Grocery Shopping, HIV, YALI, Food, and Puppies

It was an eventful few days, but first things first: I was ATTACKED! We were walking into the other YCMES staff's house and we heard from some little boys across the street yell, "hello, I LOVE YOU habibi!!!". Hello and i love you are common things to hear on the street because they are two things that people happen to know in English? Habibi means something like "my darling". So then they allll run over to us and up the stairs we were on and each one hands me a puppy to pet!! I have no idea what they were saying but Chase says they were saying "this one, now me, do you want one?". YEAH I WANT ONE! Needless to say, i was tortured. But i did pet every one of them twice and then i pulled out my camera, which the little boys clearly enjoyed. Then i went inside and washed my hands. The same thing also happened when we left! I sure hope they are nice to those very young puppies.

Maybe it isnt a good writing strategy to tell the most exciting story and pictures first? Oh well. Back to a few days ago.

For the last 2 or 3 days Chase and i devoted the evening to shopping. There were a few things that we decided we needed, like phones and sim cards, a rug for our completely tiled floor, cleaning supplies, (though the maid cleans the bathroom every other day) sheets, a fan, adapters, and foooood. Shopping for things to set up a new place is usually pretty exciting, but multiply that by living in a place where you A. dont know your way around and have no map or street signs and B. nothing is exactly...convenient...or...labeled with a set price. We succeeded in buying all of these things, but it was certainly an adventure. The way shopping/selling things works here is that there are lots of stores that sell exactly the same thing. There are grocery/ dare i say Target-like stores if you know how to find them, and then there are street vendors that sell some of the exact same things. We walked around the main square and bought some adapters and a random night light (that turned out to have blue green and red lights, groovy) for a total of about $4, as well as an adapter power strip (woohoo!). The phone search was less easy. There are little booths and hole in the wall stores that sell cell phones absolutely everywhere, but they all have different phones! Chase and i are both picky so we spent probably three days searching for phones that satisfy us, and ended up with the same little Nokia with Arabic AND English letters on the keys! I thought it might be a good way to learn. If not, it works for now and will make a nice keepsake for a drawer someday.

The more exciting part of our shopping spree (besides the fan, mom) was grocery shopping. First, i should probably talk about how difficult eating has been for the past few days. After our consecutive 2 hr, 9 hr, and 6hr flights plus layovers and about 35 time zones, eating was really really low on the list. Not to mention (because i already have) the last flight from Frankfurt to Yemen was really miserable for me. On top of all of the traveling, Yemen isnt exactly the most digestive tract friendly place (so we have heard from everybody, at least we're in good company!!) AND i was nervous about all of the job interviewing. I lived a few days on mostly granola bars and milanos that i imported in my suitcase. So we were grocery shopping on a quest to find edible food that wouldn't make our stomachs angry. We have been to two grocery stores so far, both of which had, i thought, an impressive selection of food. I guess i was impressed because i recognized some of it. I don't really intend to eat more expensive imported club crackers, pringles, and coca-cola for a year, but it was nice to see some familiar foods in such a strange place. Its kind of hard to do all of this adjusting with a sick stomach and strange food, so we allowed it this time.

I did however, suddenly feel ok and eat some good local food! At the grocery store after we bought stuff, we were starving so we got food from a stand outside of the store--i had a felafel sandwich and chase had a "burger". Both of them turned out to be really delicious! And so i ate a meal.

The next morning we had to be at the YCMES building at 9am to be taken to get HIV tests at the ministry of health. We entered Yemen on tourist visas and everyone who applies for a residency visa is required to test negative for HIV. So we were driven 5 minutes away from the school to something like a clinic that looked like a government building on the outside and a school on the inside. We were handed forms and vials (AH!) and called in individually. The women (a woman studying at the YLC and i) sat behind a partition and the men (Chase and another male student) sat on the other side. It seemed clean enough and the test was over quickly. The girls got band-aids and the boys did not! When we returned to the car that was parked in a real parking space (real enough for Yemen) there was another car parked behind it blocking us in. So we walked back.

