What's gonna happen in the world today?

The (US) midterm elections are behind us and I feel hopeful that the situation here (in the Middle East) won't escalate. 

Clearly war isn't what people want (and I, being one of said people, can hardly blame them...and am also so proud of voters for sending such a clear message of "no thanks to war"...I don't think being pro peace should be controversial, but sometimes it seems like it is...for whatever reason...anyway...).

Andrew was asked to do a segment on Al Jazeera tomorrow morning, which he agreed to do. And then they called and asked if he'd do a segment this evening as well. It felt a little last moment, being decided as we were all just coming home from various places.

It was pretty funny, actually. We had been at our friends' house doing art and history lessons:

Andrew stayed late on campus to help proctor a test for another professor who had done some earlier segments on Al Jazeera. And then he was like, "Okay, I'm heading out." And I was like, "We're heading out, too, but we're just going to take an Uber to the metro station" because it was rush hour and an Uber home was super expensive. And he was like, "I'm going to metro home, too."

And then he texted and was like, "Why don't we just meet at the food court at DECC? It's late. I'm starving...."

So I texted Miriam to say that was the plan and she was like, "Okay, I'll get ready to go" (because she was at home).

And then Andrew texted to say never mind. He'd just order pizza or something because they wanted him on the news tonight as well and were going to send a car by around 9:00 to pick him up, so he had to be ready to go. And we were approaching 7:00, so he just wanted to get home and pick out a tie and so forth. 

So I texted Miriam to not leave the house because we had ordered pizza to come to us (instead of going to pizza). 

It was a very text-heavy metro ride. 

When we arrived at our station, I got off the metro with the little kids and we started rushing out of the station to try to catch our bus. 

"Where are you at?" I texted Andrew.

"Just getting off at our station," he said. 

"Huh. Us, too. Next bus is in 5 minutes!"

"We must have been on the same train," he mused...on the escalator behind us (Phoebe and I always lag behind the kids who were already waiting for us outside). 

And, indeed, we must have been! But I was riding in the family car with the kids and Andrew...isn't allowed in there without us...so he was in one of the standard cars and didn't even know we were on the train. I suppose he could have come into the family car because we were in there, but he didn't know we were in there so he didn't try to enter. 

(For the record, we got on the train at different metro stations, so it's pretty cool that we ended up on the same train). 

We caught our bus without a problem and then walked home and as we turned the corner to head to our apartment door we ran into...the Talabat guy who had delivered our pizza! 

Impeccable timing all around this evening!

Anyway, we ate, Andrew got ready to go, we had scriptures and prayer, and then Andrew left. Miriam had her organ lesson (over Zoom with her same teacher in Georgia), I read to the kids, got Phoebe tucked into bed, and then we turned on the news.

Andrew sent us this picture from while he was getting ready:

And I took approximately one billion screen shots:

It was difficult to get a good shot with his name on the screen. The very first question went to him and he was a little...flustered...at first. But...he...got better...

He was quite relieved to get home (and shower off the makeup they put on him). He said the translation was difficult because he had an interpreter in his ear, but they were only saying about 50% of what was going on, but he could understand about 90% of what was going on (because he basically majored in fusha—pronounced foose-ha—the formal Arabic of the news, etc) but it was difficult because of the simultaneous other translation going on in his ear and so he felt rather laggy. But I think he did well overall!

I wouldn't want to be in the hot seat, personally. But he did great!

My family all tuned in and my mom had people coming by her office to watch and sent the link out to a bunch of people in the HBLL, so I think we know at least 15 of the 70,000 or so people watching live on YouTube (not to mention however many were watching on television). 

Andrew gets to do it all over again in the morning (only he's hoping it won't be a panel of eight experts with conflicting viewpoints because that was pretty intimidating)!

*****

In December 2006, The Daily Show did a segment where one of the comediennes (Samantha Bee) tried to revamp the English version of Al Jazeera (which had only recently launched...to mixed reviews) to better appeal to an American audience.

I cannot find a clip of it online anymore (one used to exist!), but it lives rent-free in my brain (here's a transcript of the skit, but it's really just so much better seeing it acted out). I don't think more than a day or two ever goes by before some line or other from that skit pops into my head:

"What's gonna to happen in the world today? Oh, no! Something terrible!"

"Al Jazeera! Al Jazeera! Al Jazeera! Al Jazeera!"

"Let's talk about segués. I need you to hold my hand...and take me with you."

"Anywhoooo...kittens!"

"Peppermint Gomez...?"

How fun is it that Andrew got to go on Al Jazeera (Arabic, not English)?! 

When I first saw this skit 20 years ago, did I ever think Andrew would be sitting live on Al Jazeera? I did not. But there he was! Pretty awesome!