I really hate weddings here. Well, the guy's part at least, the women have the decency to do their celebrating indoors. For the men, they set up a tent in an open area in the city and then they chew quat, dance, and play music. No big deal, but there are certain Yemeni touches that make them impossible... The biggest thing is the noise. Gatherings tend to be loud, and happy ones tend to be louder still. But that isn't enough, just having the band's noise on it's own would not be enough. A PA system is installed to amplify the festivities. The speakers aren't arranged for the participants, after all, the people there can hear just fine. No the speakers are for the surrounding neighborhood. They point the bullhorn type speakers out into the surrounding streets, sometimes even a street over and BLAST the music. The other problem is the time they do this, they usually start around 11PM and wrap up the loud part around 2-2:30.

It's one thing to not care about other people's sleep, but to actively make sure that the wedding is as loud as possible at the worst time upsets me to no end. A wedding party was being held last night, but they STARTED at 2AM. God was I pissed. I closed up all the windows and put in earplugs and I could still hear them. Honestly, I managed to block enough of the noise to fall asleep, but it was the idea that they not only didn't care if I slept, they actually hoped that I didn't that kept me awake. I was too mad to sleep. I have no idea when I drifted off, but it wasn't too far from the morning call to prayer. I was tired enough (and had earplugs in) that I actually slept through the really loud call. Yemenis in general are very nice, but their deliberate disinterest of impacting other people's lives is infuriating...

I just had my first lesson since I got back, it went well. I was a little afraid since I hadn't really done any Arabic for a couple of months. I read the stuff well enough, the only trouble I had was with new words (and that's natural). The cool thing was that I was starting to to pick out what form the words I didn't know were in. Were they a gerund, a participle, or the noun form? I'm getting there... I've asked Mahmoud to drill me on the forms that the verbs can come in, it feels like not having that knowledge is now holding me back. I'm dreading it a bit, memorization has never been one of my strong suits, but it's time to buckle down and "get" this. Onwards and upwards!

I now have skype activated. Download it here. My user name is working_for_travel (note the underscores) and all of you guys with broadband should download it so that I can call you! Calls are free computer to computer. All you'll need is a speaker and a microphone. Email me your user name and I'll get my contact list up and running. Keep in mind that I'm 8 hours ahead of you guys on the east coast, so we'll have to arrange a time to chat... Hope to hear from you soon!

One of the appeals of my new place was the washing machine. I had been doing all of laundry by hand, and it really sucked. Last night I did my first load and I realized that just having a machine didn't mean that the labor was over.

True, this one does indeed "wash" the clothes, but even just hooking it up was a pain. There is a really short cord on the back, and there's no outlet in the bathroom. It needed to stay in the bathroom because there is no water hookup. Not only does this mean that I had to fill it up my self (more on that later), but when the wash water is drained, it just dumps it on the floor. That isn't a problem since my bathroom, like most of them here, is one big shower stall. I don't have a drain in the center, it's off to the side, but the idea is the same. It's actually kind of nice, I end up washing the floor every time I take a shower. I just squeegee after the shower and voila! Clean floor...

Anyway, I figured that I could just use an extension cable to hook the washing machine up to the outlet that is right outside the door for the hot water heater. Right, so first I rigged up some strings to support the extension cord, and ran the plug to the outlet. Surprise! It uses a plug arrangement that not only have I never seen here before, it is totally incompatible with all of my adaptors. It actually looks a lot like the 220 plugs back home, but all of the plugs here are 220, I have no idea why they would use a different one... Anyway, I stretched an extension from the kitchen and connected the extension cable from the bathroom to it. All that was left was to plug the washing machine in, ARGHHH! It uses another plug I haven't seen, all of the prongs are slanted. Luckily, one of my many adaptors did the trick. I have now seen 5 different plugs/receptacles here; make sure you bring plenty of plug adaptors with you if you come over here for any amount of time...

So I now had power, I put the clothes in and the soap and started to fill it with water. Let me tell you, it takes a considerable number of bucketfuls to fill that tank... At long last I could start the machine, there was only one problem, all of the controls were in Chinese... I figured it out eventually. After the washing is complete, you switch the middle dial to the right and all of the wash water drains out. Then I had to fill it up again so that it could be rinsed. That went on for a while, then I drained it again. Then you take the clothes out of the wash bin and put them into the spinner to get rid of most of the water. The trick is that the spinner has about a third of the volume of the wash tub, so it took several iterations to get it all done. The clothes were fairly dry when they came out, but they have to be hung up for the final drying.