Chase went to work and i talked with some students and staff that i have met before outside. They said they were going to get something to eat and invited me so i went....Hey, i ate last night and i dont feel sick so why not!? Turns out we were going to get "fried bread"...which sounded scary for my stomach but turned out to be pretty delicious. It was a little piece of flattened dough that i watched him dump in boiling oil and then pulled out with a stick..then it was handed to me in a piece of magazine or something. So far i have eaten out of notebook and newspaper... With a little bit of sugar it could have passed for a donut! I returned home pretty proud of myself for eating.

Then around noon we went back to the school to go with a group of YCMES staff and students to YALI for the official announcement/ceremony of the YCMES take over of YALI. Since i have been there several days in a row for interviews, it was nice to see the people i had met and introduce them to Chase. It was also kind of strange to see everyone i know in Yemen in one place! Everyone here is very interconnected anyway, especially the "ex-pat" community of people who ended up working in Yemen for some reason...and the combination of YALI and YCMES makes it even more connected for me.. .that is IF i have a job, Inshallah. The picture is of Chase and I at YALI, looking kind of strange.


After the short ceremony, we walked to a nice restaurant with a bunch of YCMES staff/friends. It was a place that chase and i stumbled upon and eaten at the other night, but it was much more enjoyable this time because we actually felt like eating. I had some more delicious felafel and parts of the rest of the tables feast. Afterwards we were pleasantly stuffed and i went back home while they went to work. That picture is of the "mixed salads", something like alfredo pizza (cheese bread, sooo delish), and coke in arabic! P.S. this is not really Yemeni food, the restaurant was Jordanian, hence the felafel.

For now its Thursday, which is the first day of the weekend in Yemen because Friday is the holy day. Tonight we are doing notthiinnng so we can relax. Tomorrow we are going on a day trip to Manakha with YCMES staff.

Also, i found this like to a website that actually has Sana'a's weather. Texas, you should be so jealous: http://www.wunderground.com/global/stations/41344.html

Masalama!

So i live in Yemen...

So, I live in Yemen… I thought I was going to arrive and feel like we were on some fun and strange vacation for a while and then wake up in a month and think “Oh my God, I live in YEMEN!?” There is still plenty of time for that kind of epiphany, but so far it definitely hasn’t felt like a vacation. This isn’t because we haven’t been having fun or that it doesn’t feel very different from home...It doesn’t feel like a vacation because work has begun for both of us immediately. Seriously, there are still six unpacked suitcases on the floor!! Which I plan to unpack today.

We arrived on the night of the 21^st and by the next morning Chase was meeting his new boss and fellow staff members, and I was being introduced to the director of the English school that I want to work at (Inshallah). All of our busyness and social/”career” networking can be credited to Matthew, who Chase knew from Minnesota and who has been our contact for the last several months while chase applied for jobs and we figured out what I could do and all the other details. He has lived here for the past two and a half years and apparently knows everybody and everything about Yemen, I’m fully convinced. Matthew has been extremely nice and helpful to get us everything we need here, and introduce us to all of his friends before he left for Cairo and the AUC yesterday.

I’m sure that information is all very boring to anyone who wants to know what in the world its like to be in Yemen. (Where’s Yemen?) I think my answer to that after 5 days is still… it’s interesting. Not to be vague, but really this whole place is just very interesting. I’m living in an Islamic society as an ethnic minority, I don’t speak the language and I don’t really know how to use the toilets. Well, actually I haven’t tried the squat method yet because I’ve been fortunate to find ‘Western’ toilets everywhere I’ve needed one. TP is another story. Sometimes it is very traditionally Yemeni (said Yemen- e here, not yeh meni like I thought) and sometimes the place is a living paradox.

