holy jesus snack cup!

version: ice. I made it to work, after about 45 min of pouring warm water on my car while simultaneously letting it run (which if you know me, you know i HATE doing). I did end up getting the ice off of the necessary windows and out on the road. where DAMN, yo. it was coated. my "ANTI-LOCK" light came on and stayed on all the way to work. I hope that's not a problem. of course, like everyone called in, so i worked an extra half-shift. spent about 15 more minutes getting my car cleaned off again and made it home. but, we all know the reason I made this post is to use "holy jesus snack cup" as an expletive.

the end.

the fine line between judging and being judgmental...

let's just say i leap over it every time i go to work...

i think i'm going to hell for this next one

So, sometimes I play this game. It's not really so much a "game" as it is "snap judging people by their appearance" the rules are a little hard to define, as I said before: not really a game. I also don't really pick the people that I do this too. it's not like "i'm going to do every fifth person i see today" but there are two at work that I have done this to, and it was all almost instantly. One was in orientation with me. She's an RN. I saw her and thought "She's Catholic" I don't know why. I'm actually probably wrong. I totally saw her wearing a non-crucifix cross, which makes me have my doubts. But to me, she's Catholic. And then there's a Med Tech. I saw her and went "Pentecostal" "wait, no. not pentecostal, but fundamentalist. Baptist. Yeah. Baptist" but now that i think about it, she very well could be AoG. oh well. i'm not so interested in her. i ALMOST was like "are you Catholic?" to the other. Which I TOTALLY did in Yemen, among the students.

do i have catholic-dar? should i ask to find out?

arabic.

So, Yesterday I went to Missouri State and had my first ever Arabic class in the US of A. Which is kinda cool. and now I need to do work for the course. I intend to do all of book II this semester (don't laugh, bitches) I guess I'll see how feasable that is with a job when I have a job... inshallah, inshallah.

So far I have learned that my teacher is Algerian and she's just about as easy to steer off-topic as Arwa, which I'm totally cool with as long as we stay in Arabic. It's also nice that she stays in arabic with me, but she can verify my english translations because she is competent in english as well.

oh christmas tree, oh christmas tree...

I just realized I don't know the words to that song beyond "how evergreen your branches" -- Real point. I went to Target last night and bought my Christmas tree for a dolla and a qwata. and also some decorations for half-off as well. Then I took them home, decorated my tree and set it on my television. Hey, i still have most of the Christmas season to enjoy it. (Actually, I might leave it up until Lent)

islam & jerry

So, i'm flipping through the channels and Jerry Springer is on with "Blood Cousins Wed" and I only think that throughout the Middle East it's completely OKAY for first cousins to marry. I mean, Muhammad said it was okay. And then I start thinking of what these people would say/do if confronted with the knowledge that many muslims have no problem with their behaviour. Would they change their minds?

oh what can i say? i adore you.

I slept for 17 hours when I got to STL. mmm blessed sleep!

dubai

So I'm sitting on the floor in the DUBAI! airport. I'm about five hours in to my 42ish hour trip and doing okay. I was going to download podcasts, but either my iTunes is being weird or the network has a block on that sort of thing. But apparently I can still download other things, so that's cool.

My next flight is supposed to leave at 2 am (and it's 2:45 now) so I have a lot of time to do whatever. In an airport. I think that might end up getting old. However there are like fifty terminals in this place.

One of my headphone speakers decided it didn't want to work, so whatev.

I thought my bag was so small that it couldn't possibly be overweight. Oops. I have 45 kilos or so (which i think is near the maximum for international flights, but they also have some kind of weight per bag (i think 23 k or so.) but they didn't charge me extra, hamdulillah! and they didn't check them through to STL. I know I have to pick them up in JFK for customs, but I hope I don't have to hang on to it until I check in to my flight to STL. Not only because it's a lot of stuff but because American would probably try to charge me overweight baggage for an internal flight. Also I was hopeful (but realistic) that I could make it to mass in New York. MMM Jesus!

