that the place was haunted by genies. Then he pointed to another building and said that it has collapsed three days earlier, sending Sonia to scream at me to get out of the building that I was currently in. You really have to see this place to believe it. For more pictures of Old Marib, please go here.

After Mabib, we hopped a bus to Seiyun. Check back for pictures and stories in Part II: California Kim and the Lost Cities of Wadi Dau-ar!

Back on Sanaa, safe and sound

MALI didn't pay the DSL bill, so internet at school is out and I am at a internet cafe with a broken shift key that is driving me mad. Fortunatly I can touch-type because all the letters on the keyboard have been rubbed out. Needless to say, this will be short.

I realized that it has been quite a while since my last post saying that I had run off with Sonia to the kidnap capital of the world (OK, maybe not, not with Baghdad) but I am back safe and happy. We had a very good time and saw a lot of incredible things. Check back as I will be writing more about it when I have a computer that works.

Ho ho ho

How easy to forget that 'tis the season to be jolly. 5 days till Christmas and I haven't even begun my shopping yet.

To celebrate Christmas Sonia and I are taking a road trip to Marib and Sayoun. Foreigners arn't allowed in Marib, so we are going to have to wear a niqab (the cloth that covers the face). Fortunately for me, I have dark eyes so when wearing a scarf and niqab I can pass for a Yemeni providing that I don't talk, walk, stand up or move. In Marib they have the famous Marib dam as well as a bunch of camels that I am going to ride. We leave in T+11 (everything runs late here in Yemen.

But since I will be on the road, Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.

Dog, cat, cow...

The local TV station often shows reruns of popular sitcoms, and a few days ago I was watching an episode of Fraiser. In the episode, Niles is trying to teach a hopeless Daphne how to play the piano and having little luck-- after a few lessons, Roz is able to play a song while Daphne can't even handle a simple scale. He assured Daphne that he would continue teaching her as long as it took. "You're a lot nicer then my last piano teacher," she tells him.

Niles is shocked. "You've taken lessons before?"

Daphne goes on to talk about her old teacher, a master of piano, who instructed her every day for fifteen years. He eventually killed himself, she says, right after one of their lessons. She said that she was the last one to see him alive.

I know just how that piano teacher felt.

I had an exercise with my class to teach them relative clauses. Since the examples all focused around relationships ("I like guys who are smart"), which doesn't translate well into a society where mothers pick their future daughter-in-laws, I decided to let the students pick their own topics. I handed out pieces of papers and told them to write a noun on it. The students were baffled.

"What do we do, teacher?"

Write anything, I told them. Any thing. After 16 pairs of eyes continued to stare at me blankly I said: ""You can write anything you want... dog, cat, cow, whatever."

Happy, the students dropped their heads and started to write. After a moment I walked around to check their progress. Dog, dog, cat, dog, cat, cat, cow...

"No, no, no," I said. Write your own word!" I collected the paper and asked them to try again, and this time not to use cat, dog, or cow. "If I was doing this in Arabic," I told them, "I would write something like kitab (book) or qalam (pen)."

They started to write and I went around the room again. Book, pen, pen, book, pen...

Thank God this is my last day.

Wild Shouf

As my preparations for departing Yemen, approach, the most pressing problem that I am faced with, again, is what to do with the cat. Cats here are considered vermin, and I am trying to make an anology for myself to understand people aversion to them. I guess it would be if someone adopted a pet cockroach, fed it, and let it sleep in the bed and carried it around in thier arms. Anyway, all my Yemeni friends just laughed when I asked if they would take him.

So, after asking just about every expat that I could find, I gave up on a permanent home and decided that the best thing would be to let him go at MALI, where the other cats are fairly docile and (most importantly) very fat.

This has been a gradual process. I didn't want to just dump him, so instead I will drop him off in the morning before going to the gas company and would check on him while I was teaching classes during the evening. So during my breaks, I would stand outside and call out "Shouf! Shouf!" and he would run out to say hello.

