Day 42: "C" is for "Cookie"

Friday, August 2 

So... in the 30 minutes before class, I studied for the test. Not long, but enough that I could remember all the vocab.

Didn't matter. That test.... I couldn't understand that actual sentences that I was supposed to plug the words into, and if I don't understand the context, then I certainly can't know what words to put there.

But, I think I understood the story that was in there for the most part, and I wrote a decent essay, I thought. I knew I studied that vocabulary for something.

But luckily after Modern Standard Arabic was over, we had our Colloquial class, and we made cookies! They brought all the ingredients in, and we stirred them all together and rolled them into little tasty looking sugar-balls, and we were all ready to have them baked so we could eat them, and the cook smiled joyfully at us as she took the pan away and said, "And! You get to eat these on Monday!"

Our reaction.

So yeah. I'm sure they'll be so fresh on Monday. Can't wait.

As to the pain, because I'm sure you're just on the edges of your seats wondering, I was still aching on Friday, but this should be the day that everything would start to dissipate, slowly, but surely. So no worries.

However, there was a planned trip for the weekend, one that I had already signed up for and paid for before I knew I was going to fall off a horse and still be in pain. So, I spent a significant portion of the day trying to decide whether or not I should go, because I didn't want to regret not going, but I didn't want to be in pain the whole time and not enjoy it anyway, and then come back feeling worse (because it was a very energy spending weekend trip). There were about 12 other students who signed up to go, and it sounded so fun, and I spent a great deal of time pulling my hair out trying to decide, but, after much internal debate, I concluded that I was going to be in too much pain if I went, so I stayed here instead.

My roommate still went though, and they all left at midnight that night (you have to travel at night because it's an 8 hour bus trip, and since it's still Ramadan, nothing is open during the day and you'd be stranded if you needed to stop for anything. Like gas. Or restrooms.)

But, before everyone left, we had our last mandatory event that day after class. I'll just say it was a VERY controversial discussion about Islam and government and other things like how they viewed women's roles and some other stuff that most Americans would be offended just to hear. Needless to say, we were, in fact, all very offended, and the program must have known that we would be when they hired these guest speakers, but I guess they just wanted to give us a taste of wildly different world views.

After we got home, and after Iftaar, my roommate wanted to prepare for the upcoming trip, so we went to the supermarket and bought all things bad for us, like chips and cookies and chocolate. I really like these cookies called "Tango" cookies, and they're like 17 cents for a package of 6 of them. They're a lot like those cheap half-vanilla, half-chocolate cookies that everyone ever brought to those little kid parties. You know the ones. They're kind of off-brand but awesome.

Yeeeeah. I loved those.

These are sort of like that.

Delicious. (Though unfortunately they haven't made me tango yet. Perhaps I haven't had enough exposure. I must experiment further.)