Aaron and Anne-Sophie

Today marks yet another Yemeni national holiday, Evacuation day, or the day when the last British soldier left Aden in 1967 (also the year when Israel began to occupy the West Bank and Gaza). So we have a day off. We’ve gotten pretty settled here in Yemen after 2 and half months, which basically means there are a lot less surprises. We’re used to the blackouts during class, all the covered woman, etc., and just the different rhythm of life here. At the same time we still have a lot to learn about life here and we’ll keep writing about it. However the activist side of me has pushed me to explore some other issues that we weren’t expecting to encounter here in Yemen. (more…)

Music in Yemen

This week as a teaching method we had the students listen to a song in English to help their listening skills. We were hoping to find a song that we liked and that would be easy to understand like the Beatles or U2. However the Yemeni taste in western music isn’t quite the same as ours, and we didn’t bring any music with us. Yemenis like Michael Jackson, Celine Dion, all boy bands, Shakira (who is half Lebanese), and perhaps some pop artists like Britney Spears, 50 Cents, and JLo. (more…)

The other Friday we went to chew qat with Maher, some of the other staff, and about a dozen of Maher’s over 150 cousins and second cousins. (see pictures in the around Sanaa album) We’ve been offered Qat several times and have on occasion agreed to chew a leaf or two just to be polite, but this was our first time doing a proper qat chewing session. (more…)

Classes have started up again, and our schedule is now pretty full with Arabic classes as well. Anne-Sophie will probably have to stop (at least temporarily) giving French lessons to the Mauritanian kids. There’s not much else to say at this point, though I hope to continue some more topical blogs about the culture and history here when we have the time. Friday we will be going to chew qat, so we’ll let you know about that experience. Just hope you all continue to send updates to us about yourselves when you have the time. Peace!

We made it back to Sanaa in one piece (to see Aden photos). After our experience on the bus we decided to take a shared taxi on the way back for a change. (more…)

We made it to Aden! (more…)

Travelling to Aden is proving to be more difficult than we thought. Travelling to and within Yemen is not the easiest thing. (more…)