American hips

Ouch. Belly dancing class this evening. I continue to maintain that American hips can’t move the way those of our Moroccan belly dancing teacher can. It is craziness. I am convinced I am going to give myself arthritis from all this hip-waving. My hip joints actually hurt. I think I need to get one of those jingly belts. Not because it will make my hips feel better or anything, but because I can have more fun while I make my hips hurt. Also, I think we cause a scandal whenever we leave the dance studio with wet hair. Showers in the dance studio = I am clean more often than I would usually be at this point in the week. Generally women don’t go outside the house with wet hair, and when they leave the hammam it’s all wrapped up in two scarves, so you can’t tell it’s wet anyway. So we were scandalous yet again this evening.

Today I had an ISP epiphany. My topic is really just me trying to relate to Moroccans. I mean, I am all about preserving and learning from historical materials, so wouldn’t it make sense for me to see if Moroccans felt the same? At least now I can explain my project better. Because it is me looking for the same thing in a different culture.

I am about to send a cat down into the courtyard / chimney to shut those birds up. So my room actually sits on top of the front door of the house under us. One of my windows looks out into the street in front of their door, and the window on the other side of my room looks down into their central courtyard. Where they keep some caged birds. Sometimes I think they forget to cover the cage at night, because those birdies are cheeping at all hours of the night. There are plenty of spare cats running around. It shouldn’t be a problem to find one to drop one out of my window and into the courtyard to eliminate the Bird Problem, thus allowing me to sleep more soundly.