Yemen Fortnight

We are finished with our fortnight of studying Yemen. Among other things, we did the following to learn about life there:

• Ate mangoes, saltah (national dish of Yemen, eaten with a condiment made of ground fenugreek), honey, dates, yogurt, cardamom rice, etc.
• Listened to Yemeni music on YouTube
• Watched a movie on Yemen from Amazon and learned about Socotra (like the Galapagos islands as to remoteness and unique flora and fauna, but located in the Indian Sea) from YouTube videos
• Visited a spice store and did a scavenger hunt for spices used in Yemeni cuisine (fenugreek, pepper, coriander, cumin, turmeric, cinnamon, etc.)
• Bought some frankincense incense sticks and burned part of one
• Toasted spices and ground them with a mortar and pestle to make hawaij, a Yemeni spice mixture
• Cooked several dishes using hawaij as the seasoning
• Recited poetry to each other (poetry evenings are a common evening entertainment in Yemen)
• Learned about oil exploration at the Hunt energy exhibit in the Perot Science Museum in Dallas, Texas (petroleum is Yemen's primary export and approximately 25% of its GDP)
• Imitated the Yemeni sport of camel jumping by having my kids and their cousins run and jump over each other's backs
• Learned about social issues such as child brides and the current civil war in Yemen (we visited friends and family for a week, often sleeping on cots or the floor, so we could show the children what life is like for a displaced person fleeing civil war)
• Learned how to say "Good appetite!" in Arabic: bil-hanā' wa ash-shifā'