Yesterday, walking through the main square, Chase realized that to us Sana'a is like a never ending costume party…Men wear everything from short sleeved t-shirts to nice western suits to a suit jacket and a thaub (that’s skirt to you) with a Jambiyya (yep, a mini sort of ceremonial sword) tucked into their belt with a sort of turban (not sure if that’s the correct terminology) on their head. Women are more limited in what they wear as most Yemeni women wear an all black balto (robe) with a hijab (head covering) or niqab (not a burqa, but it covers everything but the eyes).

At first this was stunning to me, especially in the airport in Frankfurt as I was standing across from some “American” burger restaurant while a woman in the niqab walked by with her husband in a shirt and jeans and little boy in the same. I thought “how unfair that she has to wear a cumbersome robe that she can barely see through while they get to wear jeans”. Likewise on the plane to Sana’a most of the lady passengers were dressed like this and the plane was very hot. (so hot that I spent the last 3 hours trying not to be sick) After being in Sana’a for several days and seeing women all over the place doing fairly normal things by themselves wearing their niqab, it is a lot less weird. Chase and I have even talked about how it is not strange or surprising anymore. I havent seen a woman driving yet, but I cant imagine why anyone would want to drive here anyway. (what? Lanes on the street. Who needs them! I have also never seen a stop sign) After my observation and small amount of interaction with covered women at YALI (the English school) I realized that the flowing material, especially the part that comes down their backs or the way a hijab is pinned can really be very pretty! It seems to me like an excellent solution to bad hair days! Some of them are a little bit bedazzled (maybe with a brand label??) and often there are heels, jeans, or pumas sticking out of the bottom of a balto. So far I have also heard stories about women wearing it to get away with things…like a zit or to be incognito in public for their own benefit. An American who works at YCMES, speaks fluent Arabic, and is married to a Yemeni said she was planning to wear it in the market with her husband to get better prices—if she wasn’t they would think she was a tourist. In a year I will tell you if I think it is oppressive or not, maybe after I have walked under the niqab myself... As long as I’m on Yemeni women’s issues, yesterday at the MALL! (yeah, a real mall—ipods, lingerie, appliances, Pierre cardin, baskin robbins, ecco, diesel) there was some sort of program on breast cancer…we think. I saw the pink ribbon and was very impressed.

So anyway, back to the paradoxes. Sattelite TV is my favorite. Heres a fun fact: there are 2 TV channels in Yemen. Nobody watches them because why would they want to hear about the president, who they’ve probably heard enough about in the last 30 years that he has been in charge, when they could be watching MTV Arabia or BBC Arabia, or NBC2.

Where am I again? Yes, I am definitely in the Middle East in a developing country, the poorest one at that…I know this because when I walk down the streets or ride in a cab, the streets are dusty and one of every 5 doors opens to a small kiosk selling fruit and coca-cola with English and Arabic logos. Other doors open to men in skirts, sitting on cushions on the floor, chewing a baseball sized wad of qat (green leaves that release a stimulant drug- Yemen’s national pastime) Other streets are lined with dusty stores selling American looking toilteries, while next door is one that just has bajillions of eggs. I’ve seen goats in a truck and a Porsche dealership. There are nice furniture stores and nice restaurants and huge grocery stores next to holes in the wall that sell… something? nothing? On one of my cab rides yesterday (alone to YALI, always an adventure) I saw one such dusty shop with a TV… with that box that includes freee satellite. Wait, what?

This is getting really long, and I’m going to try to write more often so that it won’t be in the future… but I should probably include some info about my job search. If you want to call it a search… On Friday, the first day we were here (aka Sunday’s equivalent in Yemen), Matthew introduced us to his friend, Greg, who happens to be the director of YALI (the Yemen-American Language Institute). YALI was once run by the American Embassy, was taken over by an organization called Amideast, and has recently been taken over by YCMES (the school where Chase and Matthew work). Greg suggested that I come to YALI on Saturday to talk about a job interview. It was a slightly traumatizing Saturday (Monday in amer I ca) morning because I woke up feeling pretty sick, but knew I had no choice but to get to this meeting. After some medicine and some deep breaths, I got into a cab by myself for the first time, without being able to speak much Arabic, to go….somewhere in Yemen. I was completely terrified, but eventually made it with the directions that Matthew wrote for me in Arabic. Because it used to be part of the American Embassy, and to keep it safe still, it is heavily guarded by military personnel in a truck with a mounted gun... and the road is blocked from both directions. (sounds a lot scarier than it looks) Greg gave me a tour of the school which is very very nice. I was pleasantly surprised by how big and pretty it is because the website has barely any information. I met Abdullah, the person who hires teachers, who told me to come back the next day for an interview and to observe classes.