"Shouf" is the imperative for "Look!" in arabic. So please imagine the following... you are in classes at your school, calmly sucking down a cigarette during your break when this six-foot tall foreigner walks out into the middle of the lawn and starts screaming "Look! LOOK!" I got a lot of strange looks and the first day people where pretty baffled at what I wanted them to look at. After Shouf showed himself people caught on.

Then came the annoying process of people educating me on the meaning of "Shouf." The first person who came up to me to jabber excitedly "Do you know what Shouf means bi-arabia, Teacher? It means look!" The first person who did that got a smile, the second person a polite smile, and the twenty-third person a look that could kill.

Shouf is doing well and seems to like his new home. I told the cafeteria guy (and my driver) Abdul about him, and Abdul just laughed at my suggestion that he keep an eye on the cat and give him scraps. However, the next day Abdul picked me up with stories of my cat, first telling me that the cat was speaking English and then saying that the cat was thirsty so he gave Shouf some cream (which gave the cat some pretty bad runs so I was really, really, really glad that he was outside). I think that this guy is now as attached to the cat as I am.

Goodby Sweety Kim

No, Mom-- I didn't spell the title wrong, as you can see this is how they spelled it. As they are my students, I only hope that they just ran out of room.

My students had a good-bye for me on the second to last day of class, and I was very, very touched. We had planned sort of an end-of-the-term thing but it was supposed to be about them, not about me. These are my 6B students, and so after this class they are finished with MALI and are moving on. I know that they are going to do great because they are some of the most talented kids I have ever met (except for Fouad, who isn't a kid, but is rather old enough to by my father.)

Assem wrote a great speech wishing me well and making suggestions for each person in the class. Fouad wrote a poem about the "Dancing Teacher" (I will do anything to get my students attention) that I was also very touched by.

The group shot is my entire 6B class. From left to right: Mohammed, Elvira, me, Fouad, Abdullelah, Mohammed with glasses, Afif, and Assem and Ahmed in the bottom row. They brought sparklers and drinks. Ahmed even brought a can of "fake snow" that he covered me with because he thought that perhaps I missed the snow in Seattle. (I didn't have the heart to tell him that there wasn't really any snow in Seattle.) It was a blast, and I will miss them terribly.

This picture is me and my two female students, Elvira and Khlood. I was teasing Khlood right before the picture was taken by telling her to wear the veil that covers her eyes over her face. She thought I was serious and pulled it down. I laughed and went to push it away when the picture was taken. You can see the light material that covers the eyes in the picture and the thicker material that covers the face. She rarely pulls down the eye-covering material but always wears the face veil-- I have no idea what she looks like, and neither does anyone else in the class. She's a great student and one hell of a writer. Elvira is the girl next to me, a student from Russia who I held dear to my heart because neither of us spoke Arabic. She pronounced her w's as v's and sounded like a little vampire. Although she begged me to, I refused to correct her accent. It was way too cute.

And here is me cutting the cake. It dawned on me that I haven't posted a picture of myself wearing a veil! I am really getting sick of it but I can't take it off. My students, most of which have seen me without it, asked me to take it off and I felt like I was stripping for them.

Teaching 6B alone made Yemen worth the trip. Thanks, guys.

(Check back, I will be posting Fouad's poem here in a day or so.)

Sawatdee Khrab!!

Get Thai'ed!
You're talkin' to a tourist
Whose every move's among the purest.

It's official, I am leaving Yemen on January 4th to a new adventure. This time I will going to Thailand to work with refugees on the Thai-Burmese border. I am terrified, especially since this is unpaid volunteer work and I really don't know what I am getting myself into. At the same time I am really looking forward to not making money for a change, and concentrating on people who really need my help, rather then people who are taking English to get a better job.

I am going to be based out of Mae Sot, which is about as far as you can get from Bangkok and still be in the same country. I am going to be teaching English although there are going to be chances for my to branch out into development related fields. Their website is here: http://www.geocities.com/maesotbvp/. As you can see, I won't be working with them directly but will actually be farmed out to an NGO or perhaps a refugee camp that needs an English teacher. Other then that, I really don't know very much which explains my fear!

