Must. Eat. More. Howli....I mean sheep...

First things first, I survived Aed el-Kbir, the biggest holiday in Islam.  This holiday commemorates the story of Ibrahim and Ismael in the Quran; the same story is told in the the Torah and the Bible with Abraham and Issac.  Basically, Ibrahim was about to sacrifice his only son to demonstrate his faith and submission to God when a goat/sheep appeared "in the thicket."  God told Ibrahim to sacrifice the goat/sheep instead.  Alas, we have Aed el-Kbir.

Now, you may be wondering why I chose the term "survived." Well, let's just say there was a lot of animal sacrifice going on.  My family slaughtered nine sheep - one for every married male member of the household.

These are the first few sheep that arrived...if only they knew what was coming.

This one knew all too well...

The open sewer full of blood must have alerted this one to his impending doom.

 We ate every single part of that sheep for five days. I ate kidney, intestine fat, liver, heart, stomach, head, eye sockets, legs, etc.  Every morning for breakfast we ate liver kabobs swathed in intestine liver.  Mmmm, scrumptious.

These cutie-pies are my twin 10-year-old host siblings, Simo and Mouniya.  Those legs were our lunch the next day.

L'Aed is also a time when everyone gets dressed-up and receives presents - usually presents of clothes, but I thought I'd do it American style and give "stuff." The day was quite exciting, what with all the slaughtering going on and the hoo-ing and haw-ing over all the meat and how zwinin (beautiful) we all looked in our l'Aed outfits.  Just to clarify though, our family only made us, the foreigners, wear traditional, Moroccan clothing.  Everyone else was wearing suits and dresses.

 I must thank my dear cousins for this beautiful bubble-gum look.  Note the red sequined headband.

The haze in this picture is due to the common practice of grilling inside the home.  Don't ask why.  Never, ever ask why

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Five days of eating meat, and only meat, three meals a day, does not help with digestive issues.  This was definitely a great holiday to experience, but if I miss it in the future, my stomach will thank me.  L'Aed concluded our first home stay experience, so now I'm off to my new and exciting adventure in the South.  Wish me luck.