Happy Easter!

Salut tout le monde!
I can't believe it's been almost a month since I last updated my blog; time seems to be passing quicker, but my countdown to summer vacation still seems to creep along. I've been in M'Bout for about three weeks now, since my last trip to Boghe/Kaedi, and we've had the center open for classes five afternoons a week. We teach the girls about three times a week, and then adult /mentor classes the other two days. It's been awhile since I've worked a five-day work week like that, and it is tiring! By the time our day off rolls around, I'm ready to sleep in and chill out at John's house for the better part of the day. Saturdays are definately the most tiring with four hours of girls' computer lessons in the morning, and then an hour or two of adult English club in the afternoon. It seems like my life changed so quickly once we got the center activities up and running; we went from wandering around town for a few hours each day talking to people about a center that we didn't even have yet, to being at the center five afternoons a week and having a real "office" space to work and a group of girls to teach.
The hot season has arrived and is beginning to affect everyone's daily activities: at my host family's house, we've started doing everything about 30 minutes earlier in the morning, more naps in the afternoon during the hottest part of the day, and then not really going out again until about 5 in the evening. I know that my dad is going to say, "Oh yeah, sounds really rough. Taking a nap every afternoon," but I can't say that it's a very good sleep when you wake up soaked with sweat on whatever area you had touching the mat. (I prefer side-sleeping now because it leaves the least surface area touching the mattress.) Everyone's starting to look forward to the rainy season: it's more humid, but things cool down significantly after the rain passes, there's grass everywhere, and the rivers, lakes, and wells fill back up.
I still really enjoy spending time with my host family. Now that my Hassaniya is better, I can understand more of the conversations going on around me and initiate conversation as well. One night, I was sitting outside my family's boutique with my host sister Halima and wondering if she knew the same star constellations that I do: Big Dipper, Little Dipper, Orion, etc. I asked her in Hassaniya, "Do you see those stars?"
"Yes," she responded.
"Do you see the spoon (Big Dipper) that the stars make?"
"Huh?"
"You see those stars," I pointed, "One, two, three..."
"No, no, no. Stop!" she urged. "That's not a good idea."
"To count the stars?"
"It's not good. You have your stars and I have mine." I didn't have the language skills to ask her exactly why we shouldn't count the stars, but I like this idea. "You have your stars and I have mine": Like the stars were given to each individual to decide exactly how they want to interpret them. How they want to see them. And yet we know that they're exactly the same no matter where you are in the world.