On little boys and throwing rocks, on time and food and wearing socks

current jamz: "gethsemane" from Jesus Christ Superstar, seriously. I'm making you proud, momma.

Funny story, I once almost killed my sister and I because we were too focused on singing the entire score to JCS at the top of our voices, and not so much focused on how I was speeding like a maniac through rush hour traffic.

Anyway, on to the blogging.

First time a kid threw a rock at me at close range: COUNT IT. I was walking my host siblings back to school after lunch and this toddler was chillin out max and relaxin all cool with a rock the size of his FACE in his hands. It was the weirdest experience, his facial expression didn't change at all and yet I saw the rock and knew exactly what was going to happen. Luckily the kid throws like a girl and it just sort of fell at my feet. Kind of anticlimactic...I guess I could have said something like "he hit me smack in the jugular so I junk-punched him and now we are best friends."

Moving on.

Perhaps it's fitting that most houses I've visited for tea have two or three clocks that don't work on display. Morocco runs on a completely different schedule, a concept I was briefed on but didn't quite grasp how it might affect my life until really experiencing it. Sometimes lunch is on the table at 12:30, sometimes my host mom isn't even back from the community oven with the fresh-baked bread (amazing) until 2:30 or closer to 3. What's funny is I am already starting to have trouble getting places on time, and as many of you know I'm usually chronically prompt. Yesterday, for instance, I KNEW my friend was coming over at 4 pm to go walk around/hang out in the village-sort of the center of town-and yet when my host mom asked me at 2:45 if I wanted to make American cookies, I said "sure, why not?" Poor time-management+misreading a recipe+being afraid of my mom's oven= I was over an hour late meeting my friend. But the cookies were delicious.

And speaking of food, wow do I eat a lot here. I need to just suck it up and deal and be happy I'm not in a PC country where there's a lack of food, but my goodness am I expected to eat a lot. My host mom looks physically pained if I refuse a fourth piece of bread or respectfully decline a third cup of tea (even when I explain that I had tea with the family of a kid from the dar chebab less than an hour ago). Even when I do try to eat more, I still do something wrong. If I go for another piece of bread, I'm scolded for not putting butter on it. As soon as I finish the portion set out for me, someone semi-yells at me to take more. This evening, I was given bread, butter and tea, and was trying to eat all of it when my host mom gave me an apple, too. I didn't immediately eat it, so she ordered me to eat the apple. When I put down my glass of tea to take the apple, she told me I need to drink tea. When I picked the glass back up she said I should take more bread. How do you say "Go go gadget arms" in Arabic?