A man in a white sedan pulls up to the front of the hotel. He rolls down the window, cranes his neck, and asks, "Dr. Teh-ey?" "Yes!" He knows my name, but why take the chance? "What's your name?" "Fatah." That's not it. "Arafat" he says after a brief pause. That's it. I get in to the front seat.

Familiarity has rubbed some of the exoticness off things around here, at least for me. The fact that almost everyone I've met has spoken at least a little English, even if it's an Arabic-English pidgin, has made life here seem much plainer. I, on the other hand, seem to remain bizarre and alien, telling by the frank and slack-jawed stares some people give me, with the occasional "Nihao!" or "Konichiwa!" I wonder if I can have a race-burqa made...

We are in the offices of the Juzoor foundation, a non-profit organization that does a lot of healthcare education. We've contracted them to do life support education for us, and currently we're arguing about whether to order airway positioning first or CPR, seeing as how the new emphasis on chest compressions has confused everyone. Suddenly, all eyes turn on me: "how about you, Tae? As our representative from America, what is your opinion?" Uh oh - playing the foreign consultant card in an attempt to break the deadlock. "Um, gosh, you're both right, but it's a matter of knowing, culturally, what your people would respond to." Wiggled my way out of that one! I wonder if I can have an awkward-political-pawn burqa made...