Also, Am Sayeed was amazing this morning. I came downstairs this morning and went over to the other building to check my email. When I came back, he was standing in the doorway and was asking me about when I was going to leave, and who was taking me. When I explained that I thought Muhammad was taking me he was like "Is Muhammad around? I think he might be in his village." I really had no idea. I talked to Jameel, the director, the week before and he said there would be someone at 8 am to take me. Am Sayeed (who might be as ancient as days) walked over to the other building to see if Muhammad was around.

Of course, he was gone to his village (today is a holiday for ... um... the last british soldier leaving ? mumkin?) and he found this other guy who works for the center to take me. I got to the Airport in plenty of time. no hitches. Mum-taz!

And that brings you up to the moment with me ... sitting on the floor updating my computer in Dubai.

I HAZ TIKTZ!

I bought a rug

and some chocolates.

honesty, of sorts...

I'm not really sure if I should be impressed or offended by shopkeepers here.

A couple of friends & I went into this shop where I had, several months before bought an incense burner and one of them asked how much a simmilar burner was. He answered about 200-300 riyal more than I paid. When I called him on it, he said "yeah, but you must have bought it four or five months ago. Now, there are tourists and everything."

nuns

You know what I love about the nuns? Sometimes they ... (wait. clarification, it's not the only thing i love about the nuns, but it is one of those little things) ... Sometimes they burp during adoration.

I was talking to Arwa today during class, we got started talking about the Bible, so I brought mine down and was showing her Old Testament, New Testament, Gospels. She was surprised that the entire book wasn't just JESUS! I think she felt a little superior that the Quran is entirely directly from GOD! but at the same time, she wasn't condescending. She also was amazingly diplomatic when it came to Jesus. According to Islam, Jesus didn't rise from the dead -- I think maybe he didn't die on the cross according to Islam. I don't remember rightly. But instead of "after he died" she was able to use "after he ascended" or at least that's the translation I'm using with hand motions and all. It was just nice to know that I have a teacher who is openminded, at least in words.

In other news, I bought a new abaya. Diana looked at it before I bought it and agrees that it is beautiful. I'm not sure why I decided I needed it a month before I left, but I did.

a list of vocabulary i am becoming acquainted with through my arabic readings (in english)

thick
thick
tight
thin
thin
transparent
translucent
loose
cover
covering
to cover
cover
cover
to reveal
embellishments
colorful


seriously, i'm enjoying it.

women in islam

I have two hours of class a day right? Doesn't sound like much, but it really can be a lot. I restarted class at the beginning of the week. On Saturday I go to class. My teacher & I do what we generally have been doing. First hour is Al-Kitaab and the second hour is a reading exercise. Well, it's supposed to be reading. I generally get bored with the story about a sentence in and then just go as fast as possible. screw comprehension or vocabulary additions. We got through the first page of a story on Sindibad. And I began stalling. Bringing up just about any subject I could think of to NOT move on to the next page. It's soul crushing.

Finally, I looked at her and I was like "I don't want to read this." (I should probably note that I've gone through about three books, reading one story or so from all of them and finally just being like "No, I don't want to do this.") Seriously, most of the time the stories are okay enough, but I'm not that interested and they are too difficult to do in class with my teacher who doesn't speak very much English. So I ask her if we can read something about Islam or life in Yemen. Because this stuff interests me more than stories that I've heard before in English. She sounds excited and tells me that she will bring something in the next day.

So Sunday comes around and she's brought books from her house. Which is cool. We look through them, and I run upstairs to show her this random book that I bought in a bookstore because it says "to muslim women" on the cover, with a picture of a woman in hijab. She looks at it, reads part of it and is like "yeah, it's good" so I decide to use that one, because then I can feel free to write in it and all that jazz.

And thus we start! We get about a line in and I'm like WHOA! This is amazingly difficult. Especially since (i repeat) my teacher does not speak English very much. So, I stop her, and we agree that I will look work on it at home with the dictionary and come back to class and we can talk about it. She suggests I try to get through the entire section on hijab, about a page and a half. I think "Sure. It might be alot, but I'll get as far as I can, maybe half-way or something"

I go home and start in with the dictionary. After working for probably three or four hours, I am four lines in. I haven't even finished the first paragraph. On top of that, the subject keeps changing back and forth. So, I give up for the evening.

