Day 4: House of Sun

Tuesday, June 25

Morning summary: bread breakfast, classes.

After class, my roommate and I went with a group of people to go buy phones. Unfortunately, the walk was sort of far. Now, a 15 minute walk may not seem that far, but when you're this close to the equator and it's 1:15pm, it really is.

Once we got to the phone store, there was only one person working there, and every person that needed a phone took forever. Then, when it was finally my turn, they were out of phones. So yeah. Made that walk for nothing.

Well, not nothing. I discovered where the McDonald's and Pizza Hut was, at least. I'm not sure how good Pizza Hut could be anywhere that's not America: Home of the Grease. But I'll try it eventually, if only just for the comparison.

After the phone hunt, we went to a restaurant next door called O'Fast Food. It was at least a thousand degrees in there, and, for some reason beyond the realm of sanity, everyone wanted to stay and eat. So stay we did, and eat they did, while I felt like I was baking alive the entire time. There was no refuge from the heat. They were making rotisserie style chicken in a large hot oven right inside of that tiny building. I felt like dying a little.

The heat seems to affect me more than other people. I remember from last summer, everyone wanted to have class outside, and they all thought the classrooms were cold. They were all bundled in their little sweaters, while I was all sweating, like, "Can't we get a blizzard up in here or something?" Then they also wanted to have class outside, as if it wasn't 101 degrees outside. And a swamp. And they celebrated like prisoners who had never seen the sun every time we did just that.  I felt like weeping like a sad, little child when that happened.

I did however get some pictures of the old city, and a park, and some sweet graffiti.

Some of the Old City.

The blue cars are Petite Taxis.

The Old City is on the left, beyond the wall.

الحرية = Freedom

A really cool park that we can't get into.

The taxi we took back home had a very nice and talkative driver. He asked us if we were learning Arabic, and he talked about the weather, and air conditioners, and the local architecture and how the older houses are much cooler than the newer ones. 

For dinner we had grilled turkey and soup. I'm not usually a fan of turkey, but this was really good. They know what they're doing here when they cook meats. They're pros. The meat is never dry. I also greatly enjoyed the soup. I can't really describe it. It doesn't taste like any soup I've before.

Then at night, I talked to Mom and Dad on Skype, which was really nice, while I was trying to work on some especially confusing homework. It's not that the work itself is really hard. It's the directions. I spend most of my time just trying to figure out what they want from me. GAH.