A lot of people are curious to why I am leaving Yemen so soon. Well, one of the main reasons is that I am having a hard time with the conservative life here. I plan to come back to this area, but I think that I am more likely to go back to Palestine or perhaps to Jordon. But for now, I feel like I am ready for a new adventure. If you've been following my blog, you'll see that staying in this situation isn't really an option right now anyway.

More to come on this, you betcha...

Pearls of Wisdom from Level 6B

"If people had wings, there would be bad traffic in the sky."

"If people had wings, they would fly from the house to the restaurant"

"If water wasn't heavier then air, it would float everywhere."

"If I had been absent from class yesterday, I would have been killed."

"TV Ads tell us to buy creme from pimples"

"He should either be fired or move to another planet."

Al-Houdada

This weekend I FINALLY made it out of Sanaa and went to the beach town of Al-Houdada on the Red Sea. Joining me were my housemate Sonia, two Frenchmen (Olivier and Eric) and a guy from Madagascar (Tojo).

The purpose of the trip was twofold. The first was to have some sort of adventure outside of Sanaa. I haven't left the city since I got here, which is akin to going to LA and not leaving your hotel. Most you need is there but you have to get out anyway.

The other reason was to decide if I was going to stay in Yemen until March. I have a group of kids at the gas company that I feel obligated to be there for. They will be finishing in March and my heart tells me that that is the right thing to do. On the other hand, I am not really wanted here, things between me and Schmucko (see below) are getting worse and I really feel that I am ready to move on.

The trip actually made a good case for staying in Yemen (haven't decided yet, actually I have but I will save that for another blog entry) but in the wrong way. I chose Al-Houdada because my recent experiences have been so negative that I thought it would only be fair to make the decision while with a nice group of friends on a pretty beach. However, the minute I got off the bus I remembered something vital about living in a tropical climate that I apparently blacked out upon leaving Samoa.

Tropical climates are hot. And humid. And there are a lot of bugs.

I had forgotten what it was like eating dinner with one hand waving away the bugs and the other getting food into my mouth before something flew into it. Sonia ordered a tea at one point but 30 seconds pushed it away after a fly flew into it.

Do I really want to do this to myself again?

Hot weather aside, I had a great time. I will really let the pictures here do the talking. The trip up there was the best part (apart from my motion sickness partway through) and it was the most beautiful scenery that I have ever seen, although the road was terrifying with huge drops and pathetic guard rails to protect us. After a while I fell asleep, and awoke to a sight that was both familiar and strange- a landscape with no mountains. I don't think that I have seen anything like that since I left Iowa years ago!

Upon arriving in Al-Hodata, we were escorted to our hotel room. Turns out that it wasn't really a hotel room actually. I had worried about staying in a bug-infested hellhole but when I opened the door I found that we had been booked into what can only be described as a suite, complete with a kitchen and living room with Satalite TV. I was prepared to spend my break there.

Sonia went to pray and I found out later that hotel rooms come equipped with both a prayer rug and a helpful sign telling one where Mecca is. Something I would not have thought of were I in the Middle Eastern Hotel biz, but very important!! After a rest, we went out and had a meal of fish on the beach where I became reaqauinted with flies and more flies.

We went with a MALI student named Tamir who was a real gentleman. His cousin, Mohammed, showed up in his SUV (yes, Sarah) and took us on a whirlwind tour around Al-Houdata. With little care for his suspension he drove off-road onto the beach and we bounced around the dunes screaming our heads off. We hit a local fish market (not literally, but close to it) and Mohammed impressed me by telling off a guy who was beating a mule with a stick. The man was making the poor animal carry too much ice and Mohammed told him that he hoped that his ice fell into the sea for the way that he was treating the animals. We became quick friends and I told him that I would happy to be his second wife.

