When all else fails, just say "beef sandwich"

this is a story repeated to me by Matt and the other male English teachers:

they were sitting at a table in a terrace area of Sharjah (called Al Qasba), and noticed the precarious position of a huge umbrella teetering overhead. of course they were worried about the possibility of being impaled (or flattened) by a falling (or flying) umbrella. so, for safety reasons, they asked an attendant custodian if it would be possible to to remove it. unfortunately, this particular fellow was skilled in neither Arabic (not that it mattered) nor English. so he just cobbled together the few words in English that he knew:

"Hello. Hotel. Beef sandwich."

and then he did nothing about it. a bit later, after i arrived, the umbrella swayed and finally toppled over, nearly squishing a couple of kids! if only we could have decoded what he meant by "beef sandwich." perhaps we could have avoided catastrophe.

Flipper Goes Arabic

i just loved this.

first impressions

well, first of all... it's HOT. like you're opening an oven door when you walk outside. your sunglasses instantly fog up. you almost faint. it's kind of unbelievable. it's like hanging out by a bonfire in the middle of the day on the hottest day of the year. this part of the world takes air conditioning seriously. it's pretty much necessary for survival.

the people here are insanely friendly. what a difference after the cold winter of new england attitudes! they have a great sense of humor, and oh the shenanigans. i'm going to shamelessly cut and paste something from an email i just sent to our folks:

The cab rides have been interesting. Apart from the crazy arab driving skills (or lack thereof?), the conversations have ranged from illuminating to hilarious. I've been surprised at how personal they can get. For example, everyone wants to know if we're married, and then they want to know for how long. Of course, this is followed by questions of how many "childrens" we have. When we tell them none, they're shocked. Then we explain that people from our country and Europe often wait a little longer to have children. A conversation with one guy went like this:
"I was married at sixteens year, and my wife was fourteens. When she turn 16, she catch baby. Now I am twenty-eight and one half year [we thought he was 40], and I catch four childrens. Soon, you catch babies too, my friend! I saw on the tv woman in USA who catch 7 babies one time. 7 babies one time!" At this, he proceeded to laugh heartily for about two minutes. The idea of septuplets really tickled him. So then he showed us photos of all his children on his mobile phone (need I mention that he was driving like a maniac, and simultaneously flipping through his mobile phone gallery?!).

anyway, we're having a great time. i'll try to keep this blog thingie up to date as much as possible.