Some pictures are up now. Just go to http://photobucket.com/emeline. There is also a link to the right.
If you click on them to make them big, you should be able to see the captions. It takes a really really long time to upload them, though, so I've only put up a few.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
I add an afterthought
Two things about my homestay that I thought were funny:
On the first day, when walking about town, I ran into one of the other students doing a homestay who is in the intermediate class and had a better idea about what was going on. We were each being led around by a rather large group of children. She told me, "they're laughing because they have two of us!"
Also, I had a bonding moment with my "mom" Zoha on Saturday when we laughed at the fact that we both had really big holes in our shoes. That was one of my favorite moments I think. We were sort of sitting out on the stoop... by which I mean the end of the alley where the family's rooms were. We did that a lot, and a lot of other people were sitting out their stoops as well. There's not a lot to do in such a small town as that, and the women don't really work per se, so there's a lot of socializing with the neighbors and relatives. Apparently pretty much everyone in that town is related. Zoha held my hand a lot too, whenever we went anywhere. People hold hands a lot here, and personal space is pretty much reduced to nothing compared with the U.S.
Anyway, I was going to keep a written journal while I was here, but that didn't last more than three days, so this has become my journal of my trip as well as a way of sharing my adventures with everyone. Sorry if I'm writing boring stuff, but I want to be able to remember it later.
On the first day, when walking about town, I ran into one of the other students doing a homestay who is in the intermediate class and had a better idea about what was going on. We were each being led around by a rather large group of children. She told me, "they're laughing because they have two of us!"
Also, I had a bonding moment with my "mom" Zoha on Saturday when we laughed at the fact that we both had really big holes in our shoes. That was one of my favorite moments I think. We were sort of sitting out on the stoop... by which I mean the end of the alley where the family's rooms were. We did that a lot, and a lot of other people were sitting out their stoops as well. There's not a lot to do in such a small town as that, and the women don't really work per se, so there's a lot of socializing with the neighbors and relatives. Apparently pretty much everyone in that town is related. Zoha held my hand a lot too, whenever we went anywhere. People hold hands a lot here, and personal space is pretty much reduced to nothing compared with the U.S.
Anyway, I was going to keep a written journal while I was here, but that didn't last more than three days, so this has become my journal of my trip as well as a way of sharing my adventures with everyone. Sorry if I'm writing boring stuff, but I want to be able to remember it later.
Monday, June 23, 2008
I spend the weekend with a local family
I spent this last weekend with a family in a town about 10 minutes away called Zouia. There are about 250 people who live there, and they have a strong Berber heritage. They used to live in caves, and a lot of families still use their caves for storage, livestock, etc. My family had their kitchen in their cave. Zouia was the original Ifrane (the town that جامعة الاخوين [Al-Akhwayn University] is in), until the French came and decided they needed to build a ski resort, which is the current Ifrane. "Ifr" means rocks, which there are a lot of.
Anyway, we all had the option of doing a homestay for the weekend, but only 8 of us chose to do so, which apparently is a lot more than in past years. They dropped us off on Friday evening and picked us up on Sunday evening. My family had built a concrete house around their cave, adding a hallway, two small living rooms with those giant couches, a bedroom, and a bathroom. The bathroom had a really nice squat toilet. The kitchen was in the cave, but the floor was concrete, and there was a drainage hole. This made it really easy to clean. Remember how in China, they cleaned everything, even the carpet, by throwing water on it? Same thing here (though the carpet was swept, not mopped). To clean, you just sweep everything on the carpet in the living room into the hallway and out the door. Then you throw water on all the floors that don't have carpet and sweep the water into the kitchen and down the drain in the floor. Then you squeegee the floor. I want to buy a squeegee now, it seems like a fun way to clean.
I've only had three weeks of fusHa (standard Arabic), the first two of which were spent learning the alphabet. My family only spoke derija (Arabic dialect) and Berber, so we pretty much only communicated with hand gestures. In Arab culture, people are never by themselves, so the little neighbor girl Fatima was put in charge of me. When we first arrived, we kind of just sat in the living room for about half an hour while I tried to give her my speil about being an American student from the state of Missouri who studies the Arabic language at Al-Akhwayn University, but she didn't really understand a whole lot of it, and I didn't understand anything she said. Then I decided that we should go for a walk outside, so she took me around town, by which I mean she took me through all the fields (as far as I could tell the fields were either for growing peas or grazing their animals) and around the stream. I pointed out all the animals whose names I knew, and she taught me the ones I didn't know. It was actually very pretty. There was a small stream that ran through all the fields, and at times it got deep and wide enough to swim in. To swim is one of the 10 verbs I know, so I actually understood when her brother Yassine told me that he was going to swim in it- which he did. I didn't think "to swim" would be a useful verb to know, but it turns out it was.
After touring the town, we came back to the house and Fatima put henna on my hand. It looks pretty awesome, even though it is obviously not professionally done. After that, someone came back with a kaftan that they put on me so I could take pictures. They also had this big rug thing that was decorated with sparkly thread that I wore over the kaftan. Pictures are hopefully forthcoming. That night we had couscous for dinner. We all sat on the couches in the living room, and a table was brought in. There was a giant communal dish of couscous and vegetables, with broth to pour over it, and lots and lots of bread. The children and I were issued spoons, but the adults ate it with their hands by grabbing some couscous and rolling it around in their palm to form a ball, then eating it. They kept putting bread in front of me. I'd eat a piece, they'd put another down; I'd get halfway through that one, and they'd give me two more. They kept telling me to eat, eat! Our teachers told us this is also part of Arab culture, that guests are offered more and more food even if they decline it. I went to bed pretty soon after dinner, since dinner was at 11. Fatima and I both slept on the same couches we ate dinner at, while the children slept on the couches in the other living room and the adults I think slept in the bedroom.
In the morning, the table was brought back into living room and we had bread and butter and jam and coffee. The coffee was steaming hot milk with Nestlecafe instant coffee and lots of sugar. They offered me a shower, but I declined. Fatima and I went around town some more and took pictures. This time Rashid joined us. Rashid was the son of Zoha, who I am not sure actually lived in the house I stayed in, but was my "mother" for the weekend and cooked in the kitchen there and everything. I think she lived in the same little alleyway, and probably sort of lived in the house, because her house was just a living room and a bathroom, no kitchen or anything. I never figured out how everyone was related or who actually lived there. I didn't realize Fatima didn't live there until the next day when we went to her mother's house. It was pretty awesome that the kid's name was Rashid, though, because in class we made up a story about رشيد الدوب (Rashid the bear) who we always use for examples now. The Arabic word for "bear" is "doob," and "my bear" is "doobie," so some of the guys thought this was hilarious. After taking lots of pictures, we went back for lunch. I watched them make couscous, which took an hour and a half- no wonder it's better than the couscous at home (no offense!) I was so tired, though, that I totally fell asleep. After that, the kids made fun of me and always asked if I wanted to take a nap. After lunch (which was sometime between 2 and 3), they asked again if I wanted to take a shower, and I declined. So Fatima, Yassine, and Rashid took me to the Cascades, this park that was about 10 minutes up the road. It was gorgeous. On the way there we stopped by two guys with horses who asked if we wanted to ride the horses, so we each took turns riding up and down the road. A lot of people were riding horses, and some were riding donkeys. One of the horse-guys spoke some French and offered to pay me money to marry him so he could go to the states. I don't think he was joking.
