Catch-up
Sana'a,
Yemen
Saturday, November 26, 2005
Hello all,
Not too much to report really, but just thought I'd check in. Actually - shock horror - since returning to class after Eid, and with the impetus of a new teacher, I've become a hard-working student. This is in stark contrast to the lay-about bum attitude that characterised my first few weeks here. I only have 2 hours of class a day still, but I now also have a 3 hour class on Thursday (ie, the equivalent of Saturday), and I now study for maybe 5 hours a day outside of class, plus any conversing I do with the locals on the street. So, all-in-all, I feel I'm making better progress under the tutelage of my new teacher, Adil.
I can now write short stories and write about my weekend and family and stuff using all the different tenses and crazy Arabic grammar that I've learned. My speaking skills are unfortunately still pretty bad, so I'm hoping to get them up to the same level as my writing before I return home. Although the grammar is strange to get used to, there are elements of the language that are quite simple compared with English, plus Arabic breaks fewer of its own grammar rules than does English. I've come to realise that the key to learning Arabic is knowing the verbs, much more so than other languages I reckon, because of the way the language is structured. So, I've now got about 80 or so verbs written on flashcards which I'm now trying to remember. Then I just need to memorise the plethora of conjugations for each root verb - depending on the tense, singular or plural, masculine or feminine, regular or defective, passive or active, who is carrying out the verb etc etc - and I'll be stringing sentences together no problem!
Anyway, enough about that. On Thursday (ie, Saturday), we had a pretty cool day to celebrate our Yemeni friend's birthday. There was a fair group of us - some Germans (too many obviously), a Hungarian, an American, a French, a Turk, and Hudda the Yemeni lady whose birthday it was. We started out with a really great meal prepared by 'al binat' (the girls) of fresh fish of different sorts. After that we sat in the mafrage and chewed qat 'ainsee' (a special kind of qat) and just chatted for hours. It was alot nicer than what I'd chewed before, and I had a nice cheek going by the end of the evening.
Later in to the evening when we were done chewing a smaller group of us headed to the Sheraton Hotel (one of three 5-star hotels in Sana'a) so that we could have a few drinks (haram jiddan!). I was very excited to have my first beer for 6 weeks, and was also keen to see one of the 5-stars. When we got there, we were ushered into the bar. Expecting 5-star opulence we were somewhat disappointed by what could be described as a tent attached to the hotel with a mini-bar in the corner.
The music and entertainment too was suitably awful - a blend of cheezy Arab pop songs sung by a mutton-dressed-as-lamb Egyptian lady, a hatefully bad pop-song quartet from Russia who presumably were singing to fund the much needed completion of their sex-change operations, and a Lebanese belly-dancer who, sporting a pie-gut, failed in the one essential pre-requisite of a belly-dancer of having an attractive stomach.
Undeterred, however, I had solely the consumption of beer on my mind. Upon assessing the 'range' I soon realised that all they had was Heineken out of a can. Now, I'd sooner swallow my own piss than drink Heineken back home, but after 6 dry weeks I couldn't say no. We were only there for a couple of hours, maybe less, and all I drank was 4 cans (coke-can sized cans, not beer-can sized cans - so I probably drunk maybe less than 2 pints), but I was really quite drunk. As the night's outstandingly bad entertainment drew to a close we got the drinks bill. To my horror the tiny little cans of piss-water that was the Henieken came to over $6 each. Luckily I'd not ventured beyond the beer, but Betina the German girl had had a small glass of wine which cost $12 and Bence the Hungarian had naively had a whiskey which set him back a staggering $19! Having got used to living on maybe $2 a day out here, this really stung the wallet.
Anyway, that about brings you up to speed I think. I just read on the bbc website that there were blizzards in England yesterday - last week there were a couple of clouds in the sky over Sana'a for two straight days, so I too have had my share of bad weather recently!
Anyway, bye for now,
Tom
