Eid Eve

Our sheep has arrived.

Road to the Sahara

Last week my semester abroad program went on a scheduled trip to the Sahara which was more impressive than I imagined. Of course, you don’t just appear in the Sahara from Rabat, you have a long drive in crazy Moroccan traffic first. According to a Moroccan friend of mine, there was a documentary about a French NGO that worked primarily in Senegal; however, their primary complaint did not come from crime, disease or culture shock, but rather it came from the danger of Moroccan roads. I’m not sure why they didn’t just fly. Nonetheless, I can honestly say that this sentiment does not come solely from the fact Moroccan drivers love to speed or that pedestrians cross when they feel like it, despite the size of the road. This danger also comes from the existence of cliff side roads that barely fit two lane traffic and provide only a fragile barrier between the Kingdom of Morocco and a 500 foot drop into the Kingdom of Heaven. إن شاء الله

Anyway, on the way to the desert we were given a tour of the Alakhayan University, the most prestigious private university of Morocco located in Ifrane. As described by David, it was like driving to a fairy tale as we into the lush city of Ifrane drove from dry farmland and villages. Some related the stop to being teleported to Ireland, but I thought it was moderately leafy, not quite verdant. Although it was beautiful there, filled with young people and home to the second largest library in Morocco, I am glad I chose Rabat and not that University for my semester abroad because the primary language there is English and I would not have had a home stay. Then again, it snows in Ifrane–you should google it.
We finally got to the first night’s hotel which was the enjoyable location with a great buffet dinner. We drank our fill of mint tea, hung out at the pool and the rooftop. This night I was put back the view of the sky. Not a cloud in the sky and no city nearby, we could see stars clearly even at the horizon. The next day we would set off to the actual desert and not the “near desert zone.”

Below is a picture of another tour we had. It was of a business where they go and search for stone in the dessert with fossils in order to turn them into furniture. The first is photo is probably going to become a table and the latter will probably be a centerpiece.

Shout out to Fanta’s blog Ifrane, Gnawa Music & The Sahara (fantameetsmorocco.wordpress.com)

Rice Pudding

Mama Amina has been trying to fatten me up with the amount of food she gives me. Remember every meal comes with bread except one. That meal would be rice pudding (arroz con leche). I write that because in Arabic it’s “Ruz m3 halib” or rice with milk. It is good but I’m still confused what kind of meal it is. I once got it as dessert, another time as breakfast and tonight as dinner. Either way I need to find a way to not be fat; maybe the trip to the desert this weekend will help. Hope I get eggs tomorrow morning though. I never know what is next. Also on the fattening team is my host sister who is being super Moroccan towards me. What do I mean? She brought me up food for dinner and asked for my laundry and garbage. Then when I tried to help with both she fought me tooth and nail. Or she doubly refused and wouldn’t tell me where either goes just so I couldn’t help. I guess I am the third oldest in the house. Someone talk to Tessa.

Here’s a photo of us being tourists. I may or may not despise one of these people. I may or may not highly enjoy many of them.

 

 

 

 

Nightlife – Morninglife

Recently, I went shopping with a fellow student in the Medina and got myself a pair of the Moroccan slippers in the ever so popular royal colour, yellow. Of course you can get them in any colour as seen in the photo below.

Last night though, I got to see what Rabat night life is all about. At first, about 25 of us just gathered at a nearby restaurant to celebrate one of our classmate’s 21st birthday which was pretty nice. The wine selection was delicious and we were in a lounge area which was a bunch of chairs tables and couches with a view through big glass windows of the street below. Very comfortable. After a long time of enjoying the people I know and getting to know the people I’ve been meaning to hang out with it was time to bring the near sloppy people home and such. It’s nice to see we are in that part of the program where admitting/acting on their crushes for each other. As for me, I simply accompanied someone to her house because she lives in a sketchy part of the medina.

