Sweet Talk

God has blessed me with 2 really great roommates here. I have learned so much from them both. Today, J and I went to the university that we attended last semester to try and get our deposits back. Through the 3 different offices we went to today, J used all her Texas girl sweet talk! The process was so much easier, because she was so gregarious with all the people! She even made a friend with Mohammad in the last office. We have to go back and see him tomorrow to Lord-willing get our $200 deposit refunds.

But while we were there, she asked him something that I would have never asked him. She asked him for a Spring Sticker for our ids. I don’t know about your universities, but to get a semester sticker is the same as validating your id that you are current student. The problem is although we have current ids, since we are not taking classes this semester we don’t have Spring Stickers, and therefore cannot work out in the very nice university gym. J worked her God-given magic to see if Mohammad had any wasta (or connections) to get us into the gym. You see, here there are NEVER any hard, fast rules here. There are always exceptions. So J pushed to see if we could be an exception, and finally he told us to go and talk to Joelle in another building about it. You see we thought this meant that he would call Joelle and tell her to give us stickers or something, but of course he didn’t.

So we show up and explain our situation to Joelle, and that Mohammad said that they were good friends and that she could help us. Her boss just happened to be there at the same time. And to make a long story short, we did not get stickers, but they told us that we could work out there, and that they would not be so strict about the stickers!!! So, instead of getting our stickers, it seems that now a lot more people can get into the gym, because they are not going to be checking for stickers!! All because J asked Mohammad, the registrar!!! Gotta love that there are NEVER any hard, fast rules here. I hope I don’t go back to America and expect to get outta rules all the time. That won’t be appreciated in America, but it is very normal here.

So then J and I take a taxi home and the driver knew English, French, and Arabic, which is very common. We talked on and off with him. I was a little disturbed when I first got in, because I felt like he was staring at me through the rearview mirror. So finally he expressed what he was thinking. In Arabic, he told me that I was very pretty, but would be much more pretty if I put my hair in a ponytail!! The taxi driver was giving me advice on how to wear my hair. He was trying to say it is better in the summer to wear a ponytail because of the heat and that it makes your face look better. I asked if he meant like a facelift and he agreed!! He also said J would look nice too in a ponytail! Oh country that I live in! Never would I have thought that a taxi driver would tell me that my face would be much prettier if I wore my hair in a ponytail. And he was not even trying to hit on us, he was just giving us advice. Oh, and J being in a great mood after getting into the gym started singing in the taxi, to which he wanted us to sing the oldies song Twist, so just before we got out of the taxi we sang “Twist again like we did last summer, twist again like we did last year!!” Oh country, how I love your randomness!!