We spent a few hours at the Cascades, which were really pretty and cool because of all the shade from the trees. I drank some water straight from a little waterfall there. I haven't gotten too sick yet, and that was Saturday. When we got back to the house, I was covered head to toe in dust and dried sweat, and I knew I smelled pretty gross, so when they offered me a shower again, I agreed. They boiled a giant bucketful of water for me, and gave me a stool and a towel. Since I only had one pair of shoes, one of the women even gave me the shoes off her feet to wear while I showered. Then I sat on the stool in the bathroom and poured water on myself using a little cup, and scrubbed down with my Dr. Bronner's. There was a clothesline hanging above the toilet for the towel and my clothes. Since the floor was concrete, and the toilet was on the floor, all the water just goes down the toilet. It was exactly like going to the Hammam in town, but without the 20 naked Moroccan women fighting for the bucket. Afterwards, I helped make dinner by chopping a bunch of herbs that went into this delicious soup. When I went to bed that night, I realized that poor Fatima had to go to bed at the same time I did and wake up at the same time, because I couldn't be alone even when I was asleep.
We had mint tea several times every day, and I finally learned how to make it. You put several spoonfuls of tea into the tea pot, then fill it with boiling water. Then you dump out all the water, and fill it again. Then you put seriously about a half pound of sugar in the tea pot, which you then stuff full of mint leaves. To mix it all up, you pour tea into a big glass, then pour it back into the pot... you do this several times. Then before drinking the tea, you pour it between several glasses to cool it down. Delicious!
On Sunday morning, after breakfast, we went to the souq in Ifrane. Because finding a taxi is so hard in such a small town, we paid some guy who was taking his van into town and was also taking a bunch of other people. We walked around for a while, but it was really hot. We bought some figs and some grapes. I felt kind of bad, because Zoha only had 15 Ds to spend, but when I bought the grapes, all I had was a 100 D bill, which I had to carefully extract from my wallet without showing the other 100 D bills in there. But the program gives the families 200 Ds a night for each student, so I guess it was okay. I also did exactly what everyone tells you not to, and ate the grapes and figs straight from the souq without washing them or peeling them first. There were consequences, but nothing dire. Anyway, Zoha told me she was pregnant, and that the sun was really hot, so we went back home, but not after waiting a long time to get a grand taxi back to Zouia. Grand taxis take six passengers, and when you're not with other AUI or American students who can afford it, you wait for all six seats to be filled. It helps, though, when some of the passengers are really tiny, like Fatima. It turns out Fatima was fifteen, but she looked about nine.
After the souq, we cleaned the house and folded laundry, then made lunch. I'm pretty sure that for lunch I had fried intestines and liver. The intestines tasted like bacon. The liver tasted like liver. We also had this awesome sweet couscous for desert. I think it may have been made with milk, or cream, or buttermilk, or some sort of diary, and it had sugar on top. It was very لذيذ (tasty). We watched some weird TV show after lunch, but I never quite grasped the concept. And then it was time to go home. But my friend Amanda (who also did the homestay in the same town) and I promised that we would come back next weekend to give them some of the pictures we took, so I guess we will be doing that.
Anyway, the first "semester" is almost over, and we have a final exam on Friday. The kids who are only staying 4 weeks leave this weekend, and some new people will be arriving. And now it is time to do my homework, because I have to write a 300 word essay about myself in Arabic, and give a presentation on my homestay. This should be fun!
Anyway, we all had the option of doing a homestay for the weekend, but only 8 of us chose to do so, which apparently is a lot more than in past years. They dropped us off on Friday evening and picked us up on Sunday evening. My family had built a concrete house around their cave, adding a hallway, two small living rooms with those giant couches, a bedroom, and a bathroom. The bathroom had a really nice squat toilet. The kitchen was in the cave, but the floor was concrete, and there was a drainage hole. This made it really easy to clean. Remember how in China, they cleaned everything, even the carpet, by throwing water on it? Same thing here (though the carpet was swept, not mopped). To clean, you just sweep everything on the carpet in the living room into the hallway and out the door. Then you throw water on all the floors that don't have carpet and sweep the water into the kitchen and down the drain in the floor. Then you squeegee the floor. I want to buy a squeegee now, it seems like a fun way to clean.
I've only had three weeks of fusHa (standard Arabic), the first two of which were spent learning the alphabet. My family only spoke derija (Arabic dialect) and Berber, so we pretty much only communicated with hand gestures. In Arab culture, people are never by themselves, so the little neighbor girl Fatima was put in charge of me. When we first arrived, we kind of just sat in the living room for about half an hour while I tried to give her my speil about being an American student from the state of Missouri who studies the Arabic language at Al-Akhwayn University, but she didn't really understand a whole lot of it, and I didn't understand anything she said. Then I decided that we should go for a walk outside, so she took me around town, by which I mean she took me through all the fields (as far as I could tell the fields were either for growing peas or grazing their animals) and around the stream. I pointed out all the animals whose names I knew, and she taught me the ones I didn't know. It was actually very pretty. There was a small stream that ran through all the fields, and at times it got deep and wide enough to swim in. To swim is one of the 10 verbs I know, so I actually understood when her brother Yassine told me that he was going to swim in it- which he did. I didn't think "to swim" would be a useful verb to know, but it turns out it was.
After touring the town, we came back to the house and Fatima put henna on my hand. It looks pretty awesome, even though it is obviously not professionally done. After that, someone came back with a kaftan that they put on me so I could take pictures. They also had this big rug thing that was decorated with sparkly thread that I wore over the kaftan. Pictures are hopefully forthcoming. That night we had couscous for dinner. We all sat on the couches in the living room, and a table was brought in. There was a giant communal dish of couscous and vegetables, with broth to pour over it, and lots and lots of bread. The children and I were issued spoons, but the adults ate it with their hands by grabbing some couscous and rolling it around in their palm to form a ball, then eating it. They kept putting bread in front of me. I'd eat a piece, they'd put another down; I'd get halfway through that one, and they'd give me two more. They kept telling me to eat, eat! Our teachers told us this is also part of Arab culture, that guests are offered more and more food even if they decline it. I went to bed pretty soon after dinner, since dinner was at 11. Fatima and I both slept on the same couches we ate dinner at, while the children slept on the couches in the other living room and the adults I think slept in the bedroom.
In the morning, the table was brought back into living room and we had bread and butter and jam and coffee. The coffee was steaming hot milk with Nestlecafe instant coffee and lots of sugar. They offered me a shower, but I declined. Fatima and I went around town some more and took pictures. This time Rashid joined us. Rashid was the son of Zoha, who I am not sure actually lived in the house I stayed in, but was my "mother" for the weekend and cooked in the kitchen there and everything. I think she lived in the same little alleyway, and probably sort of lived in the house, because her house was just a living room and a bathroom, no kitchen or anything. I never figured out how everyone was related or who actually lived there. I didn't realize Fatima didn't live there until the next day when we went to her mother's house. It was pretty awesome that the kid's name was Rashid, though, because in class we made up a story about رشيد الدوب (Rashid the bear) who we always use for examples now. The Arabic word for "bear" is "doob," and "my bear" is "doobie," so some of the guys thought this was hilarious. After taking lots of pictures, we went back for lunch. I watched them make couscous, which took an hour and a half- no wonder it's better than the couscous at home (no offense!) I was so tired, though, that I totally fell asleep. After that, the kids made fun of me and always asked if I wanted to take a nap. After lunch (which was sometime between 2 and 3), they asked again if I wanted to take a shower, and I declined. So Fatima, Yassine, and Rashid took me to the Cascades, this park that was about 10 minutes up the road. It was gorgeous. On the way there we stopped by two guys with horses who asked if we wanted to ride the horses, so we each took turns riding up and down the road. A lot of people were riding horses, and some were riding donkeys. One of the horse-guys spoke some French and offered to pay me money to marry him so he could go to the states. I don't think he was joking.
