Blombi!

Yesterday we had normal classes in the morning and then Liz and I went shopping in the medina with Ja'afar (one of our leaders- he's actually Portugese but he used to live in Morocco and somehow knows our other instructors). He's a master at bargaining and knows exactly how to do it. If you're going to make a purchase you basically have to get to know the shop owner first so that he doesn't rip you off. Liz bought a rug and it took probably over an hour (which included talk about the shop owner's recent marriage and sitting down for some tea). Between the two of us we only bought 8 things but it took FIVE HOURS. We were so exhausted when we got home.

Nadia had class from 2-8 last night so we had to eat dinner with just our homestay mom, Khadija (the name of Mohammad's first wife, FYI). See Khadija doesn't speak any English...except "sorry" which we learned when Hiba ripped up a piece of lettuce and through it all over the carpet/my feet. Anyways, yesterday in class we learned words for different occupations. Everyday we come home and just recite random words that we learned in class that day so that we can have some level of communication with our mom. WELL, we were going over things like "good morning" and "congratulations" when all of the sudden I remembered one of our new words so I said excitedly, "BLOMBI!"... which means "plumber". Khadija was kinda thrown for a loop when I said that and then neither Liz nor I could think of any other words for occupations so we left her hanging awkwardly with "plumber" as the last word. Later we told Nadia and asked her to explain the whole thing to her mom and the two of them were crying laughing over it. Just another funny language-barrier story.

Nadia's favorite thing to get me to say is "Ana Maghrabia, wuhead, zhosh, cleta" which means "I'm Moroccan, one, two, three." As if my ability to count to three justifies the statement that I'm indeed Moroccan.

Tonight we're having a singing/dancing performance at the ALC where we get to bring our homestay families and take pictures and have fun. Hopefully I'll be able to get pictures of my whole family up (though I've only seen my homestay dad for a total of 30 seconds so far and Hallad (my brother) is scared to talk to us).