may

so may was a pretty good month. still sick of being stared at and generally hate walking around, but otherwise, i like yemen. i was actually talking to my yemeni coworker today about this, and saying that perhaps i should wear the niqab, but she said it won't make a difference. i thought she meant because people will still know i'm a foreigner, but she said no, just because i'm a woman. i don't mind walking around in the old city as much, or with my friends, but i think the solution is for me to make enough money to take taxis all the time...if i want to stay here. taking taxis is usually alright, and you almost always have the pleasure of listening to akon.

i've been mostly hanging out with foreigners this month, with some mohammed al-khouja here and there. oliver has been gone (in britain and ny, coming back in 4 days!!!), so i've mostly been with his old housemates, amina (italian), stephan (norweigan), and brian (american/fake irish). we've been on a few trips, first to manakha (without stephan, and before the kidnappings), then to kamaran. i have already been to manakha, in the haraz mountains southwest of sanaa, but last time i was sick from eating sushi in kamaran the day before. we went on long walks/sort-of-hikes on thursday and friday, and it was very beautiful (will inshallah post pictures to facebook). on thursday, brian and i drank tea with an old couple in a tiny village on the mountainside between manakha and hajjarah, who lived in an adorable house and offered us some freshly picked qat from their field. after meeting amina, we continued on to the village of hajjarah, where we were invited to a wedding and were offered more food than i've ever seen before...meat, shafoot, bint assakhin, spongey bread (forget what they call it here), vegetables, chicken, mushakal, bananas, etc etc etc. then we walked around the mountains for 3-4 hours. we unfortunately decided to stay in the hotel on the right (of the two main ones), when the one on the left is nicer and the staff are much cooler/less annoying, but ohhhh well. the food was good and we got to make fun of a group of american mountain bikers playing guitar and singing "sweet home alabama" sitting in their room all night...cringy. on friday, we actually did a bit of real hiking (to cahill), followed by some not-so-real hiking along a path up the mountain. we also visited hotayb, an ismaili village that seems extremely out-of-place, modern, and clean among the old mountain villages that surround it. the people there also seem out-of-place, sulaimani bohras (a sect of ismailis) with clean white robes and mutadayyin beards. many are pilgrims visiting from india or pakistan. we ended up coming back to sanaa with a rich family we met outside hotayb...flagged them down, they took us to see their village, bought us qat, took us to our hotel to get our stuff, payed off our peugeot driver who claimed that we had to go back with him and had agreed ("inshallah" is not agreeing) and refused to take our money for this, and drove us all the way back to sanaa listening to the genius of the backstreet boys and akon. good times. brian and i also managed to chew qat a total of 5 days that week...a few times in sanaa, in the peugeot there (obvi), both thursday and friday while walking/hiking (always offered to us), and of course on the trip back.

the following weekend, we went to kamaran island. stephan came along this time, along with jessica (who works with me), her boyfriend, and their friends (mostly yemeni, one american who has been living here for a while)...9 of us altogether. the ride there in the peugeot was quite cozy, with me, amina, and brian in the far back, and stephan basically half-way out the window with 3 others in the middle row. we arrived in hodeidah, a port city south of kamaran and in my opinion the lattakia (a**hole) of yemen, in the afternoon on thursday. hodeidah is probably the most humid place i've ever been, my redface was out of control, and even amina (who does not sweat) was sweating. we ate at a restaurant near the fish market, which was quite delicious and i ate both fish and shrimp (i don't like fish). then, we took a very cooozzzy van to salif, the port city close to kamaran, and a boat to kamaran. being hot and sweaty is probably one of my least favorite things in life, and i was in grumpy bitch-mode by the time we arrived. we walked left after arriving on kamaran toward the cheaper "hotel" (a guy with 4 huts), past the huts, and to a beach where brian and amina stayed last time they were here. we argued a bit with the police (i think) who told us that we had to stay in the hotel, but in the end we just ate lunch at the hotel the next day and paid the guy a bit for letting us hang out and nap under his shelter. we spent the next few days doing as little as possible, most of the time either napping or in the water. the water was like a warm bathtub, but it was still refreshing and nice. thursday night, we (mostly just stephan, brian, and i) drank an entire bottle of sweet port wine (an after-dinner drink not meant to be consumed in such quantities), followed by a bottle of red wine, went swimming, saw some amazing fluorescent plankton, and were bitten excessively by little water creatures. friday, we were going to visit a mountain called jabal buraa, a wildlife preserve with baboons, waterfalls, and i'm not sure what else, but we found out that it was a few hours from salif and we were all quite exhausted from the trip the day before and just wanted to enjoy the beach/not sweating. i woke up, went for a little swim, and made my way over to the hut guy's shelter. stephan was already napping, maybe around 9:30 am. even amina (who is a ball of energy) napped for a bit, and i believe brian (who never sleeps) napped a total of perhaps 5-6 hours, a few of those with his right leg and the right side of his face in the sun. very good day. we ate lunch with the hut guy, fresh fish, rice, and vegetable sauce. that night was fairly uneventful, aside from amina randomly going for swims followed by intense sprints on the beach, while the rest of us lounged on the beach. we returned on saturday, a holiday (unification day!), and made the genius decision to negotiate with the driver who picked us up at salif port to take us back to hodeidah. he picked us up in a big, air-conditioned van and we convinced him to drive us back to sanaa for about $10 each (with his lunch and qat thrown in)...not much more than we would have paid for the trip back to hodeidah with him and then the sweaty, crowded, stinky peugeot. we ate at the hodeidah fish market again (picked out our fish, crabs, and shrimp this time...the first time we had arrived too late), bought some decent qat, and made our leisurely way back to sanaa. we stopped to try some camel milk from a camel-herder along the way (for some reason we bought 3-4 bottles), which was quite good but of course warm because it was straight from the camel. watched them squeeze it into the bottle...delish.

