Love at First Web Site
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Hi blog!
Right now I'm still in Hangzhou. I never know from day to day what my plans are. I speak to Mohamed every day. Usually he asks me to come back to the Middle East, but right now, I am not finding the barren lands of the region appealing!
The hostel I am staying in is a mini-Eden in itself, but for the humidity and the accompanying mosquitoes. The common areas are multilevel. Walk in, and to your left you have some dorms rooms. Some nights are spent sitting on the sofas outside them with some beer, some fellow travellers, and the stock standard hostel conversations you become accustomed to.
Walk further, and you have the outdoor area. There's a huge TV they used during the World Cup. Good memories in that area there, with August, my short-term flame/Chinese-Japanese beauty, and Sam, my beautiful new English friend from Leeds.
On the right is the bar area. There are a couple of air-con machines in there, so one must bag their spot and find respite from the air outside! Good memories in there too. Lion, from Chengdu, and his beautiful guitar playing. A bit of The Beatles, Oasis, Nirvana... Yet another friend I am sorely missing.
Further on the left is the bbq area where you can get cheap meat and vege kebab sticks. The corn cobs are always sweet, which is nice. And it beats eating in the bar restaurant!
Now upstairs is the best part!! Go up the stairs and to the left is the manager's art studio. It's full of his works, and he has a couch area with a traditional Chinese tea set. About a week ago he invited me to have lunch with him there, and I told him about my experiences in the travel industry. He has a really cool hostel, it's kind of niche, good places for artists and so forth. I told him not to let Lonely Planet sell the place out! (Literally and figuratively of course).
And then further up there's a deck with yet another chillout area and some tents for people on a shoe-string. I usually spend my nights here chilling out and chatting, sometimes surfing Wikipedia which I love because it's open source. But actually, sometimes if I really like an idea I see, I write to the academic and tell them! I got a reply the other day and it's pretty cool.
Ok gotta go, Christine's on her way to come and have a beer. She loves this place, and she thinks the 'epic' love story between Mohamed and I is 'awesome'!!!
Signing off
Liz ¶ 21:40 0 Comments
Right now I'm still in Hangzhou. I never know from day to day what my plans are. I speak to Mohamed every day. Usually he asks me to come back to the Middle East, but right now, I am not finding the barren lands of the region appealing!
The hostel I am staying in is a mini-Eden in itself, but for the humidity and the accompanying mosquitoes. The common areas are multilevel. Walk in, and to your left you have some dorms rooms. Some nights are spent sitting on the sofas outside them with some beer, some fellow travellers, and the stock standard hostel conversations you become accustomed to.
Walk further, and you have the outdoor area. There's a huge TV they used during the World Cup. Good memories in that area there, with August, my short-term flame/Chinese-Japanese beauty, and Sam, my beautiful new English friend from Leeds.
On the right is the bar area. There are a couple of air-con machines in there, so one must bag their spot and find respite from the air outside! Good memories in there too. Lion, from Chengdu, and his beautiful guitar playing. A bit of The Beatles, Oasis, Nirvana... Yet another friend I am sorely missing.
Further on the left is the bbq area where you can get cheap meat and vege kebab sticks. The corn cobs are always sweet, which is nice. And it beats eating in the bar restaurant!
Now upstairs is the best part!! Go up the stairs and to the left is the manager's art studio. It's full of his works, and he has a couch area with a traditional Chinese tea set. About a week ago he invited me to have lunch with him there, and I told him about my experiences in the travel industry. He has a really cool hostel, it's kind of niche, good places for artists and so forth. I told him not to let Lonely Planet sell the place out! (Literally and figuratively of course).
And then further up there's a deck with yet another chillout area and some tents for people on a shoe-string. I usually spend my nights here chilling out and chatting, sometimes surfing Wikipedia which I love because it's open source. But actually, sometimes if I really like an idea I see, I write to the academic and tell them! I got a reply the other day and it's pretty cool.
Ok gotta go, Christine's on her way to come and have a beer. She loves this place, and she thinks the 'epic' love story between Mohamed and I is 'awesome'!!!
