girls in the city

i woke up again around 4 am to the sounds of the pre-adhan. today we had to take a placement exam and it wasn't THAT bad. i just forgot a lot of vocab. i tried taking the next level exam but i couldn't remember much of it even though i had studied it. the teachers at CALES are really nice and encouraging. i met my teacher, abdullah who said it would all come back to me, insha'Allah. i hope so. i start classes tomorrow (sunday) from 10-12 and then from 1-3 pm.
afterwards, abdur razzaq...the 18 year old 'guide' took us to buy cell phones and sim cards. i hate saying this but i feel much more complete with a cell phone now. people can contact me...i can contact you.
abdur razzaq also took us to the restaurant(where we had breakfast the day before) for lunch...it was actually our first meal of the day. we had chicken, rice, fried potatoes...kinda like french fries, salad, a yemeni salsa (i forgot what it's called), another potatoe dish and the flat bread...i think it's called rashoosh. the rice reminded me of biryaani. i asked him what the rice was called. he just said 'oorz' (rice). then i asked what the chicken was called and he just said, 'dajaaj' (chicken). yemenis are not very descriptive of their food. anyway, all of that came out to about $2 per person and we couldn't even finish the food! kyla and i were the only women at the restaurant. abdur razzaq was saying that yemeni women never eat at restaurants. there are a few restaurants outside of the old city that have segregated places for families to sit and enjoy meals but not just women. he was saying it might be better to order food and carry it out to eat in the dorm.
later on in the evening, an american student who lived in our building asked us if we wanted to go eat falafel sandwiches. of course we did! remember, we wanted falafel sandwiches the night before but got cheese sandwiches instead. so we met up with two other american students and walked along the outside walls of the old city to a small joint that sold falafel sandwiches for less than 25 cents each! this joint was next to a shady theatre. the girls were saying they had gone to see a movie but left after 10 minutes 'cause it was an old 70's chinese movie that was dubbed in english with arabic subtitles.
so there were 5 of us girls...none of us were wearing niqab and one girl wasn't even wearing a balto/abaaya/jilbaab/burqa. i think that's a lot of female faces in one go for a yemeni man to take.