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Hi all! I hope everyone is well.
Things here are moving right along. I'm still sort of finding my way on the work front, although I just had a conference call with my professors and I feel a bit clearer now about where I should be focusing for the time being. I went to work yesterday and just did some background reading for a few hours as the work day on Thursdays is only until noon. I had today off, but will be able to start more in earnest tomorrow. It looks like things will be moving rather quickly. They are saying that I should go out on my first field visit next week, as early as Monday, which is both daunting and exciting. I'll know more over the next couple of days.

In terms of finding my way through daily life there has been some progress on this front as well. Yesterday was a bit funny in the morning because Mervat, the woman at the Social Fund (work) who has been coordinating everything for me, told me I would need to contact a certain taxi company in the morning in order to call a taxi to take me to work. They have a deal with this company where they would be billed for driving their employees, and the company is known for being one of the more trustworthy companies; it's the only taxi company using meters. Anyway, calling for a taxi sounds straight-forward except that I have absolutely no idea how to explain where the hostel is that I'm staying. There are no street address at all or signs for the hostel, and even some streets are called different things by different people. On top of that the hostel is in a little alleyway off of a larger street and I don't know any of the landmarks to explain where on the larger street I could be waiting. Anyway, as I was on the phone with the taxi service trying to explain in broken Arabic where I was, one of the other girls staying in the hostel came in and told me there was a man waiting for me downstairs. It turns out Mervat ended up being able to get one of the drivers from the Social Fund to pick me up, but she didn't have any way of telling me since I don't have a cell phone yet (something which is really essential, I should be getting one tomorrow). Anyway, he had been waiting for me for like 15 minutes and I had no idea. Ahhhh... communication. It turns out that it is established that I will be picked up by one of the Social Fund drivers in the mornings, but will end up taking a taxi home. It will likely be the case that I will end up with a particular taxi driver whose cell phone number I will have, and I will be able to call him any time I need a taxi. That way he'll always know where I mean when I say "take me home" and I don't have to try and explain.

After work I met Heather--the woman running the hostel--again and she took me out into the city to do some errands. We walked down to a main square and went to get me some passport pictures taken (you need little passport pictures in order to get lots of things in Yemen, including a cell phone number, which is weird, but there you go). We were also going to get me some money changed, but all the exchange places we passed by were closed. She took me to her house in the old city and she had some cash lying around, so she exchanged some money for me, which was very nice. Then she took me around the old city. We went to a sulta place for lunch. Sulta is a uniquely Yemeni dish that is sort of like a stew with beans and ground beef. It's spicy and quite good. The coolest thing about it though is that it's served in a cast iron dish that is really hot and the sulta is bubbling vigorously when it gets to you. It's served with a little bowl of cold brothy soup on the side with lots of herbs in it. You buy your own bread out on the street and bring it in to the sulta place, the same with drinks, and then once it's cool enough to eat, you dig in! Yemeni women pretty much never eat at sulta places, so you do end up getting some interested stares being women in there, but everyone was very cordial, and as long as you come as a group of two or more it's fine because you can be occupied in conversation and not have to feel like too much of a spectacle. After sulta we went to a guy Heather knows who sells scarves.
His name is Mohamed and he was really nice. We sat in the shop and he gave us some tea and we chatted for a while. She had taken me there to ask him where the best place to buy a balto (robe) was that was close-by, so after visiting with him for a while we went and bought me a balto.

After that we walked back to the hostel, stopping for some groceries along the way. It started raining just as we got back.

It ended up thundering pretty hard, though it only really rained for about a half an hour.