<--The view from my roof in Hdida

-->My house in Hdida. Trust me... looks are

<-- The girl closest to me is my host sister... and a bunch of her friends and cousins (everyone is related in the town)

--> The ladies in the village painted our hands as a welcoming into out new community... here I'm letting the henna dry, it now looks pale orange.

And here's the details:

Just got back to Ouarzazate after my 9 days in the very small town of Hdida (about 200 people). Coming back to Ouarzazate is wonderful to say the least… a few of the good things: western toilet, food, hot showers, and laundry facilities. Hdida put a lot of things into perspective which is only made more extreme by the fact that it’s Ramadan still. I feel like I’ve been starving for the past week just because no one eats during the day and the stores are generally always closed during Ramadan. I can only imagine what these places that I’ve been living in will actually be like in a couple weeks when Ramadan is over.

Some notes about Hdida…I live with a husband and wife who are significantly older. The man is called the Haj, which means he is the most respected older man, and probably the richest too. The only problem is that he doesn’t really move around, he is basically tied to sitting in one room all day. His wife spins wool for most of the day. So one of their sister’s lives with them, she too is older but manages to run the house. She has become my go to person but the language barrier is still huge. The sister has a daughter of 13 and she too helps run the house. Together they take care of the husband and wife and prepares the meals. The daughter is well, how do I say?... a little cold towards me most days of the week. In fact, the family seems difficult to read in general just because there is no communication there. Of course I am trying to communicate what I learn in my language classes but more often than not they have no idea what I am saying… and let’s be honest no one can learn a language in 6 days. So yes, there have been a lot of difficulties in the past week.

I thought I’d share some other details on what life here is like, through my perspective at least. I wanted to mention that Ouarzazate and the area around here does in fact look exactly like the Morocco seen in the movie Babel. It’s unbelievably dry here, I really have never experienced anything like it… and the sandy dust accumulates everywhere within about 5 minutes. I guess I should be honest and say that it is more of a third world country than I thought it would be. Oh, and having running water and electricity doesn’t mean that much, Morocco is still pretty much in it’s own world. There’s a sense of dirtiness in the streets that I love in the cities but somehow dislike strongly in the villages. The women in my village are tougher than any that I’ve seen. Their hands are about twice the size of mine and their feet look like they could tell the stories of a thousand lives.

Anyway, I am currently covered in about 40 bug bites… they’re definitely not mosquito bites so who knows what they actually are. In all honesty it’s not that bad… it’s just a lot of adjustments that happen in really quick spurts. I’ve been in Morocco for exactly 3 weeks and it really feels like I’ve been here for about 6 months. Time moves slowly here, slower than I’ve ever known before… sometimes I love it (and well, other times… you get the idea).