Superstition

So apparently one isn't supposed to talk about baby for the first twenty-four hours in case something awful happens. I took it as a personal attack. My bad.

The house has been entirely empty. I went home after Arabic yesterday to find no one there. I went to bed at 10pm and still no one was there. I woke up to find that breakfast had been left for me on the table. Later in the morning, Mother walked into my room without knocking and I was in the process of getting dressed. There was no request for pardon.

Gender this morning was... not interesting. The syllabus made it sound like we were going to talk about how al-mourshidaat (gov't sponsored women's program to get really educated ladies out there educating other ladies) has taken off to a rocky start. Instead, an hour and a half of my life was spent staring into space while the professor discussed the literary aspect of the article instead of its relevance to the real world.

I did not go home for lunch. Instead, I ate Brahim's food, and it was absolutely delicious. I smiled as I realized that my lunch held every color of the rainbow, red for tomatoes, orange for carots, yellow for potatoes, green for beans and also lettuce, blue for my entire Nalgene that I drank, and finally purple for beets. I do believe that I have finally fully recovered from Friday's illness.

The sun is shining. I've been sitting outside on the terrace working on tanning... the backs of my hands. It's still quite cool, so I, foolishly (and sensibly) kept my shirt on. Some of the other girls, however, have opted otherwise. It is hshuma for sure, but at least they'll go back to America with nice tank top tan lines. Morocco had been famous for its fabulously mild winters but I guess that was just not in the cards for us. Even now, in proper spring time it is much too cool and the clouds on the far eastern horizon don't look much like gentile cotton balls.

I got back all of my mid terms, and I got an A- on all of them. I am furious with myself. I need to get on the ball and polish off a perfect semester.

I want to apoligize for my extreme swings in behavior. Morocco likes to play with my mind. While I do love it here, I hate it as well. I do not find myself saying that this was the best thing ever (like I have with Exeter or either Outward Bound experience). I shall take the next four and a half weeks as I would the end of any normal semester. It is hard to not have a library to retreat to but I'll have to settle for overpriced cafés with rude waiters instead.

Baby

Hanane's baby was born last night at 9pm by Cesarean section in a hospital. I did not know this at the time (I was walking home from a friend's house after having a girls' evening complete with the movie Twilight and homemade pizzas).

This morning Hanane wasn't around. The house was empty when I got out of bed. Mother eventually showed, and I asked her if I could do anything for her as she looked very tired and worried. She said nothing. I asked where Hanane was. She said she had spent the night at a friend's house.

This afternoon I got home for lunch right at 1pm. Mother was putting on her jilaaba and indicated the lunch on the table waiting for me. She said that she wanted to go out and closed the door behind her. My sickness has not fully left me, so I did not eat much.

I was reading in my room when Toufiq stepped in to announce that baby had been born. I expressed my happiness at the event. I did not express how hurt I was that I hadn't been told about it earlier despite asking Mother about it several times.

Mother has been acting very strangely around me lately, and her not telling me about the baby's birth may be linked with the superstition here in Morocco to not talk about a baby for the day after birth for fear of it falling it. I thought of it, at the time, as a means to exclude me from the family, and I still feel that way. Mother acts like she does not trust me nor has faith of any sort in me. This was the icing on the cake.

Weird Weekend

Friday afternoon I was fortunate enough to accompany Kim to her home to partake in couscous. Unfortunately, yours truly got food poisoning from the meat within and has since taken a firm stand in being vegetarian for the rest of my stay in Morocco. The food poisoning manifested as I sat down to dinner at an Italian place Friday evening and I spent more time in the ladies' room than I did at the table. I did not eat a thing but still I helped pay for the meal because that was the right thing to do. I was sick in the street on the one-minute walk home from where the cab dropped me off. I was meant to attend the neighbors' wedding yesterday (Saturday) but was too sick and dehydrated all day to be able to do more than run from my room to the bathroom on occasion.

The neighbors' house is too small to accommodate all of its guests, so half of them came over to eat dinner (at 1.30am) at our house. Amazingly enough, I slept through the entire thing and right on through until 11am this morning. Thankfully, I am now fully recovered. I told Mother that I would not be eating any more meat even though I had never had a problem with what she cooked, and she, amazingly enough, seemed to understand. The tension in the house seems to have gone now.

