What are the baggage regulations again?

So as I sit here contemplating what I can leave here and what I absolutely need to take with me, I realize that in about 4 hours I will be on my way to the airport and then beginning the journey back home.   Wow, when did this happen?  Hopefully my bags will make it past the wonders that are the airport baggage system, and get home.  See you on the flip side!

The Struggle for Contacts

I never thought it would be so difficult to contact people until I came to Morocco.  I think this is just my luck at things because many of my SIT classmates have been doing just fine contacting potential interviewees and advisers, but for some reason responses have been coming very slowly or not at all from most of the people I have attempted to contact.  However, I now have an adviser and an organization, Amal Sale, where I will be teaching English to Moroccan teenagers.  I will potentially be teaching for 4 hours each weekday in 2 hour sessions; one being a more grammar-focused and classroom session, and the other a more loose and conversational period.  Hopefully, my knowledge and memory of English grammar will be strong enough to help them through the complicated maze that is the English language with a little help from the textbook of course!  I was supposed to start yesterday as an assistant to the current teacher who is leaving after today, but, unfortunately, I became violently ill from what appears to have been food poisoning or something of that nature and could barely get out of bed.  So let's hope I can gather enough information about the class today.

In other news, there are two places in Morocco that I want to explore before I leave: Chefchaouen and Al Hoceima.  The first is a medium-sized city tucked away in the mountains, and is supposed to be a very beautiful and relaxing place with plenty of places to go hiking.  The second, Al Hoceima, is a beach town along the Mediterranean, and we all know what that means:  sun, sand, beautiful water, and tanning!  Not that I need much help tanning in the African sun, and mostly this solely means burn protection.  However, since rediscovering beaches over the past couple years, I have also discovered how incredibly relaxing a good stint in the sun can be.  So, insha'allah, I will be packing my bags this weekend, not for warmer climes (there is definitely plenty of sun in Rabat!), but shall we say, Mediterranean climes.

Moroccan Studies

Up until now, most of the school work involved with the program has been through classes and lectures, but now we're beginning to step outside the box.  As part of the SIT program, the last month is dedicated solely to research that the student conducts (ISP), which is absolutely fantastic.  The level of independence is surprising after following a rigid academic schedule and staying within a homestay family, and most certainly is welcome.  However, with all the time, there also seems to be no time to waste.  Three weeks simultaneously feels like an eternity and not nearly enough time, especially for figuring out the who, how, where, and what of a primary source research project. 

So what on earth would I want to study during my brief stay in Morocco?  Why children in urban areas, like Rabat and its sister city, Sale, stop going to school or don't finish their education.  After a week and a half of attempting to contact various people and organizations relating to my project, I finally have an adviser, and I believe I will be teaching English at an organization in Sale.  I am, hopefully, meeting with them tomorrow to actually see the center and begin my two-week volunteer position as an English teacher for high school-age students.  It will mostly be conversations with the students, so I imagine there will be plenty of time to talk to them about what concerns my research as well as the everyday things teenagers love to talk about.

Another aspect of my ISP I've mentioned is living away from my homestay family, and while that does involve a great deal of freedom, it also means I need to learn how to cook the Moroccan way very quickly.  I have definitely mastered the Moroccan mint tea (I picked that up as soon as I could), but more substantial meals are a little more of a mystery.  Tonight I attempted to decode some of that mystery by making Zalook, a tasty mushy mixture of eggplant and tomatoes.  Now I know what the non-eggplant lovers are thinking: "ewwwwww!" but I don't like eggplant either and this is spectacular!  You can find the recipe we used here, and while most Moroccans consider it a "salad", it was very good on some penne and eaten as the main course.  Along with some Moroccan tea and deviled eggs, it was an overall excellent meal!  I'll keep you posted on any other interesting/tasty recipes that I happen to come across and have success with in my little Moroccan kitchen. 

Movin' On Out!

Tonight is my last night in my homestay family.  I must admit I'm pretty happy to be leaving, but, as you come to know people over time, parting from them is always a little bittersweet.  Why would I be excited to leave a house like this, you ask?  For the same reasons I was excited to enter it:  the big family.  No matter what family you're among, there are always good times and bad times.  However, living in a house with 3 children under the age of ten has proved to be not the easiest task to undertake for someone who had never had to deal with children on a daily basis before.  I welcomed and accepted the challenge, but I will also welcome the new peacefulness that will come with my new home! Albeit, I will be living with 10 other females of my same age, but I think things will be slightly quieter, nonetheless.