We spent a few hours at the Cascades, which were really pretty and cool because of all the shade from the trees. I drank some water straight from a little waterfall there. I haven't gotten too sick yet, and that was Saturday. When we got back to the house, I was covered head to toe in dust and dried sweat, and I knew I smelled pretty gross, so when they offered me a shower again, I agreed. They boiled a giant bucketful of water for me, and gave me a stool and a towel. Since I only had one pair of shoes, one of the women even gave me the shoes off her feet to wear while I showered. Then I sat on the stool in the bathroom and poured water on myself using a little cup, and scrubbed down with my Dr. Bronner's. There was a clothesline hanging above the toilet for the towel and my clothes. Since the floor was concrete, and the toilet was on the floor, all the water just goes down the toilet. It was exactly like going to the Hammam in town, but without the 20 naked Moroccan women fighting for the bucket. Afterwards, I helped make dinner by chopping a bunch of herbs that went into this delicious soup. When I went to bed that night, I realized that poor Fatima had to go to bed at the same time I did and wake up at the same time, because I couldn't be alone even when I was asleep.
We had mint tea several times every day, and I finally learned how to make it. You put several spoonfuls of tea into the tea pot, then fill it with boiling water. Then you dump out all the water, and fill it again. Then you put seriously about a half pound of sugar in the tea pot, which you then stuff full of mint leaves. To mix it all up, you pour tea into a big glass, then pour it back into the pot... you do this several times. Then before drinking the tea, you pour it between several glasses to cool it down. Delicious!
On Sunday morning, after breakfast, we went to the souq in Ifrane. Because finding a taxi is so hard in such a small town, we paid some guy who was taking his van into town and was also taking a bunch of other people. We walked around for a while, but it was really hot. We bought some figs and some grapes. I felt kind of bad, because Zoha only had 15 Ds to spend, but when I bought the grapes, all I had was a 100 D bill, which I had to carefully extract from my wallet without showing the other 100 D bills in there. But the program gives the families 200 Ds a night for each student, so I guess it was okay. I also did exactly what everyone tells you not to, and ate the grapes and figs straight from the souq without washing them or peeling them first. There were consequences, but nothing dire. Anyway, Zoha told me she was pregnant, and that the sun was really hot, so we went back home, but not after waiting a long time to get a grand taxi back to Zouia. Grand taxis take six passengers, and when you're not with other AUI or American students who can afford it, you wait for all six seats to be filled. It helps, though, when some of the passengers are really tiny, like Fatima. It turns out Fatima was fifteen, but she looked about nine.
After the souq, we cleaned the house and folded laundry, then made lunch. I'm pretty sure that for lunch I had fried intestines and liver. The intestines tasted like bacon. The liver tasted like liver. We also had this awesome sweet couscous for desert. I think it may have been made with milk, or cream, or buttermilk, or some sort of diary, and it had sugar on top. It was very لذيذ (tasty). We watched some weird TV show after lunch, but I never quite grasped the concept. And then it was time to go home. But my friend Amanda (who also did the homestay in the same town) and I promised that we would come back next weekend to give them some of the pictures we took, so I guess we will be doing that.
Anyway, the first "semester" is almost over, and we have a final exam on Friday. The kids who are only staying 4 weeks leave this weekend, and some new people will be arriving. And now it is time to do my homework, because I have to write a 300 word essay about myself in Arabic, and give a presentation on my homestay. This should be fun!
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
I ride a camel in the Sahara
This last weekend, almost everyone in the ARANAS (ARabic And North African Studies) program that I'm in took a trip to Erfoud and Merzouga in central Morocco. We left at 2:00 on Friday, right after class, and spent 5 hours driving in two giant tour buses, plus two bathroom breaks. When there are about 70 people, bathroom breaks take a long time. The landscape in Erfoud is much more desert-like than in the mountains here, but it is not the Saharan landscape one thinks of when one thinks of the desert. It was more like the American Southwest, with a lot of rocky terrain and a few scattered bushy things. The منطقة (area/region - learned this word today) is very famous for its fossils, and there were a bajillion roadside stands selling cheap fossils and minerals that were all really interesting.
The hotel we stayed at in Erfoud had a pool and a bar, so some of us stayed up late swimming. The booze here is kind of gross and really overpriced, though, but that didn't stop some people from hanging out at the bar all night. The water in the pool and in the shower was kind of salty, the way soft water is, and I didn't feel very clean after bathing in it. At the hotel, I roomed with a girl from my class named Amanda, and, despite having gone to bed at 3am, we got up around 8 (later than I have since I've been here!*) to explore the town of Erfoud. We went to the souq and explored lots of shops with beautiful scarves and shoes and clothing. I also got to hone my haggling skills. I'm beginning to wish we haggled for everything in the states, it is getting to be a lot of fun. It was also insanely hot there, someone said 42°C (107°F). If you look at the map, Erfoud and Merzouga are down by Algeria. Ifrane is northeast of Fez, way up at the top.
At 4:30 we moved on to Merzouga, about another hour and a half away. We were supposed to stay in tents on the sand dunes, but I guess whoever organized the trip neglected to tell the people just how many of us there were, so when we arrived we were informed by our teachers that we were instead going to be stayin in a hotel on the edge of the Sahara. Literally- you looked out the front door and it looked like Erfoud, you looked out the back door, and there were giant dunes. Everyone was pretty upset, but we got over it. We went for a hike into the Sahara and attempted to climb an enormous dune to watch the sunset from. About 2/3 of us made it to the top, the rest (including me) had to stop halfway up. It took us about an hour to walk the half mile to the base of this dune, and another two hours to get to the top. I discovered that walking on sand is not fun. It was hard enough getting to the dune, but once we started climbing it and discovered how very steep it was, it just got worse. For every 8 steps you took, you made one step of progress, because you simply sank back down through the sand. I still got some cool pictures, though.
There were some drummers who were out to entertain all the tourists (an identical group was at the hotel in Erfoud- they keep taking us to the most touristy places they can possibly find), so we got to dance around with them at night before bed. I was really excited about stargazing in the Sahara, because I figured there would be a lot of stars out, but the moon was nearly full, and you couldn't really see many of them. In the morning, however, we woke up at 4:00 to ride camels back into the desert so we could watch the sunrise. Since it was still dark, and since the moon had set, the sky was much better for stargazing. You could clearly see the Milky Way and thousands of other stars, but not much else on the ground. We took camels (with guides, of course) back through the desert. It was about all we could do to not fall off, especially when we went down any dunes. We went in about twenty minutes, then disembarked and climbed another steep dune by foot. We sat atop that one for about an hour and watched the sun rise over the Sahara. I have about 80,000 pictures of that. My guide's name was Hamool, and I decided to name my camel Hassan. He was pretty friendly for being woken up at 4am to carry some tourist into the desert. Hamool kept turning around and saying "you okay? You okay?" When we were watching the sun rise, he took a nap, but I suppose he sees it all the time since this is his job. We kind of communicated in a weird mix of French, Arabic, and English, and I showed off my deep knowledge of Arabic by pointing at the sun and saying شمس. He told me that the Berber word for sun is "tefilout" (or something that sounds vaguely like that, anyway).
