Dealing with the heat

Life in Tafraout has finally settled down and life has returned to a normal routine.  Over the past month I have found a house, filled it up (kind of), decorated, and started to cook for myself.  It wasn't an easy transition though.  When my host mom finally had her baby, about 3 weeks ago now, I needed to leave their house immediately because so much family was coming to visit there was no more room for me.  This left me pretty much homeless.  I was all packed, keeping a suitcase at my host family's, another bag at Sarah's host family's, and carrying thing around in my backpack to live with.  We had thought we were getting an apartment so we weren't looking very hard, but quickly came to realize though the landlord said he would bring us the key, he was never coming.  This lead to a mad dash around Tafraout talking to anyone who would listen about where to find a house and how much it would cost. Luckily my host dad stepped in and within just a few days we had homes.  Now if I thought that was hard now I had to try to fill up my new house with the things I needed to make it a home, including water and electricity, all on a pretty tight budget.  It took about a week to finally get electricity, and I slowly moved in my bed frame and mattress, a bedside table, stove and gas, shelves and fridge, and tables, and my host family kindly gave me two ponjs for my living room.  About 3 days later my fridge broke and I was back on the streets looking for another one.  It wan't too hard of a search and I found one quickly in my price range.  I had some pictures printed off the other day and now my house is filled up and starting to resemble a home.
       Besides all that I've been working a bit at the youth center having some conversation classes with some advanced students who are very good at english and just want to practice and learn new words.  As of recently about 10 to 20 small boys show up everyday now, they don't really want to learn english just play games so we play frisbee, pingpong, and cards with them.  Tomorrow we are starting a summer camp for them, it's going to resemble the olympics and they will have to pick countries and make flags, but the games are like water balloon fights, and some english games.  It should be fun and as long as they don't fight too much I think it will go well.  I also work at the women's association here, 3 times a week I teach an aerobics class and twice a week I teach an english class to whoever shows up.  Attendance isn't the best and sometimes we have 2 women and sometimes we have 10.  In September that should change because right now people are traveling and it's very very hot.
       More on the heat, it's hot here.  Like can't leave the house because the sun is out kind of hot.  Sadly it makes for pretty boring days, and since there are snakes we can't hike until after the heat is gone, hopefully that will be sometime in September.  To beat the heat I shower a lot, though it's not extremely helpful because the ground water gets really hot from the sun, so my showers are usually warm.  Most of the time during the day I lay around in a sport bra and sweat.  There isn't much else to do now that I don't need to shop everyday.  Sometimes Sarah and I get invited for meals at our friends houses, I won't turn down free food, it gives us something to do during the day and means we still get to eat Moroccan food, which now that I don't have to eat it every day I'm starting to like again.  Lately everyday it thunders all day, and sometimes it gets really windy, rains for about a minute if that, and then gets sunny again.  There are no real storms just a lot of thunder.

Me modeling my traditional Berber clothing

Homemade eggplant and squash burgers 

     In celebration of the 4th of July Sarah and I made hamburgers and pasta salad, and had watermelon.  We had some of our friends over and gave them their first hamburgers.  They loved them. We told them all about the 4th of July and how we celebrate it in America.  It was a lot of fun and everyone had a good time.  Our friend even made us little American flags and another friend brought us a 4th of July cake.
     This weekend there has been a festival here.  There is a huge stage in the park, and park looks beautiful, and everyone from town and a lot of tourists are here to enjoy.  It's been fun, and we have been able to hang out with a lot of our friends there.  The music is all traditions Berber music.  It's definitely a cultural experience.  Sarah and I even dressed in traditional Berber clothing.  In black almulhof's and red Tafraout shoes.

Traditional shoes

Sleeping on the roof!