Sylvia's Journal

I slept late and found neither my ticket to the US organized nor the email with Boston working. We use a travel agent but they didn’t kick in until I had organized everything myself, arrangements made via Skype. I learned from the nice Delta lady that the only seat available on the 16 hour flight from Dubai to Atlanta is in the middle of the middle row. I had changed my route with the intent of an upgrade but instead find myself in the least attractive place in the entire plane.

To compensate for this I booked myself in a nice hotel that looks over the Creek in Deira, Dubai. I will hang out there from noon till early evening when it is check-in time for my night flight. I will need to finalize my presentation now that I recieved all the missing pieces by belated email. I plan to cross the creek for a nice lunch at the Lebanese restaurant before heading out to my middle seat.

I had my Dari lesson with a sneezing and coughing teacher who refused to sit next to me, fearing she would infect me. We started on the last lesson, 25, of the here famous Glassman book. After that I will start reading and writing. I am now learning the kind of very complicated sentences that allow me to express hopes or fears or inquire about possibilities that may or may not be realized, some requiring the subjunctive and some requiring the progressive past tense. These lessons require many hours of review and practice. I think my vocabulary is now approaching one thousand words.

A bunch of us got together to watch Proof (Anthony Hopkins, Gwyneth Paltrow) on a big screen after an eclectic meal prepared by the cook of guesthouse 0. It included tuna pizza (hmm), rice, roasted lamb, roasted potatoes and onions, an Afghan dish with eggplant and yogurt and a few other dishes I never even got to.

Our cook had contributed his excellent apple torte and I had made asparagus
soup from the peels and stocky ends of the spears we ate the other day while our cook was watching my every move. I tried to explain in my best Dari what a roux was and why one made one and how it made the thin soup thick. I actually don’t understand the physics and didn’t know the words for thick and thin so I doubt he got it.

Our little Dari/English cookbook has a cauliflower soup in it, made with potato as a thickener and so I pointed to that. I think Axel is going to have cauliflower soup soon, thick soup I imagine.

And now it is way past my bedtime as the driver will show up in about 6 hours and I am not quite ready. The broken email was fixed at the end of the workday here and then let in a long stream of emails that I have not attended to, except for the one with the new ticket that still sits me in the middle back in coach.