While cruising through town we encountered a few checkpoints. They looked at the car suspiciously until it became clear that they were traveling with an American, and then we were waved right through. Did they honestly think that I would get troops there if they didn't do as I said? One of the guards kindly asked if I needed bodyguards to join me in my travels. I told him no thank you, I left quite safe with my current escorts. The French were pissed at my royal treatment. (Perhaps if they had joined the Coalition of the Willing then they would have been offered bodyguards too.)

Another highlight of the trip was when Sonia and I got our hands henna-ed. I had shied away from this custom because when a friend of mine had it done she broke out into an ugly rash. Turns out that she got the black henna, I went with red. As you can see, Tamir's cousin did a bang-up job.

The next day when we hit the beach I stayed in the water for only a half hour and then vainly choose to sit in the sand and read a book. I said that I was tired but really I just didn't want the ink to fade. (That, and I am understandably not particularly interested in hanging out in the water after a year and a half in Samoa.) We took a boat to an isolated beach and the guy stopped and let us jump out and play in the coral reefs of the Red Sea.

Back to Sanaa for a week of work hell.

Can't wait until I can get out again...

The Yemeni Bridget Jones

A piece of advice: don't EVER shag your boss, no matter how lonely or desperate you might be.

At the time I figured that I could handle it. If things went wrong-- sure it would be uncomfortable but not unbearable. I've gotten along okay with my other ex'es.

But what I didn't forsee is the situation where HIS boss calls him into the office to ask if they should promote me to be his assistant. He has two possible answers: “No, because we used to sleep together” or “No, I don't think that she would be a good fit.” One way makes us both look bad and the other way just makes me look bad. So, all my hard work and long hours flushed down the toilet. So, if you are going to shag your boss, at least make sure that your boss has a shred of integrity first.

The only good thing that I got out of the relationship is that he walked off with my scale so I have stopped obsessing about my weight.

So the bad news is that I am being pushed out of MALI but the good news is that I have been accepted into a really exciting program that allows me to work in Thailand with refugees from Burma. It's a volunteer program that recruits English teachers, something that I feel confident enough to call myself now. Plus it is volunteer with only accommodations provided.

It will be nice to get away from the money market for a while. The boss is a really nice woman, which is more good news because that means I should be able to avoid getting myself back into this recent mess.

Unless I decide to go back to women again.

Which I might just do.

Just an update

Hey, sorry that I haven't written in so long. I finally got my computer fixed so hopefully I will have more time to catch up on emails.

This English teaching thing is proving a lot harder then I thought it would be. Do you have any idea how many tenses these poor kids have to learn? Three continuous tenses and all these perfect tenses that I never even realized existed. Did you know that by the time I finish this job I will have been working here for six months? It's true, I will have been away and I will have been living overseas for two years. My students ask me why English needs about ten tenses when Arabic only has two. I am still trying to think of an answer.

I am teaching eight hours a day (and four hours on my "Saturday") and it's murder. I have a level 2 in the morning at YLNG (the gas company) and I have two level 6 classes at MALI so I have been really crazy busy. My level 6 classes are proving to be pretty challenging with all their stupid perfect tenses. But they are lucky-- especially my level 6B class-- because they are after my level 2 and they get compared with people who say things like “Yesterday I studying all the night ago.” Still, I am overworked and so I rarely get to plan a decent lesson plan. My students who are paying $150 a head to be in my class deserve more me coming into class five minutes lates, plopping down in a chair, rubbing my eyes and saying “okay, uh, so, what do you guys want to talk about today?”

I have taken to wearing a headscarf and balto around town. Women here wear three peices, a long coat called a balto, a scarf over their head, and most women wear something called a necab, which is the scarf that is worn over the face. Most nicabs are two parts-- a dark piece of cloth that covers the face and a sheerer cloth the can be pulled down over the eyes to completely cover everything. A lot of the women also wear gloves to hide every little piece of skin.

Now although I am against the idea of wearing this much (I think that the nicab is going a bit far) but I am more against the idea of being whisted at and stared at too. It does have it's moments, I will admit. One day I litterally managed to stop traffic while crossing the street. And the other day I went out without covering and actually managed to cause an accident. On the other hand, I went out and some guy grabbed my right breast. I went to punch the guy but Sonia wouldn't let me.