The rain has returned. It poured most of yesterday and the temperature has plummeted into the low 50's. Today is grey but there is no rain yet. As I type the sun actually came out for three whole seconds. Later in the week it's supposed to come back for good.

Mohammed told me that the baby is due 4 April. The family is so calm. In America we freak out whenever a baby is due but here all is calm. There aren't extravagant baby showers resulting in fifteen different plastic playsets that hold baby's attention for five minutes each. There isn't an upheaval of diapers and frilly baby outfits. There is a crib and that's it as far as preparations that I have seen.

I happened to glance at my Arabic syllabus for the first time in weeks to realize that we are a week behind for some reason. Starting after spring break, we were meant to do a chapter a week, which seemed fast-paced but realistic. Now we have five chapters of this new book, the second in the Al-Kitaab series, to do in four weeks. These chapters are between thirty and forty pages each with upwards of seventy vocabulary words and lots of nit-picky grammar concepts. I don't understand why we were allowed to get behind and it will make the next few weeks really rushed. My family expresses surprise every time I speak to them in Arabic. Toufiq, my brother, says that I speak better than any American he's ever heard. I wish I thought that about myself. I keep doing so well with this language in the classroom but I still don't feel like I know it well at all.

Death

Yesterday I went home for lunch. A handful of women were mopping downstairs where they've been doing lots of drilling and whatnot for the to-be café. I thought nothing of it. I went upstairs to put my things away and Mohammed came to fetch me saying that a cow was downstairs. I verified that we were talking about a cow by saying 'moo,' and followed him downstairs.

Upon seeing the cow I knew it was meant for slaughter. Our neighbors' son is getting married this weekend. I was sat down next to Hanane and right behind the one support column in the entire room. Like all sacrificial scenes in movies, the singing and ululating got louder and louder with each second until the moment of the slitting of the throat which passed in silence. The column hid my view of the actual act and also blocked the initial spray from hitting me (I was wearing white, so thank God).

For an hour total I watched as they tied the legs together to pull the cow off its feet, the actual killing, the casual chat as women went about mopping up the blood, and the two men sharpen their knives time and again to cut off the feet, skin the cow, and properly divide it up. I had to wolf down my lunch in five minutes and run to class.

Oddly enough, it didn't disgust me. I didn't feel sick (though when I got home in the evening the whole house reeked of cow). I watched with a blank face. The animal locked eyes with me after its throat had been slit, so that didn't exactly make me feel warm inside. I had never witnessed death before unless you count squished bugs. A little boy sat by watching and munching on cheese puffs. Mohammed discussed the price of new curtains with Hanane.

Yesterday morning on Souiqa (the main market street that I live only one block from) a women was stabbed by a man who then stole a car, drove to one of the nearby churches, and killed a small boy. The man knew neither party but is allegedly mentally unstable.

Other than that, I watched a movie bought on the street for 5dhm and ate strawberries courtesy of Mother's indulgent shopping experience. Only one month remains with homestay families. We have papers and exams and birthdays up the wazoo in the coming five weeks.

To be blunt, I'm kind of done here. I enjoy Morocco but I've seen enough of it, and I am ready to be back in the States. I was followed by a man this morning from Mohammed V (like Main Street) all the way to the center (i.e. ten minutes' walking). A boy on his motorcycle followed me all the way home yesterday. As the warmer weather comes along, shorter sleeves is a direct correlation to exponential harassment growth. Oh joy.

Terrible Week

A man shoved me out of his way as I was walking to the center the other day. It was an especially forceful shove and it spanned for 180 degrees (whereas the typical shove lasts for maybe 90 degrees of movement). He called me 'bitch' in darija as he passed by. I did nothing other than be in his proximity as he passed by. A man nearby got out of his truck to tell the guy to chill out, so while I appreciated his gesture, the mean nature of this other man tainted my day significantly.

People didn't respond to my requests about going to Alabama in August, so I bought a ticket to Houston. Expedia charged me twice, and I just had a hell of a time calling them, keeping a connection, and sorting it out to get a refund and not credit. It did work out, finally, but now I will not be in Alabama again until December.

I got back my Arabic mid term yesterday (92.5/100). It is by no means bad, but as I got an A in both previous semesters, I will be damned if I get an A- while abroad. We have a quiz today, and I intend on doing perfectly.

