Pub quiz: name your Arabic dailies

(This was half-drafted before the Egyptian Revloution went..revolutionary, so it's a couple days late, but better than late than never, as I've been real focused on avoiding impromptu mobs/the police the past couple days)

Well, last night was another one of those wow-this-place-is-entirely-misunderstood moments. Went to pub quiz. All the women were in leggings, over the knee boots and chic tops. I was in corduroys and some sort of sackish top. Typical.

The thing about Kristen-in-Arabia is that she is a way more conservative, way more patient, way more compassionate version of Kristen-in-America. The good is awesome-- I can sit for hours in various bureaucratic cess pools, waiting out the man who won't stamp this-or-that because he's too busy napping. I don't buy clothes, I barely drink alcohol, I spend endless hours sitting with women and talking about war/illiteracy/poverty/children/younameit. The bad is at least interesting. I guess Islamic conservatism was drilled into me in a serious way in Jordan/2004--if a guy sits next to me on public transportation, I am offended, damnit. Don't you dare touch my fingers when we exchange money-- I will throw a fit! I am more conservative than the conservatives! The people in Senegal (which is Muslim-lite) would make fun of me and call me the Taliban when I visibly flinched at sitting next to men. Blogfession: I am a fundamentalist weirdo!

So, in any case, I'm working hard to get over my closet fundamentalism here, as it turns out Palestinians, at least in Ramallah, are a fancypants bunch who like a good 'hoopalala', as my 6 year old niece calls it. Pub crawl was a great example of this-- raucous crowd, some drinking alcohol, some drinking delicious fruit juices (guess which one this fundamentalist had...drinking alcohol around Muslims?? For shame! Never mind that my entire table of Palestinian teammates are chugging white wine like it's going out of style...), everyone high-fiving and whooping when they win. It was awesome, and WAY more creative than the standard pub quiz in America (black box questions where the answer had to fit inside a box, etc.), and totally fun.

My team ended up coming in first until the final question, where we succumbed to the group of 40-ish men (team name: the wise men) who exulted in a glorious group high-five when their name came up as winners.

Pub quiz. Ramallah. Tuesday nights-- you in?