On the way back to the hotel we saw a camel spider. The Moroccans told us that they don't really live here, they're more of a Gulf thing, but apparently this one did not get the memo. I'm really glad I saw it from the back of a camel, though, and not when I was on foot. It wasn't quite as big as the one in the picture, but nearly so. I could see its teeth from my perch atop Hassan. Before the camels left, I bought a fossil (probably fake) from Hamool because he practically pulled me up that sand dune. It's a pretty sweet looking fossil, though.
On the way back to Ifrane, we stopped at the Sunday souq in some town along the way, and did a lot more shopping. Shopping is a lot more fun when you get to argue about the price of everything. Some people tried to buy two oranges, and ended up with 2 kilos of them for only 10 DH (about a buck fifty), so we had a good time handing them out to the little kids that congregated around us. Depending on the size of the souq, it can get very confusing, so I've taken to giving some kid a dirham to take me to the part of it I want to be in. They're so cute, and they always try to speak to you in French- it's irresistable.
Today for class we went to the Berber market in the nearby town of Azrou and practiced our derija (Moroccan colloquial Arabic) skills by buying the ingredients to make fruit salads, which we will make tomorrow. The one good thing about an immersion program is that you get to actually go out and practice your skills. I bought oranges, carrots, sugar, and cinnamon. The smallest amount I knew how to ask for was a quarter kilo, so that is how much cinnamon I got, but it was still less than $2. Perhaps I'll take it home with me, because I know a carrot salad does not require that much cinnamon.
Anyway, I've rambled on for long enough now. !مصا الخير
*Everyone here has been short on sleep for the past two and a half weeks. Even on the weekends I haven't had the opportunity to sleep in. Everyone has discovered that napping is a bad idea because half hour naps inevitably turn into four hour sleep fests. Yesterday at 2:30 I meant to doze off for twenty minutes before meeting this guy at 3:00 to get help putting my pictures online. Next thing I knew it was 9:00. I'm pretty sure my roommate came in sometime around 4:00 and we had one of those awkward conversations in which one person is actually still asleep and so responds to the other person with a bunch of non-sequitors. I hope she doesn't think I'm weird.
The hotel we stayed at in Erfoud had a pool and a bar, so some of us stayed up late swimming. The booze here is kind of gross and really overpriced, though, but that didn't stop some people from hanging out at the bar all night. The water in the pool and in the shower was kind of salty, the way soft water is, and I didn't feel very clean after bathing in it. At the hotel, I roomed with a girl from my class named Amanda, and, despite having gone to bed at 3am, we got up around 8 (later than I have since I've been here!*) to explore the town of Erfoud. We went to the souq and explored lots of shops with beautiful scarves and shoes and clothing. I also got to hone my haggling skills. I'm beginning to wish we haggled for everything in the states, it is getting to be a lot of fun. It was also insanely hot there, someone said 42°C (107°F). If you look at the map, Erfoud and Merzouga are down by Algeria. Ifrane is northeast of Fez, way up at the top.At 4:30 we moved on to Merzouga, about another hour and a half away. We were supposed to stay in tents on the sand dunes, but I guess whoever organized the trip neglected to tell the people just how many of us there were, so when we arrived we were informed by our teachers that we were instead going to be stayin in a hotel on the edge of the Sahara. Literally- you looked out the front door and it looked like Erfoud, you looked out the back door, and there were giant dunes. Everyone was pretty upset, but we got over it. We went for a hike into the Sahara and attempted to climb an enormous dune to watch the sunset from. About 2/3 of us made it to the top, the rest (including me) had to stop halfway up. It took us about an hour to walk the half mile to the base of this dune, and another two hours to get to the top. I discovered that walking on sand is not fun. It was hard enough getting to the dune, but once we started climbing it and discovered how very steep it was, it just got worse. For every 8 steps you took, you made one step of progress, because you simply sank back down through the sand. I still got some cool pictures, though.
There were some drummers who were out to entertain all the tourists (an identical group was at the hotel in Erfoud- they keep taking us to the most touristy places they can possibly find), so we got to dance around with them at night before bed. I was really excited about stargazing in the Sahara, because I figured there would be a lot of stars out, but the moon was nearly full, and you couldn't really see many of them. In the morning, however, we woke up at 4:00 to ride camels back into the desert so we could watch the sunrise. Since it was still dark, and since the moon had set, the sky was much better for stargazing. You could clearly see the Milky Way and thousands of other stars, but not much else on the ground. We took camels (with guides, of course) back through the desert. It was about all we could do to not fall off, especially when we went down any dunes. We went in about twenty minutes, then disembarked and climbed another steep dune by foot. We sat atop that one for about an hour and watched the sun rise over the Sahara. I have about 80,000 pictures of that. My guide's name was Hamool, and I decided to name my camel Hassan. He was pretty friendly for being woken up at 4am to carry some tourist into the desert. Hamool kept turning around and saying "you okay? You okay?" When we were watching the sun rise, he took a nap, but I suppose he sees it all the time since this is his job. We kind of communicated in a weird mix of French, Arabic, and English, and I showed off my deep knowledge of Arabic by pointing at the sun and saying شمس. He told me that the Berber word for sun is "tefilout" (or something that sounds vaguely like that, anyway).
On the way back to the hotel we saw a camel spider. The Moroccans told us that they don't really live here, they're more of a Gulf thing, but apparently this one did not get the memo. I'm really glad I saw it from the back of a camel, though, and not when I was on foot. It wasn't quite as big as the one in the picture, but nearly so. I could see its teeth from my perch atop Hassan. Before the camels left, I bought a fossil (probably fake) from Hamool because he practically pulled me up that sand dune. It's a pretty sweet looking fossil, though.On the way back to Ifrane, we stopped at the Sunday souq in some town along the way, and did a lot more shopping. Shopping is a lot more fun when you get to argue about the price of everything. Some people tried to buy two oranges, and ended up with 2 kilos of them for only 10 DH (about a buck fifty), so we had a good time handing them out to the little kids that congregated around us. Depending on the size of the souq, it can get very confusing, so I've taken to giving some kid a dirham to take me to the part of it I want to be in. They're so cute, and they always try to speak to you in French- it's irresistable.
Today for class we went to the Berber market in the nearby town of Azrou and practiced our derija (Moroccan colloquial Arabic) skills by buying the ingredients to make fruit salads, which we will make tomorrow. The one good thing about an immersion program is that you get to actually go out and practice your skills. I bought oranges, carrots, sugar, and cinnamon. The smallest amount I knew how to ask for was a quarter kilo, so that is how much cinnamon I got, but it was still less than $2. Perhaps I'll take it home with me, because I know a carrot salad does not require that much cinnamon.