The total amount of labor is still about the same as hand washing, but it is far easier on my back. The clothes do get cleaner too, hand washing would get rid of the major clumps, but my goal with the hand washing was to not smell... There's still a lot of time involved, especially with the spin cycle. At least with the washing and rinsing I can go do something else, but I have to keep my weight on the machine during the spin to keep it from vibrating and jumping everywhere... It really makes you appreciate the all in one washing machines, you know the ones where you put in the clothes and soap and walk away. Oh well, I guess it is progress....

The scan isn't very good, but you get the general idea... There are a few pieces of garbage in the neg from the processing, but that's nothing a little photoshop can't take care of when it comes time for printing.... And for the record, the materials you use DO matter... If all goes well, there will be a few more shots up on my account, click on "my photos on the right to see them or go directly to my Flicker account...

Things went pretty well. My first two rolls were basically me getting used to the camera. It has a shutter interlock system that gave me some overlapped frames. It turns out I have to cock the shutter and then advance the film. I also kept forgetting to close the frame number window on the back. The result was more than a few pictures with some red streaks on them. Oh, and the framelines are, to quote a popular pirate movie, "They be more like guidelines..." The framing is significantly off. Guess I'll have to just shoot loose and crop later. I'll get used to it eventually... The good news is that the exposures were good and the focusing was mostly good. Shooting a medium format camera wide open requires some careful focusing... There was the expected issues with the lab. A very typical thing to have happen is to get grunge on the larger film. 35mm is thinner and so many labs just keep the center of the rollers clean, but when you run 120 film through there and use the entire roller, you get to see all of the upkeep issues at the lab on your negatives. The guy promises me that he'll have it clean next time. I'll give him another shot, they were quick, and more importantly, they are nearby. There is another place I can go to, but it's a bit of a drive to get there. I'll do it if I have to, but here's hoping this place can get it's act together...

... but I'm distracted. I've been watching some sci-fi shows and I'm amazed at their views of the future. The original 1960's Dr. Who (William Hartnell) provides some laughs. They go to futuristic places with technology way beyond what the present day earth has and yet they still have telephones attached to cords and computers that take up an entire wall. That stuff is forgivable, I mean, c'mon, they made that in 1965. Far more interesting to me is the Max Headroom series. No, not his interview show, the drama that centered around a courageous reporter, always searching for the truth... That show was based on technology, there were computers galore and the namesake of the show was an entity that was totally digital and was an AI. They came so close... The beginning of every show said that it was set "20 minutes into the future." The show was deliberately retro in some aspects, old, manual typewriter keyboards are seen everywhere along with cars from the 60's and odd architecture. There's no question of when the show was made (1986/86), just look at the hair and the outfits! They got the wireless communications right, and they got the people sitting around screens right, and they got the idea of having lots of computers around and lots of data available. They even got the concept of of an entity living inside the computers, but they missed several important things. First, everything dealing with computers is strictly text based as far as input goes. There are no mouses, there isn't a GUI, it's all command line baby, just like the computers were back in 85. Most importantly, they never saw the internet coming. They got a lot of the concepts right, but they were focused on the wrong medium. They used TV and its satellites for all of the communication, data gathering, and even as the conduit for the AI Max Headroom. They used computers for many things, but they didn't see the interactive aspect of networked computers coming. To be fair, I doubt that any of us did, I was excited by my 9600 baud modem attached to my Commodore 128D (yeah, I'm old school) and I didn't use a GUI until I got out of college in 94.

It just goes to show that even if we get a lot of our guesses about future technology and its consequences right, we're going to miss a lot. Back in '85, no one saw the power of broadband and networked computers that would be in place as early as '91 (that's when I started surfing the net, on a Digital Vax machine running UNIX. It was all GOPHR and WAIS servers back then...) and would be common by '95. Right now we have people creating online worlds (Second Life anyone?), who knows what the next 10 years will bring us...

It sure is different here. Not only do the kids scream "SURA SURA" all the time (they want me to take their picture), but adults want me to take pictures of their kids and them. I explain that my camera doesn't have a screen on it, but they don't care, they just want me to take their picture. Back in the states you get a dirty look if you have a camera and are within 50 yards of a kid. It really refreshing to, you know, not be treated like a pervert when I'm out taking pictures. If you like taking picture of people, you'll love this place!

