I like the night life. I like to boogie...

well, we just walked in the door from our first moroccan musical event. it was a charity concert for a boy, who needs to raise 65, 000 dirhams for an operation on his heart. he was there tonight, all in white with a red fes cap on. . .tassel and all. his father makes the equivalent of $4/day, and there are six children in his family. we were supposed to meet steve and his wife ruthie and another guy from the church and his daughter around 7:45pm. we got lost in a slightly shady part of town, and had to look around for some girls to help us figure out where we were supposed to go since we can't talk to men around this joint. we felt like we were close to the exchange cultural--said with a french accent--but we didn't know EXACTLY where it was. we just had a general idea. some very nice moroccan girl helped us out, and we finally found the cutural center. THEN we couldn't find steve & co b/c they were in an area that you had to have a ticket to get into. we could have called him, but vivi and natalie had the phone. all we had was a business card for steve, and my sad, sad attempt at writing the english equivalent of arabic words to tell a taxi driver where to go (which didn't work, BTW, b/c my accent stinks!). anyway, we met up with them finally at 8:15pm. we got into the concert hall-type place, and . . . . . . . . .sat for 2 hour b/f the concert finally began. people work on MST--Moroccan Standard Time around here. when we got there there were about 4 other folks in the room. it was sad b/c this was supposed to be a benefit for the kid with the heart condition, but nobody gives out of their own pocket. they don't see a need for it, which is odd to me since one of the core teachings of the koran is alms to the poor. whatever. we found out after we left that the people in the first three rows were the only ones that paid. the larger, back of the room was pretty full. i guess a couple of hundred dirhams is better than nothing, but when you have to raise 65, 000 it didn't seem like a whole lot.

the music was fun. we could kind of understand about 2 words out of each of the three songs that we stayed for--mohamad and shokran. each song lasted about 7-8 minutes, and were loud and lively. i wish i wasn't so tired as we were sitting there. it made it hard to seem like i was having a good time. i WAS really loving the music, but i'm sure my face looked like a sleepy mess. this music was full of drums and percussion just like i like it. there were stringed instruments, and horns. it was fun. steve and ruthie had to leave to pick up a friend, and we rode home with them in their brand new car complete with AIR CONDITIONING!!!! we would have stayed at the concert longer, but neither of us had planned for tomorrow, and we just moved to ed's house today so none of our stuff was settled yet. plus, we got a sweet ride for FREE!

too bad vivi wasn't there to belly dance for us tonight. we found out on saturday that she was a belly dancer for 15 years. . . .like she learned at a class at her local YWCA, and then took over teaching the class. she met her husband while performing as a belly dancer. he plays some kind of stringed instrument used in arabic music, and she hired his band for a recital for her students. she is a laugh riot. you just honestly never know what is going to come out of her mouth. she seems like she would be good friends with tom watson. we keep telling her that, and she has some smart-aleck comment to make each and every time. it's hysterical. she refuses to tell us how old she is because--and i quote--"my age just pisses me off. it's not a reflection of what i can still do!" we keep telling her that we are going to steal her passport to see when her birthday is. she now carries it on her person at all times to prohibit that from happening.

okay, it's WAY past my bedtime. love you guys! 8 days of school and counting!