World cup, fattoush, and the English language

I'm watching Spain's first game at the home where I am staying, but since the family is Croatian, the station is Croatian, and it's even harder to pay attention to football broadcast in a completely foreign language. And I say complete, because I think da means yes in Croatian same as Russian, but I'm not sure.

We had a sick peacock in today from the Iranian embassy. Afterwards they were joking to offer me up to be kidnapped, as I'm an American.I said I was more likely to have been kidnapped in Oakland than here. Also the dog in for castration was absolutely vicious, breaking one rabies pole and then breaking on of his own teeth on the other just to catch him to give him sedation. The owner's didn't believe it, of course. Otherwise it was a very slow day and I left a bit early.

I finally ate from an Arabian restaurant here, called Tarboosh, and it was, of course, awesome. I had a mixed grill, plus hummus and fattoush salad. I love the hummus here, it is like I was taught to make it, lots of tahini, with noe of the flavor of unknown origin that hummus has in the States. But the fattoush salad was the best. It's lettuce, tomato and cucumber in an herbed vinaigrette, topped with deep fried bits of pita. Yum. I got another from the Supermarket today at lunch, which was not as good, as there was no dressing and the pita wasn't as fresh, of course, but it was only 275 baisa, which is about 65 cents.

Which brings me to English. Laura, one of the girls at the clinic from the U.K. laughs every time I say grocery store instead of supermarket, and today I found out they say plait (pronounced platt) instead of braid, but it's still a French plait. I've been spectacularly remembering to say football instead of soccer, which is good because they love to make fun of Americans. But then, so do I.