laundry handsome

i'm a little tired of thinking of titles for my posts so i'm just gonna title them randomly by things i see around yemen or titles of songs, books, movies, etc. they probably won't have anything to do with the context of my post so just beware. this post's heading is the title of a laundry place near my dorm.

i hadn't mentioned this before 'cause i didn't wanna make a big deal of it if it couldn't be fixed. but as you all know, kyla and i were staying in the students' dorm which is right next to the school. the dorm has both male and female students. i didn't think that was a big deal as long as the guys stayed on their floor so we could take off our hijabs. there are 5 floors in the building and we were on the 4th floor. there's a bathroom and kitchen on that floor as well. i thought we were the only ones using it when one day, i opened my door without my hijab to go to the bathroom and what do i see?! a guy walking out of the bathroom!!! i was like, what in the world is he doing on our floor?!?! and then we were sitting on the terrace without our hijabs, i happened to look up and saw a guy peeking out of his window from the 5th floor! oh my goodness! and then i see guys coming into the kitchen. i mean the place was infested with guys! so we complained to jameel, the director of the school and asked if we could switch to an all girls dorm. directly above the school, in the same building is the women's quarter. no men are allowed to enter. alhamdulillah, a girl was leaving today, so the room was free for us to move into. except, it only had one bed and one desk and one set of keys. jameel said he would get all that ready.

after class, kyla and i packed all our stuff. i feel like i've already accumulated a lot of stuff. but it's mostly books. i'm gonna have a suitcase full of books when i return. i was hoping to have a suitcase full of hijabs and other souvenirs to add to my collection. hehe. anyway, we really could not drag our suitcases down the stairs 'cause it would be too hard and then to drag them up the stairs to the new place would just kill us. so alhamdulillah, muhammad (he was the driver who picked us up from the airport) appeared out of no where and helped bring down the suitcases. he's an old man and he made 3 trips down (kyla has 2 suitcases and i have 1) carrying the suitcases on his back and neck. and then he made 3 trips up the stairs of the new dorm as well and then he disappeared before i could thank him. he always seems to appear when we are in distress or lost...like he's an angel or something.

the new dorm is really nice. there's a nice kitchen with a bathroom next to it. then there's a door that opens up to the mafraj which is like the sitting area. it's huge and has a broken tv. there are several doors along the walls of the mafraj. 4 doors are to the bedrooms and another to a 2nd bathroom. at the moment, there are 2 other girls living there. so 4 girls sharing 2 bathrooms and a kitchen. not bad.

my friend, kyle who works in aden with the relief organization had called earlier in the day because he was on his way to sana'a. we decided we'd meet up for dinner. kyla and i took a taxi to hadda street. that's the street that nagi and nusaybah showed us the day before. we went to a restaurant called hamra. when we entered, the guards directed us upstairs. that's where the women and families eat. downstairs was just for men. upstairs, we weren't sure whether we should wait to be seated or find a seat on our own so we stood around looking confused until one of the workers pointed to the tables. we sat down and expected someone to come and serve us. i mean, we didn't know what the system was. finally, a server came with a menu in arabic. no english available. we both ordered chicken shawarmas. the server wrote out the our order and gave us the receipt. we had to pay first and then sit back down before they brought us our food. kyle had said he'd be at the restaurant in 10 minutes. i had a feeling he was referring to 10 yemeni minutes. i was right. he showed up 30 minutes later. he came with a worker from the organization, zuhayr who is from sudan. later, another worker, ahmad from somolia joined us as well. after some conversation, kyla and i left to go back to our dorm.

at the dorm, we met our dorm mate, alia who is also from the states...boston. she was actually on the same flight as us on the way to yemen but i don't recall seeing her. she's half yemeni and half bosnian and she's here to learn grammar and also to make a film on yemeni women for her thesis. she actually lived in sana'a for 13 years so she knows the city quite well. she told us about the mukhadaraat (secret police) who follow you around. but she said it was for our protection. i wasn't surprised to hear about it. maybe it's good someone is watching our backs.