Gaby and I counted and were offered 32 times, "Donkey ride? Good price for you my friend" Finally, at the end of the day we gave in and let the kids ride donkeys. They deserved the rest after hiking a full day with minimal whining. 
On our second day, we hiked up to the "Monastery" - an impressive relief carved into the sandstone high up on a mountain top. The hike took us about an hour up and about 20 minutes down. The views from the top of the mountain are well worth the hike even though I had to carry Colin most of the way up. 
On the first visit, the music teacher, Tawfeeh, seemed warm and welcoming. He even offered to restring my oud and have it ready for me the next day. We agreed on a price for lessons ($10/hour lesson) and arranged for me to come back the next day for the first lesson - so far, so good.
I returned the next evening. Before starting the lesson he stated, “it will be $200.” A bit flabbergasted, I asked him to explain. He said I needed to pay upfront for 20 lessons. “You pay for lessons upfront because I commit my time to you,” he said in his broken English. Since just the night before I had seen him sitting with his buddies smoking with no customers in the shop, I suspected he was bluffing and that he wasn’t as popular as he wanted me to think. Having fallen for this “pay upfront” trap before, I told him that I needed at least two lessons before I was ready to commit. The conversation went back and forth several times until he saw that I was ready to leave. He then agreed that I would only pay for that evening’s lesson.
He took me in a back room filled with pictures and posters of himself at the height of his career. From the bellbottom pants and Saturday Night Fever-style shirt that exposed his hairy chest, it seemed like he was a popular musician back in the 70s.
As the lesson began, he was noticeably offended when I asked him why he removed three strings from the oud and later when I asked him to explain the way he was tuning the oud. After a few choppy, incomplete explanations, he played a 15-note scale once and then asked me to repeat it. Again, he was noticeably upset when I could only recall 5-6 of the first notes. He showed them to my twice again, told me to practice, and then left the room for close to 20 minutes. He returned reeking like cigarette smoke, turned to a page in the middle of the book written in Arabic. Without any instruction, he asked me to play it. Again, he wrinkled up his face when I could not play a song 20-minutes into my first lesson. The rest of the hour was no different. Needless to say, I left with no intention of returning.
