Busy days... and yet if someone asks what I do all day, I'm stumped. But people keep reassuring me that's quite normal here.

I do have my first official language lesson on Sunday morning-- that's certainly something for which to be very thankful. The proposed trip to the zoo last Wednesday morning was unfortunately never realised, due to inclement weather. Rain. Lots of it. Monsoon-style, almost.

I've met a German couple at the international fellowship I attend here, and there's been much mutual pleasure in my attempts to speak German. "Attempts" is definitely the correct word for it. I can understand most of what they say, but anything I try to say starts out in Arabic, fades into German (with a great deal of effort) around the middle of the sentence, and then slips back into Arabic by the end. Fortunately they've studied some Arabic too, so they at least can still understand me, despite my garbled speech patterns. But I've also found that if I do anything much in German, whether it's speaking to this couple or reading at home, then German creeps into my Arabic a bit... and very few people here know any German. In fact, I haven't yet met anyone who does. It really confuses people. I've been known to utter sentences such as, "Mumkin, ich 'aiza die shanta sehen"-- which exactly alternates between the two languages, word by word. And is, around here, simply incomprehensible, though to me (and I suppose also to the German couple) means, "Please, I'd like to look at that bag."
At least someone understands.

A few whirlwind days later, I'm back, safely ensconced in my own quiet apartment, enjoying the company of an inquisitive white cat who, like my own dear Emily, finds my activities in front of the computer of perpetual interest. Fortunately this one (who answers to "Kitty") has not yet become actively jealous of my close relationship with my laptop, though clearly she too thinks it a shame that such an object should so monopolize a perfectly comfortable lap. She's only with me for a couple weeks while her owner travels out of the country. Hopefully the competition between cat and computer will not grow too fierce in so short a time.

My trip to the capital was mostly good-- at least the majority of my time there was spent pleasantly. The meeting I attended was nightmarish, but I've come to expect little else. Despite my impression of busy-ness during those two days, looking back on them I feel as though I'd wasted a good deal of time. I saw very few people I needed to visit and accomplished none of the errands I had planned. Probably I'll have to go again soon.

The stupendously-stupid-Sarah moment of late: last night I stuck a marshmellow on a fork and roasted it over a gas flame. Nothing unusual about that. I did that during college. This time, however, I had more than the usual trouble removing the hot toasted marshmellow from the fork, and in my struggles I inadvertantly clamped my mouth down around the fork itself. Was the metal still hot? Let's just say this: from the blister patterns on my upper and lower lips one could quite easily deduce that the roasting utensil in question was four-tined.

The cat has decided to compromise rather than fight-- at the moment she has curled herself up in the narrow space left open in front of the computer. And has quite promptly gone to sleep with the front half of her body draped over my left forearm. I expect that hand will soon go to sleep.

Tragedy of the day:
This morning I sliced strawberries and a banana, pulled out the box of really great granola cereal, opened the refrigerator, and found... NO YOGURT. Milk was not a worthy substitute. Rather disgusting, actually. No longer the breakfast of champions.

And now... the rest of the story.

This morning I made the trek back downtown to make my second attempt at picking up the package my mother had sent me. Now familiar with the building, I walked straight upstairs and underneath the rattling conveyor belts to the back corner cage-- which, I have now learned, is where they send the international packages that come with insurance. My friends were, of course, ecstatic to see me, and we spent a few minutes in pleasant chit-chat before getting down to the business at hand. Forms were filled out in quadruplicate, notes were made, my passport was examined again, and finally a whole sheaf of papers, supposedly all relating to my (by now surely infamous) package, was sent upstairs to some unknown dark cranny of an office. The ladies made tea and we settled in for what promised to be a not-insignificant amount of time. Conversation moved from the weather to how much I like this city to their children-- at this point I found out that the older daughter of one of the women is named Sarah, which explains at least part of the instant liking they took to me. Names are very important here. About half an hour later, the go-fer man returned with a few sheets of official-looking and heavily-scribbled-upon forms. A few minutes scrutiny of these forms revealed that the total tariff due on my package had been reduced to a fifth of the originally quoted price. An absolutely unlooked-for blessing. This is completely unheard of. People will be talking about this for years. I'm happy, my friends are happy (it's due entirely to their efforts that this drastic cut in duties has been obtained), a couple other people wander into the cage and they're happy too. We all laugh and talk for a few more minutes, and then I am allowed to help as the day's newly arrived packages are opened and inspected and tagged and reported upon. Nothing of very great interest, except for the disgusting tar-like substance they use to reseal the opened boxes. On Tuesday I had almost tripped over a bucket full of the stuff. It looks at least slightly toxic and quite possibly lethal. I'm still cleaning it out from underneath my fingernails.

