Onion

We apologize for not posting in a while. We've been in Kenya with Ashley's parents where we went to a rural 'town' in the northern part of the country and then did a safari. We haven't had internet access, which has unfortunately caused me to fall behind in my soap-operas. Regardless, we are alive and well--we leave tomorrow morning for London and we'll finally arrive in Jackson at 10:00pm-ish on Saturday night! It's been a long strange trip (yes, that's a nod to Bill Walton...for those of you in the know), and we are so appreciative for people to share this experience with. We can't wait to talk with you all and share more about this summer. We feel like we've grown and learned a lot.


In conclusion, we'd like to confess that we've made many, many mistakes this summer...a few of which we've already told you about. Mainly these mistakes have been the result of our attempts to speak with Moroccans in their dialect of Arabic. We've told you about calling ourselves donkeys, and I (Ben) think I even called myself my own husband. We've also kept speaking Moroccan Arabic to Kenyans (who speak English and Swahili), but we're used to being foolish, strange foreigners.

One example of these kinds of mis-communications happened early on when we were taking language classes in Casablanca. When leaving one day from class we told our teacher Besla, which we thought meant "Good bye." "Good bye", however, is actually pronounced Beslama (which literally means 'with peace'). Besla in Moroccan Arabic is actually the market word for "onion." So our language teacher cocked her head, stared blankly at us, and then walked away without a word.

So, in honor of our stupidity, we would like to say "onion" Morocco. "Onion" Kenya. It's been a long strange trip, but we wish you a very sincere Besla.