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!