Anyway, I've rambled on for long enough now. !مصا الخير
*Everyone here has been short on sleep for the past two and a half weeks. Even on the weekends I haven't had the opportunity to sleep in. Everyone has discovered that napping is a bad idea because half hour naps inevitably turn into four hour sleep fests. Yesterday at 2:30 I meant to doze off for twenty minutes before meeting this guy at 3:00 to get help putting my pictures online. Next thing I knew it was 9:00. I'm pretty sure my roommate came in sometime around 4:00 and we had one of those awkward conversations in which one person is actually still asleep and so responds to the other person with a bunch of non-sequitors. I hope she doesn't think I'm weird.
Sunday, June 8, 2008
We wander the streets of Fez's old medina
This morning, several small groups of us got up early to go to Fez. I don't think I've slept past 8am since I got here. Me and four other students took a grand taxi from Ifrane to Fez, about an hour's drive. A note about taxis: petit taxis will shuttle you around town and hold four people plus the driver. Each town has a specific color for its petit taxis: in Ifrane they are green, in Fez they are red. Grand taxis will shuttle you between towns, and are supposed to take six people, plus the driver. You have to pay for all six seats, regardless of how many are actually occupied. I can't imagine having any more than five passengers, though, because we were quite cramped and uncomfortable as it was. They are just these old Mercedes(es?) that in the states would hold five people, including the driver. Here, however, you are supposed to squeeze seven people into them.
Anyway, it was about 25 DH (less than $4) apiece, including the price for the extra seat. There was only one handle to roll the windows up and down, so we passed it around to get some fresh air. On the way we passed a lot of fields that were dotted with what I think are red poppies, but am not sure about. It looked just like that scene from the Wizard of Oz, though. There were a lot of people sitting at crossroads trying to catch rides, and a lot of rocks and cacti the further along we got. Driving was a little scary, kind of like in China, where there aren't really any set rules of the road. We made it alive, though, and the taxi driver dropped us off at the grand taxi station in Fez. We kind of headed off in one direction until we found a bus stop, and inquired of this nice British/Moroccan family which bus we needed to take to get to the "ancien medina." Bus number 29. So, we took bus number 29 and got off at the end and made our way through these big arched doorways that led into this dark and labrynthine maze of a souk. We just started wandering around, looking for the old medina. I think we entered the "new" medina, which was still really old, but I'm not entirely sure. I've decided that when tour books make maps of that part of Fez, they just make it up, because making a map of it would be impossible. We eventually found our way to where we wanted to go, though.
I don't even know how to begin describing that experience! It was a little overwhelming, and I think Fez is definitely a place that needs to be visited at least twice. Volubilis and Meknes we could have easily figured out on our own; it would have been nice to have a little guidance in Fez. We pretty much walked around the entire souk just taking in the sights, sounds, and smells. There were sections just of produce, and meat markets (the souk is a bombardment of bizarre and sometimes gross foreign smells, but the worst was passing by all the fish that were laying out in the sun and covered with flies). There were sections of metal workers who make those awesome lamps that I decided I can't leave without, sections of shoemakers, clothes shops, bootleg DVDs, jewelery, everything you can imagine and more. You could actually see the people sewing together a pair of leather shoes or a dress shirt. Each shop was just this room that was maybe 10 feet deep and 5 feet wide, with wooden doors that opened onto the street. The street itself was maybe five or six feet wide- just wide enough that if you backed up against the wall, you wouldn't get run over by the men leading laden donkeys through the maze. I think you could live there for years and still get lost. We spent four hours just wandering around and never saw the same street twice. Most of the old medina is covered, so it is dark and semi-cool (compared to the blazing heat of the concrete jungle outside), but it makes it more difficult to know where you are because you can't look up for any landmarks such as minarets. It was an entirely different world in there.
Three of us bought these neat little teapots to serve the famous mint tea in, and one girl bought two pairs of shoes. They are the cutest red leather shoes I've ever seen, and they were only $10, so I've decided I have to go back and get some. The teapots were kind of expensive, and my roommate told me we got ripped off, but considering I only paid half of what he wanted (I'm starting to develop some haggling skills now), and that my blond hair and lack of Arabic prevents me from ever getting the Moroccan price, I'm okay with that. I have an awesome Moroccan teapot now.
In the end, we ended up having to pay some little kid 5 DH to show us the way out, because we had somehow wandered out of the tourist area, where we would ocassionally pass small groups of Europeans, into the sketchier local part where a lot of the houses must have been (most of which can't have been much bigger than the shops). We were utterly exhausted and immediately took a grand taxi back to Ifrane (in this one, the windows didn't go down at all, but we mostly [tried] to sleep), where we all got giant bottles of cold water and took a shower.
And that was my day in Fez. I definitely want to go back. My roommate said she loves going to the old medina in Fez, and could get me the Moroccan prices if she went with me (it's hard to haggle for something when you have absolutely no concept of its worth). So, maybe on one of our other free weekends, she will take me to Fez.
Next weekend, though, it's off to the desert.
Anyway, it was about 25 DH (less than $4) apiece, including the price for the extra seat. There was only one handle to roll the windows up and down, so we passed it around to get some fresh air. On the way we passed a lot of fields that were dotted with what I think are red poppies, but am not sure about. It looked just like that scene from the Wizard of Oz, though. There were a lot of people sitting at crossroads trying to catch rides, and a lot of rocks and cacti the further along we got. Driving was a little scary, kind of like in China, where there aren't really any set rules of the road. We made it alive, though, and the taxi driver dropped us off at the grand taxi station in Fez. We kind of headed off in one direction until we found a bus stop, and inquired of this nice British/Moroccan family which bus we needed to take to get to the "ancien medina." Bus number 29. So, we took bus number 29 and got off at the end and made our way through these big arched doorways that led into this dark and labrynthine maze of a souk. We just started wandering around, looking for the old medina. I think we entered the "new" medina, which was still really old, but I'm not entirely sure. I've decided that when tour books make maps of that part of Fez, they just make it up, because making a map of it would be impossible. We eventually found our way to where we wanted to go, though.
I don't even know how to begin describing that experience! It was a little overwhelming, and I think Fez is definitely a place that needs to be visited at least twice. Volubilis and Meknes we could have easily figured out on our own; it would have been nice to have a little guidance in Fez. We pretty much walked around the entire souk just taking in the sights, sounds, and smells. There were sections just of produce, and meat markets (the souk is a bombardment of bizarre and sometimes gross foreign smells, but the worst was passing by all the fish that were laying out in the sun and covered with flies). There were sections of metal workers who make those awesome lamps that I decided I can't leave without, sections of shoemakers, clothes shops, bootleg DVDs, jewelery, everything you can imagine and more. You could actually see the people sewing together a pair of leather shoes or a dress shirt. Each shop was just this room that was maybe 10 feet deep and 5 feet wide, with wooden doors that opened onto the street. The street itself was maybe five or six feet wide- just wide enough that if you backed up against the wall, you wouldn't get run over by the men leading laden donkeys through the maze. I think you could live there for years and still get lost. We spent four hours just wandering around and never saw the same street twice. Most of the old medina is covered, so it is dark and semi-cool (compared to the blazing heat of the concrete jungle outside), but it makes it more difficult to know where you are because you can't look up for any landmarks such as minarets. It was an entirely different world in there.
