Day 43: Sew Chill

Saturday, August 3

When I woke up, it was 800 degrees in the house. At least, it was in my room.

"I guess it's time to get up."

I thought briefly about taking a shower and quickly realized the futility of that pursuit and decided against it. We've gotten pretty used to not showering that we don't even notice our stank anymore. (We're not like street-rat gross, or anything. Just regular gross.)

When I walked into the living room, I saw that Noura and her daughter were madly cleaning the house. They had stripped the couches (apparently the outer fabric coverings aren't attached), dismantled them, and shoved them all against the walls to clean around and behind them. Apparently this is just something they do before the last week of Ramadan. Not sure if that's a cultural thing or a family preference. Either way, more power to them, because as I stated previously, it was 800 degrees in the house, and they were bustling about like busy little bees, and without the option of water.

Well, as to the desert trip: I'm glad I didn't go.  The more the weekend progressed, the happier I was that I kept myself from enduring the infinitely long drive and boiling desert sun. I know that the desert was probably awesome and such the experience, or whatever, but I was all 'experienced' out for the week. (And anyway, it's not like I'll never go to the Middle East again. I'm studying Arabic, after all. That has certain Middle Easterny implications.)

It is too bad I had already paid for that trip, though. It put me in the hole, somewhat. It was kind of expensive. I tried getting a refund, but I was only able to get half back. Which is better than nothing, but it still a lot of money lost.

So, I went to the school on Saturday and chilled with my friend Mary instead. I had lots of homework and blogs and things I needed to catch up on. Not very exciting, but I'm not very exciting, and I enjoyed the general restful attitude of the day.

I also fixed my hat which was devastatingly broken after the horse thing, understandably. But I just sewed it back up like the proper seamstress I am.

The work of a professional.

Then we went shopping in the market, which was fun. There's one shop nearby that sells very lovely things which we like to visit a lot because the shop owner gives great prices for students and he's really nice. His name is Abdullah, and while we were there, casually browsing, he just left. We were like, "Ok?" And we kept looking at the stuff. Then he came back after a few minutes with two bottles of water that he'd bought for us (because it was very hot outside). It was really nice! Then, as we continued to look at stuff, he left mysteriously again, and then came back once more with a bag full of sweets for us! We were like, "Wow." He is a very good salesman, and I got some very nice things.

Then after going back to the school and chilling in AC for a while (thank heavens the school has AC), we left and went to church again, like last Saturday. Little had changed. I still don't know French.

"It's like they have a different word for everything."

After a hour of standing and sitting and politely listening, church was over and we walked to Mary's house, which wasn't too far. We ate Iftaar with her family, which was composed of some things I doubt I would ever have eaten if I wasn't in a situation where I needed to be absurdly polite. There was soup (which was surprisingly flavorless), and then this cold potato chunk / tomato/ onion salad mix. I don't like any of those three ingredients, much less together. So, I didn't eat too much, but enough that it looked like I had at least enjoyed it.

They had the best juice though, man. It was straight up natural orange juice. It's expensive, but they buy it from a guy who has oranges and he squeezes like a 100 of them and then juice happens. So good.

There was also sweets that were very good, and of course the sweets from Abdullah.

Then after Iftaar, we chilled for a while and let things digest, and talked about the nerdiest things we could think of, and when the coffee shops started to open we went to the one across the street from her house called El Toro. We went for the internet, of course, not the coffee. The internet is broken in Mary's house, for some reason.

When we got back, Mary's host mother was very insistent that we eat dinner with them (which was going to be at 1am or so), but we were still very full from Iftaar and didn't want any, so we just had to tell her we were tired and that maybe we would eat dinner if we were still awake, but if our light was off that meant we were asleep and she should let us be.

So, when 12:30 rolled around, we turned the light off and pretended to be asleep while we continued to dick around on our computers. The bedroom door has frosted glass windows on the front, so we had to close our laptops and hide in darkness whenever we heard people about to pass by.

We were total ninjas.