9 Days and counting...

Hard to believe I will finish the first stage of my 27 months in 9 days... it has been one helluva trip so far and I think the next week is going to be even more event filled. Starting tomorrow the women in my host family head out for a weekend weddings... yes wedding ceramonies can last for several days here. So that leave me, Mohamed and Hamid alone for three days, I am looking forward to maybe cooking and wash my own clothes and my guess is that the other two men will be hanging out in the cafes all weekend. The hardest part of CBT as I might have mentioned before is giving up the freedom of living in my own place and the independence that comeswith that... after over thirty years it has been differicult adjustment. So I must say I am looking forward to this weekend. Not invited to the wedding otherwise would love to see that first hand.
The next big event is L'eid Kbira or the Big Feast... sounds like a reason to throw a party but it anything but, it is a very important and holy event... it is based around Abraham, when God asked him to sacrifice his son (the difference is that we believe it was Issac and the Muslims believe it was Ismail)... but God see that Abraham faith was so strong that he told Abraham to sacrifice a sheep... and that leads me to the big event, the slaughtering (for religous and food) of sheeps all over Morocco. Every family should kill a sheep after sunrise on the first day of Kbir... right in the yard or home and then skin it and eat it over the next two days... pretty much every part of the animal. yes we will all be right there and eating or tasting it all... Oh Yeah!!!
So needless to say there are sheep EVERYWHERE and they look very scared... in fact I have noticed many sheep acting a little odd, laying down, acting sickly or insane, because only healthy and clean sheep can be killed, so the word is out in sheepville... the humans are hungry and the only way to get through this week is to pretend to be a dirty, unstable sheep. Sheep are very tricky!! Like genies... that is another topic for another day... love those genies!
After L'eid Kbira ther are only afew days left in "Tllaqa Kbira" for this PCTer, will I miss this place, of course, it has been home and I have delevoped some wonderful friendship that I hope to take with me for the rest of my life. I will not miss the the mind-numbing cold of the last month... invision that useless bag of peas that everyone has in their freezer.... yes the one that has been there for years with frost and oddly shaped.... well that is how I felt all day and night since October, usually those peas get tossed out or become part of the icebox... i wasn't sure what my outcome was going to be there for awhile, but I can see the light and I am heading to a new city.
Random thought... there is a welder around the corner from my home here and I was watching the other day as he was welding and upon a closer look I noticed that his welding mask was made out of card board with two eye hole cutout... it looked like a hockey mask from the 60's. Let me say again... his welding mask was a piece of card (Bosch Spark Plugs) with hole cutout so he could see and tied around his head with a string!!! CARD BOARD, no goggles.

Well that is the latest from my perch in the Middle Atlas Mountains... Oh yeah after swearing in many of the new PCV have been invited to Marrakech for 4-5 days for a craft fair. Marrakech sounds warm to me. Inshallah