I'm out taking pictures again! I mean actual, real photography, with film and everything. I've started my first roll in my new camera, it's more or less a test roll. I have to see how the camera works, how well the lab develops the film, and most importantly, if I can remember how to use an all manual camera... Hmmm, shutter speed, fstop, depth of field, focusing... it's coming back to me, but slowly...

We had another discussion yesterday, the topic was whether or not women should be allowed to drive. No really, it was a little controversial. The class split up primarily along gender lines, all of the women were in favor of being able to drive while only one guy was in favor of them driving. The guys started the argument by saying that women would cause more accidents. Naturally, I scoffed at this, but later on Tami made the point that you have almost zero peripheral vision when wearing Niqab. There seems to be an easy solution to that, but that wasn't discussed... Later the guys asked the women what they would do if the car broke down. The clear assumption is that they could not ask a man for help and any other woman would be useless. I was tempted to ask if maybe the problem wasn't with women driving but with learned helplessness and strict gender segregation, but I decided not to go down that path.

Eventually, the argument went into the area of what women could and couldn't do. Luckily, there weren't too many of the guys that stuck to the idea that men are always better at all things. Most of them even admitted that they would allow their wives to work if they were going to make significant money. But still, it was another amazing day. The trouble is that none of the students really understood how weird the topic was. In my youth, I remembered seeing films from the 30's and 40's with old men saying that women can't drive, that's about as close as I've ever come to this topic before, I plan on discussing it more in my class...

We talked about dowries some more yesterday and one of the women brought up an interesting point. She was in favor of dowries being as high as possible as a hedge against divorce. The idea is that if a guy hates his wife, he'll think twice about divorcing her if he had to pay a really large amount. There really isn't any stigma attached to a guy that is divorced, but divorced women live a shamed life. It's unusual for a divorced women to be considered good marriage material, but it does happen... Anyway, a high dowry is one way for women to protect themselves here...

The new principle wants me to come to her with a list of topics that I plan on using for my conversational English class. I'm having trouble coming up with the 20 topics that she asked for. It's harder than you might think... There are some obvious topics that can't be brought up due to the culture here, there are a whole slew of topics that are just too controversial here (women's rights/roles, Palestine/Israel, etc.), but the category that is giving me real trouble is the one encompassing all of the things that are outside of their knowledge due to a lack of education and insular culture. Talking about what kind of foods they like would be a short conversation, as would where they have travelled, pets, romantic relationships, etc.

Tami ran into a similar problem with her class. One day she asked them to bring in some pictures for the class to talk about, they all brought ID or passport pictures... She was expecting vacation pictures, pictures of relatives, anything really, but she got ID pictures instead...

So I'm struggling a little. I'm sure that once we start talking, the conversations will naturally flow, but in the meantime I need some topics to hand into the principle...

Tami and her teacher were having a conversation about the American election process. Her teacher finally asked her if she was nervous about what would happen after the election. "Well, no, it'll be a relief getting W. out of there..."
"But what if he doesn't want to give up power?"

Wow, just... wow. Not much shows the differences in our cultures better than that statement. While I guess in theory if the president has the backing of the military, he could ignore the elections and rule via martial law, I can't think of any American that thinks that that scenario is even remotely likely. Her teacher was expecting, at the very least, riots and demonstrations. I think we had some demonstrations in the last two very close races, I can't remember any actual riots. Plus, the candidates were not the ones behind those things, or even their parties. Political stability, respect for the rule of law, and a transparent election system may be the most important things that separate the US from Yemen. The respecting the rule of law bit is sorely missed here, many of the problems here would be at least minimized if not eliminated if the government would just follow the rules...

Anyway, in this light, I expect the election to be pretty dull, but at least it's going to be a good race:-)

There have been some complaints that the gas price is rising here in Yemen. The "official" price for 20 liters of gas is 1200 YR, that's about $1.14 a gallon. Recently, there have been complaints that places are refusing to do 20 liters for that price, they "demand" 1800 YR instead. That's a 50% increase, and that's got to mean something. The government owned stations are still pumping at the official price, but if other stations can get away with charging 50% more, then I predict that the government stations will have long lines if not actual shortages. There's no stopping prices, if price is rising, either supply is dropping or demand is increasing. In either case, there is less gas than there is demanded... The last time the government tried to raise prices there were riots. The same thing happened in Iran when they tried to raise the price of gasoline. As the price for gas keeps going up, governments (and especially ones like Iran and Yemen) can afford subsidies less and less. That's one of the big problems with subsidies, people quickly become accustomed to the low prices and it doesn't take too long before they feel entitled to them. When are governments going to learn?

