Monsoon Season in the Desert

As our first month away from Denver wraps to a close, the rains have hit. We had a sunny week, and then it rained basically all weekend. All weekend. It was like God cursed the school children. And it was a cold rain -- last night, when we got home from meeting a friend for coffee, Daph and I both sat with our hands and feet on the heater. One of my toes appeared to have lost all circulation and was a rather putrid shade of green. Daph says it was just white, but I say it was green. And festering.

Things here, though, are going well (even my toe regained its natural color). Classes are intense, but exciting -- we're learning a lot of new material and getting to the point where we can begin to ask questions in class in Arabic, and have basic semi-conversations. We even wrote a short children's story about a monkey and his dog that you can see in the pictures. I'll have you note, our teacher asked who was the "Picasso." Of course, she thought that the images were all cubist renderings of variously posed dead fish. . . .
You win some, you lose some. . . .

We went out last night with our friend, Fallata, a Nigerian at school at Yarmouk, but who normally lives in Saudi Arabia. He brought a friend, Mohammed, who wants to work on his English (and help us with our Arabic). Fellata entertained us with tales of his failed matchmaking attempts and discussions of religion and renewable energy in the Middle East. He also told us where to get the best smoothies and introduced us to the best felafel place in town.

Fallata's father, by the way, had four wives and 23 children. Fallata can also distinguish between which individual tribe Nigerians are from by their facial features, and can do the same for regions in the Middle East. At the felafel place he had a friendly argument with the Egyptian felafel-makers about what country had the best soccer team in Africa. It was left unresolved.

At home we are settling in, and after a disaster-laden first attempt to make fu'ul (the local breakfast of choice, basically a dip made of fava beans), we asked one of our teachers, Adella, how to make it. Apparently, you see, we only needed about a quarter of the garlic, but to mash it better (in boiling water), with tahini and cumin. Now we wipe the bowl clean with chubs and then lick it to get the last bits of aroma. Yummy. Pictures are coming, let us know if you want the basic recipe.

Anyway, the phrase of the day: Jo bared. Cold weather!

Much love!