Three of us bought these neat little teapots to serve the famous mint tea in, and one girl bought two pairs of shoes. They are the cutest red leather shoes I've ever seen, and they were only $10, so I've decided I have to go back and get some. The teapots were kind of expensive, and my roommate told me we got ripped off, but considering I only paid half of what he wanted (I'm starting to develop some haggling skills now), and that my blond hair and lack of Arabic prevents me from ever getting the Moroccan price, I'm okay with that. I have an awesome Moroccan teapot now.
In the end, we ended up having to pay some little kid 5 DH to show us the way out, because we had somehow wandered out of the tourist area, where we would ocassionally pass small groups of Europeans, into the sketchier local part where a lot of the houses must have been (most of which can't have been much bigger than the shops). We were utterly exhausted and immediately took a grand taxi back to Ifrane (in this one, the windows didn't go down at all, but we mostly [tried] to sleep), where we all got giant bottles of cold water and took a shower.
And that was my day in Fez. I definitely want to go back. My roommate said she loves going to the old medina in Fez, and could get me the Moroccan prices if she went with me (it's hard to haggle for something when you have absolutely no concept of its worth). So, maybe on one of our other free weekends, she will take me to Fez.
Next weekend, though, it's off to the desert.
Saturday, June 7, 2008
My roommate shows up and the Americans go to Meknes
Man, I'm getting super good at typing on these French keyboards.
Classes didn't start for the Moroccan kids until Wednesday, so my roommate finally showed up on Tuesday night. As far as I can tell, her name is Saalma, but we American students are all having a really hard time pronouncing all the Moroccans' names. For example, one of our teachers is named Meriam, but the other one is Abdul-qlmksdjf something or other, which no one can say, so we just call him Usteth, which means teacher.
Anyway, my roommate is from Rabat (seemingly most people's roommates are) and one of the first things she told me is that she hates Ifrane because it is too small and the cafeteria here serves gross food. Well, I can assure you that the food here is a whole lot better than what we got in the dorms at Truman. Also, her boyfriend just left for the states to go to school at the University of Alabama (Tuscaloosa?), so she really wants to go to America now. She speaks pretty good English, though, and I practised some French with her too, and a little bit of Arabic. I'm a polyglot now! For the most part we're not in the room much at the same time except at night. Sometimes she watches TV in English, so I watch too. There is a really popular soap opera here called Noor which is actually Turkish but is dubbed (poorly) into Arabic, and when she watches that I can sometimes pick out short phrases such as "thank you," "thank God," and "his name is Ali."
On Wednesday we had our "clubs," and I am in Calligraphy Club. We got special calligraphy pens (that we don't get to keep, so now I'll have to make a special trip to the marché because I want to take one home) and learned how to make half a dozen letters plus a word baab which means "door." On Thursday we watched a movie (it had English subtitles!) called "And the Language is the Land," about an exiled Palestinian poet name Mahmoud Darwich, who is supposed to be one of the most famous living Arabic poets. Before some of you start harrumphing about propoganda, let me say that, regardless of his politics, I really enjoyed his poetry, and I want to find a book of it translated into English now.
Today about fifty of us took a tour bus to Volubilis and Meknes. Volubilis is an ancient Roman town where they have been excavating the ruins. Our tour guide (an old Moroccan man with quite a sense of humor) told us it meant "Morning Glories," like the flower. You could still see the layout of all the houses, and some of the ones that had been excavated had really amazing tile floors. There were big roads, a huge Arc de Triumph-esque thing, lots and lots of columns ("Doric, Yonic, wa Crinthian" according to our guide), a sauna, olive press, aquarium, garden rooms, and even a vomitorium (our guide explained that the Romans ate and drank a lot and then threw it up, and that "in Germany, it is called Oktoberfest.") It was also super hot and sunny.
After that we went to Meknes and had lunch in a pretty fancy looking restaurant that seemed to only serve groups of old Europeans. It was tasty, though, and we had beef tagine. After lunch we went to the souk. They were going to let us wander around by ourselves, but we ran out of time, so we had to stay in a group as we walked through the souk (and let me assure you that fifty American students walking in a line makes quite a spectacle!) Meknes was much more like what I was expecting in Morocco, completely different from the modern AUI campus and tourist-oriented town of Ifrane (someone told me that in the summer, Ifrane will grow to 100,000 people, because the weather here is so nice). There were a lot of ginormous arched gates with super elabroate tiles and wood carvings. The souk itself was this maze of narrow streets all covered so it was cool and dark, with tiny shop after tiny shop, every other one selling those pointy-toed shoes. We went to the old medresa, which is a Qur'anic school, as well as the tomb of Moulay Ismail (he was a Moroccan king, and Meknes was the capital during his reign). He wanted to marry the daughter of Louis XIV, but she refused, and as compensation Louis XIV sent him four big clocks, which are still ticking away today.
Well, I've procrastinated on my homework enough now, so I will end it here. Tomorrow we are going to Fez, but independently, so we won't have to be in such large groups. After seeing the souk in Meknes, though, I can only hope we don't get horribly lost in Fez!
PS- for those of you with Facebook, some people have posted pictures and tagged me in them, so you might be able to find some pictures of Morocco if you look around. For those of you without Facebook, someone might help me get my pictures onto the internet sometime soonish. I'll probably put them on Flikr or something- I'll let you all know when that happens.
PPS- An Interesting Factoid: I was kind of annoyed that Arabic does not use what we call Arabic numerals, because it meant I had to learn all new numbers. But I just found out that what we know as Arabic numerals were actually developed in the Maghreb and migrated to Europe when the Moors conquered Spain, which is why we call them that. The "real" Arabic numerals we have to learn were developed in the Arab east through contact with India.
Interesting Factoid #2: In Arabic, al-Maghrib actually only refers to Morocco, which is how you say the country's name. I don't know what they call what we refer to as the Maghreb: Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Moorish Spain. I knew "Maghreb" meant "west," but it literally means "place where the sun sets."
Classes didn't start for the Moroccan kids until Wednesday, so my roommate finally showed up on Tuesday night. As far as I can tell, her name is Saalma, but we American students are all having a really hard time pronouncing all the Moroccans' names. For example, one of our teachers is named Meriam, but the other one is Abdul-qlmksdjf something or other, which no one can say, so we just call him Usteth, which means teacher.
Anyway, my roommate is from Rabat (seemingly most people's roommates are) and one of the first things she told me is that she hates Ifrane because it is too small and the cafeteria here serves gross food. Well, I can assure you that the food here is a whole lot better than what we got in the dorms at Truman. Also, her boyfriend just left for the states to go to school at the University of Alabama (Tuscaloosa?), so she really wants to go to America now. She speaks pretty good English, though, and I practised some French with her too, and a little bit of Arabic. I'm a polyglot now! For the most part we're not in the room much at the same time except at night. Sometimes she watches TV in English, so I watch too. There is a really popular soap opera here called Noor which is actually Turkish but is dubbed (poorly) into Arabic, and when she watches that I can sometimes pick out short phrases such as "thank you," "thank God," and "his name is Ali."
On Wednesday we had our "clubs," and I am in Calligraphy Club. We got special calligraphy pens (that we don't get to keep, so now I'll have to make a special trip to the marché because I want to take one home) and learned how to make half a dozen letters plus a word baab which means "door." On Thursday we watched a movie (it had English subtitles!) called "And the Language is the Land," about an exiled Palestinian poet name Mahmoud Darwich, who is supposed to be one of the most famous living Arabic poets. Before some of you start harrumphing about propoganda, let me say that, regardless of his politics, I really enjoyed his poetry, and I want to find a book of it translated into English now.
