Weird Weekend

Friday afternoon I was fortunate enough to accompany Kim to her home to partake in couscous. Unfortunately, yours truly got food poisoning from the meat within and has since taken a firm stand in being vegetarian for the rest of my stay in Morocco. The food poisoning manifested as I sat down to dinner at an Italian place Friday evening and I spent more time in the ladies' room than I did at the table. I did not eat a thing but still I helped pay for the meal because that was the right thing to do. I was sick in the street on the one-minute walk home from where the cab dropped me off. I was meant to attend the neighbors' wedding yesterday (Saturday) but was too sick and dehydrated all day to be able to do more than run from my room to the bathroom on occasion.

The neighbors' house is too small to accommodate all of its guests, so half of them came over to eat dinner (at 1.30am) at our house. Amazingly enough, I slept through the entire thing and right on through until 11am this morning. Thankfully, I am now fully recovered. I told Mother that I would not be eating any more meat even though I had never had a problem with what she cooked, and she, amazingly enough, seemed to understand. The tension in the house seems to have gone now.

The rain has returned. It poured most of yesterday and the temperature has plummeted into the low 50's. Today is grey but there is no rain yet. As I type the sun actually came out for three whole seconds. Later in the week it's supposed to come back for good.

Mohammed told me that the baby is due 4 April. The family is so calm. In America we freak out whenever a baby is due but here all is calm. There aren't extravagant baby showers resulting in fifteen different plastic playsets that hold baby's attention for five minutes each. There isn't an upheaval of diapers and frilly baby outfits. There is a crib and that's it as far as preparations that I have seen.

I happened to glance at my Arabic syllabus for the first time in weeks to realize that we are a week behind for some reason. Starting after spring break, we were meant to do a chapter a week, which seemed fast-paced but realistic. Now we have five chapters of this new book, the second in the Al-Kitaab series, to do in four weeks. These chapters are between thirty and forty pages each with upwards of seventy vocabulary words and lots of nit-picky grammar concepts. I don't understand why we were allowed to get behind and it will make the next few weeks really rushed. My family expresses surprise every time I speak to them in Arabic. Toufiq, my brother, says that I speak better than any American he's ever heard. I wish I thought that about myself. I keep doing so well with this language in the classroom but I still don't feel like I know it well at all.