Arriving

So I'm finally in Yemen after hours and hours and hours and hours and hours of planes, airports and layovers. The trip started out Friday morning in Salt Lake. My plane left at 9:55 am, which isn't that early it's just that I only got roughly 4 hours of sleep the night before. Then I flew to New York and had a two hour lay over there. Then I was off to Frankfurt Germany for another 2 hour layover. And then to Yemen. That totals roughly 25 hours of travel and 4+ hours of layovers. I arrived in Sana'a, Yemen at about 9:30 pm on Saturday and didn't get to bed for about another 3 hours. I then woke up the next morning at 6 am. Needless to say, I'm extremely tired and my sleep schedule is completely out of whack. P.S. It's 9 hours ahead of Utah here.

I woke up about an hour before my alarm was supposed to go off. Fun. It's just so loud here. I forgot that it was like this in Egypt too. America is such a quiet place in comparison. Granted, I'm in a big city here and not the suburbs, but still you have no idea how much constant noise there is here. People talk much louder then Americans, they honk their horns every 5-10 seconds just for kicks, they never seem to go to sleep, and the Call To Prayer is LOUD and 5 times a day. I believe it woke me up between 4 and 5 am yesterday morning. I'm going to learn to accept that this is going to happen daily.

This morning we had an orientation and then we took our placement tests. I feel like I've forgotten EVERYTHING I once knew. That's a bit frustrating. After I was done with that is was 11:30 and I had a city tour scheduled for 1pm. I thought a one hour nap sounded perfect. And I was, except for the fact that it meant missing lunch, which I didn't realized until 1pm when lunch was over and the tour started. Joyous. Anyway, I obviously survived and went on the walking tour of Sana'a. It's such an amazing city. Beautiful and poverty stricken all in one. We walked past a camel mill. There was this camel walking around in circles grinding Sesame seeds for oil. The camel was blind folded and just kept going. We walked through the Souq where I saw frankincense and myrrh. There were so many spices there too. We went to the roof of this hotel and got an amazing view of the entire city. Then we had this amazing tea. I'm not a tea drinking (duh) but I figured it was part of the cultural experience of being here in Yemen and everyone else in the group wanted to try it. The place where we went is run by this one guy who individually makes every cup of tea. He adds sweetened condensed milk to it. My dislike for tea and milk is greatly outweighed by my love of sugar. It was delicious.

When we got back to the Center I got my laptop set up for the wireless internet and then went to dinner with Ross (from Ireland) and one of the daytime security guards here at the center. We had chicken, foul, bread, french fries, this salad stuff and sodas for 600 rials total. That's roughly $3 in the states. I love how cheap everything is here.

I went to bed last night at about 9pm because I was soooooo tired (justifiably so) and then woke up at about 1:30 am. The power was out. Which is common in the MIddle East. It happened frequently in Egypt also. Typically it occurs in the middle of the night when you're sleeping, however I'm not sleeping now, I'm awake blogging. Good thing my laptop was fully charged.

Here are some pictures from the hotel of Sana'a.