So where is this new home? About 2 minutes away from my homestay family.  Of course that's a lot of houses when you consider how tightly packed houses are in the Medina, but it's just far enough away that I will be able to see them whenever I desire, instead of the other way around.  It is also just off the main produce street, so food will not be difficult to find.  I've packed my bags, and it's time to go.  So, wish me luck!

Off to the Beach

Last weekend, I needed some time away from the craziness that is my host family and the business of Rabat, and what better place to go than the beach?  However, I don't settle for any old beach, I wanted the real deal.  Therefore, going North to the Mediterranean coast was the only real option.  The voyage started with a very packed train ride to Tangier, which required that we stand in the hallway for the majority of the 6 hour ride.  On the train, my friends and I met several people who told us all about their version of Morocco.  Mostly, the conversations revolved around Moroccan food and hospitality, and Arabic.  I was actually quite proud of myself because I was able to conduct a full conversation using mostly Arabic; though I must be excused for the occasional slip into French when I didn't know a word.

The sun was beginning to set just as our train pulled into Tangier, and so we took a taxi to go find a hotel we could stay in for the night.  All was going well and we had found a very reasonably priced and decent hotel, until my one friend and I realized that we had left our passports back in Rabat.  A very stupid move, but nonetheless it happened.  There was no way we were going back to Rabat on another 6 train ride, and so there was no other option than to go the Central Police station to obtain a document stating that we were, in fact, legal immigrants/tourists and would not be asking the hotel we decided to stay in to perform any illegal activities.  So off to the Central Police Station in Tangier we went.  Normally, any police station in a developing country spells disaster in most people's minds, but each of the (non-uniformed) police officers we spoke to were very nice and somewhat helpful.  We were there to get an official document stating that we had entered into the country no more than 3 months ago and that we were, in fact, U.S. citizens.  As the officers began conversing with us in their very Moroccan way of bantering about everything and nothing at the same time, they pulled up all our information very easily.  However, somehow in the mix, they forgot to include all of this information needed by the hotel we would be staying at.  But that wasn't all.  As we were leaving, one of the police officers asked us if we wanted to be escorted back to our hotel, and how can you refuse an offer like that?  So we all piled into a police van and made our way down to our cheap but nice hotel near the beach.  We pulled up in front of a shop, and when I looked over at the shop owner, his eyes were bigger than I ever thought eyes could be.  As we stepped out of the van, I attempted to suppress the laughter that was almost consuming me, as this poor man attempted to figure out what was going on.  I thought that this would have been enough for the police officer, but then he told us that he would accompany us to the hotel to make sure that we got a good room and a good price.  Never mind the fact that we had already negotiated the price and found it to be just fine.

The next day was far less ridiculous.  We all met up for breakfast at a little cafe, purchased our tickets for the bus to Tetouan, and hopped on at 10 am for the 2 hour drive.  The ride was fairly uneventful and relaxing, but I must say the Rif Mountains are spectacular (even if the roads through them are atrocious).  And while we were making our way through a particularly bad pass, I could see electric-generating windmills on the far ridge.  It was a very heartening sight to see after being exposed to all the trash heaps that seem to be lining every street.  When we finally arrived in Tetouan at the bus station, we were all just a tad disoriented and it seemed like nothing was the way it said it was on the travel guide map.  So we picked a direction, and found a grand taxi to take us to the tiny beach town of Martil; about a 15 minute drive away.  The wait and travel time was definitely worth it.  Two months around my large family or 40 other SIT members can make you get a little crazy for some quite time.  And the beach at Martil was perfect for that.

We checked into our hotel, which was a two minute walk away from the Mediterranean beach, and took what we needed to spend the rest of the day lazing about on the wonderfully soft sand.  Perhaps I had just been deprived of anything like it, but that beach was spectacular!  For, the beach in Rabat is not that great, to put it lightly.  We all spent the proceeding 24 hours exactly like that.  I had a brief interlude of stress attempting to figure out housing at F&M, but fortunately that was brief and not as much of a headache as I thought it would be (Sorry to all of you who still have to figure things out!  I hope it all works out in the end).  The next day we tried to buy tickets for the bus heading straight from Tetouan back to Rabat, but unfortunately, it was already full, so we ended up taking a nondescript bus out of the bus station in Tetouan to Tangier, and taking the train from Tangier back to Rabat.

