Prophet's Birthday

So, I ate my body weight in ghaifa and Moroccan pancakes smothered in butter and honey in the past two days. Mother bought a ton of cream-filled pastries and sweet buns with chocolate all over them. We had huge breakfasts, bigger lunches, late snacks, and I stayed so full that I went to bed without dinner. Lunch Tuesday was something resembling the entire side of a lamb for all the ribs that were sticking out. The sauce with it was fantastic but I hardly ate any of the meat for it was buried under an inch of fat. There's a custom of two people grabbing a hunk of fat to tear it apart and then be eaten whole. The more I have been here, the more I have been eating vegetarian. I bought a piece of tarte aux pommes for 5dhm and fake Nutella for 15dhm. Last night I had harira (special Moroccan soup with cinnamon and cumin) and an egg with fries. I know that I had about eleven cups of tea and six of coffee in those two days. That's how I celebrated the holiday.

I did lots of studying for the Arabic mid term (which takes place today) and wrote up my gender mid term. The gender mid term is frustrating because it requires zero analysis of anything. All we do for all six pages is summarize the readings we have had thus far. The Arabic mid term will be much more interesting due to the massive vocabulary we have learned. I spent almost seven hours at a café yesterday doing work. I hammamed again last night with Daniella, Anna, and Amanda G. We scrubbed ourselves for over an hour and a half and still there was skin coming off. Then a half hour was spent on soaping and rinsing over and over again. I wish more than anything that we had hammam in the US. One of BU's introductory-levl Arabic professors is currently here visiting and checking up on the programme. She is one of those tiny women who can sneak into any situation and conversation unnoticed. She always has pad of paper in hand and is jotting down notes. She adores the gender professor (so unfortunate). I really don't care for her. I wish they had sent Gavin (my lecturerer from second semester) instead.

March. Mid terms. Spring Break. 70-degree weather. How in God's name is this happening? I do wish that I could stay here longer. Mother said that she will find one of her nephews to marry me but asked that I find her an American husband in return (I found out that her husband passed away more than ten years ago). I told her that I would work on it. Hanane has been doing less and less work as I find myself more comfortable doing things around the house. She's started sleeping in a proper bed instead of on the couch like the rest of the family. She looks like she'll go into labor any day now. I even saw a crib in the downstairs part of the house. Le fête de bébé is still on for 1 April after Hanane had a lengthy discussion with one of her friends as to when her marriage was last March. Weddings take a whole five days here in Morocco, so they were trying to figure out which is the proper date for the anniversary dinner.

I am currently sitting in the sunshine on the CCCL terrace wearing short sleeves. In January, I had never thought such luxury possible. Yesterday I bought a loaf of bread to eat with my fake Nutella and made a friend because the vendor thought I spoke Berber. It was kind of a strange interaction but a good one nonetheless.