But back to the warehouse---- At this point we are still waiting for the final mysterious paperwork to descend from the exalted heights of the upper-floor offices. To pass the time, one of the women helps me read through a couple of the forms lying scattered around her desk. I'm extremely pleased with the number of words I recognize, small though it is. This is definitely a vocabulary situation I have not yet encountered in lessons.

Finally the required forms arrive, and I'm handed the slip of paper I must take to the cashier in the next building over. The insured-packages-cage go-fer will carry my package for me. Goodbyes ensue, and about five minutes later we've all ma'salaamed each other for the last time. At last I negotiate my way through the lines and the windows and pay my money. The package is mine. I have socks now. A new sweater. A wonderfully warm afghan. And, of course, two very important tubes of cork grease.

Last night's (Monday's) town hall meeting, sponsored by the American embassy, was disappointingly bland. No explosions or gas masks, no hysterics, none of the raw emotion I was so hoping to be able to observe.

I was sitting at home afterwards, pinching myself to stay awake until a reasonable hour rolled around at which I could finally go to bed, when my boab knocked at my door with a package notice in his hand. The long-awaited afghan-containing package from my mother. Ensuing discussion established that the place where I needed to go to pick up this package was very far away, near the main train station downtown, and that it must be a very large package and consequently would probably be expensive. (Duties are charged on all things shipped into the country.) My boab was terribly sorry, he wouldn't be able to go with me in the morning, but his sister's husband would come by at about 9:00 (which by the end of the conversation had moved to 10:00) before he was going to pick up something from the same place. If I liked, I could go with him and he would help me.

I woke up this morning and immediately wanted nothing more than to roll over and spend the rest of the day in bed, but the thought of my package forced me up and into clothing. By 10:30 I had decided to seize fortune and go by myself-- mostly so that I could get back to bed as quickly as possible. My boab gave me detailed instructions on what to tell the taxi driver and where to go in the building itself, and before I could leave he made me repeat all of it back to him three or four times. Surprisingly, the trip downtown was extremely uneventful, and I was soon standing in front of a dingy old multi-stored building that I might have at first glance have assumed was abandoned, if it weren't for the multitudes of people milling back and forth and in and out of the lobby of the place. Still following the directions of my boab, I went up two flights of stairs to the "first floor" and entered a vast warehouse of a room, crisscrossed by clanking conveyor belts and chutes that dropped down into huge cages filled with clerks and packages. A woman looked at my package notice and escorted me to the far back corner of the cavern, where after exchanging the usual pleasantries with the smiling woman behind the table I managed to get down to the business of obtaining my package... a business that lasted an hour and a half... thus far. I still don't have my package. Negotiations required multiple trips to another floor and several other offices, frequent and perplexed consultations of a few post and customs manuals, and many expressive hand gestures. Apparently no one around spoke English, and the situation at hand was admittedly a bit of a stretch for my Arabic. Which is, of course, the fun of going alone.

Eventually we were able to agree on a few things: yes, I would accept (and pay for) the package in question, despite the rather pricey tariffs placed on the socks, but no, I could not obtain said package today because they were still not sure if the medicine was legal. Medicine? I didn't remember my mother saying anything about sending me any medication. And she didn't declare it on the customs form attached to the package, a form I had now had ample opportunity to peruse. Maybe, suggests one man, it's vitamins. This, I think, sounds at least somewhat plausible. She's worried about my calcium intake again. So I agree, yes, maybe they're vitamins, and this prompts a discussion of how worried my mother is about me, since I live so far away from her. She doesn't think I eat right at all. Maybe they're vitamins. Finally we decide that I can come back on Sunday and maybe then my package will be cleared for pick-up. Back downstairs to the warehouse, where the two women who were originally helping me there welcome me back like a long-lost cousin and decide that I can see the contents of my package, even though I can't take it home with me. They like me; they know I'm curious. So we open the box and pull out socks, a sweater, an afghan, and... two tubes of cork grease, which I have been desperately needing for the thirsty joint corks of my clarinet. Ah, I think. The medicine. The mystery of the medication may now be apparent to me, but unfortunately explaining the solution to my new friends is a little more taxing. Very few people here have heard of a clarinet (and even those who have require visual aids for identification and recognition), but I manage to get some of the idea across-- I play a musical instrument similar to the flute (true, but ouch-- that hurt) and these inexplicable white plastic tubes are for that. Ah. Despite my poor explanation, I can see a spark of understanding. By this point everyone is utterly charmed by me, so the two women say that they will resubmit the paperwork on my package and will explain that these are my clothes, for me only, and that I am a poor student here. insha-allah this will reduce the amount of money required to free my package. Back upstairs, where we (I with the help of one of my friends from the warehouse cage) explain to the director that this is not medicine, it's for my musical instrument.... Ah. Well, in that case, the director will speak to her director tomorrow, and then I can come back the day after that and retrieve my things-- insha-allah, of course. Closing pleasantries, and at last I am outside and hailing a taxi to go home. To bed.

