1. Given enough repetition, I will answer to anything. Two of my coworkers call me (in Arabic) "Arab Girl", which I now answer to as though it's my name.
2. It only takes a couple weeks to adapt to 106 degree weather. I doubt the same will be true of 120.
3.I'm inherently vaguely suspicious of other Westerners who speak Arabic, despite speaking it myself. Especially if they're better than me. It might be jealousy.
4. After several years of reasonably avid wine drinking, I realized upon arrival that I can't open a bottle of wine with a normal corkscrew. Instead, I required the one with arms (thanks, mom!). This has since been remedied.
5. Indian food in Iraq is better than Portland. And Indian food in Portland is pretty spectacular, right Shaun?
6. Ordering food for delivery is a bitch in a country with no addresses. I still do it pretty often.
7. Humor is most definitely NOT universal. I went to see the Avengers movie with coworkers, and was very often the only one laughing at jokes. Some of this may have been the quippy nature of the jokes, but then the rest of the theater laughed at things that remain a total mystery to me. And as a coworker leaned over to another and whispered (audibly) "Megan laughs at the weirdest things."
8. The Black Mamba snake lives in a one square mile radius, and is highly territorial. If you build your house in that mile, it will come right on in and make himself at home. If you remove him, he'll be back. (I learned this from a coworker who previously worked in South Sudan-- they don't live in Iraq).
9. The expression "The journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step" is used in Arabic as well as English.
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