Three meals have been eaten in absolute silence in the past two days at my house. It seems that we only talk during meals whenever Mohammed is there, and for whatever reason lately he is only around every other day.

On the good side though, yesterday commenced our weekly informational lectures that will last until the end of the semester. Yesterday 'Abd al-Aziz, one of the Arabic professors and a 6'5" gentleman, presented on the Msid Quranic school. We all sat on the floor reciting Quranic verses after him and wrote on tablets with reed pens and were hit with a stick whenever we messed up our recitations.

It's Really Hot

I am surprised that I am able to say so, but I had to take off my outer shirt once I reached the center for the warmth in the cafeteria. My shoulders are bare; I am so glad to not be in the street right now.

Every single time that I have done laundry rain has followed within a few hours. This is why my clothes have never smelled clean. It is always tainted by dirty rain and doesn't get straight sunshine to dry it out. There was a week of nothing but sun but then I did my laundry and it became cloudy. I am thoroughly annoyed.

Yesterday I had to lock myself in my room because I had a four-page take-home culture mid term to complete, an oral presentation to prepare from scratch, three chapters of gender readings, and a half dozen Arabic exercises to do. It was pretty intense. Mother was gone the whole day helping a friend prepare cakes for a wedding taking place this weekend. Hanane's baby is due in ten days or so.

Amanda G and Anna were not in class yesterday and we later found out that they missed their train from wherever in Portugal to Gibraltar on Sunday, so, إن شاءالله, they made the one yesterday and will be here today. Everybody's breaks went really well and we had a grand time sharing all the details in class.

Photo Album: http://www2.snapfish.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=275641881/a=72121623_72121623/otsc=SHR/otsi=SALBlink/COBRAND_NAME=snapfish

Encore des sourds de Casa

So yesterday I took a long walk just to do something outside of the house. I was walking along the river, ignoring all the men who called out to me, when I saw a pair of guys signing to each other. I smiled to myself, being sure to not make eye contact, as usual, but a minute later I had a tap on my shoulder and there was the deaf pair. They signed in ASL and LSF mostly but wrote in German, so I was really thankful that I have actually studied a small bit of ASL and German. They were really adamant about having coffee with me. They're from Casablanca but not leaving for ten days, so I said that this coming weekend we could go to a café and I will bring my friend Amanda, both for company and her greater ASL skills.

Mother is being less weird about the whole baby-buying ordeal. I've noticed that she goes to bed later than midnight most nights, i.e. the last one to sleep, and that she is always the first one up usually around 7am. I sure wish that I could function on such little sleep, but I am best at nine hours' worth.

Culture class this morning was actually quite good. We had a woman, a child psychiatrist/painter, come to speak to us. Her name is Noufissa Benjelloun, and she actually had an exhibit in Birmingham, Alabama, in the 90's because her sister married an Alabamian and Noufissa moved there for a few years to help her adjust. She is a modern painter but uses brilliant colors. I actually liked her pieces. I believe googling her name will show up with a few of her works. She likes to 'write poems in her paintings.' Sometimes she literally paints the words of a poem and then puts in a few invoking images. Others it's like a series of images in the one painting describing an event or an emotion. Prof Mekouar wouldn't let the poor lady talk, and she was absolutely adorable. She is of the generation that was wholly educated in French, so even though she was born and raised in Fez, she speaks barely as much Arabic as I do.

Last night on the telly there were some interviews being done at the women's center in Fez that I visited. I mentioned to the family that I had been there, and they got very curious indeed. Before I suppose they had just passed it off but this time around they were really interested. I think Mother is really frustrated with her newest boss (her first female boss) and is torn in the women's rights conflict gripping Moroccan society.

I got another letter via snail mail today (that makes three letters, nine cards, and two parcels so far). Mail delivery only happens once or twice a week, and everybody is always anxious to see how many items are for me. Keep up the great work, y'all! I cannot tell you how much it means to me. It's been very difficult to not be able to talk to y'all. I know that calling is expensive and letters are slow, but it's all I've got.

Cell phone: 011+212+652396256
Mail: PO Box 6291
Rabat Instituts
Rabat - MOROCCO 10101

... because people keep asking for it.