Note of interest: impatient and persistent ringing of my doorbell while I was in bed this afternoon finally prompted me to struggle out of bed and to the door, where I found that the impatient door-ringer had exited, leaving a package leaning up against my door. A package mailed from the States. Delivered to my door, still sealed, with apparently no tariffs assigned to it. Containing a book and a CD (and CDs are not very common here) from my friends J.r and Heidi. The difference? I haven't a clue. Logic of any Western type at all hasn't applied to my life in months. Maybe the post office liked Heidi's handwriting more than my mother's. Who knows.

Not much happening these days. I mostly keep my nose buried in books, mostly of the literary or linguistic variety. Still waiting to be able to start language lessons again. Waiting, for a plethora of diverse events, seems to be a major part of my life right now. The state of the world today, both on a local and a global level, is a great breeding ground for patience. Or impatience, depending on how positively I'm reacting at any given moment.

I should be thankful. It's a refining process.

Tomorrow night there is a so-called "town hall" meeting here-- entrance requires an American passport. I'm really curious to hear the reactions of others to recent events. And to know what possibilites they're considering for the near future. Deadlines of all sorts are approaching, and I seriously doubt that in the end the way things pan out will be as anti-climatic as Y2K. Too many forces are already in motion.
All this will make a great story some day.

Living here I have to wonder: is the only reason I have been assumed to be American for the greater part of my life that I have lived that greater part in Oklahoma, where clearly, unless given much immediately obvious evidence to the contrary, the most legitimate assumption is that nearly everyone is, in fact, American? (Feel free to write and comment/complain on the length of that sentence. I'll gladly refer you to Faulkner.) Because here, if I never admitted I was from the U.S., evidently no one would ever guess. I am most of the time German, very occasionally British (that usually only if the person inquiring has heard me speaking English), but almost never American. It's probably been almost three months since the last time someone guessed I was American. Certainly there is a noticeable population of Americans here, so it's not that meeting one would be anything of a rarity. One theory is that these days everyone here is hoping that you're not from the U.S. People here, in general, like foreigners and wouldn't want to have anything immediate to hold against any of them. And as world tensions rise, this may become even more often the case. But that's not the excuse for me. I've been German since I stepped off the plane back in September. I'm pegged as a European even when I'm in the company of people who are immediately reconizable as Americans.
It's an interesting phenomenon to me.

For the past several days I've been in an odd funk, and though I had occasional moments of clarity and light, I was unable to dispell the mood for very long. This afternoon as I was walking to the tram stop suddenly the cloud lifted. All was better again. Impossible to predict or understand, but immediately I was once again contented at the thought of being here, invigorated by the challenges of cross-cultural living, and excited by the knowledge that every tram ride is a potential opportunity for meeting someone new.

This evening I went with one of my friends (American) to a cafe. She had brought a book to read, and I pulled out a notebook and started working on some Arabic verbs. Amy watched, fascinated, as I began listing the verbs and then writing sentences using them in different tenses. I was evidently quite a distraction from her book (though for those of you who know her, you also know that she doesn't need much external help to become distracted)-- she kept remarking on how impressed she was that I was voluntarily and independently studying Arabic. Finally I laughed at her and explained that in the past two days I have, in some way or another, used four different languages. Language study is, for me, nothing impressive or remarkable. It's simply what I do, given any chance at all. A function of my personality. An odd quirk I possess. Really, I thought that the unusual aspect of the situation was that Amy was reading a book.

Did you know that one might play a game with some other object than winning in mind? I had heard that such people might exist. But I couldn't really imagine it. Why play if not to win? I'm not talking about a cut-throat, devil-take-all, no-blood-no-foul mindset (I reserve that for Spades and Risk), but just in general-- isn't a desire to win a natural part of engaging in competition?

Apparently not for everyone. Apparently some people play games with only the goal of enjoying the company of other people. Nothing more. These are usually the sort of people who decide to be nice at some point and bend the rules so that someone doesn't feel bad.

????????????????

Such tactics (or lack thereof) catch me off guard, throw me off balance, cause me to loose my footing in what would otherwise be a fairly natural setting for me. Much more natural, at least, than mingling and standing around pretending to be interested in whatever superficial banalities people bring up in an attempt (usually unsuccessful) to provoke semi-stimulating discussion. Ah, a game. Something to wrest us all from small-talk-induced somnolence. So I would usually think. But when you throw into the mix a need to be nice to people, to spare their feelings at the cost of a true spirit of competition, then I'm left perplexed and uncertain of myself. My uneasiness shows itself as my behaviour erratically swings from quiet withdrawal to overly pushy comments and suggestions.

