My roommate takes me home

This last weekend I went to Rabat with my roommate. She goes every single weekend, even though it's a two and a half hour drive and a four hour train ride one way if you can't find a car.

We caught a ride with one of her friends from AUI, who drove us down in his brand new VW Golf (though despite being new, it didn't have a sweet sunroof like mine did ;) ). Driving was kind of terrifying because we would be going upwards of 120 kph down these tiny, curvy rural roads, which was twice the speed limit. Passing was acceptable as long as you could see 20 ft ahead, as a two lane road can always turn into three lanes if absolutely necessary. When passing, we would often make it up to 160. On the way, we stopped in Meknes to get some lunch at MacDo. Just like in Pulp Fiction, they totally had a "Royal with Cheese." They also had a "McArabia," which is kind of like a hamburger on pita bread with meat that has been seasoned to taste mutton-y and Middle-Eastern. As is the case everywhere, the Coca tastes very different. In general, McDonalds in Morocco is expensive and not quite the real McCoy. On the way to Rabat, we listened to a lot of Lynyrd Skynyrd, especially "Sweet Home Alabama," because Selma's boyfriend is currenty studying in Alabama on a tennis scholarship. Another of her friends is going to be studying in Austin, TX, this fall, too. She says she was offered either Kansas or Arkansas (she couldn't remember which) or Austin. I told her Austin was probably the better choice. But I don't know why these Moroccans all choose weird places like Texas and Alabama to study when they go to America. You'd think they'd all go to California or something.

Anyway, once in Rabat, I got to meet Selma's parents. Her mom has light brown hair and blue eyes, and her dad is this cute little old man who wears his pants pulled up to his chest and speaks pretty good English. Her house was pretty big, and was in a kind of fancy looking neighborhood where everyone had big gates and fences around their houses. The lawn was very manicured, and there were citrus trees growing in the back with lots of gorgeous, giant, colorful flowers everywhere. It actually reminded me a whole lot of Florida.

The first night we just hung out with some of her friends from Rabat, and I learned a couple bad words. We went somewhere by the beach, where there was a big fixed-price market, and I bought a bunch of stuff. Now I really do have to buy another suitcase to take it all home. The merchants would immediately recognize that I was American and start speaking to me in English, but Selma would tell them that I had to practice my Arabic... so I did a lot of practicing my Arabic. It was good for me.

The next day, Selma's parents went to Casablanca for her nephew's birthday. Selma and I and her roommate during the schoolyear, Alia, went with them and they dropped us off halfway in a town called Mohamedia where her parents had a beach-front condo in a really nice resort area. As far as I could tell, the whole town was pretty much a resort for tourists and wealthy Moroccans. So we hung out in the pool (which was filled with salty water like the pool in Errachidia), tried to tan (I'm still pasty white), and then went down to the beach. The beach was very rocky, with very coarse sand. The sand was actually pretty cool, though, because it was just shell flakes, but each one was really colorful. I wish I'd had a bottle or something to take some of it back in. There were a lot of people swimming in the ocean, but only in little alcoves where the water was only a few feet deep. There was a range of outfits from teeny bikinis to people swimming in jeans, long-sleeve shirts, and hijabs. At the pool in the condo, most people were wearing bikinis, but I did see some mothers walking around in long-sleeves and hijabs, holding the hands of naked kids who were almost too old to be walking around in public with no clothes on. It was a weird dichotomy.

The next day, we took the train back to Rabat, about a 45 minute ride. From there, we drove back to campus, where I immediately took a nap. But all in all, it was a good, relaxing weekend. I got a lot of stares all weekend, though, because I don't think we were in a place where too many Americans go. It was probably especially weird to see one American hanging out in a group of Moroccans.

On Thursday, us Americans are getting together to have a 4th of July BBQ. We're not doing it on Friday because a lot of us want to travel over the weekend. Sometime after our American foodfest, some friends and I are going to make potato salad, pasta salad, and apple pie. However, we're having some trouble finding brown sugar and vanilla to bake with (they have this weird powdery vanilla stuff here that comes in giant boxes). Tomorrow the ARANAS program is hosting a mock Moroccan wedding so we can see what it's like. Our friend James volunteered to be the groom, and then volunteered our friend Lisa, without her knowledge, to be the bride. So in class today we got to tease her a lot about getting married tomorrow.

We got a new kid in our class yesterday, who came for the second 4-week session. Her name is Ariel. She used a different book than we did, and now has a lot of catching up to do vocabulary-wise, so that kind of sucks for her. But she seems nice.

Not much else to report, I guess. Homework time!