Spring Break Debriefing

Photo Album:
http://www2.snapfish.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=275641381/a=72121623_72121623/otsc=SHR/otsi=SALBlink/COBRAND_NAME=snapfish

So I owe it to myself and my future children to live in Europe. IT'S SO BEAUTIFUL! Also, the benefit of speaking at least two languages fluently will be the best possible gift I can give them. Monica, Rebecca, and I plotted how to become classy old ladies living in Europe, smoking and drinking well into our 90's. We came up with thus:
1) own a purple skirt suit and eighty different scarves
2) always wear red or orange lipstick regardless of whether it goes well with your coloring
3) flirt shamelessly with the bartender to get free wine
4) shop for fruit at the market every morning and veggies every evening
5) never go to church but take offense when people say the Lord's name in vain

We're working on the rest of it. You can get the gist of my trip from the photo album previously posted. I am at a café right now and should probably get another coffee. A fuller account may be given later. For now, observe.

Sunday: easy traveling, easy métro travel to the hostel, meandering, dinner at a vegetarian place, window shopping for two hours

Monday: see a cathedral, see the royal palace but forget student ID so pay full price, 3,90€ pasta lunch, siesta, walking in parks, Turkish diner for dinner, wine at a bar afterwards

Tuesday: the foursome splits into two pairs, lots of walking to see Don Quixote and the gorgeous parks, Indian for lunch, Museo de América, small grocery run for next day's lunch, the Prado for free admittance at 6pm, Chinese for dinner, chocolate con churros for dessert

Wednesday: bus to Toledo, Sefardic Jewish museum/synagogue, cathedral, fantastic picnic lunch, chocolate con churros (far superior), Alcázar, El Greco museum (for free during restoration!), meandering, bus back to Madrid, vegetarian place again for dinner

Thursday: return to Prado, pasta and salad lunch made myself in hostel kitchen, meet with Hilary (from BU group) in Plaza Mayor, buy 0,70€ wine, spend an hour finding a corkscrew to open it, have a bread, cheese, and wine picnic in el Retiro park, bought some baby things that Moroccan family asked for, went with Daniella to Turkish diner for dinner, made friends with Jolean, the cook, because I started reading the signs in Arabic, went to his friend's shisha bar, stayed there drinking tea and smoking, argued to be allowed to pay the tab, left at 2am having paid nothing, got invites to stay with the people in their homes in Turkey, Iraq, and Lebanon, and got Jolean's contact information.

Friday: easyJet made me check my bag even though it is regulation size, smooth flight, made a friend with 'Ali on the train from Casablanca, had to turn down invitation for coffee, nine hours total door-to-door from Madrid to Rabat, Moroccan family got weird because what I had bought was not what they had asked for (but it was...), I was too tired to stay up for dinner

Saturday: I sit in a café checking up on things online, in six weeks' time exactly (to the hour) I am on a plane from Paris to Boston, and, again, I do not know where time is going.

Countdown to Madrid: 2 Days

So today is Friday. I didn't do a thing all day long. I sat out on the terrace and read in the sunshine. I helped Hanane to make fun of Toufiq (have I mentioned him before? he's my homestay brother, age 27) because he's been sick and doing nothing to make himself better. He wants to marry either a European or an American, and Shannon, if you're reading this, he thinks you're absolutely gorgeous.

I got three cards, a letter, and a parcel all in the same day, yesterday. The earliest was dated 18 Feb and the latest 28 Feb. Like I said, the mail system here has no sense of punctuality.

I have found the medina's best patisserie, and they have my loyalty to come almost every day and purchase summat. It's absolutely delicious and dirt cheap. I haven't found an item for more than 10dhm ($1.25). I am about to be kicked out. I will be thinking of all of y'all when I am in Spain and trying out my very basic Spanish with the locals. I hope to flamenco a time or two and do a tapas night. You will, of course, hear all about it.

! الحمد الله

al-Hamd Allah! It means 'thanks be to God.' People say it all the time here for good things that have happened, someone sneezing, burping, being sated, etc. You say in sha' Allah 'God willing' for anything taking place in the future.

I just took my Arabic mid term. That thing is one-third of my grade here. I knew all of the vocabulary and all of the grammar but it set me ill-at-ease. Maybe I knew things so well that it just seemed easy. The essay was on the differences between Maghribi women and American women, which is easy enough normally but we just do not have that sort of vocabulary.

