Eid Mobarak Said!

Well, Ramadan is finally over, to the relief of everyone in Morocco. The end of Ramadan is called the Eid, and like Thanksgiving, it is a time for family and food. We woke up rather early by Moroccan standards (10am), and dressed in traditional jelebba (they kind of look like big robes with pointed hoods...which then in turn look like KKK members when you have the hood up...except everyone wears brightly colored jelebbas, but it is still kind of disconcerting) and caftan (jelebba without the hoods) and we went over to the the family house in Temara. A note about Moroccan dress: everyone matches everything to the same color. If you wear a blue shirt you where dark blue or light blue pants with blue shoes, a blue bag, and blue sunglasses. Essentially, you have to stay within one color. As a result of this matching, my sister Selma thinks i am incapable of dressing myself. The other day she told me that, "Betule, you put very odd colors together", and i said, "actually matching complementary colors together is quite normal in the US". At any rate, I was dressed entirely in pink for the occasion. We essentially sat around and talked and ate a huge taijine of couscous with vegetables and chicken in it. It was phenomenal. Couscous is a very time consuming and expensive dish to make here, so most families only have couscous on friday for lunch, and so it is kind of a big deal when couscous is cooked for you on a day other than friday.

During the evening we took up a common Moroccan activity: watching wedding videos. Apparently watching wedding videos is very very popular here, and it doesnt really matter whether anyone knows the people getting married in the video. They are the longest home videos of all time. Luckily we were watching Madiha and Steve's wedding, so at least i knew some of the people. Moroccan weddings last about 3 days...straight. The first day is a religious day, the second is for henna, and the third is the actual wedding. During all these days there is dancing and eating and celebrating. In fact, on the final day, Madiha's wedding went until 7 am the next morning. The brides also go through about 6 dress changes, while the grooms go through 3. It looks exhausting, but fun.

The next day, we had a "beach day", but in Morocco, this means that we arrived at the beach after waiting around all day for lunch (at 3:30pm) at 4:40 pm. Moroccan time is lovely when it postpones class, but it is unbelievably frustrating when it is delaying something fun, like the beach. Nevertheless, we had a great time and swam in the ocean and played soccer on the beach with the family.

On Friday, Madiha (our program coordinator, whose family i am staying with ) arranged a huge Moroccan party for the CIEE kids. Everyone was dressed in their Moroccan finery (tekshetas, caftans, jelebbas, etc), and the whole house was transformed to accomodate five or six tables, dance space, and a traditional band. When we walked in we were offered creamy milk (fresh from the family farm 20 minutes away) and dates filled with almond paste; a traditional Moroccan greeting. AFter this we had tea, cookies, music, henna, and dancing. Dancing here is very different and is really fun. Everyone dances. And you dance with everyone: little kids, grandmas, cousins, aunts, uncles etc. After the huge amount of dancing, we sat down, exhausted for a dinner of couscous with carmelized onions, raisins, and roasted almonds. The spices in the onion/raisin topping were heavenly, and it was my favorite couscous dish thus far. At midnight, all the American kids became tired and all the Moroccans kept dancing. We sat on the couch and marveled at their energy. It seems endless!

Since everyone gets out of school and work for the Eid, we still had the whole weekend to travel. Janet and I decided to go to Meknes. However, so many and exciting things happened, that I will write a different post for our weekend.

Love and miss you all
Magpie