Signing off
Liz ¶ 21:40 0 Comments
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Hey peeps
Don't think I've updated since touching down in Dubai. What an interesting, to say the least, journey that was on Gulf Air from London to Bahrain, then a quick break there to continue on to Dubai. Mo met me at the airport - I recognised his profile, he had his face turned to the right with his sunglasses on. I was clopping along in the shoes I had bought for temping in the UK - I predicted that I flip flops wouldn't cut it in the middle east especially on a western woman! I think he was wearing a polo shirt and jeans, and I couldn't believe I was in fact seeing Mohamed again, in the flesh, and in the middle east - his turf! We met, maybe a kiss on the cheek, and got a taxi to the Royal Falcon hotel. He had a nice room there - we sat and smoked while I digested where I was and who I was with. The flight was a tough one, and I spent days recovering from the same jet lag which didn't get better but seemed to get increasingly worse!
I eventually snapped out of it, and suddenly Mohamed and I were engaged, moving into a villa, and looking for jobs. I had a sudden and surging interest in God, theology, and because I had Mohamed with me, the core values of Islam. I asked him some tough questions... after a short hiatus in his teens, he again became a devout Muslim (devout def TBC) and spent hours of his life in the library reading. I was full of questions. Where in the Koran does it say that a woman on her period does not have to fast? The only thing we could find was that people who are sick or travelling do not need to fast. Well, that was an easy one. Of course many people still think that a woman on her period is somehow sick... after all, *men* don't bleed every month, do they? ;-)
I thought like I had never thought before. I went nuts on wikipedia, reading about Confucius and Buddha and Jesus, and Mohamed. I remember wondering about the divide between Christians and Muslims. I was terribly excited when Mohamed, my walking encyclopedia on all things monotheistic, told me that there was a Christian sect who argue that the Prophet Mohamed was foretold in earlier versions of the bible. (The St Barnabas church). Boy oh boy, what had come over me? Was I becoming a religious nut? Mohamed had picked up some dvds at a supermarket. The covers made them appear to be 'dummies' guides' to Islam, so I thought that would be pretty good. We started one of them, and it was the filming of a Pakistani man behind a microphone on a stage before a large audience of men. (Just men ;-) ) The 'conference' or whatever it was, began with sung verses of the Koran. Then he spoke, and he talked on, and on, and on. It was not the 'dummie's guide' I had been expecting. It was tremendously boring in fact :-| So that didn't do much to win me over. But Mohamed was so glad that I a) now believed in God and b) was interested in Islam. When we were together in Sydney, with me the complete aethiest, all he could do to get me wondering about the prospect of God was suggesting there was no explanation for the origins of the big bang. It was left at that, and then on that Gulf Air flight to Bahrain, suddenly it was real.
Mohamed and I got married in Jordan while staying with his brother and sister in Amman. His brother is a good guy who has a passion for German culture and following the German soccer team. His sister is a strange one; there are mysteries to her life that remain mysteries years later. The four of us made a trip to Petra, and there were a few family dramas that went on which kind of marred our night in the Intercontinental Aqaba on the Red Sea, the night before my birthday. It really was a strange night - the night in the hotel was my treat, with the last cash I had, and Mohamed and I ended up sleeping in the trundle bed while his brother and sister slept in the gorgeous queen size. It was no honeymoon:-P His sister had been married to a Saudi, and all through our walk through Petra and on the way back, I pondered what it had been like for her to be married to someone from one of the most blatantly and unashamedly mysogynist societies I had heard of. I felt horrible, horrible pity for her. My pity for her was so strong that I could almost feel what she had possibly been through :-(
Throught the rest of the stay in Dubai, Mohamed and I looked for work, hung out, argued, loved each other, played, had fun together. I taught him musical beats, we played hangman to improve his spelling, we listened to music, often the same songs every day, we even composed songs! Towards the end he got out his academic English textbook, and that's when I understood what a cultural divide *really* means. It really is amazing, the things we take for granted. I barely knew what a topic sentence and supporting sentence were, despite being able to use them without even knowing it!
Dubai was full of ups and downs. Here I am in China - and I'm loving it, really loving it for the first time ever. Well, more than I usually do, anyway!