I was trying to speak to my teacher in Arabic (from here on out, Arabic refers exclusively to the standard dialect fusHa فصحى) but I kept breaking into French and darija. I speak to Amanda G almost exclusively in ASL now. So much is going on!

A boy on the street had just bought a sweet as I was approaching where he was standing unwrapping it on my walk back to the center. With no ceremony the boy handed it to me and said, "tiens." He could not have been more than eight years old, and I had to insist for an entire minute before he would take it back without my having any.

I have no more class until after spring break. I leave Sunday and return Friday, and I shan't be taking Blanchette with me. It seems like we just got back from the excursion in February, but no. That was a month ago! Ahh! Too fast!

Prophet's Birthday

So, I ate my body weight in ghaifa and Moroccan pancakes smothered in butter and honey in the past two days. Mother bought a ton of cream-filled pastries and sweet buns with chocolate all over them. We had huge breakfasts, bigger lunches, late snacks, and I stayed so full that I went to bed without dinner. Lunch Tuesday was something resembling the entire side of a lamb for all the ribs that were sticking out. The sauce with it was fantastic but I hardly ate any of the meat for it was buried under an inch of fat. There's a custom of two people grabbing a hunk of fat to tear it apart and then be eaten whole. The more I have been here, the more I have been eating vegetarian. I bought a piece of tarte aux pommes for 5dhm and fake Nutella for 15dhm. Last night I had harira (special Moroccan soup with cinnamon and cumin) and an egg with fries. I know that I had about eleven cups of tea and six of coffee in those two days. That's how I celebrated the holiday.

I did lots of studying for the Arabic mid term (which takes place today) and wrote up my gender mid term. The gender mid term is frustrating because it requires zero analysis of anything. All we do for all six pages is summarize the readings we have had thus far. The Arabic mid term will be much more interesting due to the massive vocabulary we have learned. I spent almost seven hours at a café yesterday doing work. I hammamed again last night with Daniella, Anna, and Amanda G. We scrubbed ourselves for over an hour and a half and still there was skin coming off. Then a half hour was spent on soaping and rinsing over and over again. I wish more than anything that we had hammam in the US. One of BU's introductory-levl Arabic professors is currently here visiting and checking up on the programme. She is one of those tiny women who can sneak into any situation and conversation unnoticed. She always has pad of paper in hand and is jotting down notes. She adores the gender professor (so unfortunate). I really don't care for her. I wish they had sent Gavin (my lecturerer from second semester) instead.

March. Mid terms. Spring Break. 70-degree weather. How in God's name is this happening? I do wish that I could stay here longer. Mother said that she will find one of her nephews to marry me but asked that I find her an American husband in return (I found out that her husband passed away more than ten years ago). I told her that I would work on it. Hanane has been doing less and less work as I find myself more comfortable doing things around the house. She's started sleeping in a proper bed instead of on the couch like the rest of the family. She looks like she'll go into labor any day now. I even saw a crib in the downstairs part of the house. Le fête de bébé is still on for 1 April after Hanane had a lengthy discussion with one of her friends as to when her marriage was last March. Weddings take a whole five days here in Morocco, so they were trying to figure out which is the proper date for the anniversary dinner.

I am currently sitting in the sunshine on the CCCL terrace wearing short sleeves. In January, I had never thought such luxury possible. Yesterday I bought a loaf of bread to eat with my fake Nutella and made a friend because the vendor thought I spoke Berber. It was kind of a strange interaction but a good one nonetheless.

Casablanca

So I went with Amanda G and Daniella to Casablanca to meet up with her deaf friend from the US, Vaye. Vaye was born deaf in India but can fully speak both Hindi and English and knows ASL and BSL. He had a friend with him, Josh, who became deaf from meningitis at age 2 who can hardly speak at all. That is beside the point. I had absolutely no problem talking with either of them, and we had such a blast.

We saw the Hassan II mosque, the third largest in the world behind the grand ones in Mecca and Medina. I do believe that it is the square footage of a football field if not more. We walked along the beach talking for almost three hours. We made friends at each dining place we visited. Funnily enough, the first place, le Buffet, had not a buffet but instead prostitutes all in a row smoking in the back. We had couscous for lunch (fantastic) and got a free lesson in Berber. We had a fun time arguing with the man at the front desk of the hotel because we can at 12.15pm to collect our things and he wanted to charge us for an entire second night. We had Josh signing to Vaye, Vaye signing to Amanda, Amanda translating into English to me and Daniella, and me translating into French and Arabic for the receptionist. It was a huge ordeal but we finally won.

