Who knew?!

I frequently learn words while sitting around the dining room table, either during or after lunch.
Usually what happens is that I'll hear a word and ask what it means.
Sometimes though, someone will ask me what a particular word is in English.

Today, my sister in law was talking about amber, and how women here like to wear it in jewelry.  But she was calling it by its Arabic name, which escapes me at the moment.  When she asked me what it was called in English and I told her it was called amber, she laughed.

Amber, in Arabic, means big butt.  lol
Not just kinda big but I guess REALLY big.  :D
So, that's the exciting new word for the day!

:::

The noise level outside seems to have risen quite a bit in the last week or two and we figured out that it wasn't actually the noise level that has risen, it is the fact that the fans aren't on 24/7 anymore, so we can just hear everything better.

As annoying as the fans are to listen to day after day, I think I prefer it as a noise muffler for all of the outside noise.  The fan is kind of like white noise, but it does get irritating when it's on ALL the time.

So now instead of slight noise and fan, we hear lots of noise.  All the talking, shouting, traffic, horns, dogs barking, vendors walking down the street shouting out the name of what they're selling, kids scampering, etc., it all seems so amplified.  And particularly at 3 or 4 a.m., when the rest of the city is quiet and sleeping.

Our neighbors have been quite loud lately as well.  Our upstairs neighbors.  They fight quite frequently, and I mean knock down drag out fights.  Very loud yelling and pounding on furniture and I'm sure there is hitting going on as well.  Even when they aren't obviously fighting, they are VERY loud upstairs.  They seem to always be banging furniture around.  It's quite a mystery as to what actually goes on upstairs, but it goes on at ALL hours and it's really irritating.  And not just to me, to hubby as well.  The whole family can hear it I suppose, though it seems to be centered above our bedroom.  Lucky us.

:::

Couple of pictures.

This first one is hmmm... can't remember where I took it at.  Near downtown I think.  But what I like about it is the no honking sign.  Because really... just... LOL.  I've never heard so much honking in all my life as I've heard here.  The sign is clearly someones idea of a joke. 

And this picture shows the street below us.  They were doing a whole bunch of work on the street a couple of months back.  At this point, they were doing something with the manhole covers.  I think they were making new ones or something, who knows.  In any case, what you can see here is the total lack of any protective equipment.  No gloves, no safety glasses, no hard hats.  And also, no blocking the street off in any way.  People and cars went right on by like they weren't even there!  Crazy!

Hoping to update soon with apartment news.  Nothing for now.