After, a group of three invited me to go out to Rabat-Agdal which is where most of the night life is here in Rabat. I was surprised to see such an amount of liveliness. Apparently I should not have been. One of our classmates lives in a dorm with a Tunisian instead of a homestay but it has a ridiculous curfew of 11pm. So AFTER making sure she had a place to stay we went to the first place, Upstairs. Oddly named because it only has one floor. This reminded me of Charleston. Tightly packed bar, most people had huge beer mugs filled with what was on draught and the band’s singer had an Amy Winehouse range voice. Naturally, I had some of that Speziale. There was a guy who walked up to tables who did magic and it was really impressive. We went on to what’s called the Cotton Club afterwards which also had live music and we met some fun people there. We actually got a free ride home after we made friends with a drunk guy from Wales and his designated driver/brother-in-law.

Woke up this morning and went for a run with my host-bro. It is very bearable to run in the morning here as opposed to the afternoon. The beach was full of people playing football and I actually saw quite a few other people running. Mostly older people though. We ran past a group standing around who were obviously Americans in a different study abroad program and when I locked eyes with one of the ladies I did a typical nod and smile that I would do if I was on a run in Annapolis. Usually I get back a smile or wave but I forgot, this is Morocco where the American ladies get cat-called and semi-followed pretty often and I look like a Moroccan. Therefore, she just made a panicked face and looked away. This is racism, but I can’t blame her, she probably though we would stop and start talking to them in broken English saying things like “hey Lady Gaga, I love Obama.”

I almost always order kahwa halib/café au lait/cafe con leche at the cafés.

End of First Week

Well, there goes my first week of school. Counting Darija, I had up to 14 hours of Arabic instruction and over 10 hours of instruction in French. I still suck at both. Also, the way class is designed, I am still as tired as I would be at the Academy. Mondays I have like 6 hours in a row of classes which would never happen at the Academy. Noon meal formation sounds like a good break. I might have to drop a class against my will though. Then again, I will probably just audit it anyway. What am I going to do with a two hour break in between classes?

Signed up for the Marine House gym at the embassy so now I can work out over there. Probably not going to happen unless I find a book bag. Also, I don’t know if they have a shower over there yet. Either way, I probably should do something about working out even though I have a weird schedule.

So in Gender Relations I was singled out as an Arabic major and as a guy taking this course. She said she values when there’s male opinions in the room for such a class. I gave my opinion on a quote and I was told my opinion was wrong. I am pretty sure this is going to be fun class, especially due to the fact that I actually do readings unlike the average scholar.

Here’s Holly’s capture of what walking in the Medina at night looks like.

Moroccan-American Mixer

The centre put together a mixer for us to meet some collegiate Moroccans that I thought went pretty well. We met on the roof of the centre building and with some refreshments, talked in Darija, English and French with some cool people. A majority of them study something related to language or social sciences, from actually majoring in English to linguistics or international relations. I would say communicating with different people in Darija helps the most because different people notice different deficiencies. It is always funny to run into the minority of Moroccans who speak English with an extremely British accent. At least for me, it seems to mask that they also have an Arab accent behind the British one more than if they spoke American English. I think some of my fellow Arabic students felt a bit young since most of the Moroccans were 21-24 range and already in the process of job hunting. It is a different time when you see the light of the end of the tunnel, and I’m one of only two seniors in our group. Two months until I find out what I will be generally doing for the next five years of my life.