Stay tuned?
xo ¶ 04:36 0 Comments
Don't think I've updated since touching down in Dubai. What an interesting, to say the least, journey that was on Gulf Air from London to Bahrain, then a quick break there to continue on to Dubai. Mo met me at the airport - I recognised his profile, he had his face turned to the right with his sunglasses on. I was clopping along in the shoes I had bought for temping in the UK - I predicted that I flip flops wouldn't cut it in the middle east especially on a western woman! I think he was wearing a polo shirt and jeans, and I couldn't believe I was in fact seeing Mohamed again, in the flesh, and in the middle east - his turf! We met, maybe a kiss on the cheek, and got a taxi to the Royal Falcon hotel. He had a nice room there - we sat and smoked while I digested where I was and who I was with. The flight was a tough one, and I spent days recovering from the same jet lag which didn't get better but seemed to get increasingly worse!
I eventually snapped out of it, and suddenly Mohamed and I were engaged, moving into a villa, and looking for jobs. I had a sudden and surging interest in God, theology, and because I had Mohamed with me, the core values of Islam. I asked him some tough questions... after a short hiatus in his teens, he again became a devout Muslim (devout def TBC) and spent hours of his life in the library reading. I was full of questions. Where in the Koran does it say that a woman on her period does not have to fast? The only thing we could find was that people who are sick or travelling do not need to fast. Well, that was an easy one. Of course many people still think that a woman on her period is somehow sick... after all, *men* don't bleed every month, do they? ;-)
I thought like I had never thought before. I went nuts on wikipedia, reading about Confucius and Buddha and Jesus, and Mohamed. I remember wondering about the divide between Christians and Muslims. I was terribly excited when Mohamed, my walking encyclopedia on all things monotheistic, told me that there was a Christian sect who argue that the Prophet Mohamed was foretold in earlier versions of the bible. (The St Barnabas church). Boy oh boy, what had come over me? Was I becoming a religious nut? Mohamed had picked up some dvds at a supermarket. The covers made them appear to be 'dummies' guides' to Islam, so I thought that would be pretty good. We started one of them, and it was the filming of a Pakistani man behind a microphone on a stage before a large audience of men. (Just men ;-) ) The 'conference' or whatever it was, began with sung verses of the Koran. Then he spoke, and he talked on, and on, and on. It was not the 'dummie's guide' I had been expecting. It was tremendously boring in fact :-| So that didn't do much to win me over. But Mohamed was so glad that I a) now believed in God and b) was interested in Islam. When we were together in Sydney, with me the complete aethiest, all he could do to get me wondering about the prospect of God was suggesting there was no explanation for the origins of the big bang. It was left at that, and then on that Gulf Air flight to Bahrain, suddenly it was real.
Mohamed and I got married in Jordan while staying with his brother and sister in Amman. His brother is a good guy who has a passion for German culture and following the German soccer team. His sister is a strange one; there are mysteries to her life that remain mysteries years later. The four of us made a trip to Petra, and there were a few family dramas that went on which kind of marred our night in the Intercontinental Aqaba on the Red Sea, the night before my birthday. It really was a strange night - the night in the hotel was my treat, with the last cash I had, and Mohamed and I ended up sleeping in the trundle bed while his brother and sister slept in the gorgeous queen size. It was no honeymoon:-P His sister had been married to a Saudi, and all through our walk through Petra and on the way back, I pondered what it had been like for her to be married to someone from one of the most blatantly and unashamedly mysogynist societies I had heard of. I felt horrible, horrible pity for her. My pity for her was so strong that I could almost feel what she had possibly been through :-(
Throught the rest of the stay in Dubai, Mohamed and I looked for work, hung out, argued, loved each other, played, had fun together. I taught him musical beats, we played hangman to improve his spelling, we listened to music, often the same songs every day, we even composed songs! Towards the end he got out his academic English textbook, and that's when I understood what a cultural divide *really* means. It really is amazing, the things we take for granted. I barely knew what a topic sentence and supporting sentence were, despite being able to use them without even knowing it!
Dubai was full of ups and downs. Here I am in China - and I'm loving it, really loving it for the first time ever. Well, more than I usually do, anyway!
Stay tuned?
xo ¶ 04:36 0 Comments
