On a similar topic, gmail apparently has an autosave feature
Bring it here please blogger.com! Google and blogger are affliated afterall.
But back to my remembering my dearly beloved topic.. The night before last I finished working at about 10pm and I was extremely hungry and keen for dinner. I decided to skip on vegemite on bread this time and hunger drove me out into the big bad streets of Sana'a to procure some food. On the way I stopped into the pay phone shop because I was desperate to hear my girlfriend's voice. The boy in the booth could not speak or understand English so I was forced to use my poor and embarassing Arabic. I roughly said can I call Australia? He responded with a flurry of Arabic and pointed me toward the pay phone labelled International.
I crossed the road to a مطعم (restaurant) that I'd walked past a few times already that I had heard was cheap and the food was good. I roughly asked if I could have dinner still (unsure of whether I was using past or present tense) and the fella in the مطعم happily responded by saying please sit. I was asked if I wanted beans, and I was sure I didn't want that, then they offered me meat and I enthusiastically said yes. What they served me was not the most appealing in appearance but the taste was incredible. Again I was really impressed with the Yemeni cuisine. They offered me tea and I said no, do you have Coke? They didn't but without hesitation or a sign of inconvenience one of the guys headed off down the street to bring me back one. What service.. and consideration. In Australia if you didn't know a calling code I doubt someone would rush down the street to find out for you and I can't picture a KFC worker running down the street to get you a Coke since they only have Pepsi. But in the end the most surprising thing about my adventure down the street with no escort was the price of the delicious meal with a Coke - it was only 130 Riyals -> 86 cents.
Today was my first day off and it was disappointing how uneventful it was. Most of my day was spent eating or sitting around watching music videos while being offered qat and shisha. I passed on the qat and enjoyed the shisha. I do need to be careful with shisha though because I'm sure I have the potential to become addicted. I dislike sitting around though, it really grates at my personality. I asked some Yemenis and apparently soccer is played on the street so I will be keen to participate in that. I also asked if YLC had any plans to add a gym to their facilities and apparently only Americans and now me have ever asked about a gym. The director isn't convinced about the idea but I'm making it my mission to convert him :)
The difficulties in communicating in English with Americans has also been surprising. The other day I asked if the officer's club had "weights" and to an American listening to an Australian it sounds like "whites". Which was really weird but I can see the similarities between my pronouciation of weights and the American pronouciation of whites. Anyhow the American in the scenario thought I had was inquiring if the gym was whites only!
Overall though both my thumbs are still up about coming to Yemen. Like I have read elsewhere, walking around in this city certainly feels like you've stepped back in time by a few hundred years and that's nice. I would have liked to have visited Cairo before it became so overpopulated, polluted and overly western influenced. During my time in Egypt and Lebanon I started to get the subtle impression from locals that Arabic was not a fully functional language and certain things needed to be discussed in English. Kids who speak both for example, seem to prefer speaking in English. Yemen has convinced me that Arabic certainly is a fully functional language. All the signs here are in Arabic predominately and occasionally there is some broken English included as well, even graffiti is exclusively in Arabic. Through the years of isolation Sana'a's Arabic culture has been really well preserved.
Tomorrow I'm meant to be getting my placement exam which will determine what level of Arabic I start on the following day. I'm really keen for my lessons to start and to get moving forward with my objective for coming here. I don't want to fall into a rut of sitting around and developing lazy habits.