We got into Tangier with about 2 hours to spare, so we decided to go out and find a cafe.  The only type of food/drink establishment we could find: McDonald's!  It was actually a very nice McDonald's, and had a great view of the beach.  All in all, a fun, albeit crazy, adventure all in the attempt to find a beach.

Stop Following Me!

This is a long overdue post, so you'll have to forgive me.  But I guess it's better late than never!  Two Saturdays ago, I woke up early to catch the bus to go spend a week with a family in the countryside of Morocco.  The village we went to was near Boujaad and was the closest to in the middle of nowhere I've ever been.  However, after spending so much time in a city, I was definitely ready to be out in the country with fresh air and fewer people.  I was initially extremely nervous to meet my homestay family because I really didn't have any idea what to expect.  From the paper the program gave us, I saw it wasn't nearly as big of a family as my Rabat family (thank goodness!) with only 3 sisters and one brother.  So when I got off the bus to meet my new host father I was just a tad nervous, but upon meeting him and seeing his very relaxed demeanor, I was instantly put at ease.

While some of my fellow SIT-ers got to ride to their new homes in donkeys on that first day, I was happy to just walk and take everything in as we went the long way down the road to my house.  As we walked up our driveway, the dogs instantly started barking at us, not as much to warn those in the house as to sound as intimidating as possible.  We had been told in our orientation that the people's relationship with animals would be very strange and sometimes contradictory, and over the upcoming week, I definitely discovered that fact.  Dogs are of particular concern because while they may look fine, they are trained to guard the house, and so are fairly hostile to humans.  If in doubt, pick up a rock.

Otherwise, my time in the country namely consisted of spending lots of time with my new homestay family, and taking hikes.  Both were definitely welcome, but I'm more of a fan of things in moderation and this did not happen in either case.  The first things my sisters did upon my arrival was 1) feed me and 2) take me for a walk.  Both were very welcome at the time, but as the next two days passed, the walks became more of ways to babysit my younger sisters instead of enjoying the countryside.  However, the SIT group took a spectacular hike and tour of the village and the area nearby on the first full day in the village.  It was complete with spectacular views of the ridges and valleys, and a glimpse of our director's old house, which had been abandoned when his family moved to Rabat.  We had a talk/lecture about deforestation and how the colonial government alienated the people from the forests which they had previously been very closely tied to by making them national parks.  This may seem counterintuitive, but by attempting to strictly preserve the forests, the government made the people hate the forest because they could not continue their previously healthy relationship with it.  As a result, people began to pillage the forests by cutting down whatever they felt they needed, significantly decreasing the previously all forest areas to just a few groves here and there.  This is becoming a more serious problem as the combination of erosion and drought make it very difficult for farmers to continue their way of life sufficiently.

One of my most memorable times in the village stay was the discussion forums arranged by the program; one with just the males of the village, and the other with just the women.  Why is something like this so memorable you ask? Because you learn from their questions and answers what is important to them and how, if at all, men and women react differently to certain things.  One session was held one day and the other the next day, so there was no confusion as to who should be where when.  Splitting the two groups up also allowed the mostly shy women to voice their opinions and ask questions our director told us they would not have asked otherwise.  The men were very interested in what Americans do when they die, while the women were very concerned how we viewed their hospitality and wanted to know about houses and our mothers in the United States.  The fact that the women focused more on home matters appears to be an awful stereotype to most Americans, but it was truly what these women were concerned about and that cannot be discounted.  For some reason, the men in this village chose to ask us if Americans ever die, which is a very interesting question considering he has probably only seen American students from SIT, which has been doing a village stay for at least 10 or 15 years.  Naturally, we go into a discussion about cremation, which is a very strange concept to all Moroccans, and the types of services or ways of remembering the dead Americans have.

The next couple days found us helping rebuild a very important part of the village, the market building where rugs are sold.  While it was not a very organized scene, I did feel like I was accomplishing something in return for the families' extremely generous hospitality.  Each of the SIT students took turns wheel-barrowing loads of silt from the relatively nearby stream, mixing this silt with the makings of cement, and then literally splattering it on the wall surrounding the house.  We were supposed to paint this wall the next day, but then a fog set in that did not go away for the next couple days.  Despite not being able to completely finish the project, it was nice to know that I was giving back to the community that was currently helping me.


