hina, henna, hanna

Well- the long awaited Ramadan and Eid are over and we are back into the normal routine. Eid was nice a nice break for us. We had a women's retreat type thing for a couple days. We went to a club that had a nice and pretty fancy pool- best of all it was cold water :-) It really was nice to spend almost the whole day by/in the pool relaxing and restoring our childhood games (complete with diving lessons, cannonballs, tea parties, seeing who could hold their breath the longest, and of course making a chain of about a million people to see if we could swim through everyone's legs, HA!) After Eid we had a 2 day school week (which was also nice).

This weekend I went back to my friend's house (the hokey pokey crew from before). It was fun as usual. There was a neighbor over while we were there to do their mother's henna for a wedding. Since she was already there they offered for us to get henna as well. So I have my first real African henna on my right hand right now- pretty exciting, I must say! I really love those girls. (Oh- the title of this blog is because they all sound the same but hina=here, henna=what you get on your hands and feet, and hanna=a girl's name)

Also this weekend, I went to a new suug (market). It was extremely expensive so I just ended up with a new pair of shoes. It took us about 2 and half hours to get home though. We were in an amjaat (which is a public transport- similar to a taxi in the form of a minivan) sitting in stand still traffic for about and hour to and hour and a half- motor off, doors open, no a/c in at least 100 degree heat if not hotter. We (6 ladies) finally decided to try to walk home and see if we could beat the traffic. The only trouble with this was that we didn't exactly know where we were at... After asking a traffic cop where the main street next to our house was we started walking- not too confident in his directions. Still lost and confused we asked another man. This didn't really seem to help but we kept walking anyways. After a while we came to a main street when I realized that it was OUR major street (the girls did not believe me at first- but it was) I was so happy because I knew we were almost home. I arrived at my flat about 2 and a half to 3 hours after we left the market in what should have been a 20-30 minute drive. (Yes, the traffic was THAT bad!) But all of the ladies, myself included, had a great attitude about the whole thing, hunger and all, and we just chock it up to another cultural experience :-)