Laugh out Loud

There is absolutely no way I can communicate the funniness of this story, but I'm gonna try.  

Today one of my teammates and I went to lunch at one of our favorite restaurants.  It's a Muslim restaurant and serves absolutely amazing beef.  This was a reward for surviving the medical adventure written about in the previous blog.  So the plan was to swing by the med office, pick up our paperwork and eat lunch.  Plus I had a hose and gas regulator that was left at my house by our supervisor and he needed it for his apartment.  So that was the plan...pick up paperwork, swap hardware, and eat.  Important stuff.  

So here we sit getting more stares than usual because there are two of us...one tall redhead and one short blue eyed blond.  Now to get the whole picture let me explain that anytime people in this culture see a man and woman together both foreigners, they automatically assume one thing....that they are married.  It's really quite funny and we've had a lot of good jokes about this.  Just think of it in this context...if you were in a restaurant and say two Hispanics, Asians, foreigners speaking a different language, one man and one woman wouldn't you automatically assume they were married.  Well I would and they do here.  But what really causes the stares other than our looks is that we don't sit together on the bus, we pay for food separately and leave separately. We even sit away from each other at a table.  If you really really want looks what until he gets up to go next door to get a cold beverage (they don't' serve cold beverages in the restaurants...only tea, so if you want one you've got to go to the little market next door) go ahead and stand up, lean across the table and give him money for your drink.  Very confusing to this culture.  So all this staring and murmuring just usually adds some unneeded stress to the environment.  

So after a delicious and yet a bit awkward lunch we paid......separately and stepped outside only to discover a toothless old man who'd been gawking at the two foreigners.  For some reason this man who literally probably only had five teeth total, started cracking up in this raspy ha, ha, ha, ha, ha voice.  Almost taunting, almost evil, but for some reason quite humorous.  At first we just smiled politely and tried to turn away, but this man wasn't finished..."oh ha, ha, ha." Well I got tickled first and then my teammate started to crack. What was he laughing at?  We hadn't said anything or done anything...yet here he was cracking up.  We both looked at our new found friend and laughed and as we laughed he laughed.  At some point we both started crying we were laughing so hard!!!  The old man just stood there and kept laughing, "oh, ha, ha, ha, ha."  At this point I remembered the hose and gas regulator that is in my backpack and begin to dig to retrieve it as I'm trying to contain my laughter.  For some reason as I get the hose out of my back and hand it to my friend, that's when the toothless little old man really loses it as if this is the funniest thing he has ever seen.  He is laughing so hard I'm afraid for his health.  So as he is laughing hysterically, my friend and I begin to lose it all the more and this introduces another minute or so of laughing between ourselves and our new friend.  I'm sure he had a great story to tell his family that evening and if he was any indication of how funny we are, I'm sure he's family laughed too.  Ha, ha, ha, ha. 

So like I said it's one of those, I guess you had to be there stories, but I at least had to try.  

Beautiful Feet