Just another lazy Sunday

This is the second blog that I'm posting in a row, so make sure you scroll down and read my previous entry about traveling!

Just Another Lazy Sunday

Hardly.

So Sunday in a household of women is the hardest day of the week. As a lazy American, I would rather have 7 days of work than the one day of the housework they do here.

Today was pretty typical: They woke me up at 9 to eat breakfast. So my sisters Hasna and Oumayma had already made french toast and coffee. So by 9:20 I had my dirty clothes out of my room and was going to town on my laundry. Hand washing laundry is HARD WORK. A few pieces wouldn't be so hard, but having just gotten back from being gone 8 days at my permanent site and having not done laundry before leaving, I had a ton to catch up on. Usually we use one hand as a scrubber against the other hand, but because I had so much laundry today, they broke out the washboard. I personally felt like the washboard was much harsher on the clothes than just using your hands, but it probably does a better job. The hardest part about hand washing, in my opinion, is wringing out the clothes. It gets so tiring and I try to squeeze every drop out, since it takes so long to dry as it is. So in about 2 and a half hours, I was TIRED but I had finished the laundry and hung it on the clothes line on the roof to dry.

This is a normal routine for Sundays, though usually without the washboard. After that, usually one of my sisters has been working on making lunch since finishing breakfast. (Meals are cooked from scratch daily. It usually takes one sister all day to make all three meals. It's like it's always Thanksgiving. And nobody complains!) When I'm finished with laundry, I usually help get lunch ready. At about 1 we eat a big lunch. Immediately after lunch we finish cleaning the rest of the house, which usually involves changing the covers on the couches and mopping all the floors.

Today, lhamdullah (Thank God), the water is out again and so we can't mop the floors. (The water went out almost the minute I finished all my laundry. Again, lhamdullah! My clothes were FILTHY.) Instead we are cooking a ton. My family decided to invite the other five people from my training group over for Cascarot. Cascarot is supposedly a "snack" between lunch and dinner, but it's usually enough food to count as a whole meal.

So now my two sisters and my mom are busy kneading bread and baking. This will probably last until late afternoon when my friends will hopefully come over and eat Cascarot with us.

So why am I in my room typing this and not out there kneading bread with them? For a couple of reasons. The first is that kneading bread is really difficult and my arms are tired from wringing out my laundry (I have license to be tired though because I'd been traveling for two days). But the second, and most important, reason that I'm not out there working with them is because every Sunday, by the time it is mid-afternoon, I am always ready to pull my hair out because my family is DRIVING ME CRAZY. (Not to mention that I'm FREEZING and all my warm clothes are drying on the roof!)

I really like them a lot and they're great, but there comes a point when one is sick of being made a spectacle. From the second I wake up on Sundays I feel like I'm constantly being scrutinized because I don't do things quite the way they would like me to. Like, when washing my laundry, which I've done every week since I've been here, the three of them just stand behind me watching me! And then often they break in to show me how to do it -- again -- and then watch and make comments like "look at you washing your own clothes! We should take a photo and send it to your mom!" And that was funny the first couple of weeks (and we did take photos) but it's not funny anymore, and I don't appreciate them breathing down my neck. Then I move into the kitchen to help prepare lunch, and I can just do no right in the kitchen. I'm slow at peeling the cucumbers with a knife (which they always point out), I don't know how to peel tomatoes (which they always point out), they show me how to slice cucumbers EVERY SINGLE TIME even when I say I know how, and then they just sit there and watch me do it. There's only so much "constructive" criticism I can take. For the first few weeks it didn't bother me because they were right, I couldn't do anything. But now I can, and it's become like an extended joke that I really don't find funny. So it's now 3 pm and I have told them I have homework and barricaded myself in my room. I do feel a little guilty though because they're preparing Cascarot for MY friends, but I think I'd go crazy if they watched me whisk anything else today. I'm probably especially on edge because I'm so tired from traveling. I wanted to go to sleep early last night but we didn't eat dinner until 11 pm (it'll probably be the same tonight).

LHamdullah, I have school tomorrow.


P.S. After writing this I did go back out to the main room and help bake some msmmin... the whole family watched me -- and a neighbor. The party was a grand success despite my lack of enthusiasm. Cascarot with my five classmates turned into a Hefla (party) of about 14 people. The men left early and it became a dance party once they were gone.