Anyway, although my housemate Sonia tells me that I will get over it, I love the balto. It's the first time in about two years that I can walk around the street without getting stared at. It's really nice. My old Samoa friends can probably relate. The best part is that if I wear a nicab no one can tell that I am not even Arabic, espcaically if I am not walking. My favorite place to get take-out, a fasoulia place down the street, is ony accessable by walking right past the apartment of my asshole ex-boyfriend. So if I don't feel like dealing with the world I throw on the nicab and I doupt that even my mother would recognise me. The hardest part is not walking like an American but I am getting good at pulling even that off-- you just have to walk like you are afraid that something really big is about to fall on your head.

My students also seem to really enjoy my wearing a scarf, although I am not quite sure why. They got used to it very quickly as well. The other day I was teaching my YLNG students, and came up with an idea. These are the students, by the way, who had me scarfless for about a month. Anyway, I was teaching using words like first, next, finally, etc., and after having them teach me how to use my cell phone and open a coke bottle, I came up with the idea of having them show me how to put on my scarf. I reached up to unfasten it and my students freaked out before I even got a pin off. Some of them went so far as to cover their eyes, and most of them looked away. All of them yelled at me to stop. I reminded them that they had seen my hair about a million times but they seem to have forgotten.

Those Darned Kids

A funny thing happened a while back when I was walking come from work. I was walking through a residential street when I heard a *knock knock knock* on one of the doors. I stopped and looked around, confused because I didn't see anyone knocking on any of the doors around me. I heard the knocking again and realized that it was coming from inside the gate. I walked to the gate and saw that it was bolted shut-- from the outside.

You see, Sanaa is a city of walls and gates. Watch coverage on CNN and you will notice that most major Middle Eastern cities (such as Baghdad, or rather what is left of Baghdad) is filled with walls that are interspersed with metal gates. In the morning, the shop keepers come out and unbolt the gates and pull them aside. Imagine that you are in a giant outdoor shopping mall, but with piles of trash sitting around and no helpful signs letting you know where the post office is.

The other strange thing about the gates that are on the houses is that they can be bolted from both the inside and the outside. I noticed this on our kitchen door in our house, and was told that this design was to keep the women in the kitchen when needed. What this means, of course, is that someone could theoretically go around the streets of Sanaa in the dead of night and lock a majority of people (the people who don't have guards outside their houses, that is) inside their houses and there would be no way that they could get out, unless a passing stranger, like myself, heard their cries and unbolted the door.

Which is what I did. A young girl, about twelve, peeked out and thanked me and ran away. It wasn't until I shared the story with my housemates that they pointed out that she was probably locked up for a reason. I hadn't thought of that, but I later decided that I was fine with liberating trapped girls from their houses as a form of protest. Plus, it was a fire hazard.

A few days later I discovered why perhaps these kids should be locked up. Ramadan is over, thank goodness, but during this month it was the custom to set off firecrackers. I had always assumed that the kids were tossing "poppers", those little bits of gunpowder wrapped in paper. I wondered why they always threw them so close to my window all the time. I later learned the hard away that they were not being set off in my proximity, the blasted things are just very, very loud.

I was on my way to work when a kid was lighting firecrackers and one landed about two yards ahead of me. "This is just great," I thought and stopped to wait for it to go off before I continued my walk. Little did I know that the little bastard had just thrown one a few seconds before that was about three inches from my shoe. It went off like a gunshot in my ear, I screamed and it felt like my head exploded. The kid thought that this was really funny and started to laugh (at least I think that's what he was doing since all I could hear was a loud ringing) but he stopped laughing when I dove across the road and started screaming at him, cursing the fact that I didn't know enough Arabic to REALLY give the punk a piece of my mind. A few minutes later some women came to my aid. I told them that I wanted the firecrackers. The kid said that he didn't have anymore. We frisked him and found about 20. The stupid kid really put up a fight when we took them away. I am not sure why he did, I know that he can get more. I was at the store buying a Coke the other day when some kids ran in and bought what I thought was candy-- when I walked out they were lighting a 911 call waiting to happen that flew around the sidewalk shooting off sparks. (Lets not forget that most of the cars around here leak.)

