Ahh, back in Yemen. The flight went smoothly, I even had an empty seat next to me! I was so tired, and I felt so grimy. It seemed that all I did in China and Dubai was sweat. All I really wanted to do was shower and go to bed. When I got to my place I realized that just about every article of clothing I had was not only dirty, but smelly dirty. I had to do laundry. Why didn’t I do it in China? It was mostly a language issue, I was not able to get the idea across that I wanted my clothes washed and I was also afraid that if i did find a laundry there would be some sort of miscommunication about the price, when it would be ready, etc. I did a quick load and decided to take a shower. Surprise! We had no hot water… Welcome to Yemen! Grr, I did the shower anyway, I really felt disgusting. Then it was sleep time.
Woke up about 5 hours later (around 4 PM) and met one of my new house mates. He’s a Scot, and seems like a nice guy. He’s already got a degree in Arabic, so he’s just brushing up for the next 3 months. There is also a swede downstairs and another German (what is it with Germans and Yemen?) living on my floor that I have not met yet. I attempted to take Henry to the pizza place I like so much, but the dabob we took did not follow the same rout they usually do. By the time I figured out that we were not on the right path, we were so far out of the way I had to flag down a taxi to take us there. He didn’t know where the restaurant was and I quickly realized how much Arabic I had forgotten when I tried to explain it to the cab driver. Thank God Henry’s Arabic is better than mine… We had some great pizza thanks to my new stash of pork based pepperoni (thanks Anne!) and went home to find out that the power had gone off. Welcome to Yemen! i did another load of laundry in the dark and crashed for the night around 10:30.
Today is a holiday, reunification day. I think that is when south and north Yemen were reunited. I haven’t met anyone that takes the holiday very seriously yet, but everyone likes a day off:-) I’ll start classes again at the beginning of next week (next sat.), until then I will try to do all of the Arabic that I was planning to do on the trip…