Two Weeks!

Yup. Two weeks. And I will be sleeping in a real bed. I can't wait. Mom, please fill the refrigerator with chocolate milk, chedder cheese and raspberry yogurt, and have some whole wheat seedy bread on the counter! I'm coming home!

Am I excited about going home for a few weeks - um, just a little! With the heat rising, the dust clouds billowing, and the work piling up... it seems like a really good time to take a holiday.

However, I think tomorrow might be a public holiday here. And then there might be another public holiday for the Eid al Adha next week. But I'll just work- got one or two things I need to get done before I take off, eh?

Anyways, we have had some fun, too. Yesterday, after work, Jackie, Richard, Annamarie and I met at a fancy restaurant and indulged ourselves in a cappuccino. Yum yum. We pay Starbucks prices for it, but sometimes, you just gotta treat yourself. While we were sipping, Richard was regaling us with stories. One of the funniest stories has to do with one of the local tribe's marriage customs. Seems on the wedding night, the bride and her groom have a bit of wrestling match. If the bride wins the match, she can run home to her mother, because she has married a man who will be unable to protect her. However, if the man is able to defeat his new bride in the wrestling match, she is happy and proud that she's got herself a real man who will be able to slay the dragons for her, so to speak. Apparently, both the men and the women spend most of their pre-marriage lives practicing for their big wedding night wrestle!

Since we had just stocked up on shea body butter, we were thinking that it might be advantageous for the woman (or the man, depending on your perspective) to smear themselves with shea butter before the match begins - they'd be so slippery that their opponent wouldn't stand a chance!

Ok, so maybe that's not so funny. It sure seemed funny yesterday as we were drinking our cappuccinos :)

Nothing too noteworthy happened today, either. Um, let's see... I had to go and get some little cakes from the corner store for a little farewell tea we were having for a staff memeber today. As I was walking out the gate, a couple of the staff members were really puzzled by the fact that I was walking, and not taking a truck. They just couldn't figure out why I was on foot (why I was "footing", as they say here). Maybe I need to walk more often, just to prove to my colleagues here that I actually DO know how to go out on foot, and not just in a truck!

It was hot today, but we had our Arabic lesson early, while the generator was still on. So I could enjoy a little breeze from the fan whilst trying to put together coherent sentences in Arabic. I think I'm a real "people-pleaser" - my whole motivation for wanting to learn Arabic is so people will smile and be happy that I'm speaking their language! During our lesson, I'm always just so fully concentrating on making Justin, my teacher, laugh or say, "Sah! Very good construction!" Anyways, even when we fail, he is very encouraging and is always telling us, "Good try... but say it like this..."

Anyways, I have a whole 4 days now until our next lesson - hopefully I'll make the time to do some studying...