Connected, and preparing for Eid

As of today, there is internet in the apartment. This is ridiculously exciting. I anticipate that, among other things, it means that I will update this blog more often than I have been.

Tomorrow I am going to go buy a sheep for my host family. Eid, the holiday in which each household slaughters a ram to commemorate the sacrifice of Isaac (hey, scripture scholars, do I have the right guy here?), is on Wednesday.

They sell them at the Marjane, the local hypermarché.

Apparently, they also sell them in some neighborhoods pretty far from town. Following is, translated, the exact dialogue that I had with my host family as to the whereabouts of these Eid-sheep selling lots (and they do sell them in parking lots, much like moveable eatable white Christmas trees.) In Tetouan, where I was last year before Eid, they sell them in the center of the medina. Here, I saw a sheep being carted on a cart through the medina, but I haven't seen any large-scale sheep lots within the town.

Me: So, where do they sell them here in Rabat?
Host family kids: In [such-and-such] a neighborhood. You have to take a bus there.
Me: So, do you take the sheep on the bus to get back home?

This caused the host family kids to howl with laughter.

Me: So ... if you don't take a bus, how do you get the sheep home.
Host family mother: You take a taxi.
And the kids didn't laugh at that, because it wasn't a joke.

But I thought that it was pretty funny. Of course the sheep gets a taxi.