That was Friday evening and Saturday during the day. Sunday I stayed in my room mostly to get reading done. Mother made 3kilos of sfa (angel hair cut up with cinnamon, sugar, and raisins) for dinner, and we almost finished it. Today in culture class we discussed the historical novel Abu Masa's Women Neighbors written by the professor's friend, Ahmed Toufiq, who happens to be the minister of religious affairs. The novel lacked plot but was based on a tale from the 14th century so I guess we can excuse that.

TurboTax is telling me that Rockbrook owes me money. I look forward to sorting that out - NOT!

Peer, thine name is Ravenous

Yesterday afternoon we had one-on-one reviews with our professors. I was the third of the four students in my class to go in. The other two had taken a good long time, almost ten minutes each. I sat down, and Hanane, my professor, told me that I had no problems whatsoever and that my Arabic is very good; however, I should try to think more in Arabic because I keep using French sentence structure when I speak. Fair enough. I was in and out in a minute flat. Mid terms are next week, and I am thoroughly put out by the lack of libraries here because I must do all of my studying while sitting on my bed at home and thus be very prone to lying onto my side and falling asleep.

Susanna, the oldest member of the BU student group, has decided to stay here in Morocco for the better part of a year and has a job interview at the American Language Center later this afternoon. She bought a bike yesterday and says that the only difficult thing about riding a bike in Rabat is the Moroccan sense of space is so greatly less than that in America. Cyclists ride side by side so that their knees knock as they pedal, and this is considered normal.

The rain has finally stopped. I was in such a fanciful mood this morning to see the sun and dry streets that I splurged on some goat cheese from Brahim's secret spot for cheese in the medina. I asked for 30dhm worth; the shabb, after much effort and exertion, cut up a hunk worth 50dhm and just shook his head and took the 30dhm for it. I was more than happy to share this enormous bounty of cheese with my fellow students but my generosity took a turn when I left for two minutes to go ask a question downstairs and came back to find that almost two-thirds of the block was gone. The bread I had bought to eat it with was gone as well, so I will take care in the future to avoid such situations.

Amanda G, who has been teaching me ASL, has a deaf friend from the US visiting Casablanca now, and she and I plan to go visit him today. I am quite anxious about meeting a deaf person and speaking to him, to be honest. My family kind of laughs at me when I practice my ASL; they cannot grasp the concept that it is a full language instead of just a sort of code. Signed languages are learned and evolve just as other languages do. People sign in their sleep and dream in sign. Babies will babble in spoken languages and signed languages alike. Signed languages are not universal. LSQ (langage signée québequois) is not understood by ASL speakers and vice versa. I said all of this and more to my family, but still they just started pantomiming, and I went back to my business.

Today I was absolutely devastated to realize that half of the things I had wanted to do in Madrid will not be possible because I arrive at 5.30pm Sunday afternoon and leave Friday. Football games, bullfights, and some of the best open-air markets are on Sundays only and take place early in the day. Still, there are enough museums, parks, cafés, and flamenco bars that I surely can manage without these things in particular.

Last night there was a lecture on the problems of spoken vs. written Arabic. FusHa (standard) Arabic is limited to school and international policy, darija (Moroccan dialect) is the mother tongue of most urban people, median Arabic (between FusHa and darija) is used in local government and on TV, Berber (oldest extant language in Africa) is spoken in most of the rural areas, and only in the past fifteen years have the latter three been written down. The lecturer is a professor of linguistics at l'Université Mohammed V here in Rabat and he kept slipping in and out of French, darija, and English. I had a thoroughly wonderful time understanding every single word that he said.

Could one of y'all comment on whether the links for the photo albums work or not? I put them up and then hear nothing, so I don't know if people are getting to see any of Morocco.

Lastly, and very importantly, tomorrow a nation-wide change in phone numbers is going down. My cell phone is now: (from US 212) 6 52 39 62 56. I look forward to hearing some voices, either there or on Skype.

