Moroccan Wedding

We had fun last Thursday as the organizers here put on a mock Moroccan Wedding for us. Everyone got dressed up in traditional Moroccan gear, we had some traditional food, and a group of musicians came along too. The musicians were great, although I could not for the life of me find the beat in what they were playing; actually when I think about it I'm sure the guy with the symbols on his head must have been playing to some beat. We all got up and tried to boogie, but I think it takes years of practice to be able to shake your bootie to this sort of music. The kitchen ladies showed us girls how it was done - I swear their butts moved independently of the rest of their bodies :)

I had a fairly quiet weekend this last weekend, although I did a day trip to Fes, which, as I think I've mentioned, I am completely in love with. This time it poured with rain the entire time i was there, so I spent a good 8 hours completely saturated. It actually got really cold for a couple of days there - it was only 10 degrees in the middle of the day yesterday; i put on my flannelette PJ's under my jeans, much to the amusement of my American counterparts. This reminds me of something I need to tell Rachel if she is reading this; Rachel, pack three pairs of jeans/pants, not two. What I forgot was that you always have to be wearing one pair whilst doing the laundry, which means pretty much that one pair is always dirty. Just trust me on this; three pairs.

My second day at the orphanage was a little easier than my first; I spent a lot of time dressing the kids, which petrified me at first - working out what goes where is not as easy as you might think! - but now i think i am a pro. A lot of the kids are disabled or handicapped in some way, I guess because these are the kids that are either given up most often or they find it hard to be adopted. I was a little unnerved having to put diapers on 4/5 year olds as everything seems a little awkward, but they seemed to find it a bit of a hoot thank god. I really admire the volunteers who work with the severely disabled kids. These kids stay at the orphanage for as long as they live, which usually isn't very long - the oldest there is 19 years old. The volunteers working in that section do such an awesome job - always smiling and laughing even though it's both physically and mentally draining work.

I had an interesting insight on the views of the nurses yesterday; we have an American/Kuwaiti volunteer - Darah -who can speak Arabic, and hence she has been able to actually converse with the nurses. The nurses, it seems, can't understand why Americans (and Australians) would leave their own country to work in another - i.e. your countries have problems of their own, why are you working here instead of in your own country? Also the prevailing view is that the Americans in particular all hate the Arab world, even those who say that they disagree with the Bush administration. Darah was trying to tell them that that wasn't the case, but they simply told her 'we don't believe you'. It's sad because even working next to each other we're still struggling with cultural understanding. The language barrier is a much bigger problem than I had anticipated it to be - i guess that's part of my own cultural snobbery that I expected everyone to speak English!

That's all for my ramblings for the moment; I have a trip to the desert planned for this weekend, which I am really looking forward to, and I am sure I shall have much more to say after that :)