If I hear that Yemen is the "Ancestral home of Osama Bin Laden" one more time I am going to puke. This is one of the two phrases that always accompanies any mention of Yemen in the US press. The other phrase is "Site of the bombing of the USS Cole." The Cole happened in 2000 and OSAMA WAS BORN IN SAUDI ARABIA!!! Sure, his father was born in Yemen, but so what? How come you never see, "Saudi Arabia, birthplace of Osama Bin Laden," or even better yet, "Saudi Arabia, birthplace of more terrorists than you can shake a stick at..." Yeah, it's fricking Saudi, not Yemen, Iran, Syria, Libya, or even Palestine, it's Saudi fricking Arabia. Quit picking on Yemen, this place has enough problems, no need to saddle it with the responsibility of Osama too...

I sat in on another class today and they were discussing whether or not high dowries were a problem in Yemen. They all agreed that they could be, but they disagreed about what a good dowry was. The debate went back and forth, finally they asked me what I thought. I had no idea of course. There were a little surprised that there isn't a dowry in the US (I didn't have the heart to tell them that most of the world had given that up a long time ago...). I also tried to explain how horrified parents would be if a man offered to "buy" their daughter. The students didn't relate at all of course. I did concede that the man usually has to buy a ring, usually with a diamond. That mollified them a little, but they were still a little confused. In hindsight, I should have emphasized how the parents really don't have a say in the marriage in the US. Just one more cultural bump to deal with, I think my conversation class will emphasize the differences between what is acceptable to talk about in Yemen vs. the US. Wondering how much a man should pay for his bride in the US will get him, at the very least, condescending stares....

OK, I think I've got the apartment stuff taken care of. I've unpacked, thrown out the old junk, and mostly rearranged what need to be. I'm settling in nicely, it's great to have my own place. When I left the other place, there was a family downstairs, and Karl and an American that Karl and I referred to as "the ghost." He got that moniker because he made himself scarce all the time. He wasn't interested in being social with anyone, and went out of his way to avoid us. The only way we knew he was there was by his incessant swearing in the kitchen. He really made a ruckus in the mornings. As far as I could tell, it was always about something silly, like dropping something. He really swore up a blue streak though. I asked Karl about him and Karl said that he had had enough, he moved out. He said the last straw was when he heard the ghost swearing one morning and he worked the phrase, "They'll kill us all..." into it. When Karl asked him if everything was alright, the ghost responded that he didn't want to talk about it and then slammed the door to his room. Why are all the weird ones American?

For some reason, the jet lag really hit me hard this time. It took several days before I didn't feel totally out of it and/or want to go to sleep at 5pm. I'm also really feeling all of the laying around I did back home. I walked to the store and back and I literally was having trouble standing up, my knees were buckling. My legs are getting better, but I'm still not 100%. Well, there's only one way to fix that problem...

The other business that had to be taken care of was the schedules for class and for work. My teacher is busy until the 30th, so I won't have any classes until then. I want to stay with Mahmoud because he's really making me work on my spoken Arabic. I'm forced to come up with some way of expressing myself and that keeps me on my toes. There's a new manager where I work, so I had to go over all of the stuff that I thought that i had taken care of before I left. The good news is that they are really excited to have me there and are scrambling to get me into some classes. They're going to form a conversational class for me, and I'll take over a mid-high level class as well. It looks like things will be pretty much normal come Feb. 1. Whew! It's been some work, but I'm feeling good about everything now...