You can choose your friends, but you can't choose your co-workers, I guess. No doubt they find me just as difficult to understand as I do them. At least as difficult.

I realised sometime today that there had been a signficant lapse in my posting. It seems impossible to me that nearly a week has gone by already. How easily the days do pass. It's been an eventful week; I do have my reasons for the silence.

This morning I had a meeting with the director of the school I'll be attending, and, assuming that schedules work out favourably, I could be starting that by the end of this week. I've been determined to prevail in the quest for what I need in language study, and so at the school I'll be spending my time in a fairly even split between colloquial and classical Arabic. They're nearly two different languages (actually, I'm not always so sure that statement needs the qualifer "nearly"), so this will require noticeably more study and practice on my part. I found out today that I won't be able to start meeting with my conversation helper until almost the end of this month, so at least I'll have some time to settle into the new school curriculum.

Of course, there's always the chance that by that time I won't even be here anymore. Depending on how the high-and-mighty punjabs of the world decide to move their game tokens between now and then.

In other, more exciting news, I made a near-perfect pot of rice tonight.

I'm back from the retreat and can now look forward to at least a week of staying here in this city. Today we finally began to make measurable progress towards getting me into language study again. By this time next week things should really be rolling in the right direction. I'm glad-- I can tell that I've lost a significant amount of speaking ability over the past month, due to an unfortunate combination of no lessons and too much time with Americans.

But even more exciting than the progress on my language learning was the late-breaking news about music. I borrowed a guitar today, because I'm going to start practicing with another girl about once a week, and while picking up the guitar I was told that if I wanted I coud probably start taking some music lessons-- most likely classical guitar or 'ood (a tradition instrument closely related to the lute). If I wanted? And in addition to all this, I was told that someone will very soon be loaning me an accordion for as long as I will want it. Good news for me, though maybe not so much for my neighbors.

Everything's working so smoothly this morning-- perhaps I've finally worked out all the kinks. I'd hate to think that it was just a simple error in my archive template that was causing so many problems for so long.

I've five gazillion eggs to boil today so that I can devil them later. Must get started.

Last night for New Year's Eve I decided not to barge in on the family celebration to which I'd been invited (invited by a couple who was also going-- I had never met the family). After the excitment of my trip back to my old city and back (more on that another time) I wasn't at all sure I'd be able to stay awake until midnight, and I certainly wasn't sure I had the mental clarity left to be sociable with strangers. One of my friends was sick and hadn't been out of her apartment since last Thursday, and two of my friends moved here on the train with me yesterday (closely related to the aforementioned excitement), so we decided to have a quiet night of pizza, Chinese food, and a movie.

As I left my apartment building on my way to join my friends, my boab (doorman) stopped me and told me that I needed to make sure I came home early that night. You need to understand that there's a definite class system here, and trust me, it's far from normal for a boab to give one of his tenants an order like that, however polite his tone of voice. I thought I must have misunderstood him. (He doesn't speak any English.) So I asked him to say it again, and he started explaining to me that I must be home by 11:00, because it was very bad to be out on the streets after that time. I was flabbergasted. Apart from occasional harrassment from too-friendly men and the crazy style of driving here, this is probably the safest city I've ever lived in. I thought perhaps he was trying to protect my reputation (women aren't usually out late here), but I told him that it was the new year and I had to be at my friend's house until midnight so we could all welcome the new year together. He smiled then, and said that would be fine, as long as I didn't come home until 12:30 or after. By this time I was thoroughly dumbfuzzled, but I said goodbye to him and went on my way. Fortunately, a couple of my friends were able to clear up that mystery for me. (They've been here a lot longer than I have.) In this city, in addition to setting off the usual firecrackers at midnight, people welcome in the new year by throwing glass and plastic bags filled with water into the streets from their balconies. So yes, it's very bad to be on the streets from about 11:30 till whenever everything quiets down again... usually by 12:30. We, of course, had to join in the celebration. The girl at whose apartment we were didn't have any glasses or plates she was willing to toss into the street, but we filled nearly a dozen bags with water and slung them off her balcony, watching each of them explode with satisfying splats on the concrete far below. Glass and flaming fireworks rained down from the apartments above us, and we took care not to stick our heads too far out from underneath the shelter of our balcony ceiling.

By about half-past, the streets were quiet again, except for the clatter of the occasional rogue firecracker, and so I set out for my apartment. I thanked my boab for his warning and dragged my weary body up the stairs and into bed.