Sick!

I woke up feeling awful today – headache, upset stomach and a bit of a fever. I had hoped to go to the fields with my host sisters, but they left at 7am and I didn't roll out of bed until close to 10. I made an effort to be social and hang out with my host family, but all I really wanted to do was put my pjs on and go to bed. One of the other girls in my training group hadn't had the henna experience yet, so we had made a date for her to come over for henna in the afternoon. Liz arrived after mid-afternoon tea and we spent a couple hours getting henna on our hands. Afterwards we went for a walk in the fields – Mina was kind enough to take us on a walk even though she didn't need to go down for anything.
On our way back home, Liz and I stopped by the family we had our school at. The women wanted to dress us up in traditional clothes and take some pictures with us. Just as they got a beautiful jellaba over my head and a traditional scarf tied on, I started to feel nauseous. We snapped a few quick photos and then quickly took everything off. I felt horrible – I had been excited because we'd been talking about doing this for a few weeks and Sphia and Aicha were so obviously happy to see us when we got there.
Arik and his host brother had stopped by to find out what time we were leaving the next morning and they escorted me home. It was about 8pm and I really just wanted to sleep, but I hadn't eaten much all day and was feeling kind of hungry. I asked Fatima what was for dinner and instead of answering me, asked me why I wanted to know. I told her my stomach was still upset and wondered if she could make me a bowl of rice or sharia to eat. She told me it wasn't a problem and I went and laid down. I was somewhat surprised and also kicking myself when they woke me up for dinner because everyone was eating rice! I should have known that she wouldn't let me eat rice while the rest of the family ate whatever was on the menu for the evening. Instead we all ate out of the huge bowl of rice. It was wonderful – exactly what I wanted, a Moroccan version of comfort food.