introduction

assalaam-alaikum. i started this blog for family and friends to keep up with what was going on with me while i study and travel around yemen. i'll be studying arabic at a language institute in sana'a called CALES (center for arabic language and eastern studies). it is located in old sana'a within the city walls.

so on my way to yemen, i stopped over in london heathrow for like 10 hours. i was supposed to meet my friend kyla there and we were to travel to yemen together. it was quite an ordeal trying to find each other 'cause heathrow is huge. we had originally planned to do a bit of sightseeing before leaving for yemen. i even bought a little guide book on london. but by the time we found each other, we were so tired and didn't even wanna think about sightseeing. so kyla called up her friend who lived nearby and we met her, ate at a middle eastern restaurant (queen of sheba) that served yemeni, iranian and lebanese food and then slept till it was time to go.

we flew on yemeniya airlines. it was a bit ghetto...at first i thought there were crumbs on my seat so i tried to wipe it off before i sat down but realized the brown specs were part of the design on the seat...hehehe. anyway, despite my seat being broken (the button to push your seat back was missing), the flight attendants were very nice. so we were to stop in aden to refuel and then go to sana'a. but we flew over sana'a first to get to aden and then flew back to sana'a. i thought that kinda weird. maybe that's the yemeni way. i don't know...