this past weekend, we stayed here to relax and chill out. it did not turn out so chill, with a little too much russian club, drinking, and qat, but it was nice to stay in sanaa. on friday, i went to the sheraton for the first time, had a few beers, swam in the pool, and relaxed in the sun...ala hisaab the UN.

well i am at work and have just wasted an hour blogging (from amideast's perspective), so i will write about my thoughts on the future next time.

love,
addie

!!!!!!

YAY!!!!! my bb became famous on his 24th birthday AND (inshallah) the bill banning child marriage in Yemen will soon be passed!!!

some other articles by Oliver:
studying in Yemen after Abdulmutallab
almost-delicious (cheaper than faHsa) salta
nonprofit dar assalam fights extremism in schools

and some really FUCKED UP SHIT:
runaway child bride

and now that i have pointed you toward some informative articles and enlightened you on various goings-on in Yemen, i can feel comfortable blabbing about my personal life for the remainder of this post. first of all, i have yet to post about my new PUPPY! perhaps not so new anymore. i got her about 2 months ago from one of my students at AMIDEAST who will be participating in the YES exchange program and spending the 2010-2011 academic year studying in a US high school. he heard that i wanted a puppy, and offered to bring her by to my house. when i asked if he would be able to take her back if things didn't work out, or watch her when i traveled, he replied in the most nonchalant tone humanly possible "yeah, whatever you want, you just tell me." no pressure. but of course, when you adopt a tiny, little, adorable puppy who attaches herself to you in the course of a few hours and trusts you so much that she sleeps on her back with legs splayed, there is LOTS of pressure.

aaaand now i will edit this draft of a post, which i began over a month ago...oops. puppy is doing well, although still not potty-trained (probably my fault). she has grown from a tiny little near-hairless rat into a still very small shaggy old man in the past few months. still adorable and aggravating simultaneously...and now i think she has fleas. either that or i have bed bugs in my new house. YES i have moved into a new HOUSE! i have fulfilled my dream of living in the old city. i was getting a bit tired of tahrir square and all the traffic...and my $250/month rent started to seem really expensive after my trip to socotra (did i post about this...probably not...will do, or perhaps fb pics suffice). i am now living in a house with 4 foreigners, 1 chinese/american girl (soo-rae) who found the place and has taken all the responsibilities for it on her shoulders (AMAZING), 2 american guys (chris and justin) and 1 kickboxing frenchman (guillaume). we each have a bedroom, which has prevented us from having a mufraj (there are only 5 rooms that are not dungeons), but we also have 2 balconies and one has become mufraj-ish. the house is BEAUTIFUL, freshly painted and fixed up, and so far mostly problem-free (except for some water issues, unavoidable in the yem). AAAND only $100/month. be jealous. i do deserve this house though, after waiting 3 months for a supposedly phenomenally wonderful apartment that i could never move into. gave the landlord my deposit, then he proceeded to delay my move-in date by 2 months (the former resident wasn't moving out), and then 1 more month for repairs. i never even saw the house, and eventually got fed up and decided even the most glorious shiqa in the world was not worth having this landlord. still working on getting the remaining half of my deposit back, a couple weeks after that. but, i guess my house of foreigners was meant to be. glad to be living with people again...my old apartment was really too big for one person (even with a small dog and often a devastatingly handwome brit) and got a bit lonely at times. so, all in all, very happy with my living situation!

