Day 10: Last Day

Much delayed post from monday because I don't have wi-fi in my home, but here goes. 

Today was our last full day in the hotel. We had our Arabic class in the morning, lunch at ALIF at noon, and then Lla MJ's class in the afternoon. After class, we hung out in the hotel and got some work done before dinner. For dinner, we celebrated our last night all together by going to Casa Nostra (surprise! surprise!). 

Afterwards, we went to a hookah bar that Christie and Ron had been shown that day. Hookahs are devices that look like lamps and are used to smoke tobacco. They pass the smoke through water to cool it down, so it is easier on the lungs than smoking something like a cigar or cigarette. The tobacco smoked is combined with molasses and comes in the form of a paste, usually enhanced by a fruity flavor like apple, grape, mint, mango, orange, vanilla, etc. As a note, smoking extreme amounts of tobacco has been shown to be harmful to your health and hookah is no less harmful than smoking cigarettes. The hookah 8 of us rented came with apple-flavored sheesha (the tobacco). I tried it and it tasted almost like eating an apple, coupled with the excitement of feeling like a dragon as the smoke came out of your mouth. It was nice to check the hookah checkbox on my checklist for life, but it's not something I'm going to start running out to do on a daily basis. 

After hanging out at the hookah bar for an hour, we went back to the hotel to pack. We all rendezvous'd in Alice and Christie's room at 11:30 to hang out for a while on our last night. While we will miss living together, we're still going to spend most of the day together and are excited to move on to the next part of our trip tomorrow.