Rain, Rain, Rain

Photo Album:
http://www2.snapfish.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=275443070/a=72121623_72121623/otsc=SHR/otsi=SALBlink/COBRAND_NAME=snapfish

Excursion pictures! Finally! It won't stop raining! I've had a belly ache for three days now! It's Thursday! Tomorrow is Friday! Not a single person did the gender readings! I have mid terms next week!

On a random note, kumquats are very underrated and very delicious. We got very heated in a debate about women's litteracy campaigns in Africa during gender class, and some people are not talking to each other as a result. I have been learning ASL and Spanish on the side in addition to keeping up with my Arabic and elective studies. As I have been researching about Madrid, I have realized that it is a really big deal and that I will have one hell of a time getting around to seeing even half the things on my list.

Also, I am pretty certain at this point that I will go into Peace Corps following graduation next May, and then do grad school once I am done with that.

Productivity

I finally did something significant in my house yesterday - I did the dishes after lunch! I tried to do them after dinner, too, but Mother came running in and dragged me away from the sink while saying that the soap was not good for my hands.

I took a shower Monday for the first time since last Wednesday. Mother took my bag of dirty clothes from the past two weeks, and there were only two shirts in it (but fourteen pairs of socks and underwear). My sense of cleanliness certainly has been relaxed since I got here.

Brahim, my favorite Berber-Moroccan in the entire cosmos, laughed when I said that I would get fat off of his food and responded, "I love fat women; my wife is fat, and I love her. She is beautiful." He then told me where to buy the best cheese and spices in the medina and promised to have me assist him one day while cooking tagine.

Hanane and Mohammed helped me to do my Arabic homework last night. We just started Al-Kitaab 2, the second book in the textbook series. I had been having some problems with it and even they had problems with it. They looked at the vocabulary and confirmed my suspicions that they were words that are not ever used in daily life.

The rain has been insane. It is January all over again. As I type it is coming down in buckets, cats and dogs, battle axes and swords, whatever term you want to use. I cannot hear the girl next to me as she speaks to me. The forecast says that it will end tomorrow, but I do not believe it.

We did mid-term evaluations on Monday and yesterday had a debriefing session on them. We talked about the problems in culture class (i.e. the fact that there's been no culture, only literature), gender class (i.e. the lack of concrete material and relation to actual women here in Morocco) and Arabic class (i.e. the lack of grades and how it is not so much "intensive Arabic" as it is "really fast-paced Arabic"). I hope that our requests will go far in improving these problems.

I'm Happiest When I'm Cooking and Cleaning

Friday 20 February:
We left for Meknes that morning. Our first stop was in a Jewish cemetery where people are buried in the walls. Following was a stop to a shop, one of only two in the world to specialize in damasain, metal-working in bronze with inlaid silver by hand. It was gorgeous and very cheap for what it was, but that wasn't what I chose to invest in. Instead, I went for the handmade embroidered cloths by nuns in the neighboring village in red. Our guide through Meknes was kind of a jokester, and when he took us to the royal stables nearby, one girl ended up having her hair eaten by an Arab-Berber mix stallion. A block away from the stables was the national golf course. That ended Meknes, and we went afterwards to Volubis, the Roman ruins the furthest south in Africa. The city was absolutely huge. We walked along the main avenue, saw houses, public baths, the hot springs, a dozen almost perfectly-preserved mosaics (which is incredibly considering the damage that the great earthquake that destroyed Lisbon did to the villages surrounding Volubis), a temple to Jupiter, and lots of olive presses. It was absolutely stunning. Lunch was in the hillside village of Moulay Idriss at a maison d'hôtes. The salads were delicious, the tagine was chicken with lemon (again?!), and there was lots of fruit to follow. We went to the terrasse where the hostess (wearing incredibly fanciful shoes) served tea and cookies. The view offered there showed hillsides, valleys, waterfalls, and, of course, the quaintness of the village. We had to get going on our bus once again to head for Chefchaouen. This city is famous for its blue color (think the Chartres of Morocco) and the overwhelming majority of the doors are all painted blue. Monica, Rebecca, and I, after buying a kilo of strawberries for 10dhm ($1.25) searched for the best doors. It took us all over the city, which was wonderful because it was a small enough town that we not only had the opportunity but the time to explore on our own. Dinner that night was couscous at a famous restaurant (chez Hassan) and the hotel had princess beds!