Speaking of cars, I also had a bit of a double take when I was walking home from work (for an area about two blocks long, a lot happens on that road) and two SUV's came bursting around the corner, obviously racing. I jumped and pressed my back against the wall-- one was attempting to pass in on a road that can only be described as one lane. Normally I would have assumed that they were drunk idiots, but people can't drink in this country. (I mean that, alcohol is VERY hard to come by unless you have a lot of money, and even then it's not easy.) As the cars passed I saw that the drivers were two kids, neither looked like they had hit puberty or even could reach the gas pedals.

I shrugged and continued on my way. Just another typical day in Yemen...

Shouf

So after complaining incessantly about the fact that neither of the care packages that I am still waiting to receive (things are slow around Ramadan) one of my housemates suggested that I tramp down to the post office and ask them.

So I put on my balto and headscarf which I have taken to wearing (and the harassment as miraculously disappeared) and started the hike down to the Hadda post office. Ramadan hours: 8-10PM. I got there and was told that I need to take an even longer pilgrimage to the post office down by the old University. My frustration at initially going to the wrong place was trumped by my pride that I actually knew where this place was and I started off again.

Half an hour later I made it. The homeless beggar women outside the office doubled as an information booth and they waved to me to where I needed to go. Not that they knew what I wanted, but I have come to learn that most people here have limited physic abilities. Once inside, I was faced with something that looked like the scene from "It's a Wonderful Life" where the bank is out of cash and people are screaming for their money. Tons of Yemenis were standing in front of the counter waving pieces of paper over their heads and screaming. It was pretty terrifying. I slunk unnoticed along the wall feeling that my attempts to blend in were putting me at a strong disadvantage for once. I stood in a different line which held the appeal that there were only three people in it, and none of them were screaming. The man behind the counter took my PO box number and vanished, giving me a spark of hope which was quickly dashed when he came back ten minutes later smelling of cigarettes and told me the dreaded words "mafeesh." (Nothing.)

Demoralized and depressed, I decided to walk back. It was a nice night and since I had planned to spend the evening playing with the contents of care packages I had nothing to do anyway. I was about three-quarters of the way home when a little brown cat walked up and rubbed against my legs.

I leaned down and pet the little gold and black striped six-month-old cutie, and picked it up. Most of the cats around here are terrified of people and would never allow this, which made me suspect that he belonged to someone else. So normally, I would never have done what I did-- which was to keep walking and take him home-- was it not for something that happened about a month ago.

A month ago I was walking to work when a black and white cat leaped in my path and meowed at me. I pet him and he followed me to work. On the way home, he was back. I started to bring cat food for him and we became good friends. I called him Ninja, and I didn't take him home simply because I assumed that this cat must have an owner. A few days later Ninja didn't show up, and I was worried that something had happened to him. My fears were answered a few days after that when I found Ninja's body dumped unceremoniously in a garbage heap. He had a hole in his stomach-- I don't think that he was hit by a car.

So holding Shouf in a busy and non-residential area, I couldn't help but remember Ninja, covered with flies in a pile of rotting food and old scraps of shoes. To my credit, I did stand there for a few minutes waiting for someone to come running out asking what I was doing with their cat. When this didn't happen I walked home. (I also went back the next day and wandered around looking for someone looking for cat.) Shouf didn't complain once during the walk, sitting in my arms like he'd been born there. In my bedroom, he took a quick sniff around and then curled up in my lap and fell asleep.

He's adorable and just what I really needed right now. Quiet, clean, friendly and affectionate-- he reminds me of Kiki, my Samoan cat who died suddenly in my arms at just one year old. I mean, I shouldn't be surprised by that-- a cat is obviously going to remind me of another cat, plus Kiki was hardly quiet. But I couldn't help but feel that I didn't find Shouf, he found me.