Bird Watching

This is just one of many tales of miscommunication that occurs when I can't understand what my family is trying to tell me. The best time was when I'm pretty sure I told my host dad I needed to eat the computer for homework, but this story is more interesting.

So what I thought we were doing was bird watching. I was so sure that's what they were trying to tell me, and my little brother was pretending to be a bird and such, so I thought we were going bird watching. Which didn't really make any sense, because there aren't really birds here. No joke, people joke that the national bird is the plastic trash bags that line the edges of every road. Anyways, we get in a taxi, my host mom, two sisters, and brother, and off we go, to what I think is going bird watching. Actually I think we were going to  legitimate park, but it was closed, so we ended up at what I can only describe as the strangest park I've ever seen before in my life. First of all, it was jammed full of people, and wasn't very big. It was bordered by  sidewalk, where the women walked in circles endlessly, and in the middle was some sort of  playground and a massive sandbox. Near the edge was a fenced in soccer, football here, court, and a man renting argylas, which was an unexpected sight in a children's park. But hey, I'm getting used to it being everywhere here. Buildings here don't have air with some smoke, they have smoke with some air. That's just how it is, people smoke nonstop, especially the men.

So me and my younger host sister start walking around what was literally a sidewalk track, and we walked in circles for a couple hours. I guess that's just what exercise looks like here. I got lots of stares for not being hijabi, but whatever. I'm getting used to that too. Although I wouldn't mind having a shirt that reads "Please don't stare at the ehjnabeea (foreigner)." That'd be nice.