Never a boring day...

Wednesday
I have never seen so many naked women in my entire life!
tonight I went to the hammam with Chayma and a couple neighbors and oh man. I loved it! At first it was a little overwhelming. I've never seen or been seen by so many people! But after like the first 10 minutes it was totally normal to be only wearing my underwear. First you strip and go into the first room where you find a seat (apparently the ideal spot is in front of a wall) and wash first with a traditional soap that feel a lot like honey. Then you go into the sauna-like room where you scrub. Amina, one of the neighbors we went with, scrubbed my back which felt awesome! We have these cloths that are almost like sandpaper. There was so much dead skin that just rolled right off! Then, after what felt like a lifetime of scrubbing, you go back to the first room and wash. By wash I mean everything. And we certainly took our time! I washed my hair like 5 times! We actually put henna on our skin because it's supposed to be good for it. I told Chayma though that if my skin turns orange I know where she lives. hahaha she just laughed and assured me that it wouldn't. Then we put something else on. Chayma didn't know what it was in english but even though it looked like mud it smelled good so we put that on and rinsed it off. Finally we used plain soap, rinsed off and left. It took about an hour and a half! My fingers were so prune-y but my skin feels absolutely amazing now. When we left, I wore Chayma's djellaba (the traditional dress). it is so much easier because I just wore my pjs underneath! and I wore my scarf around my hair. Apparently they do this so as not to get sick. Idk. All I know is that Chayma and I had a photo shoot afterwards of me in the djellaba. This is all after class and after I went running with my friend Chandra and we almost got rabies. Kinda kidding. There was a dog that wasn't on a leash or anything that started barking as we ran past. Luckily it didn't chase us but it was scary. But by the time we got back from the hammam it must have been like 10:30. Then we had dinner. We always seem to watch TV during meals. The TV is almost always on! Anyway I was really excited because Peter Pan, the one with real people not the animated one, was on so we watched it for a while.

All day I've been thinking about my independent study ideas. On the one hand the one with the judges could be really interesting and I could probably do more with it when I get back to the US. On the other, my idea is to dress one day with a veil, one day with the veil and djellaba, one day in a burka and the last day wearing something that would be considered shuma and write about how I feel each day, observe different attitudes towards me and talk to women and men about their opinions. Both could be really interesting and I might wear the different clothes for my own research and do the other one for my ISP. I think I need to talk to Abdelhay, my prof, again.

Tuesday
So I talked to Abdelhay and the final decision for me is the domestic violence/judges issue. But that is the last thing on my mind after today's crazyness. I was really hoping for a boring day, but I guess it's just never going to happen. I mean, who am I kidding, I'm in freakin Morocco! But anyway, today my friends and I got out of class early so we stayed at the center for a little while, then we went to a cafe place to get cool juices. they had date juice, avocado juice, peach juice, almond juice, mango juice, etc. it was awesome! except that it's not in the best part of town and we were sitting pretty much on the street. A woman who passed by was nice enough to remind me to pay attention to my bag because it was a little bit behond my chair. So i moved it in front of me, everyone checked their bags and we continued to look at the menu and order. A few minutes later my friend Megan looked down and realized her backpack was gone. She had just taken money out of the bank, so she had that with her along with her prescription medicine, laptop, camera, credit cards and cell phone. She called the program assistant, Nawal, and I went with her back to the center. We ended up going with Nabil, one of the arabic teachers who is awesome. He and I had a nice chat in the rain (it's the first time it's rained since I've been here!) while Megan got her passport, which luckily she had left at home. Then we went to the police station where we described what happened, and while we were there 2 guys came in in handcuffs. Nabil told us later that they had been caught drinking and smoking weed in the medina. apparently they can get up to 6 months in jail for that! Then I ran home to grab my phone and some money just in case, and when I got back to them we waited to go to the other police station. When we got to the other one, we saw this man and woman come in and Nabil told us that HE was caught drinking in public and she was with him so she was taken in too. Her response was incredible. She said that she was a prostitute and that she was working, not drinking and that he had offered her money. I couldn't make this crap up if I tried! Meanwhile, the nice policemen took Megan's information and got all of the facts about the theft, but because we didn't see anyone take it and there are no real identifiers on the stuff, she'll probably never see it again. =( After that ordeal, we took a cab back to the medina and I walked her almost all the way home. I was glad that I left her smiling about how badly we need to buy shoes. When I got home around 10pm, I told my family what happened and I guess they had waited to have dinner with me! It was so sweet.