shta, shta, shta!**

For some reason, my host mom sometimes repeats things, like a single word, 3 times. I think it might be b/c the last student did. Or maybe it's a typical thing here. Hard to know. Today seems to merit it, though, from all of the 'shta'-ing that happened.

Tonight there was a concert for free at the school's residence. I went over and saw that it was some sort of drumming group. They also had something like a tambourine as well as 2 long horn things (silver colored and seriously like 6-8 ft long when assembled) and two short oboe-ish things (dunno, reed instrument that reminded me of a recorder due to its open finger holes).

Here, people don't just listen to music. They clap. They sing along. They dance (shta). So I think that for these groups it must be really weird to play for Americans who don't know when to clap. Or any of the words. And sit and watch politely and silently. One of the drum/tambourine players would motion at us to all clap along, and it would happen for a bit. Then he came down and started trying to encourage people to stand up. We were sitting in the front row & felt like we should play along, so me & 2 others got up. We found ourselves soon drug along into dancing. Sometimes there would be two rows of people facing each other, and it was like a scene from West Side Story, as one person later said, as a person from one side would show the rest a movement and then the group would walk up the other row doing the movement (shaking a finger, clapping a certain way, kicking, holding hands and bringing them up in the others' faces, anything it seemed) and then back off. Then it was the other guys' turn to step up.

There was some really cool dancing, too. Some of the guys could do some cool footwork with jumping around - one of the American girls said it looked like they were made for stepping. And some of the dancing looks sooooooooo suggestive to us. It's funny that I, a person who has no hesitation dancing in ways that are absolutely suggestive (in the right company,) am surprised by it. But there is lots of hip and lots of shoulder movement. After a while, an older lady (guessing by her face alone, her body and hair were all covered) started dancing. And WHOA could she move. It was amazing. She danced with me for a little bit and I tried to imitate her movements. After maybe 15 seconds of one, she'd add something or change something and I'd try to follow along, mostly just mesmerized that her hips and torso could still be attached while doing all of those things.

We also had cookies and tea and got rose water sprinkled on us (traditional for the type of music, apparently for religious reasons as well as cooling affects) but, seriously, at one point I thought that I might just collapse from jumping around so much. And I was wearing a linen dress that went just past my knees. I can't imagine in a long-sleeved jellaba, with a full outfit underneath, how they keep going. I know, I know, they're used to it. But you know what I mean.

** Disclaimer: I keep mixing up the words for rain and dance because they're pretty similar to me as a non-speaker-of-the-language. I think this is dance... and that rain is 'stash'... but I could have it backwards. Or both of them wrong, come to think of it....