Day 20 - Going Native

I continue to have no idea what the relationships are here between family, friends, etc.  People kind of just wander in and out, they often stay just long enough to say hello, and then wander back out the door no more than a minute later.  I’m not sure how far they’re coming from for such a short visit, although we do live behind the Mosque, so maybe they are dropping by after their religious services or something at least some of the time.  There’s one boy that showed up about 3 days ago, and he now seems to spend almost the entire day here, but he doesn’t spend too much time talking to most of the family, and no one made any attempt to introduce him to me.  The best guess I’ve got is that maybe one of the 28-year olds are engaged to him or something, but if that’s not it than I’m completely baffled.  I’m not even sure where he is in the house the majority of the time, as he seems to spend very little time in the common room where most people relax.  So far he only wanders out for some meals and soccer games (that Madrid game was both awesome and ridiculous by the way.  Poor Atletico… good thing I prefer Real – not that I actually watch soccer when I’m not being forced into it.)  We had lessons today in African-style drumming and dancing.  The drumming went significantly smoother than the dancing, although none of us were particularly good at either.  I now have a lot more respect for drummers in general, even though they’re job is just to keep the beat, it’s really not as easy as it seems.  We were all terrible at the dance.  I think that I’ve decided that even one of us could have done it perfectly, their style of dancing just seems ridiculous when it’s a white person doing it.  It’s just too tribal looking for us to pull off.  I think I’ll leave the dancing to the true Africans from now on.  Unfortunately, it appears that video was taken of a significant portion of this class, so you all may get your chance to laugh at our non-existent skills.