Summer, summer, summer

Well, let me start by saying Happy Summer now that it's officially l'été. And thankfully, summer has finally shown up in France. After weeks and weeks of sweater and coat weather, we finally hit mid-20°C weather this week.
Literacy classes ended yesterday which was a bit sad. We didn't have classes for our final day, but rather made up tea and snacks and just chatted for about an hour or so. The ladies are all pretty singularly focused. They all leave for Morocco in the coming weeks and are all talking about what to bring with them and what to buy once they get there. It's fun to see how excited they are.
Also, the prospect of heading home has them even more jolly than ever. They're always trying to find spouses for their children, so they often encourage us to marry their sons. We, in turn, reject them, and it's become an ongoing joke. Yesterday, one of the ladies started trying to pawn off her son on one of us. She started first on my soon-to-be-40 colleague who said, "Well, I don't know your son, and in my culture, we don't marry people we don't know."
This particular mother is one of my students, and she's a real joker, this one. We'd had a conversation lesson the other day, and I'd asked her to describe her daughter. She told me that her daughter has 4 eyes and 2 noses and sleeps in the back of a truck. So, later, when she insisted that I marry her 34 year old son, I said, "No thanks. Sounds like your kids have some problems. I don't think I'll be able to marry someone with extra noses and such."
She laughed about this for a while and then moved on to tell some of the interns working with us that one of them should marry her son. The girls don't speak French yet, so they sat there, wide eyed and confused. My colleague explained that the girls couldn't marry her son either, because they don't speak French. Another one of the ladies said, "Perfect! That's even better....then they can't argue!"
They also were consistently watching how luch food they ate. I asked one why whe was so partcularly concerned about her eating, and she patted her belly and said, "Régime." (Diet) She explained that she's headed to Morocco and to the beach, and while she'll still be wearing her ankle length dress and scarf in her hair, every women has to be thin at the beach. This made me laugh. The image seems so incongruous.
Anyway, it was sad to see them all go. They've promised to be back next year, but they probably will show up late--around October maybe-- and I leave in December. My time here is winding down, and it's bittersweet. I miss home, but I will always love these ladies.