I would like to note that even though it was difficult and a bit frustrating, I was holding up pretty well. I looked up all but maybe 10 words from those four lines and I mostly found all of them (Arabic dictionaries are harder than European languages, I swear)

I think my teacher was a little disappointed in how far I got, but we worked through the rest of the paragraph together and then I went and got it translated with the dictionary. It has some great vocabulary. Though I got a little frustrated when I looked up this word and the dictionary told me it meant "to look up alphabetically" and I was trying so hard to figure out how that fit into the sentence. Trying trying, and I get to class, where my teacher is like "No! That's a name of Satan!" OH! and now the sentences sense!

And suddenly I realized how long this post was. I guess I'll leave it just as suddenly.

too much time with the catholics?

So, I have a tendency to talk about church-y jesus-y things with the foreigners here, right? And thus they find out I'm going to mass. Some of them are Catholics themselves and are like "I really should know where the church is." Some of them are not but think "Damn, it would be totally hilarious to go to mass in Yemen" and decide they want to go with me. And I take them. (for those who might be disappointed in my consent to the latter, EVERYONE I've taken with my has always been respectable. [Besides, going to mass in Yemen is totally hilarious. I mean, it's Yemen.])

Anyway, back to the story. In my time here, I've cycled many people through the Catholic church here. Today, I ended up taking my two house mates. (Though really, I have a hard time saying that I take them to church. Generally word gets around that I go to Mass and they ask if they can go with me. I'm going anyway, so whatev. come one come all. Besides, it makes dealing with the debab drivers easier if there are more people.)

Wait... where was I? Oh yeah, taking my house mates to church. So, they went with me and afterwards, one of the nuns stops me.

nun & dana:
nun: Did you bring your friends with you?
dana: Oh, yeah. I guess.
nun: Maybe you will be a missionary...
dana: I think I would need to become Catholic first.
nun: Oh, are you interested in becoming Catholic?
dana: Uh. not really.
nun: maybe you will. God knows when you will become a Catholic.
dana: insha'allah.

***

the last line was kind of a joke. Though I don't think she got it. insha'allah means "if God wills" and I generally say it to the children if they try to do the conversion speech on me. I generally mean it as an "I will only convert if God literally hits me on the head and says 'be Muslim'" Even then I would have doubts.

So, what I'm saying is that ALL the Cathoics think I will convert. But I don't.

The end.

i want nachos like whoa.

'om sayeed

We have an old man who lives in our building, 'om sayeed. He's rather adorable, as old men are, but really, I don't think he's all there. The other day, after I had come home from Ethiopia and everyone else in my house had left for home or gone on this trip to the Red Sea coast, I came in the building. 'Om Sayeed was sitting in his little room by the door and looking at this piece of bread. When I went in, he handed the bread to me. I was like "for me?" he nodded in agreement. Rather than try to politely refuse, I thought the easiest solution would be to take the bread. "shokran, 'om sayeed, shokran"

And I thought "That's weird. Also what is up his nose? It kinda looks like he shoved some bread up there." and promptly forgot. The next day, I come in the house and he hands me this really large bag of loh. (Loh is a type of slightly bitter bread, like Ethiopian injera) "oh, thank you very much, 'om sayeed" now I'm a little weirded out and start wondering if I need to talk to the director about this.

Thankfully (for me), the girls on the Red Sea trip came back early. Apparently he's been doing that for a while. So maybe it's an Eid thing...

yet another conversation.

I'm pretty sure this was not just random.

isaac: All of the Catholics think you're going to convert to Catholicism.

dana: Not all of them! Diana doesn't!

isaac: Yeah, she does.

dana: NO!

i: Yeah she does.

d: NO! Really? But I don't want to.

i: Well, I don't think you will because you really don't want to, though I don't understand why you don't want to.

d: You know, Merton was totally right -- all protestants have a distrust of catholics, it's part of their religious upbringing.


Okay, so I go to mass, but only once a week. And I go to evening prayer with the nuns, but again, only once a week. And besides. The nuns are amazingly beautiful, you'd want to go to evening prayer with them as well. And I still don't want to be Catholic.