Twelve Days

Twelve more days until we leave for the U.S.!

I'm starting to feel like a broken record here. Day thirteen didn't hold as much packing progress as I had hoped. And today we're busy with lots of regular life here things that will take up most of the day, so I don't expect to get a lot done (from the list) today either. But we are planning to attend the wedding of a friend tonight that we are excited about. The bride is the sister of our language teacher. We've become close to the entire family and visited in their home many times, but we haven't seen much of them lately. We are excited that we are going to get to see them all once more before we leave for 6 months and grateful that they've invited us to be present at such an important family event. I thought about taking Maya, but the music that they play at weddings is usually so loud it's hard to even speak over it, and I just kept thinking, "permanent hearing damage," so she's going to go to friends'. They may be upset with us for not bringing her, but she would be a mess by that time of night anyway. The invitation says the wedding starts at 8, but we will probably be awkwardly early if we show up any time before 8:30 or 9. It's not actually a wedding ceremony, they do that in the mosque and it's not something that guests go to. This is like the reception--music, dancing, possibly live drummers and sword dancers, eating, etc. The family has a wide mix of conservative and liberal people. One of the sisters married an American, one of the sisters married a very conservative man who asked that she begin covering her head, and the sister getting married today is marrying a Palestinian. We will give a money gift to the couple by depositing it directly into their bank account (the bank name and their account # come printed on the invitation!). I will try to remember to take lots of pictures and video to post tomorrow. In the mean time, this is what Maya is doing lately--sitting up and chatting!