work...not so much. it's been insanely busy lately, and i have felt quite overwhelmed and NOT like an intern. i definitely think it's better than the opposite, being a useless intern who spell-checks and enters data into spreadsheets, but that doesn't really take away from the stress. it is still very rewarding though, and i love all the students participating in the programs i work with. edward is an excellent and ridiculously organized boss, so whenever i get overwhelmed or get a call from a parent telling me that their child is depressed because they cannot continue with a program (NOT MY DECISION!), i just go see him and he lays it out so that it all makes sense and i don't feel like a horrible person. not that i really feel like a horrible person, i just feel horrible for students sometimes. i suppose such is life. only 3 more months at AMIDEAST, and then i'll be escorting a group of YES high school exchange students to DC. we'll depart on august 4th (me, 23 yemeni kids, hopefully my pup), spend endless hours in transit, even more endless hours in immigration, and thennnn i'll be back in the US of A! really not sure at all what my plan is after that. so far i've come up with teaching english somewhere or trying to find another position in international education, but i am never sure about any one thing for more than a few days. any suggestions??

off to get some food, will tryyyyy to post more. OH also, oliver has a NEW BLOG which should of course be checked out (although i'm sure i will post his articles too from time to time).

xo

AAAHHH!!

yuck

MUST POST!

i am not quite sure what this post will be about, but it's been about 2 months now since my last post (which really doesn't count that much since it was all photos), so it's time. i have been back in yemen since the beginning of february, and although i initially was very happy to be back, this past month has definitely had its ups and downs. i'm just getting sick of many many things that i could ignore for a while in the beginning by focusing on how interesting and beautiful yemen is, and also how completely the opposite of boring it is (i do still believe this). perhaps yemen/sanaa don't need additional criticisms, but my complaints are non-newsworthy and unrelated to alqaeda or even sa'ada or southern secessionists. i'm not sure how this makes critiques of sanaa any better, but since this blog is mostly just about my daily life and impressions, i should give the bad along with the good. first of all, in a society where 95% (guestimate) of women wear the niqab, presumably in the goal of greater modesty and protection of privacy, it makes me very very sick how the vast majority of yemeni men blatantly stare at women with uncovered hair and even those wearing the hijab. there is no sneaking a glance or flashing a greeting smile or embarrassedly turning away (people check each other out everywhere, of course)...they stare, and then they stare, and then they very obviously alert their friends, and then they all do some more staring, often stopping in their tracks or doing a full 180 in the process. this goes along with choruses of "hellos," often from children but at least half the time from men and sometimes accompanied by an "omigod" or an "i love you." i have adapted by essentially go into uber bitch-mode every time i leave the house. i usually walk to the same places, if they are close enough to get to on foot, so i of course "salam" my local shopkeeper and my favorite cafeteria guys and an occasional shawl salesman. as for everyone else, i ignore the living hell out of them, and can't really afford to distinguish between kind, friendly "hellos" (exceedingly rare) and blatantly obnoxious attempts to attract attention, because if i wasn't listening to my ipod at all times i think i would go insane. i feel like perhaps i'm exaggerating, and i suppose there are days when i do not arrive at my destination still fuming, but i am always relieved when the walk is over. one might make the argument that if you grew up in a place like this, where western women and even women showing some face are quite rare, you would stare as well...but this doesn't really make my experience any less unpleasant. and of course there's the "perhaps they're just staring at you because you're different, and not as a sexual object" argument (yemeni women do stare as well, although its harder to tell). i can only judge from my own experience, and i feel like most boys/men between the ages of 16-40 (roughly) are not just thinking that i'm different.

i think perhaps that's all the venting that i need to do today (no "first of all" needed, i suppose), although there are many other things that aggravate me here. i am not saying that all yemeni men are this way, and i work with and have met many many wonderful, sweet, and respectful yemeni teenagers/men, but i can't ignore experiences that i have every day either.