On the subject of animals again, though, I felt like I was back at home in a way.  Each day the family woke up at 6 am and began the long, but leisurely completed, list of things to do that day.  Since my family thought I was "soft" due to my experiences in the city, they did not wake me up until 7 am.  Have no fear of not getting enough sleep though!  We went to bed almost exactly at 9 every night.  First thing was take the cows out of the barn, then came breakfast and taking the calves out to pasture.  Then my sister and I swept the main house, and then went to where the sheep and goats were kept for the night to let them out to pasture, with our watchful shepherding eyes on them, of course.  About an hour into our shepherding session, it was usually time for me to go to whatever SIT had planned for the day.  Then there came lunch...

Food in rural Morocco is at once completely different from what I experience in the cities, and is exactly the same.  The majority of the dishes are exactly the same as what my host mom and restaurants prepare in Rabat, but method of obtaining that food is very different.  One of the biggest worries any traveler can have is gastrointestinal issues, and by some miracle I experienced almost none while I stayed in the village, despite the fact that I partook in all the dairy goods available.  I tried the freshly made leben (buttermilk), the sweet milk and rice soup, hot milk, and all the butter I could handle at once.  All of it tasted so different and very good compared to what I am used to.  However, I don't think my system could sustain a daily war with such strong dairy products.  If nothing else, I at least knew where it was all coming from!  A rural Moroccan's diet largely consists of whatever form of dairy they can produce from their cows, sheep, or goats, bread, and tea.  This is what we ate for at least 3 meals during the day, if you include tea time as one of the meals, which was perfectly fine with me given the fact that the olive oil and butter we dipped the bread in were both fantastic and I simply love Moroccan tea.  The other meal, whether it be lunch or dinner, consisted of a tajine of some sort with lots of vegetables piled high on the enormous tajine platter.  The idea and taste of the meat largely caused me to shy away from eating much, but the chicken was fairly tasty.

However, there was one bad thing about living in the country: they really don't understand privacy.  Most of the time this is due to the fact that just about everything is shared among family.  However, this extended further for SIT students because my family was constantly afraid that if I wandered anywhere by myself either I would fall into a hidden well or be attacked by a dog.  Both were very real fears, but being around the same people, especially ones you can't exactly communicate with, is very draining.  So whenever we could, my friends and I would steal away to play frisbee in the forest or just sit on a hill and read or talk.  This worked most of the time, until, one day, we encountered a boy who was herding sheep near a newly reforested part of the ridge.  We were attempted to get away from the group and have a little alone time, when all of a sudden we look back to find the shepherding boy we saw earlier at the bottom of the hill was following us up the hill with his sheep!  We attempted to change directions and go sideways across the hill, but he continued to follow us, all the sheep in tow.  So we continued to traverse the hill, until, finally, we lost him!  Many little children felt that they needed to attach themselves to you upon seeing you walk down the road, and so evasive maneuvers were sometimes necessary (see picture; almost nothing she is wearing is hers).  However, you did feel a strong sense of community as you walked down the street to hear people yelling "Salaam!" from across their field.

Leaving for the Country!

Tomorrow, I am leaving for the countryside for the week!  Not the Romantic countryside, but the actual countryside.  I will not have electricity for the entire week and will not shower for the entire week.  I have held out pretty well so far with being able to take a shower only 2 or 3 times a week in Rabat, but we'll see how I fare for the entire week.  In our briefing/orientation session for the village homestay, our director told us to expect that we will be sleeping with the entire family pretty close to any animals, like cows and sheep, that the family may have, and that the people have a very odd relationship with dogs.  The dogs protect the house and the family, but if they come too close to humans, they get a rock thrown at them.  This expected dramatic change in lifestyle will be very interesting to observe, so no doubt I'll have plenty to say afterward!  This could get ugly, but I have a feeling I'll have some fun.

