Fii al-Yemen

Ironically, I have access to facebook here but the blogger access is sketchy at best. If I can get it to work I'll update in both places, but for now I guess my updates will come via FB.

I haven't taken any pictures yet because people here aren't very fond of them and I would prefer to make a few friends before snapping pictures. But to give you a taste of the way Sanaa looks, think of buildings made of stone that range in height from one to maybe six or up to eight stories. Amusingly, none of them seems to be particularly straight. A look at any of the buildings will reveal walls and roofs and all go at slightly different angles. I wouldn't be surprised at such structure for buildings built into the sides of mountains (as is the case with many buildings in Yemen) but it seems a little comical for those built in the city. However, for a city that claims to have existed for the past 2500 years and according to tradition was founded by Shem (Noah's son), I suppose the mere fact that so many of these buildings have continued on in their present form for so long more than makes up for being a little crooked.

The old city of Sanaa is not far from our buildings and a couple of us went there today. You can find many marketplaces in this area, as well as a large and beautiful mosque. Food is very cheap. A group of five of us ate a great dinner of hubz, dijaj, foula, ruz wa coca-cola (bread, chicken, foula - a dip type dish (for lack of a better explanation) made with lentils and other vegetables) rices and, well - coca-cola. The meal was far more than we could eat and cost a total of $7.50. For all the germaphobes in the world, Yemenia dining may not be for you. The waiter brought out a plastic sheet (sort of like a flat garbage bag), tossed it over most of the table, and tossed the bread on top. Everything you eat with your hands. Actually relatively clean by ME standards but it wouldn't pass any health inspector test in the U.S., that's for sure. Other goods are also pretty cheap. One of my roommates bought a beautifully designed cashmere scarf at a local shop and it cost her the equivalent of $5 USD, without much bartering at all. I bought the traditional Yemeni dress today, the complete outfit (meaning I can manage to walk outside with only my eyes showing). This outfit is usually only worn by women when they go outside the house. Inside they wear pants, jeans, skirts, just like women in many other countries. In fact, when they walk down the street, you can usually see the jeans peaking out from the bottom of their butla (dress). Just an interesting note since I don't think most people realize that.

Arabic classes have started as well. The Yemenis speak a dialect of Arabic very close to fusHa (the written form), which is nice. They do however have a few of their own conjugation patterns and they also speak very softly, with no hard consonents. That's a little different from the way I had been learning so I'm having to relearn to speak quite a bit, but it's fun.

My fellow Taaliba al-lugha al-Arabiia (Arabic language students) run quite the array of student interests or occupations. We have an associate dean from Harvard, a grad student from Mexico City who played piano in the national symphony, a guy from Great Britain who is working to build banking infrastructure in Iraq, several students from various disciplines, etc. Makes for conversation that is never boring.

One last note for the night. There is a deaf man who sells "lighters" on the steps of one of the popular streets in one of the main marketplaces. By "lighters" I essentially means something that looks exactly like a lighter from the outside, but is actually a tiny flashlight that projects an image onto wherever you shine it. The man is deaf so he communicates what he's selling by hand motions. A few of my fellow students met him yesterday when he was making a sign of hanging himself with a noose. Upon closer inspection they found he was selling lighters with Saddam's picture. Only fifty cents.

Rolling power outages are common throughout Yemen and usually happen multiple times a day. When the power goes out it takes the internet with it, and this is about the time of night when those outages take place, so I'm signing off. Anyway it is time for me to catch up on sleep - a total of about eight hours over the last three days is not quite enough for this Imbara'a. Good night!