EID MUBARAK SAID (pronounced eeed moo-ba-rack sah-eed)

We got up at 9am on Eid morning. I’d spent all night having crazy dreams where people talked like sheep, due to the sheep being tethered outside our window all night. We had a nice chilled breakfast, and then everyone got changed into their sheep killing clothes. Let me explain a little of the background of this festival, for those of you who don’t know.

Abraham, one of the Old Testament prophets, was ordered by God to kill his son Isaac. Because he was a good believer, he went right ahead and was all ready to kill his son when God stopped him and told him he had proven himself. In reverence to God, he slaughtered a sheep in place of his son, as an offering. Very Old Testament by anyone’s standards. Now, as those religious ones of you will recognise, that means this story appears in all three religious texts, that is to say The Bible, the Qur’an and the Torah. However, it’s the Islamic faith who really do this one – it hardly figures for Christians.

So back to my story. Vegetarians, look away now. There was a bit of fiddling to get the sheep over onto it’s back with it’s legs tied. Then there was a bit of word-saying before Aziz bared the neck and sliced it right open. Blood spurted right up the wall of the courtyard. It was an experience. Even once the neck had been half severed, the sheep still twitched. BMB told me that sometimes it gets right up and tries to run, with its head hanging off. I’m glad that didn’t happen. After most of the blood had drained they snapped the neck and took the head clean off. They made an incision in the leg and took turns blowing the carcass up, so that the skin would come off more easily. It took about an hour for BMB and Aziz to skin the sheep, doing it delicately, with a scalpel. Its funny but you just don’t think of sheep as having tails, but they really do have quite long ones, this being a point of slight struggle in the skinning process. Then they sliced the torso open and took out the innards, which were our lunch. Liver and heart kebabs. I didn’t eat much. The rest of the innards and meat will get eaten over the course of the next two or three days, until we go back to Fes. For some families, this is the meat they save up for all year.

I’m not squeemish, and I watched the whole thing. I’m also not vegetarian, so I cannot be high and mighty about the killing of animals. But there is something about watching the person you live with take the life out of a living thing. Its not something I’m interested in repeating. The rest of the afternoon thankfully didn’t follow suit. After lunch we just chilled, and then the loud men who I met on Sunday came round to play Spanish cards, a game which is even more difficult to understand in Arabic, as it turns out.

I’m going away. I’ve been told its for a week, today until next Friday, but don’t be surprised if I don’t post until Sunday or Monday.

Today has been a mission, but I’m finally home and ready to get going. It’s inconvenient having to go away, but it will be a wonderful experience I’m sure. Let me leave you with some words of advice which I would have found very useful over the last few days.

1) Do not offer to make potato puree. A potato ricer is not a fun implement.
2) Do not offer to make potato puree if you will have to use a sieve to strain the lumpy potato. Especially if this process might take 40 minutes, while you are being watched by the maid because you don’t know how to ask her to help.
3) Don’t be high-and-mighty about your attendance if you’re getting ill.
4) Don’t let yourself be a hypocrite.

And with those words of advice, I shall bid you farewell. Enjoy yourselves, and if you do one thing this week, make sure that it does not involve eating a lightbulb in any way.

x

I think the best way to be awesome is to get fit. It shows you have motivation, ability to identify and reach goals, and a high level of self-belief.

It is on this basis that my friend and I are now doing a Davina workout twice a week. We’re going to be awesomely fit and have washboard stomachs, and be able to run up hills, and other things that really healthy people can do. Also, it will save me £59 a month on the very nice but expensive gym down the road, and I have a fitness buddy as well. Life couldn’t really be much better from a health point of view.

I have never been a health addict. I’ve never been on a diet or belonged to a gym. I have always kept in shape because I eat properly and I run around doing things like a crazy person because I think that the world will fall to pieces if I don’t control everything involved. However, over the last year I’ve learnt the skill that is ‘chilling out’ and consequently have put on a bit of weight, and in particular acquired the legendary ‘muffin top’. If you don’t know what that is, it’s this

This morning I was informed that the snails were on the boil ready to make Ghlelah. Snail in snail sauce to the rest of the normal world. I was shaken by this idea because I am not particularly keen on putting some kind of slimy little beastie in my mouth. I was aprehensive for lunch.

Lunch came and went snail-less. We had a delicious barbeque instead. I felt like Halima was teasing me, making me squirm because I didn’t know when she would decide to spring the snails on me. I spent the whole afternoon worrying – and not really working, not that the two are connected.

TANGENT: By the way I have an exam on tuesday. It’s for 10 credits of this year, and it’s in spoken dareeja. If you know me then you’ll know that considering I’m a language student I have a really impressive fear of spoken exams, so that could go well. You’ll also know that I suck at revising, hence the not really working. And now back to the story…

Finally, an hour ago I was called for dinner. I dallied on my way to the living room, trying to postpone the inevitable. Finally I gave up and got sat down. What did I find in front of me?

Rice pudding, except made with couscous.

Apparently, having scared me all day, the decision was taken that with my delicate stomach (what with it being weird on me the past week) I should not really eat snails in snail juice. I should instead eat wrong rice pudding, followed by cold boiled veg and a large lump of meat.
And you know, I am not complaining at all. Snails can wait.

The Americans from the University of Minnesota have a lunch date. I’m sitting watching. It’s pretty fun, because I can understand what they’re saying but I’m not being made to take part.

Got my new timetable as well. 8am start every day except Wednesdays. Good times. No more late nights for me then. In other news, Zaim definitely thinks we’re a bunch of complete idiots and I’m not sure I can blame him. I won’t have a whinge, because that is boring.

I have worked out that through cunning, I don’t need a camera to show you what it’s like here. I have a webcam and a print-screen button. As such

Green schoolery. In the rain.

AND

And here is the café. And then lunching Americans.

If you didn’t already know, I’m sure it’s becoming clear that I am a bit of an internet addict. When I’m at home, and I have actual things to do, I am not an internet addict, because I have things to do. Here, no matter how comfortable I am, is not home, and I may not go for a random jog, or watch some awful television (except in French or Arabic. Although ‘Un Dîner Presque Parfait’ is amazing)

So I get really nervous when my internet lifeline breaks on me. Particularly when there is something I specifically want to do on it. Today, I specifically want to look at drunk freshers photos from the lovely people at home. And I’m not being allowed and that makes me really nervous and tense because I dislike things not working. If you were privy to ‘the phone fiasco’ that happened a few weeks ago, you will know exactly what I’m talking about.

In remedy of my nervousness, I am therefore blogging. I have been made aware I blog worryingly often, and I would like to say
I don’t care
It’s something to do with my life

I also became a techno whizz and managed to download the appropriate drivers for my bluetooth which means you can have some pictures not stolen from other parts of the interwebs now. Ignore that, I’ve failed at technology. I wanted to show you the fruit salad I had earlier. Maybe some other time when I stop losing the war against my computer. Stolen fruit salad.