- Trip & Concerts -

***Please excuse the posting delay...our internet has been down***

Last weekend, I went on a trip to a nearby city (about 2 hours north of us) with some ladies here in our country. We stayed with a family - who are old friends of our supervisor - in a super old house that had 5 rooms, 4 floors, 3 fancy salons, 2 squatties (I am no longer a snotty, Kim!), and a very steep, windy staircase! This is a picture from one of the fancy salons. While in this ancient city, we visited the palace, shopped in the medina where we saw TONS

 of donkeys carrying loads you wouldn't believe, ate some delicious food, and of course had a henna party! When women get together over here for more than about 4 hours, you can bet there will be henna involved.

 This kind is a little different than I've had before...it's more of a geometric design. When I asked her where she got the inspiration for my design she laughed and pointed to the steel

 designs that you see on the window behind me. 

 

Is this not the biggest plate of couscous you've ever seen?!

 And, no, it wasn't all for me. I shared with 7 of my friends and we barely made a dent!!!

This week there was a large music festival in our city. They have set up 9 large stages around to city to host musicians from all over the world every night for a while. We took advantage of this and went to see Sergio Mendez (Brazil) on Tuesday night. It was a lot more fun and less hectic than we thought it would be - except for the man asking Paul's friend (a man himself) to dance and the big guy wearing orange who we lovingly named Ants

 Pants based on his unique dancing skills. I think the people 'trying' to dance around us were more entertaining than the concert at some points :) We also saw Alicia Keys (or as they say here "Ah-lee-cee-a Kayees) on Friday night which was way fun! Hey, when they're free, why not?! Although, she came out about 40 minutes late - I guess she was trying to be culturally appropriate or something but there was a lot of boo-ing. Yikes!  There was WAY more people at this one than on Tuesday night. We didn't stay until the end because people were getting a bit crazy. We exited and even found taxis to take us home at 11:30! My favorite part of the night was either 1) many covered women wearing their traditional dress getting down to the sounds of Alicia or 2) all the men yelling 'Yeah' when she asked if their were any 'strong women' in the crowd. Gotta love it! Enjoy these two videos from the concert. The first is of the crowd clappin' to the beat and the second is a guy dancing on someone's shoulders.