First Day of School

Well, waking up at 0700 for school was not bad at all (even though my sleep is always interrupted by 0530 prayer call). Mum put together breakfast for me and packed me a good pasta lunch and I was off to class. I have about a 30 minute walk (24 minutes if I’m power walking like I was today.) Today my classes were Arabic (which I have everyday), French taught Maghrebian Lit, French class, and French Taught Islam in North Africa. Each class is two hours, so I was plenty beat to say the least. I may have to drop a course but we will see. I really like the amount of French I’m being beat with; I hope this unlocks my ability to speak. I read pretty competently and I did not have trouble understanding in my classes but I have not practised speaking enough to sound competent. I have been stuck on listening to Maitre Gims though. Maybe I should just pick up his accent. I finally bought notebooks and just so you know, notebooks here have way more lines than college ruled. It’s like super graph paper. Also, street Moroccans seem to not GAF about picking their noses in public. Maybe it’s a Rabat thing. My Maghrebian Lit prof greatly emphasized the bilingualism of the state. Before, I thought of it being very similar to my little piece of the US where people interchangeably use English and Spanish, even when conducting business. However, it is nothing in comparison to what goes on here. Even in school, the language of instruction may change within a sentence. Or when conducting official correspondence with the government,  the response may be in French even if the inquiry was in Arabic. If you are a literate Moroccan, you are expected to be able to read competently in French and Arabic, and probably in that order. I find myself relying on my French more rather English when I don’t know a word in Darija. #TeamMintTea

Third Weekly

“Interesting experience”

This weekend we really learned how powerful the “walk away” maneuver is when conducting haggling. Upon arriving to Casablanca we were approached by several taxi drivers, some of 3 passenger cars (petit taxis) and a couple who had 6 passenger cars (stretch sedans). We discussed getting to the hotel and pricing with the men. The petit taxi drivers were trying to split us into threes and charge us 100 dirham per group and the stretch sedan driver was offering us 200 dirhams for all of us. We were savvy and knew that this was a ploy to trick the tourist so we offered a hundred for all of us and the men agreed that nobody would take only 100 dirham for a group of six. We then replied with a thanks and began to pretend like we were going to walk the 7.5km to the hotel. The stretch sedan driver walked up to us as we left and offered us the ride for 100 dirham which is less than 14USD.

Babylone – Zina

Shout out to my host brother for showing me this Algerian band. I like the music and they use a lot of words found in Darija. Hopefully, I learn something.

Mi Casa es tu casa

First time in Casablanca this weekend. After a ridiculous amount of discussion of when we were going and where we were going to stay, we fractured into smaller planning pods and about 8 of us went to Casablanca for the weekend. It was funny that just about every Moroccan we mentioned this to simply said there’s nothing really to see besides the Hassan II mosque and nightlife. Well the mosque takes about ten minutes so nightlife it is.

We stayed at the Villa Blanco or something like that hotel which was very nice a mon avis. This hotel had its own bar/club scene but it was an older crowd and not really much dancing so we stuck with the plan of getting tables with a friend of a friend/local at a “Jazz” place. The hotel was a short cab ride from the strip with all the bars, clubs and entertainment and it was all very lively. At our place, there ended up being a live band from Atlanta that had a great performance playing anything from 90s rock, 2000s hip hop to contemporary radio songs. The table service was great for the pricing and I always love having a clean place to sit, especially when it comes with someone to pour your drinks for you and clean up spilled ice. I legitimately had fun dancing at the club, and it wasn’t even salsa. We got to the “jazz” place at 12:40 AM after hanging out at the place downstairs of our hotel and we left, closing the place down at about 4:45 AM.

Today after checking out we went to the beach which had great sand and then to Rick’s Cafe, a quaint little joint. The funniest little point of the day might have been when we were on the beach. Some man opened put out a bunch of beach umbrellas near us. Naturally, we rolled over a foot and a half to get under the shade which was so wonderful. After half an hour, a little boy comes up to us and speaks to us in Darija and Disa tells him “no thank you,” in Arabic because he sounded like he was asking for money like most random little Moroccan boys you run into. He kept saying different things that we did not understand and Disa kept saying, “no, no, go, go, bye,” but he just stood there silently for about a minute and a half. Then yelled “forget you” in Darija, picked up the umbrella and ran away with our shade. Seemed like the umbrellas were for rent and the boy was working for the umbrella vendor. School tomorrow, yala.