All the Colors of Henna

After a long week of classes and presentations, there was no way I was traveling this weekend, and so I decided to settle in for a nice quiet weekend at home.  Friday seemed to last forever as my class and the presentations in that class seemed to drag on forever, but once I was finally done, I realized I really didn't have anywhere to be.  In the end, I decided to stay in the Center for Cross-Cultural Learning where we have our classes and talk with some of my fellow SIT-ers about home, boyfriends, and what movies and TV shows we missed the most.  One of the girls brought up this American movie she had found along the Souk Street where we both live.  I had never heard of the title before, Toy Boy according to the package, but it seemed interesting so we decided to watch it.  Most of the movie went as expected, but the ending did not fit the "feel good" formula I was looking for at the moment.  Boy was a Casanova, met a girl who changed him, however, the girl refused him so she could marry a rich New Yorker.  The last scene is, and I kid you not, a toad swallowing a mouse.  Not exactly the uplifting movie I needed to help me get through being just a tad homesick during the week.

Despite that horrific start to the weekend, things turned out fairly fantastic.  After days and weeks of rain, the sky finally cleared over Rabat, and I spent most of the day Saturday lying around on the terrace and talking to my oldest sister, Amal, about just about everything from clothes to the beach.    Not to give anyone the wrong idea about study abroad, but this apparent laziness did give me ample opportunity to practice my French and learn some more Arabic.  In the summer, she doesn't keep on her jeans and long-sleeves, but dons an entire new wardrobe that's kind of like mine in the summer.  I was initially surprised that she also wears miniskirts, shorter shorts, and tank tops in the summer because I had thought all Moroccan women were more conservative.  However, my family has definitely proven me wrong, and that there is definitely more than one side to Morocco and Moroccan women.  In the suggested packing list for the program, SIT had told me to pack conservative clothing and play it safe, so to speak, so as not to draw attention.  I can definitely understand their concern, and I do know a fair number of women who dress far more conservatively than my sisters.  Not to say that they are constantly wearing low-cut shirts etc., but instead they wearing skinny jeans, tight sweaters (since it's relatively cold here for them), and miniskirts (with tights of course)!  Not exactly what I had expected.  I was even more shocked to find that my sister not only wears bikinis, but also has 4 or 5.  I guess that's why we do the homestays.
   
During these conversations of various sorts, we did not only talk about clothes, but also the subject of dying hair came up.  I had been considering making the switch to red prior to leaving for Morocco, but decided not to do so before departing for an Islamic country where I didn't know what to expect.  I have never dyed my hair before, but my sister apparently dyes her hair every summer and sometimes in the winter.  So I figured I could trust her judgment on all things hair and dye related.  I told her that I wanted to dye my hair, and the next thing I know my entire Sunday was planned out for me.  We woke up around 9 am and followed a very strict, albeit relaxed, schedule for the day:  First, we made sure the coiffeur could perform the change that day and at a good price, and then proceeded on to search the many street stalls selling hair and beauty supplies.  I had some trouble deciding which red to choose, but in the end there were only about 3 choices so it wasn't too difficult.  Then it was off to the coiffeur to have the goop, that is the hair dye, put into my hair, and then to the hamam to rinse all of said goop out of my hair.  When I emerged from the hamam to finally see what the dye had accomplished, I found a full head of bright red.

Mission accomplished! Most people commented that it looked like I had put henna in my hair, but I assured them otherwise.  After returning from the hamam about 4 hours later, I received a text message from an SIT friend saying that her sister was willing to give everyone henna for a small price.  I asked my sister if she wanted to come along, and she agreed, though after the hamam I think she would have rather slept.  Off I went yet again.  Henna is a very interesting form of art.  To be honest, I had no idea what exactly it was before coming to Morocco, but now I have officially met henna.  To start, it is a paste that is put on your hands, palm first, and it resembles clay but is slightly more liquid.  The henna artist squeezes this paste out of a syringe that has a small needle-like tip, and makes designs on your hands the same way a cake decorator would decorate a cake.  Mami and my sister said that real Moroccan henna is supposed to be made with very fine lines and follow a more geometric pattern.  The henna I got on Sunday was definitely nothing like what they described, but is still pretty nonetheless.  It has a more floral design reminiscent of Victorian wallpaper or fabric.