Today about fifty of us took a tour bus to Volubilis and Meknes. Volubilis is an ancient Roman town where they have been excavating the ruins. Our tour guide (an old Moroccan man with quite a sense of humor) told us it meant "Morning Glories," like the flower. You could still see the layout of all the houses, and some of the ones that had been excavated had really amazing tile floors. There were big roads, a huge Arc de Triumph-esque thing, lots and lots of columns ("Doric, Yonic, wa Crinthian" according to our guide), a sauna, olive press, aquarium, garden rooms, and even a vomitorium (our guide explained that the Romans ate and drank a lot and then threw it up, and that "in Germany, it is called Oktoberfest.") It was also super hot and sunny.
After that we went to Meknes and had lunch in a pretty fancy looking restaurant that seemed to only serve groups of old Europeans. It was tasty, though, and we had beef tagine. After lunch we went to the souk. They were going to let us wander around by ourselves, but we ran out of time, so we had to stay in a group as we walked through the souk (and let me assure you that fifty American students walking in a line makes quite a spectacle!) Meknes was much more like what I was expecting in Morocco, completely different from the modern AUI campus and tourist-oriented town of Ifrane (someone told me that in the summer, Ifrane will grow to 100,000 people, because the weather here is so nice). There were a lot of ginormous arched gates with super elabroate tiles and wood carvings. The souk itself was this maze of narrow streets all covered so it was cool and dark, with tiny shop after tiny shop, every other one selling those pointy-toed shoes. We went to the old medresa, which is a Qur'anic school, as well as the tomb of Moulay Ismail (he was a Moroccan king, and Meknes was the capital during his reign). He wanted to marry the daughter of Louis XIV, but she refused, and as compensation Louis XIV sent him four big clocks, which are still ticking away today.
Well, I've procrastinated on my homework enough now, so I will end it here. Tomorrow we are going to Fez, but independently, so we won't have to be in such large groups. After seeing the souk in Meknes, though, I can only hope we don't get horribly lost in Fez!
PS- for those of you with Facebook, some people have posted pictures and tagged me in them, so you might be able to find some pictures of Morocco if you look around. For those of you without Facebook, someone might help me get my pictures onto the internet sometime soonish. I'll probably put them on Flikr or something- I'll let you all know when that happens.
PPS- An Interesting Factoid: I was kind of annoyed that Arabic does not use what we call Arabic numerals, because it meant I had to learn all new numbers. But I just found out that what we know as Arabic numerals were actually developed in the Maghreb and migrated to Europe when the Moors conquered Spain, which is why we call them that. The "real" Arabic numerals we have to learn were developed in the Arab east through contact with India.
Interesting Factoid #2: In Arabic, al-Maghrib actually only refers to Morocco, which is how you say the country's name. I don't know what they call what we refer to as the Maghreb: Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Moorish Spain. I knew "Maghreb" meant "west," but it literally means "place where the sun sets."
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
My classes begin
First of all, thanks so much for all the comments and emails, it is always nice to hear from home! There were a lot of questions to answer, but let me start off by saying that I don't know if I will be able to post any pictures any time soon, since I don't have a computer here and just have to use the computer lab, and I don't really know how all that works.
We had our first official day of class this morning, which means there will be no more leisurely tours around Ifrane every afternoon. My schedule for the next eight weeks looks something like this:
Class from 8am to 1pm, with a fifteen minute coffee/tea/juice break around 10. Lunch with our classmates and teachers, where everyone must speak only Arabic (this rule was enforced loosely today as our class only knows a few phrases- BUT after the first day of class we can already say a whole paragraph describing ourselves!). On Tuesday afternoons the beginning and intermediate classes attend a lecture together, in Arabic. On Wednesday afternoons there is a mandatory club. We had five options: theater, literary, web journal, Qur'anic recitation, or calligraphy. I wanted to do one of the last two, but the guy telling us about them recommended the Qur'an club for advanced students and the calligraphy club for beginners, so I guess I'll be learning some Arabic calligraphy now. On Thursday afternoons everyone watches a movie in Arabic. And, to top that all off, we have 5 hours of homework every night. They definitely weren't exaggerating when they told us we would be spending that amount of time on homework every day. By the end of the eight weeks, I think I will have done more homework than I've ever done in my whole life!
So now I can say: 'ism ii Emma, anna Talibah amriikyia. Askuru fii wilaayat Missouri. Adrusu al-dinn bi jamaayat Truman State, wa 'al ann anna fii al-Maghreb, wa adrusu al-arabaaya bi jamaayat al-Akhawayn. (My name is Emma, I am an American student. I live in the state of Missouri. I study religions at Truman State University, and now I am in Morocco and I study Arabic at Al Akhawayn University.) I can say all that, but I can only write 6 letters so far, plus three markings (to denote short vowels, but they are only used in elementary school books and religious texts like the Qur'an to avoid confusion. Most print media, etc, leaves them out.)
Today I found out that one of my two teachers is working on his doctorate in Sufism and politics in Morocco. How cool is that?! Morocco is mostly Sufi (and in that respect is unique compared to the rest of the Muslim world, roughly 80-85 percent of which are Sunni, most of the rest being Shi'a), although the government is trying to institute Sufism as a sort of state religion and people are unhappy about that because once you institutionalize something, it all goes to hell. Or this is what I gathered from my professor.
Anyway, this weekend we have a trip coming up to Meknes and Volubilis one day and Fez the next. They are not included in the program, so we have to pay about 200 dirham for each day, but that is only about 30 dollars. That leaves me enough to go shopping, or so I hope ;)
I can't think of much more to say right now, and I should probably get cracking on my 5 hours of homework (maybe more- since we didn't have class yesterday, our teacher gave us two units for tonight). Goodbye for now!
We had our first official day of class this morning, which means there will be no more leisurely tours around Ifrane every afternoon. My schedule for the next eight weeks looks something like this:
Class from 8am to 1pm, with a fifteen minute coffee/tea/juice break around 10. Lunch with our classmates and teachers, where everyone must speak only Arabic (this rule was enforced loosely today as our class only knows a few phrases- BUT after the first day of class we can already say a whole paragraph describing ourselves!). On Tuesday afternoons the beginning and intermediate classes attend a lecture together, in Arabic. On Wednesday afternoons there is a mandatory club. We had five options: theater, literary, web journal, Qur'anic recitation, or calligraphy. I wanted to do one of the last two, but the guy telling us about them recommended the Qur'an club for advanced students and the calligraphy club for beginners, so I guess I'll be learning some Arabic calligraphy now. On Thursday afternoons everyone watches a movie in Arabic. And, to top that all off, we have 5 hours of homework every night. They definitely weren't exaggerating when they told us we would be spending that amount of time on homework every day. By the end of the eight weeks, I think I will have done more homework than I've ever done in my whole life!