aaaaaand of course, i should include some news and whatnot, since there are some good summary articles that have come out lately (including a few by some of my MANY freelance journalist homies here):

article by my HABEEB in the asia times :)

good sum-up by my friend haley in washington monthly

yemen's 15 minutes of fame in FP

9 visits!!!! WOAH!

so looks like i had an all-time high of NINE VISITS yesterday, according to my trusty google analytics...exciting! i suppose i gots to keep posting. i am guessing that its because pictures are more of an immediate draw than 10 paragraphs of me rambling on about myself...although both are of course very enjoyable. i will continue my "awesome yemenis" slideshow on this fine day. unfortunately, i do not have any more good articles to share with you...probably because i don't really look, i mostly just wait for them to fall into my lap. but that is indeed still on my mind, so that's good...


after fighting to get his picture taken, this kid burst into tears...that was absolutely the most effective way to get his picture taken.


qat chew at mhmd's house...doing the yemeni smile


mhmd happily alongside his friend, fatHi. many brothers wait to have a joint wedding celebration because it's much cheaper. mhmd is engaged to a girl named eman, and his brother actually just got engaged, but he says it will be at least a year until they can afford to get married.


me and the grooms!


me and abdullah, another close friend of mhmd and the baby of the group :)


first qat chew in my mufraj (living room). me and mohammed lookin a lil goofy :)


three students (mohammed, aref, and azd) who went on the YES high school exchange program to the US. this was during a trip down to aden...




my kiddies :)


thanksgiving in sanaa was absolutely amazing! and quite diverse!

home sweet home :)

so i arrived home yesterday around 10 am, after a little than than 2 days of traveling. we got out of sanaa no problem this time, as i had my required exit/re-entry visas. actually, when we were checking in some guys were taking photographs (i believe for yemenia's magazine), and asked if they could take mine. i agreed, and made sure that both myself and my student hesham got a complimentary pass to the "bilquis lounge"...perhaps not the nicest place i've ever been, but for yemen, it was quite pleasant and the seats were vert comfy. after boarding and beginning our flight, the same guys came back and got me, 2 other foreign girls (of course), and a random guy and told us that they wanted to photograph us eating the first-class meal. i had no objections, although i argued that my student should come with me (they at first refused, but after i realized that this was a 3-course meal, i eventually got my way and my student got to take a nice 2-hour nap in first-class). the food was quite good, except for the shrimp appetizer (which one of the other girls kindly ate for me). one of the great things about yemen is that you will meet the most amazing smattering of foreigners, and of course you might not always get along, but everyone who up and decided to come/move to yemen is bound to be at least interesting and most often a little crazy. one of the girls in first-class with me was an amideast aden english teacher, taryn, who i had heard a bit about but never met, and she was absolutely hilarious (a bit of rice-spitting, a bit of pillow-throwing...i'm surprised they didn't kick us out). the other girl, anna, was a beautiful italian who was visiting her spanish boyfriend who worked at the embassy in sanaa...she was also extremely funny and witty, and the three of us were probably much more raucous than the stewardesses would have preferred. i was actually quite upset that the two of them were leaving yemen and that i hadn't met them before :(

anyway, the rest of the trip to rome (where we stopped, and where anna got off) and frankfurt was fairly uneventful. they eventually forced us back to economy, much to our dismay, although they didn't notice that hesham was still up there until about half-an-hour later. we had a 4-5 hour layover in frankfurt, where i bought a burger and a coke for hesham for $10...ridiculous. taryn was also flying to dulles, but unfortunately not on the same flight, so we said goodbye to her. the 8-hour united flight to dulles was alright, passed relatively quickly i suppose. upon arrival, united lost about 20% of the bags from our flight (accidentally sent them to the transfer terminal i believe), so that took an agonizing and extremely frustrating hour of waiting. then we went through customs...i got through immediately, while hesham was of course taken aside (as profiling has now become totally acceptable to everyone). i had to wait for hesham for an hour and a half, but fortunately when he got out he said that he was only questioned for 10 minutes and mostly he was just waiting as well. my boss told me that yemenis and pakistanis are automatically the last to be questioned, regardless of when they arrived, so that probably explains it. we spent that night at the holiday inn express near dulles, where i VERY much enjoyed the luxuriously soft beds, the speedy internet, and the wonderful water pressure. i was supposed to meet dan that evening for dinner, but unfortunately learned at the last minute that i would be staying near dulles instead of in DC (to escort hesham to the airport in the morning), and as you all know getting from dulles into DC is a bitch. we were of course utterly exhausted as well, and it was already 630 pm by the time we arrived at the hotel, due to all of our delays. the next morning, popped over to dulles to drop hesham off around 5 am (he flew to san francisco, and then on to some unknown airport on his way to coos bay, OR where he will be living!), then supershuttled it over to BWI for my 40 minute flight to PITTSBURGH! met my dad when i arrived at 10 am, and was very happy to be come with all the amazing BRIDGES! i was of course freezing as well...

