Boston Logan

So as most of y'all know, I'm shipping off to Not-America today to spend my summer learning Arabic in Yemen and I'm bookending that with a couple weeks in Europe. I'm writing this blog because, with $3-a-minute phone calls and my disavowal of Facebook, it seems like the best way to keep in touch.

Here's the general plan of how the summer should turn out: four days in and around Geneva, a day in Paris, a weekend in Oxford, then the rest of the week in London. I fly through Qatar and get into Sana'a,Yemen June 6th. I'll be studying Arabic there for 10 weeks with a long weekend halfway through that I may spend in the Isle of Socotra or Addis Ababa. On the weekends my school has trips to Hadramawt (hometown of the bin Ladens! - I'll see if they have an Osama walking tour), Aden, and various other towns and wadis. Then I fly back into London. I haven't bought my plane ticket back home yet so feel free to send suggestions of places to go and things to see.

It should be a great summer and a fairly safe one, with the only possible danger coming from being kidnapped by Houthi Rebels, kidnapped by al-Qa'eda, kidnapped by friendly tribesmen, kidnapped by hostile tribesmen or kidnapped by pirates. But of course the sad reality is that nighttime New Orleans is far more dangerous than Yemen, and although you hear about rebel violence and a bombing every so often (the most recent being the attentat-suicide on the British ambassador) I'll be in infinitely more danger from melanoma and, of course, the general lack of triple-ply toilet paper in one of the poorest nations on earth.

I'll do my best to update every day or two with pictures, although once I get in Yemen it may drop off in frequency due to the rarity of Internet access outside the confines of my school (the Yemen College of MIddle Eastern Studies).

I expect to sail on Lake Geneve, cycle between Swiss vineyards, plant an American flag on the Eiffel Tower (USA! USA! USA!), watch the Queen's Coronation Anniversary cavalry charge and gun salute in Hyde Park, chew hallucinogenic Qat in a circle of Yemenis, and drop a great deal of weight due to the combination of my picky tastes and dysentery.

P.S. As for a comments section, I'm wary of it. I'm allowing it now but I don't think it'll last long due to three inevitables: 8 posts a day from immediate family (you know who you are, Mom), the profanity (restrain yourselves, Whitfield), and general apathy from everyone else. So we'll see how that goes.