Tnayn u eshrin

22. We learned numbers today in Arabic lessons and that's how you pronounce my age.

Today I was in the small play center alone because one of the children's hospital volunteers has been really sick and she finally stayed home. Turns out she has bronchitis. Luckily I don't a share room with her so I should be safe. Anyways, I was flying solo and I had a kid that I was trying to speak Arabic with, heh. He asked me my age, of course I didn't know that's what he was saying, but even if he had, I wouldn't know how to say it. Now I do. He ended up writing his age down, 16, and then I wrote mine. He seemed to be thoroughly surprised by either my youth or oldness....

Nothing too exciting happened today at the hospital...I was alone in the small room as previously stated. I will say that none other than Yasir (he's the boy from a previous post) walked in and ran over to me, hugged me, and exclaimed "Hanna!!". Let me just say, my heart skipped a beat. He remembered my name!! He didn't get to stay in the room so that was all I saw of him today, but still, it was awesome!

Today I had kids that were much more visibly ill. The 16 year old mentioned above had only one leg, two other boys were caring bags for their, shall we say, "fluids" to exit their body. It was really quite heart-breaking. I had some trouble makers, but also some beautiful little kids that seemed to enjoy their hospital break.

After lunch as I said we had an Arabic lesson and then I went to the Archaeological Museum and Villa Des Arts with Adrian, Erin, and Alex. It was kind of dinky. I know I've been spoiled in my museum-going life (the Louvre, Prado, MET, Tate, even the VMFA) but this one was just hysterically lacking. There were definitely some cool scripts that my Islamic Arts class came in handy identifying back from Junior year in college. However, the lighting was poor, the name cards were peeling off the wall and browning, etc. But, hey, there was a Roman copy of a statue of Ptolemy.

Following this we wandered around until we found the Villa des Artes which was simply stunning. Beautiful landscaping and architecture. Sorry, no pictures to show you, I took only my film camera...when I come home I'll post some. Sadly there was no exhibition up but there will be one on Tuesday so I plan on going back. After this the four of us wandered a bit down Rue de Mohammed V (I think that's right, it might be Rue d' Mohammed V) which is pretty much the big cahuna of roads within the city of Rabat. The city area reminded me very much of Barcelona, just a bit dirtier. It was nice to see a different side of Rabat. And to top it off we went into some little Patisserie that had sinful looking treats and desserts. I of course got a chocolate (duh) cake-type thing which I plan on eating after dinner. (I'll let you know how it is.)

That's all for now.

Bslama!