So now I can say: 'ism ii Emma, anna Talibah amriikyia. Askuru fii wilaayat Missouri. Adrusu al-dinn bi jamaayat Truman State, wa 'al ann anna fii al-Maghreb, wa adrusu al-arabaaya bi jamaayat al-Akhawayn. (My name is Emma, I am an American student. I live in the state of Missouri. I study religions at Truman State University, and now I am in Morocco and I study Arabic at Al Akhawayn University.) I can say all that, but I can only write 6 letters so far, plus three markings (to denote short vowels, but they are only used in elementary school books and religious texts like the Qur'an to avoid confusion. Most print media, etc, leaves them out.)
Today I found out that one of my two teachers is working on his doctorate in Sufism and politics in Morocco. How cool is that?! Morocco is mostly Sufi (and in that respect is unique compared to the rest of the Muslim world, roughly 80-85 percent of which are Sunni, most of the rest being Shi'a), although the government is trying to institute Sufism as a sort of state religion and people are unhappy about that because once you institutionalize something, it all goes to hell. Or this is what I gathered from my professor.
Anyway, this weekend we have a trip coming up to Meknes and Volubilis one day and Fez the next. They are not included in the program, so we have to pay about 200 dirham for each day, but that is only about 30 dollars. That leaves me enough to go shopping, or so I hope ;)
I can't think of much more to say right now, and I should probably get cracking on my 5 hours of homework (maybe more- since we didn't have class yesterday, our teacher gave us two units for tonight). Goodbye for now!
Sunday, June 1, 2008
I arrive at AUI
After a morning flight from St. Louis, 8 hours of hanging out in the Chicago airport, an overnight flight to Amsterdam on a double-decker plane, a shorter flight to Casablanca, a quick jump to Fez on a plane with 24 seats and propellers, and an hour-long van ride, I finally made to Al Akhawyan University around 9pm Moroccan time on Friday night. Everything went smoothly for me, but one girl on my flight lost her luggage in Minneapolis, and a group from KU who was supposed to fly out from Amsterdam with us missed their plane somewhere in the states and arrived a day late.
On Saturday I slept in and then went to lunch in the restaurant on campus. Typical caffeteria food. Afterwards we had a brief orientation about rules on campus, etc. (midnight curfew on school nights, expulsion for possessing drugs and alcohol and for going in the opposite sex's dorms). Then some of the TAs took the whole lot of us (almost 40 students) to Ifrane, a ten minute walk from campus. At first it all looked horribly European- Ifrane is known as the Swiss Alps of Morocco- but then we got to the marché and it was a little more like what we were expecting. We had dinner there, and it was tasty! Three other students and I decided to split off from the main group who were all eating at one restaurant, and ate around the corner. We had a half-chicken each with rice and olives and delicious bread. There are a lot of olives here, and a lot of stray cats for that matter. We also had some of the famous Moroccan mint tea, which is totally the best thing ever, mostly because it is loaded with sugar. Remember how in Shelter Gardens there is a small herb garden, with spearmint, and we would sometimes eat the leaves? It tastes like that with a spoonful of sugar. The whole meal cost us each 40 dirhams, which is about 5.50 dollars. One of the guys I was with was even brave enough to drink the tap water (no one else would do it), and when I talked to him this morning he said he was feeling fine. However, I think I will stick to bottled water when I am off-campus (the tap water on campus is fine).
This morning we had more orientation stuff, introductions to Moroccan culture, health and travel advice, etc. Also, Moroccan daylight savings time started this morning. Six of us and two TAs went to town again for lunch, and made it back just in time to catch even more orientation stuff that lasted the rest of the afternoon. Tomorrow the intermediate and advanced students will take their placement tests, while us beginners will meet our professors and hopefully go to Azrou. Classes start on Tuesday.
I have a Moroccan roommate whose stuff is all unpacked in our room, but who has not arrived yet. Most of the Moroccan students are arriving tonight or tomorrow, so I am very interested to meet her. I don't know if she will speak English or not, but most people do. A lot of people also speak what I have decided to call "frarabic," a mix of French and Arabic. I think I will be able to practice a lot of French while I am here, and have already used it a lot in the marché, seeing as I don't know any Arabic yet.
What else, what else? It is quite chilly here, especially at night, but most of us only brought one jacket, thinking summer in Africa would be warm. We are in the mountains though, but the TAs said it will warm up pretty soon, and it is already getting pretty warm during the day.
This weekend we have the opportunity to go to on a day trip to Fez or Meknes, and next weekend we have a longer trip to the desert, where we will get to watch the sun rise over the Saharan sand dunes. The weekend after that we have the opportunity to do a rural or urban homestay with a Moroccan family. There are a couple more organized trips included in the program, and a lot of other students have expressed interest in organizing weekend trips when nothing else is planned.
That is all I can think to say for right now. I will write later after classes have started and we have traveled to some intersting places. Ciao!
On Saturday I slept in and then went to lunch in the restaurant on campus. Typical caffeteria food. Afterwards we had a brief orientation about rules on campus, etc. (midnight curfew on school nights, expulsion for possessing drugs and alcohol and for going in the opposite sex's dorms). Then some of the TAs took the whole lot of us (almost 40 students) to Ifrane, a ten minute walk from campus. At first it all looked horribly European- Ifrane is known as the Swiss Alps of Morocco- but then we got to the marché and it was a little more like what we were expecting. We had dinner there, and it was tasty! Three other students and I decided to split off from the main group who were all eating at one restaurant, and ate around the corner. We had a half-chicken each with rice and olives and delicious bread. There are a lot of olives here, and a lot of stray cats for that matter. We also had some of the famous Moroccan mint tea, which is totally the best thing ever, mostly because it is loaded with sugar. Remember how in Shelter Gardens there is a small herb garden, with spearmint, and we would sometimes eat the leaves? It tastes like that with a spoonful of sugar. The whole meal cost us each 40 dirhams, which is about 5.50 dollars. One of the guys I was with was even brave enough to drink the tap water (no one else would do it), and when I talked to him this morning he said he was feeling fine. However, I think I will stick to bottled water when I am off-campus (the tap water on campus is fine).
This morning we had more orientation stuff, introductions to Moroccan culture, health and travel advice, etc. Also, Moroccan daylight savings time started this morning. Six of us and two TAs went to town again for lunch, and made it back just in time to catch even more orientation stuff that lasted the rest of the afternoon. Tomorrow the intermediate and advanced students will take their placement tests, while us beginners will meet our professors and hopefully go to Azrou. Classes start on Tuesday.
I have a Moroccan roommate whose stuff is all unpacked in our room, but who has not arrived yet. Most of the Moroccan students are arriving tonight or tomorrow, so I am very interested to meet her. I don't know if she will speak English or not, but most people do. A lot of people also speak what I have decided to call "frarabic," a mix of French and Arabic. I think I will be able to practice a lot of French while I am here, and have already used it a lot in the marché, seeing as I don't know any Arabic yet.
What else, what else? It is quite chilly here, especially at night, but most of us only brought one jacket, thinking summer in Africa would be warm. We are in the mountains though, but the TAs said it will warm up pretty soon, and it is already getting pretty warm during the day.
This weekend we have the opportunity to go to on a day trip to Fez or Meknes, and next weekend we have a longer trip to the desert, where we will get to watch the sun rise over the Saharan sand dunes. The weekend after that we have the opportunity to do a rural or urban homestay with a Moroccan family. There are a couple more organized trips included in the program, and a lot of other students have expressed interest in organizing weekend trips when nothing else is planned.
That is all I can think to say for right now. I will write later after classes have started and we have traveled to some intersting places. Ciao!
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