So I have two amusing stories to share. The first one being about a lunch I was invited to a couple weeks back. One of the doctors at the company I work with invited me to visit his home for lunch. Mind you, he is a strict Muslim and I'm not sure why he chose Friday to invite me since this is the day that men are required to be at mosque. But anyways, he did and I accepted. So my boss dropped me off at his house a bit early (like 30 minutes before I was supposed to be there) and I sat in the living room while his wife served me lemonade and his daughters sat quietly staring at me. I knew they could speak and understand English, however, they were pretty shy so I had to keep the conversation going. I enjoyed their company and after about 30 minutes, they invited me into the dining room to have lunch. I was asked to sit down and plates of food were set in front of me. They wanted me to eat alone but I kept asking them to join me. So two of the daughters finally gave in to my plea and sat at the table with me to eat.
The doctor did not come home until well after we were finished eating (like 2:00) and he greeted me, asked if I enjoyed my lunch and then told me that I should go "rest" upstairs while he ate and then his driver would take me home at 2:30. So after eating almost by myself with him being the only person I was even remotely familiar with and then being asked to go upstairs to one of his children's bedrooms to "rest" while I waited until he finished, it definitely became a memorable weird dining experience. For future, I recommend actually being home when you invite a guest to lunch and then maybe spending a few minutes talking with them. Maybe I'm just strange and there were cultural things at play here that I didn't understand but it was truly an odd experience!
The other story happened a week or so after I moved into my new temporary place of residence. My friend was coming over for language class and was barraged by my neighbor (who I'd never seen before) asking her a million questions at once. She kind of just didn't answer any of them and knocked on my door which I found so funny. She completely left him hanging! So she told me to watch out cause my neighbor gave her the slightly creepy vibe and we didn't think anything else about it. Well when we were almost through with the class, my phone rang (which up until that point, I didn't even know my apartment had a phone!) and I thought, "Oh this ought to go well. I speak about a word of Malayalam and I'm sure it is the security guard downstairs who speaks about 2 words of English. So I answer timidly and I hear the faced paced voice of my neighbor who I now know is Sunish. He says, "Hello. This is Sunish, your neighbor in 2 C. I heard you are associated with the eye hospital." He gives a brief pause while I say, "Yes, I am." He then asks, "Can I have five minutes of your time?" I explained that I was in class and that I would have to talk with him after. Well, my friend insisted that we bring her husband along who speaks Malayalam just in case.
So after class we all knock on his door, (now who's the creepy one? Bringing my bodyguards with me lol!) and he again says hello and introduces himself. He then says while pointing to his eye, "As you can see, I suffered a serious eye condition and I have been to MIMS hospital for a treatment plan. I am not sure they are giving me the best course of treatment and want a second opinion. Can you tell me what you think I should do?" I try desperately not to crack up as I realize he thinks I am an eye doctor visiting from the U.S! I quickly explain to him that I am simply the English teacher for Al Salama and not an actual doctor of any kind. We all sort of laughed and I told my friends goodbye. Since then, I have kindly had Sunish knock on my door, bringing me a box of candy from Dubai and then again calling me the other night when I had all the ladies over for prayer to tell me to look out the window because there were fireworks! We all laughed as I told them about my over eager neighbor and we all enjoyed a couple minutes of the fireworks. Once I leave in another week or so, I think I'll actually miss him haha! It makes for never a dull moment :)
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