The henna itself doesn't seem to bother me so far, but what really got me was the fact that I had to leave the paste on my hands for about an hour.  For a person who can barely handle nail polish drying, an hour is a very long time.  Instead I decided to follow my sister's suggestion and put my hands over the stove to help it dry faster.  You know when it's time to take it off when the henna becomes clay-like and starts falling off your hands.  Then it's time to simply rub your hands to take all of it off.  Three pieces of advice from my family for anyone who is considering getting henna and wants it to last longer: 1) while it's drying spray perfume all over your hands, 2) after all the henna has come off, put oil of any kind on your hands, this will not only help it last longer but will help your hands endure the henna with flying colors on the softness scale, and 3) don't wash your hands with soap at all for the rest of the day.  My henna appears to be darker than my friend's who got hers at the same time, so I'll take this advice to be true until I see otherwise.  All that's left is to enjoy!

Part 2: The Sahara and Onward

To continue my description of the Sahara, I don't think I'll ever want to permanently live in the desert, but I definitely fell in love.  Perhaps this is due to my love of wide open spaces, and the Sahara is definitely just that, and taken to the extreme!  We were supposed to have gone on a camel ride the night we arrived in the desert, but sadly, a dust storm started as soon as we pulled into Rissani, the town/city that borders the desert.  So needless to say, we did not pursue our camel riding adventure that night.  However, we did have an excellent performance of Gnawa music.  Gnawa refers not only to a type of music but also a group of people who were brought from Sub-Saharan Africa to the north through the slave trade.  They say it resembles blues and jazz, but I didn't see too much of a resemblance in the music at least.  However, it is absolutely wonderful music and I started dancing with a few of my friends part way through the performance.

Our camel riding adventure was definitely not canceled though!  Our program director promised us that we would see the sunrise on the Sahara the next morning instead.  A fantastic idea as far as I was concerned, and partly reminded me of the time I saw the sunrise over Angkor Wat.  Unfortunately for me and my stomach, I was having terrible stomach pains when I woke up that morning.  This severely lessened my enjoyment of the whole scene, but I attempted to work through the pain and take in the absolute beauty of the full moon giving way to the brilliant sun.

Despite popular belief that the desert is always hot (at least that's what I thought), it was absolutely freezing that morning around 6 am, at least for the clothing I had packed.  But I mounted my camel regardless, and set out for one of the taller dunes near the hotel/auberge.  Riding a camel is kind of like riding an elephant, if you've ever had the pleasure of riding one, and is relatively similar to riding a more staccato version of a boat on the ocean.  So going up and down dunes can be quite scary and a little sickening, even if you don't happen to be already sick.

At the end of our short ride through the dunes, we started to see the sun slowly make its way up into the sky and it is one of those sights that your mind doesn't soon forget.  Before the sun came up, the sand was a darker color and very cold, but once the sun peeked out a little bit, it became a brilliant yellow-orange.  Like I said before, it's something that can only be partially conveyed through pictures.  After our brief stint in the dunes, we took our land rovers out into what our director called the "baked earth" desert.  Basically, it's just rocks; no vegetation, just rocks.  There is a road through this particular part of the desert, but our drivers simply bypass it and decide to start doing donuts in the middle of nowhere.  Not what you'd expect in the middle of the desert, but it sure was fun. 

After our brief sojourn in the desert, we stopped again at Rissani and got to wander around the town for a little bit before continuing onward.  I was able to quickly grab a Gnawa CD and a fairly authentic and huge Berber scarf to protect myself from the sun.  We left Rissani shortly after, and made our way to a Berber town known for its cultural heritage, N'kob.  It was truly a spectacular little town, and it had a hotel-turned-cultural center, called Kasbah Baha Baha, that was only slightly short of being a spa retreat.  They had orange trees in bloom, a pool, and outdoor living accommodations for those who enjoy sleeping under the stars.  We had lunch at Kasbah Baha Baha and got to enjoy the magnificent sunshine (compared to rain-soaked Rabat) before continuing on towards Ouarzazate.

Unfortunately for the other SIT members, I became increasingly sick as the day wore on.  However, I was able to get to a doctor in Ouarzazate and get some medicine, so all ended well and I felt better by bedtime.  We spent the night at a dormitory for girls, and it wasn't just a building full of women but a way for girls to get a better education.  Most girls who live out in the countryside don't have access to schooling beyond primary school, and so they have to go to the neighboring cities to continue their education.  This poses a considerable obstacle for most girls because they cannot go to a strange city where their family knows no one simply to go to school, and so many non-profit organizations have developed girls' dormitories so that these girls can continue their education and have more employment opportunities.  In my opinion, it's a great way to pass on the gift of education, so I was all for it.  There was a dinner arranged so that the SITers could meet the girls living in the dormitory, but unfortunately, I couldn't attend because of my stomach.  From the girls I met and talked to in passing, they all seem like bright and ambitious young women, who undoubtedly will go far.

