djibouti?

unfortunately, there's a problem with all our visas especially kyla's. CALES (the language institute) should have made it clear on their website about the whole process so that we could've avoided this trouble. the thing is, when kyla and i entered yemen, we got a tourist visa which lasts for a month. for me, it's sort of okay 'cause i'll be leaving like 2 weeks after my visa expires and i can just pay a fine of $1 a day. not a big deal. but kyla....she's staying for a whole year so she has to renew her visa and get a student visa. only problem is that yemen will not allow her to pay for a new visa. she has to LEAVE the country and then renter it to get the right visa.

after class today, alia and kyla said they had good news. what was the good news? we were gonna go to djibouti!!! alia had called the airlines to ask where would be the cheapest airfare and it looked like djibouti was the answer. and of course, we didn't want kyla to go by herself so we were all gonna go with her and make it a little vacation. so we started looking up info about the country...places we could stay, things we could do. then we went to yemeniya airlines to book tickets. we were thinking of staying for just a few days...maybe thursday till sunday. i'd only miss 2 days of class since we have off thursday and friday.

unfortunately, it was not that easy. the man helping us at yemeniya, muhammad, was a family friend of alia. there were flights on specific days to djibouti, none of which were ideal for us. so we started to think of other surrounding countries we could go to. oman was too expensive. saudi wouldn't let 3 women in without a man. we thought, what about ethiopia or eritrea or somolia? muhammad started laughing at us. he was like, 'are you guys crazy? they're so hungry over there, they'll eat you!' he was not very p.c.

morocco, libya, lebanon, syria, afghanistan, india, iran, iraq, algeria, sudan were just a few of the countries we threw out. relax...we weren't serious about going to some of the suggested countries. plus, muhammad wouldn't let us. but we were desperate to go somewhere. muhammad suggested cairo, but we'd been there, done that. anyway, after about 2 hours of searching, we reserved tickets to djibouti. but we decided we'd go to the ethiopian airlines and check with them after we ate to see if we could get better flights.

well, during our meal, we discussed this trip further and decided that alia and i would not go to djibouti. only kyla would. however, after returning home, kyla did some research on the internet and decided she'd go to jordan to visit her friends.

it was exciting to think we were gonna go to djibouti but i guess it wasn't meant to be. however, now, alia and i are thinking of going to socotra island, insha'Allah. have to see how that works out...

in other news, i have not worn my sunglasses yet even though it's sunny here 'cause the women just don't (their faces are already covered by their niqaabs). and i brought 2 pairs with me. what a shame.