So on Sunday I arrived again, had an interview, and observed two classes for one hour each. It was really nice to finally see how the classes went, look at the curriculum (they use interchange, for you ESL class buddies), and meet some very nice teachers who come from all over-- several Americans, a Canadian, some Yemenis). Not surprisingly, the teachers I met knew Matthew and some of the other YCMES staff.

On Monday I had a terrifying teaching demonstration to give. I took over one of the classes that I observed for an hour while the bosses watched. It was by far the scariest interview I have ever had, but once I was talking with students and using a book that gives me all the ideas I need, it wasn’t so bad. It’s over anyway. Then I wrote a short essay for 30 minutes and went home. All of the people that I talked to at YALI were really nice. Several students excitedly asked me if I was a new teacher, to which I replied “Inshallah”. (which means God willing, is used in every conversation, and is quiiite catchy. Its counterpart is Hamduilla, which I cant spell and means Thank God…also a fun one) One guy told me that his name was Mohammed, and there were 4 others in the class. There were five very sweet and very quiet girls in niqabs in the class. I’m not sure how I’m going to recognize them, but a couple of them said, “nice to meet you, teacher” and I liked it.

Now I just have to wait to be told if I “have been selected”. Come to think of it, the whole process felt more like initiation than a job interview. I would be teaching the Ramadan term, and I find out if I have a job next Monday…Inshallah.

And one more thing. Now that i have talked about teaching English i would like to make a disclaimer. I really like run on sentences and elipses. I like to use parentheses and write a journal like i speak. I do appreciate grammar, punctuation, spelling things correctly and all 12 tenses of the English language...but that would make writing a journal waaay too much work.

My New Home

We finally made it to Sana'a on Thursday night August 21st! We live in a dorm room that usually houses 5 students, so it still has bunk beds and 5 desks! I'm not complaining because it is delightfully spacious.
The outside is orange/brown with white lacey trim made of gypsum like all of the buildings in the Old City. There are lots of very pretty stained glass kind of windows-- though they aren't really stained glass and i will have to look up the real name. We have our own bathroom across the hall with a sink, toilet (western, yay!) and a shower. Its on the 4th? floor and the view from the windows is pretty great. From one window I can see the enormous fancy Movenpic Hotel and from the bathroom window i can see a little family backyard farm. The liquor bottles we bought duty free in Frankfurt are holding up the "curtain". We wake up in the morning at 4AM sometimes to the call to prayer coming through our windows from every mosque in the city.


There is a shared kitchen, a couple washing machines, roof terraces, a TV and Mafraj (Yemeni living room at the top of a building) somewhere in two connected buildings. There is also wireless internet..that is pretty slow. There is no air conditioning in the building, but its nice and cool. The weather is a breezy and in the low 80's during the day and 60's at night.

As you can see from my hastily taken pictures, we haven't had time to unpack or organize anything yet, but its starting to feel like home. For more pictures you can go to my photobucket website: http://photobucket.com/kiminyemen and click on "albums"
or click on the title "my new home" above.

Coming Soon!

Hi friends and family!

I've promised a lot of people that I'm going to write a blog for this adventure, so here it is. I'm still in the midst of packing my apartment in Dallas and collecting things to pack for Yemen, but i will get this journal started as soon as I get settled in Sana'a. I request comments on my future posts! Thanks for caring to keep in touch.

Kim