Saturday 21 February:
I stole lots of cookies and cheese from the breakfast buffet. Cold milk and cereal were offered, so I was pretty much the happiest person in the world that morning. We did some more exploration of the city in the form of a casbah museum, bargaining for really thick, handmade sweaters, and fantastic goat cheese for 16dhm/kilo. I loved Chefchaouen very much, possibly more than Fez. We left around noon to head for Ouazzane (pronounced wa-zaan) where we went off of our planned schedule to go to our director, Farah Cherif's, summer home. Not only was Farah (one of the most fabulous women in the entire world) there, but so was most of the CCCL staff to serve as a welcome back! Brahim and Latifah, our favorite cooks, had made a fantastic lunch that we later learned came from the garden ten meters from our tables. Farah gave us a tour of the very historic house, her garden, her olive press (where we saw the pressing of extra-virgin olive oil), and then were given a lecture on sufism (Islamic mysticism). Farah's ancestors came from Ouazzane and somewhere down the line there was a saint who is revered in the town. Farah gave us a tour of the town (it's quite small) and the saint's shrine. Farah told us that we were among the first hundred Americans ever to have seen this town because it wasn't until the CCCL started bringing students there in the 90's that anyone had heard of it. We eventually had to leave the haven and return to Rabat. It was around 9pm when we rolled onto Ave Hassan II, on which one finds the southern entrance to the medina. My family was very happy to see me and I showed them all of my pictures and my silk bedsheet and embroidery.

Sorry to have rushed through the telling of the tale, but it gets tiring telling the same story over and over again. The Internet is terrible (as usual), so picture uploading is slow, but once they're all up, you shall be able to see what I saw, sort of. Next week is mid terms. It is beyond my mental ability to fathom how we are halfway done with this semester. I've done laundry twice. I only just got comfortable walking in the medina by myself at night. I just got to really feel comfortable at my new house. Things are moving too fast!

Thursday evening there was a fabulous jazz concert given by a group of Parisian-Moroccans. It was exclusive to the BU and SIT programs. It was unlike any western jazz that I had heard before. The group was just a saxist, a bassist, and a drummer. The saxist gave a small introduction to each of the ten pieces, and they all came from either southern Spain, Tangiers proper, or southern Morocco. I got a video of two of the songs that I will post when the Internet works properly, God willing, إن شاء الله.

Friday we had a three-hour gender studies class because of the professor's preoccupation with something during our normal class meetings. My notes from the class are not coherent because the professor himself is not coherent. I fear for the mid term in that class.

I went to Marjane Saturday, the Moroccan equivalent of Wal*Mart. Milk and spices are sold in bulk. There's CEREAL! I bought a box and ate it all before I was home that evening. There was an electronics section, a cheap t-shirts and shoes section, a home-maker section, lots and lots of western junk foods, and last, and most crowded, the alcohol room. Moroccans have no sense of "stay to the right" like we do when we walk anywhere in America. People zig zag everywhere and it is mass chaos going in any direction. I was most pleased by the cheese selection.

Last night, Sunday, I had Mexican night with Kim, Monica, Rebecca, and Hilary. We walked up and down the market street and stopped by Label Vie, the small supermarket, to buy tomatoes, onions, avocados, pita bread, crème fraîche, cucumbers, corn, shredded cheese, Coke, parsley, lemons, and garlic. All in all, we paid probably 50dhm for the six kilos of produce we had and no more than 40dhm for the dairy, bread, and Coke. I love this country. We had a grand old time using the tiny counter space and awkward Moroccan kitchen knives to chop up everything. I used a gas stove here for the first time to sauté onions and melt cheese on the bread. The final meal was probably the most delicious thing I have ever had. We all sat and chatted, shared a bottle of red wine, and watched Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist. I helped Kim do the dishes afterwards, as she was the hostess and I wouldn't dare let her do any cleaning up if I could help it. I was practically skipping on my way home that evening. It felt so good to finally cook (and clean) something! I have felt a bit ill-at-ease in having everything done for me. Every time I try to ask Hanane or my mother to let me do something, they insist that they do it. If I press it they will run away and close the kitchen door behind them.

Today we are having couscous lunch here at the center. It is special herbed couscous that is a specialty from the city of Ouazzane. YUM!