at some point during my travels, probably when we arrived in frankfurt and i saw how ridiculously organized/clean/meticulous/EXPENSIVE everything and everyone was, i did start to miss sanaa and the craziness and unexpectedness of life there (in a good way). i was relieved to feel this, as during the month before my trip i had been getting increasingly fed up with all the little things, and it was good to be reminded of my love for yemen. also, i realized when i got home that i have never shared photos on my blog (as i am largely writing for people who i know and can see them on facebook), but i suppose these days there might be more people reading. i'm not going to include any nature/landscape photos (you can probably find these online anyway), just wanted to show you some of the amazing people who i work/live with and how kind and hilarious and NOT terrorist they are :)


my BFFs abdulwasia and mohammed at their friend fatHi's wedding


i usually think the cute kid pics are pretty cliche but...these kids are REALLY cute...




a wonderful note that my (really cute) launderer left me one day :)


me and my darling intern ghofran at a gathering at AMIDEAST

well, that was all it would let me upload in one go, so i think i'll save the rest for later and give them to you in doses of WONDERFULNESS!

<3

the news!

so i suppose now is not the best time to be neglecting my blog...

let me first say that i'm fine, returning to the US in a few days and definitely plan (and hope!) to come back to yemen at this point. nothing in my life has really changed since the recent yemen media craze, except spending a day or so worrying about why the embassies closed in sanaa. however, if i was in states right now, i would probably think that yemen was on the verge of war and entering a downward spiral as (as some have called it) "the new afghanistan." yes, alqaeda is out there and has been out there for many years. i can't claim to know toooo much about the situation, but i can help point you towards what (in my humble opinion) are some better blogs and articles about the situation (in a minute...)

it was during the embassy closures, when i actually started to freak out a bit, that i realized i'm really not done with yemen. when people were first starting to talk/hear about yemen in december, i actually felt a bit excited about the prospect of having to stay at home. but it hit me after the US embassy closed that this might be a real possibility, and i spent a few days very upset and depressed at the prospect of not coming back here to this BEAUTIFUL country that i have most definitely not finished exploring and getting to know, and to many people who are becoming a big part of my life. most definitely not done eating bayd (a scrambed egg variation, usually with veggies and cheese) or faHsa (kind of like shredded beef in a stew, topped with fenugreek), chewing qat, having mohammed explain the same things to me 47 times in arabic when i understood the first time, having mohammed recount events to me multiple times that i myself was present for, joking with my students at amideast, going a bit crazy with the foreigners whenever needed, traveling...etc etc. i'm hoping that returning to the states will also help remind me why i came here in the first place, and make the little annoying things that have been irking me of late melt into the background...

i am EXTREMELY excited to go home right now though, and see my family and all my LOVES!!!! especially after a recent fiasco at the airport when i was not allowed to leave the country because i didn't have an exit visa. look at that yemeni security! anyway, we were so concerned about getting the yemeni exchange student who i was accompanying his US student visa that nobody (including myself) really thought about my need for entry/exit visas. i'm going to spend a week or so in pittsburgh to see my family, grandparents, and my girlies, then probably a few days in DC with my habib dan and hopefully BERNIE! :)


as promised, here are some of the (rare) intelligent and less sensationalist blogs/articles about the yem:

Waq al-Waq (thanks jared! this is a good blog to follow continuously...)

LA Times: Foreigners in Yemen (a good article by my friend haley!)

CNN: Alqaeda in Yemen

NYT: US has few resources to face threats in Yemen

will keep updating for you guys (as much as i remember to do so...)

much love!
addie