I got back to the new apartment without any trouble. I've mostly unpacked, but the place is a total mess right now. I was pleasantly surprised to find the apartment very clean and tidy when I got there, I have since spread my crap everywhere... The previous tenants left a bunch of stuff behind, some of it useful, and lots of it that wasn't. There was a whole trunk of clothes left behind, all of which was too small for me. I put it out in a heap outside the gate, it took all of 10 minutes for it to be taken away. I'm sure that whoever took it will enjoy that stuff. The shower gets high marks from me, plenty of pressure. I also slept well, I don't have a bed, but I do have a real mattress. The last place had a bed, but the mattress was so thin that I was effectively sleeping on plywood. My new place is, on the whole, quieter as well. I don't have the traffic, kids playing right outside my window, or the trash truck to make lots of noise. That's not to say that it's perfectly quiet, this is Sana'a of course... The call to prayer is incredibly loud, there's no sleeping through that one. I don't know if the mosque is really close or if they're just really loud, but wow... My neighbor has a rooster, I've been told that I'll get used to that, but I'm not so sure.

Anyway, I'm happy to be in my place, I should have it organized soon.

The flight was fine, but there's a big difference between a 13 hour flight right after 8 hours of sleep and a 13 hour flight after you've been up for 12 hours... It wasn't crowded at all, I had my three seats all to myself. I'm still too big to sleep on there though, even with the armrests up, I couldn't find a position that didn't have nerve pinching results. So I was dead on my feet when I got here, but the sleep did me good. I'm hoping that staying up for 24+ hours and then the regular sleep cycle of going to bed at 10 and getting up at 6 will keep my jet lag adjustment down to a couple of days. The flight to Sana'a is in a coupe of hours, I hope to be back online in a couple of days.

Well, tonight I catch my flight back to Yemen. It'll be a long flight (14 hours) and I doubt i'll be in any sort of shape to go swimming at the pool in Doha. Still, I got a couple of books for Christmas, and they have plenty of music and movies for me to watch, so I think it'll be fine. My trip back this time was, if anything, a little more disorientating than last time. Everything reminds me of how rich we are, things here look almost perfect compared to Yemen. Now that I've been there for so long, that is what is normal to me. In truth of fact, a lot of the world is closer to being like Yemen than it is to being like the US. I'll post more once I'm back and I feel like my head has cleared a little. Thanks to everyone that I got to visit, come on over to Yemen, it's a worthwhile trip to make!

I had a good time last, went over to Olga's place and we chatted for hours. I met her in Yemen last year, so we had plenty of things to talk about. It ended up being largely a major bitch session...

"...can you believe that they're like that?"
"..it was the most disgusting thing I ever saw."
"... I mean God, how stupid can someone be?"
"... those poor women."
"... the government is so screwed up..."
"... the men are clueless..."

and on and on until finally,

"(SIGH) I miss that place."
quickly, "Me too!"


A tried and true maxim is that if you want to know what people really think, look at what they do and not what they say. In economics, it is called revealed preference, and it's a powerful thing. Olga and I had plenty to complain about, but I'm going back for another year and she would love to go back for an extended time. Obviously Yemen is doing something right...

A recent report says that ice in the antarctic is melting at an increasing rate. This leads to many worries about water levels rising since there is a significant amount of water stored down there. As expected, this news is being used to "prove" how global warming is ruining the planet. There's only one problem, there isn't an appreciable rise in temperatures down there.

This article in today's Washington post is what alerted me to this. They mention that the temperature has not changed and they think that ocean currents are to blame for the melting of the ice. Shortly after that, the "scientist" says that they believe that CO2 forcing is what caused it. Umm, that's not science, that's conjecture. Hell, it isn't even conjecture, it's a statement of faith. There isn't any evidence of warming in Antarctica, there isn't any evidence of warming in the oceans in the southern hemisphere, but melting ice HAS to be caused by CO2 forcings on the "global" temperature...

Don't get me wrong, rapidly melting antarctic ice is a big problem, I just wish that there was some science involved in determining the cause and any potential corrective actions that need to be taken. a similar situation in the arctic made people gnash their teeth about the plight of the polar bears and how warm things were. It turns out that the temperature had not changed significantly (so by definition, there was no warming) and with a little more analysis from NASA it was determined that changing sea currents are what caused the loss of arctic sea ice. It was also thouight that this trend would turn around soon. Before we jump to conclusions, we need to have some science done...

I've been doing a little reading about Islam while I've been here. It's been a little frustrating trying to learn about it in Yemen, nobody I talk to seems to have any more than a superficial understanding of their religion. Worse, they have zero experience with other religions, that makes it particularly difficult to converse or to find common ground.

I was reduced to picking up a copy of "Islam for Dummies," Don't laugh, it's a decent enough introduction. I've also bought some books on Sufis and another on the various sects and divisions. I've learned a few interesting things...

