Once a week, I travel to my grammar teacher’s house, which is about an hour away so I have a lot of time to visit with women that I meet on the metro. This week, I met a girl named I. We began chatting in Arabic but she soon realized my limitations in that language and, to my surprise, switched very smoothly to English, which she spoke rather well. We began talking about my studies and her work and learned that she lives fairly close to me but takes the metro to her job every day. She was headed to an area of town that I had not yet explored and, as a wonderfully hospitable Arab, invited me to join her. Of course she didn’t expect me to actually receive the offer but I was done with lessons for the day so I said Sure, why not! As we stepped off the metro and into the crowd, she took my hand and led me to a hole-in-the-wall juice shop which are common throughout my city. They usually serve only two things: freshly squeezed orange juice (yummy) and freshly squeezed sugar cane juice (a.k.a. ahseer ahsab). Upon learning that I had yet to experience sugar cane “juice”, my new friend was insistent that I try it and immediately purchased a large mug, like a huge beer stein, of the gray liquid for me and one for herself. I took a small sip, mostly the greenish foam on top. My first thought was What have I gotten myself into?! This is NOT good! Sort of like sugar water except not really. Grosser I think. Not that I usually drink sugar water, but I can imagine. I glanced at my new friend, who finished her mug in what seemed like record time and was looking at me, hopefully, eagerly, with a smile on her face, like my approval and appreciation for her gift to me was confirmation of our friendship or something. I told God, I just need some help getting it down and we’ll talk about the consequences later. But if this is what I have to do, it’s what I have to do…it could be a LOT worse. So I gave her a faint smile, held my breath, tipped it up, and started guzzling. I tried not to think about the dirty mug that I was drinking from, that I’m sure had not been washed since the last use. I tried not to think about the amount of water that I was consuming straight from the street, not boiled, not bottled. Actually, I’m not really sure if there WAS water in this juice because I don’t really even know what it was made from. Sugar cane, that’s all I know. As I sat the finished mug back down on the bar, and silently said Humdilileh (Praise God), she looked at me with anticipation and asked, Kwayis? And I responded with a weak Ayawah, kwayis (yes, it’s good). And that’s all she needed to hear. We wandered around the souk together, which turned out to be a really fun cultural experience, although I later found out that foreigners usually don’t go to that part of town due to political opposition there. Oops! My supervisor just laughed when I told her…she couldn’t believe I went there. And perhaps I’m being unnecessarily theatrical about the juice incident (I’m known to be just a tiny bit dramatic every now and then :)) but at least I made a new friend and, hey, I’m always up for a new adventure!