humbling VS I'm the Queen of the World
Let's take it from Saturday
humbling: discover that the kind lady who cleans our apartment every week looks through our garbage. even more humbling: she discovered a bag of cookies that she gave us nearly a month ago. After Eid she gave us three or four bags of sweets, more than half of which we ate. As H and I were cleaning out the cupboards last week we figured they were too old to be consumed and threw them in the garbage. The lady who comes to clean asked if she could take the cookies back. I pretended not to be horrified by her discovery. She didn't seem upset- her request was a practical-minded one. It still left me feeling like a foreign, spoiled brat. She also requested to take a bottle of hand soap that we dismissed as empty and thrown out. Thank God for her gruff manner and light sense of humor, which made the interaction less painful.
I'm the Queen of the World: swam in the aforementioned olympic-sized pool. It was December, warm, nearly empty and I got a tan. (the mere proximity of humbling and I'm the Queen of the World adds to the humbling)
humbling: have I mentioned that I often walk around with a plastic suitcase that advertises the name of my Arabic school? It's the only thing big enough to hold my notebooks and folders for meetings.
I'm the Queen of the World: managed to take a city bus by myself. Not only did I catch the bus from outside of the Ministry of Manpower, and not only did I ride it harassment-free into downtown, but the bus continued into Zamalek and dropped me off at the end of my street. For one pound! (twenty cents). Having gotten off the bus and walking like I owned the street, I encountered a shoe shiner. In my euphoria, I asked him if he stretched leather. Without the word 'stretch' on my vocabulary, there was a bit of miming and taking nouns and making them verbs. He got the idea and assured me he could make my pinching shoes comfortable. He would even walk up the street with me and wait downstairs while I fetched the shoes. The sun was shining.
humbling: standing in my socks on the street, begging the shoe shiner to stop applying polish to my DO NOT POLISH shoes. Begging him to stretch the leather without a polish. Him agreeing and continuing to apply the polish. We later established that he cannot stretch leather because that is not his job.
I'm the Queen of the World: planning a New Year's vacation to the Red Sea. Imagining the sun, the sand, the snorkeling. In my organizational glory, I was flipping through the Lonely Planet to decide which hotel we will select as our base for the trip.
humbling: every single phone number in the Lonely Planet that is listed under BUDGET in Dahab is a wrong number. One after one they hung up on me. When I tried Muhammed Ali's Village, a camp listed as a comfortable place to rent a hut and a few matresses, I was actually handed to Muhammed Ali himself, who told me that he does not run a camp. I tried to ask him if this was a problem he often encountered, but he hung up too quickly. Someone at LP is having a good laugh.
And so the battle rages: the good, the bad, the beautiful, the hideous and the utterly confusing all mixing into the same days. I have made a booking in a small beach village that translates as 'the Head of Satan,' which sounds promising.
humbling: discover that the kind lady who cleans our apartment every week looks through our garbage. even more humbling: she discovered a bag of cookies that she gave us nearly a month ago. After Eid she gave us three or four bags of sweets, more than half of which we ate. As H and I were cleaning out the cupboards last week we figured they were too old to be consumed and threw them in the garbage. The lady who comes to clean asked if she could take the cookies back. I pretended not to be horrified by her discovery. She didn't seem upset- her request was a practical-minded one. It still left me feeling like a foreign, spoiled brat. She also requested to take a bottle of hand soap that we dismissed as empty and thrown out. Thank God for her gruff manner and light sense of humor, which made the interaction less painful.
I'm the Queen of the World: swam in the aforementioned olympic-sized pool. It was December, warm, nearly empty and I got a tan. (the mere proximity of humbling and I'm the Queen of the World adds to the humbling)
humbling: have I mentioned that I often walk around with a plastic suitcase that advertises the name of my Arabic school? It's the only thing big enough to hold my notebooks and folders for meetings.
I'm the Queen of the World: managed to take a city bus by myself. Not only did I catch the bus from outside of the Ministry of Manpower, and not only did I ride it harassment-free into downtown, but the bus continued into Zamalek and dropped me off at the end of my street. For one pound! (twenty cents). Having gotten off the bus and walking like I owned the street, I encountered a shoe shiner. In my euphoria, I asked him if he stretched leather. Without the word 'stretch' on my vocabulary, there was a bit of miming and taking nouns and making them verbs. He got the idea and assured me he could make my pinching shoes comfortable. He would even walk up the street with me and wait downstairs while I fetched the shoes. The sun was shining.
humbling: standing in my socks on the street, begging the shoe shiner to stop applying polish to my DO NOT POLISH shoes. Begging him to stretch the leather without a polish. Him agreeing and continuing to apply the polish. We later established that he cannot stretch leather because that is not his job.
I'm the Queen of the World: planning a New Year's vacation to the Red Sea. Imagining the sun, the sand, the snorkeling. In my organizational glory, I was flipping through the Lonely Planet to decide which hotel we will select as our base for the trip.
humbling: every single phone number in the Lonely Planet that is listed under BUDGET in Dahab is a wrong number. One after one they hung up on me. When I tried Muhammed Ali's Village, a camp listed as a comfortable place to rent a hut and a few matresses, I was actually handed to Muhammed Ali himself, who told me that he does not run a camp. I tried to ask him if this was a problem he often encountered, but he hung up too quickly. Someone at LP is having a good laugh.
And so the battle rages: the good, the bad, the beautiful, the hideous and the utterly confusing all mixing into the same days. I have made a booking in a small beach village that translates as 'the Head of Satan,' which sounds promising.
posted by Nermeen at 4:28 AM
2 Comments:
nermeen, i miss you so. I was laughing out loud and may have woken neighbouring apartments.
sue
And have you ever looked at some of Lonely Planet's useful phrases in foreign languages? The only thing that book is good for is making the planet a very lonely one for you.
ed!
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