Apparently My Arabic Stinks

I've studied Arabic for two years. I've lived in the Middle East for two years. I should know Arabic when I hear it, right?
The other day B and I went to the grocery store and after loading up the car, it wouldn't start. Nothing! So I call the rental car company (we are renting a car until we can buy one, and we can't buy one till the residency comes in which it did, so we should be buying a car this next week insha'allah) The point is, B and Noah went with a friend to their house with all our once frozen food in an attempt to rescue it. I sat behind and waited while the car company brought me a new car.

To top it off it was 30 minutes before iftar (the breaking of the fast). So everything closed down. The supermarket closes down for an hour before iftar and an hour after. So when our friend comes to pick up B and our cold goods, the gates into the garage are shut and locked. I have to run around to the guard shack and tell him what's going on and to let our friend in and then let them out. He didn't really understand though.

*sidenote - all the manual labor jobs here are done by Indians, not American Indians, but actual Indians, so I spoke to the guard in English trying to get the gate open.

As I wait, I am sitting trying to talk with the guard and he and his buddy ask me to join them in breaking the fast, so we sat down together and waited for the call to pray. He and his buddy kept talking back and forth and I didn't understand any of it, so I figured it was Hindi.

The call to prayer goes off and we dig in and I notice that we are eating like Arabs and the soup tasted like Arab soup, so I asked him where the soup was from.
"Arabic soup"
"Did you make it?"
"Yes"
"Really? Where are you from?"
"Yemen"

they speak Arabic in Yemen

So we switched from English into Arabic, but it was really funny. Him and his buddy would talk back and forth and I would pick up maybe three or four words, then when I would talk with them and they would talk to me, it was like when a 5 year old comes up and asks you a question.
They would "squat down" and "use small words" and help me understand what was going on, but the minute I was out of the conversation, it went all fuzzy and I didn't pick anything up because they would speak in Yemeni Arab. Then I would say something and it would go back to kindergarten talk, then boom. Fuzzy all over again.
I took for granted knowing the dialect of where I was living. Gulfi Arabic, Yemeni Arabic, Egyptian Arabic, it's all fuzzy. Here's to starting over with kindergarten Arabic

and here's to Kool-Aid, fishy crackers and nap time all over again.