Candy and prizes and treats?!?

In other news-
- This weekend I got wrangled into supervising a beach clean-up project with Matt and Ben. I was so excited to get to sleep in past 6:30... but now I shall spend my day watching a million teenage Yemenis, and doing manual labor on a beach where I cannot even wear a t-shirt or shorts...

- When matt introduces himself people often laugh- nothing unusual about that, he's an odd dude- but we finally found out why. The name "Matt Duda" literally means a "Dead worm" in Arabic! "Hello there, my name is dead worm...how are you?" Hahahah sucker.

- On my first day of classes we were going over some basic verb endings, we had barely begun when one of my students said, "Okay, enough of this. Thats fine, something else now." Wait, what? Um helloooo I'm the teacher. When I say conjugate that verb YOU HAD BETTER CONJUGATE THAT DAMN VERB.

- I decided to try and do some laundry in our old-school, manual washer (with clothes line on terrace) as per instrutions I filled it with water. Apparently this apparatus was just for show/to accumulate dust- there was no bottom on it and it flooded our whole bathroom. Somehow maintenance found out about flooding and two guys came up to my apartment to fix it. One guy was the handi-man the other guy clearly served no purpose, he just came to see the show. All three of us were standing there huddled in the tiny bathroom, one guy diligently banging things around, and brandishing screwdrivers- the other guy and I just shifty-eyed looking at each other, not talking, watching... Finally out of sheer desperation I went and got some sticky-notes, I had the Yemeni guy go all around my apartment labling my furniture and appliances in Arabic. We had a LOT of time to play this game and quickly blew through major furniture and possesions... does anyone want to know how to say "wall socket" or "hangar" in arabic because I could probably tell you.

-Today I got majorly called out on using a "tense" wrong- I said it was present-continuous or some such nonsense and I had 16 Yemenis all yelling and pointing that I was incorrect. Oh? My bad. Let's move on and see what else I can incorrectly teach you today, shall we?

-The other day I bought a SIM card for my global cell phone. I tried to buy a Yemeni compatible one at home but they were all around $50. Buying one in Yemen was a bit of a charade- trying to explain in my faltering Arabic until I prised my phone apart and showed him where the card would go. When he told me how much, I just stared at him in shock- My total cost for a global SIM card and Yemeni phone number? 75 cents. Awesome! Easy, done! But not quite... For reasons that remain unclear I then had to give them a copy of my passport. I had to undergo a FULL fingerprinting and I had to fill out in ARABIC a lengthy questionnaire about my intended use for the phone, American and current address, email contacts, it took a VERY long time. I can read and write arabic, but I didn't know exactly what it was asking for. Imagine me, and five random men-none of whom spoke a word of English all huddled around a piece of paper-my hands COVERED in ink- trying to decipher/translate/explain the process of registering my information to the phone company. There was lots of shouting and gesticulating wildly. The paper was snatched and passed around becoming more and more illegible...and is the Yemeni government monitoring my calls?? What a fiasco!

- About every other day I hear a knock on the door, and without thinking go over and open it- almost invariably its a Yemeni man who see's that I'm in a tank top or t-shirt and yells "ahhh! sorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorry!" and covers his eyes with his face and backs slowly away. There are literally only two other Americans here, neither of whom live near me, and we have a secret knock so I know its them. Really though, what do I think's gonna happen when I open that door, I gotta stop flashing bare, beguiling fore-arms at all these Yemeni men.