Muslims see Jesus as a very important prophet, but not divine. This I knew and I though was one of the basic differences between Muslims and Christians. Muslims do believe in Jesus' virgin birth, that caught me by surprise. They hold Mary in very high regard (she is supposedly one of the three "purest" women of history), that too surprised me a bit. Here's the thing, with just a few questions about the virgin birth, things get pretty murky pretty fast.

If you accept the idea of Jesus' virgin birth, it leads to some tricky issues regarding His paternity. If Mary was a virgin, then who impregnated her? She couldn't do it herself obviously, it must have been God. It doesn't seem like too much of a stretch to then consider God as the father of Jesus, or to put it another way, that Jesus was the son of God. I'm not quite sure how muslims wriggle out of this, it would seem to me that you either believe that Mary was not a virgin or you believe that Jesus was the son of God. What other choices are there?

I was also struck by the seeming silliness of the basic Sunni/Shia divide. The Shia believe that only members of the prophet's family should be Caliph, specifically, only descendants of the prophet's nephew Ali should be Caliph. OK, fair enough, but there are two problems with this. First, Ali's decedents died out 10 generations after Ali. Many Shia get around this by claiming the existence of a "hidden" imam. The story with 12ver shia that the 11th "correct" caliph had a son disappear when he was 4 years old. That son is still alive and will return at the end times. Seems to be a bit of a stretch and a bit of a cop out made just to keep the shia way of doing things relevant. I dunno, it sounds weird to me.

The bigger problem with the Shia/Sunni split is that there hasn't been a caliphate since 1924, and even then it wasn't regarded by many muslims as being a true caliphate. Since then, the muslim world has gone very far away from a unified view of things and the chances of a new caliphate coming along to unify things is zero. So why still fight over whether or not Ali and his decedents were the right caliph all those years ago? It's puzzling to me, and I need to do some more reading to try to understand why this is still considered important long after the disputed title has faded into history.

I plan on getting most of the way through my sects book on the flight to Doha, I hope to have a better idea of things and be able to do some more intelligent research this time around in Yemen.

The republican candidates are campaigning in Michigan for tomorrow's primary. I don't know why I'm still surprised, but I am. Every year, politicians promise that they'll do things to improve the economy, to improve people's standards of living. Just once, and especially in Michigan, I'd like someone to say that they aren't going to do a damn thing for a particular state. It should not be the federal government's job (and therefore everyone's money) to help a place that has consistently shot itself in the foot. It's one thing if every state is in bad shape. I could at least understand the argument that the feds should do something about it, but one state? C'mon...

If Michigan's wants to improve, it will have to do it on its own. If the people think that the state is underperforming, they should take a look at some of the states that are doing well and then model their approach on the successes of those states. Instead, they engage in wishful thinking. It's time that things changed in Michigan, and it's time for the people of Michigan to do something instead of blaming other people (the Chinese, the Indians, etc.) and expecting other people to solve their problems.

Michigan, heal thyself!

I'm up at my aunt's place for a couple more days, then I'll head back down to VA for the final flurry of seeing people before I leave. It's going to be a little harried, but it'll be good. I'm really enjoying my trip up here in Connecticut, I love visiting these guys. This will be the last time that I'll be able to visit my aunt and cousin at the same time, Beth is getting married in July and will move out to the western part of New York. I saw some pictures of her in her wedding dress and almost shed a tear, she's so lovely. I now have an idea of how fathers feel when their daughter gets married...

I haven't done a damn bit of Arabic this entire trip. I knew that was going to happen, I briefly thought about not bringing my books this time, but I figured that carrying them around would be my penance for not using them. I think that I've made the mistake of equalling the language with the situation in Yemen. It's just depressing over there. When I tried to get a list of acceptable songs together for my students, I listened to several Beatles songs. I distinctly remember thinking that one particular song had been recorded in 1967, think about how much the US, Europe, and our culture has changed in that time. Now think about what Yemen must have been like in 1967. There weren't many places that had electricity, there weren't any paved roads between cities, and they were essentially living like their ancestors lived 500 years ago. Many places in Yemen haven't changed much since 1967, and it's depressing. How can a place stand still (or go backwards) for so long? Sure, there are a lot of symptoms that we can point to, but the causes are buried and difficult to find. I have to find some way of divorcing those thoughts from the language itself, maybe then I will attack my studies like I used to...