I will not be leaving the house on Tuesday!

So, let me tell you about little celebration in North Africa called "Ashura" which literally means the "the tenth" day because the Islamic New Year started 10 days ago. Please don't get confused with some Shi' ite Muslim practices of cutting the body and violence. We live among Sunni Muslims. Muslims believe that Moses fasted on that day to express gratitude to God for liberation of Israelites from Egypt. According to the Muslim tradition, Muhammad fasted on this day and asked other people to fast, among other reasons to celebrate. When you ask the average local here what they are celebrating the just say it's the tenth day and we give kids presents and they play pranks on each other.

Which brings me to my point as to why I will not be leaving the house. Last year I got attacked with water balloons and didn't know why, and boy was I maaaad. I thought they were just targeting me cause I was foreigner (could've been that too I guess :). Kids throw water balloons and eggs at people. It has nothing to do with the holiday but just tradition, kinda like hunting for Easter eggs and the Easter bunny. So not sure if I will actually stay in all day but I'll let you know you how it goes.


This could be me


And, just so you don't miss our beautiful faces (notice sarcasm) here are a couple of pics taken only minutes ago. Here is Cody hard at work on a really difficult photomosaics puzzle that he got for Christmas. Here is me hard at work on the computer. This is what I look anytime I am at home, wrapped up in this big blanket. Seeing as our house stays around 40 degrees I hate to get up!

Surprise Wedding and Exotic Garden

We gotta lotta pics this week so let's get to the good stuff. On Thursday night at around 6:00 I got a call from my friend inviting me to a wedding at 9:00 that night. Well my gut instinct was "NO WAY JOSE" is she crazy that's in three hours and we had dinner plans in 30 minutes for my friends birthday. Well, a split second later after we clarified that it was indeed tonight she was talking about, so I decided to go because I knew I would regret it later. (I do so love parties) I called up my two American friends to see if they wanted to go with me and they agreed so we started planning outfits ASAP. There were no girls wearing "Western clothes" at the wedding so we knew we had to go traditional. I wore the Kaftan I just had made (not as dressy as it should be but it would do). I asked my neighbor for her dress for one of my friends and the other wore another jellaba I had. We met our friend at around 10:00 and the party was just getting started. The bride hadn't shown up yet.


They rented this palace type building and served all these courses and sweets all night. I was still full from the Thai food I had just eaten.


By 4:00 a.m the bride had already changed dresses six times. Each time with all new jewelry. I was exhausted for her. The last picture is a traditional indigenous minority group (they were here before the Arabs and have their own language and traditions).









It's very "Arab" to wear tons of makeup like this (especially in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates). I think it's so neat.












































The bride and groom were carried in a couple of times and this time we threw flower petals on them and he lifted her veil and kissed her on the forehead. One of the men toting the groom slipped by the fountain and fell flat on his back. Everyone gasped and I 'bout peed my pants but once we saw he was okay we all had a good laugh.






Here I am approaching 4:30 a.m. and my hips and feet were so tired from dancing. We headed out before the wedding was over. At sunrise they would go to local historical landmark and take more photos. I told my friend we had to bail before sunrise because we had a meeting at 11:00. Good times had by all!

So as not to leave Cody out of this weeks post here are a few pics from a trip to the exotic gardens 15 kilometers north of our city. There were different habitats from various regions around the world. Very pretty.

Birthday Fun and Orphanage Party

Tuesday was my 25th birthday and I celebrated by going to class in the morning and a work meeting in the afternoon. WOOHOO!! But really, the evening was fun. We went with our friends to this really nice famous restaurant in the old city. This is pretty fountain with candles and rose petals. We were serenaded by some "beautiful" folk music too.


This weekend I also helped with this big event to serve 400 orphans their big holiday meal which includes the slaughtered sheep that they missed out on two weeks ago. This is at a private palace in my city.

I had a table of 10 boys to myself that I served. Don't be deceived by the one on the right, he only looks cute and innocent-he was such a turd!

Here is a nice story for you all. See the sheep they are eating on the table. Well I hadn't eaten a real meal in over 24 hours and I had been busy running around and so I was starving so I was literally eating the orphan's scraps. I drank out of their used cups and ate leftovers off their plates! Come on, my head was killing me, you would have done the same thing!

My sweet boys!


You always end a meal with fruit here so here are the arrangements we help make. I just posted these cause I thought they looked purdy.

Christmas Vacation

We went with my family to Paris and London for a week the day after Christmas through New Year's. We had so much fun and it was so great to see the fam!

You know what they say about Paris vacation pic's, you can never have too many pictures with the Eiffel Tower. Do they say that?




In London, we got to go to a broadway show of Mary Poppins, it was amazing and so much fun.

Everything was decorated so festive everywhere and the lights in the shops on the streets were gorgeous.

This is ginormous Benjamin. We also toured the London Tower and saw the Crown Jewels (my favorite part). Here is some nice trivia for you: Kate Middleton, (who is Prince Williams girlfriend) and I have the exact same birthday January 9, 1982.

We toured all of London on one of those double decker tour busses. So pretty.

We saw tons of famous pieces in the museums. We knew they were the famous ones because everyone was crowding around the popular ones so we joined in.