Next stop on our journey: Marrakech.  I had heard so much about Marrakech from my family and from the other SITers who had been reading up on their Rough Guides and Lonely Planets, that I was truly excited to arrive.  However, my first experience in Marrakech wasn't the best.  We arrived in Marrakech near lunch time (Moroccan lunch time = 1-2 pm) and were allowed to explore the city on our own for a change.  A group of friends and I immediately went from our hotel to the Medina to the famous Djema El-Fna, the fabled marketplace where storytellers, snake charmers, henna women, and juice stands pack themselves in and attempt to attract as many people as possible.  This picturesque scene just wasn't there on a Tuesday afternoon, and consequently I wasn't all that impressed.  I was even less impressed upon seeing the supposed snake charmers.  These snakes were definitely not being charmed, and looked more like they were drugged or hadn't eaten in a long time.  Needless to say, that gave me a bad impression, and it didn't help that everywhere we turned there were people ready to attack us with henna, menus, or oranges.

So instead of braving the open arena of the square, my friends and I dodged into the Souks and were surprised at how relaxed all the shopkeepers were compared to most other places we had been.  I would have expected to have been harassed just as much or more than in the square, but that just wasn't the case.  Everyone was actually quite friendly, albeit a little more when you entered their shop and asked about or tried on things, but all in all a generally enjoyable experience.

What really made my brief stay in Marrakech much less enjoyable was the torrential downpour that started once we left the Souk.  We attempted to run through most of it the long way back to our hotel, but that just didn't work so well.  I had on my recently purchased purple Berber scarf, which I quickly discovered doesn't hold color very well when wet.  Combine that with a yellow shirt and you have a ruined wardrobe.  What made things more hilarious, was that in addition to my multicolor shirt, my recently purchased blue Moroccan leather sandals began to share their color with my feet.  So not only was I purple and yellow, but also unnaturally blue!  A rainbow of sorts all caused by the rain in Marrakech.

Trip to the South, Part 1

One of the biggest problems that I see in Morocco is trash. You can literally see it everywhere. From the Medina to the countryside, the entire country seems to be plagued with trash. This may sound like a frustrated college student’s rant about how a developing country is dirty, but it deeply disturbs me on an ecological level that people are OK with throwing their trash in the street, out the window, or in the forest. Everywhere you go, no matter how “close to nature” you try to come if people have been there before you, you’ll find evidence of their existence. While my homestay family in Rabat has a trashcan under the sink in the kitchen, they still persist in throwing some of their trash out the window. And in the streets, I constantly see people just flicking the wrappers and bottles for their candy or juice wherever they happen to be standing. I know that I am not the only one who feels that things could be better with the trash situation in Morocco. Mami is always watching this TV show about the people who live on trash dumps and who clean the streets in big cities, like Casablanca and Fez, and it’s heart wrenching to hear some of their stories. She also tells me that she doesn’t like that there is basically a garbage dump on one side of our house. For the most part, I don’t think the general population knows or understands the impact that their waste has on the environment and on their health, and that worries me. Education is always a good thing in my opinion, and in this case it is necessary.

Apart from the trash everywhere, I have seen some quite spectacular sites that Morocco has been more known for: the Sahara and the Middle or High Atlas Mountains. All are absolutely spectacular and have their own specialty. The Middle Atlas is known for its cedar forests, which sadly are being depleted at an alarming rate of 30,000 hectares per year due to the constant demand for cedar products. However, there have been government initiatives to help work with the people living on the National Park land to help preserve the fragile ecosystems which they are a part of. As part of our tour through the Middle Atlas we stopped at two cedar forest locations: one was to have a picnic in a more secluded part of the forest, and the other was to see the famous Barbary Macaques. The second was definitely a place where Moroccans and tourists alike frequented to have picnics and enjoy the forest, but you could definitely see the strain being placed on the trees.

Another more somber theme we covered during our short tour of the Middle Atlas was the usage and mismanagement of water resources and the impact of different forms of agriculture. Agriculture makes up about 16% of Morocco’s GDP, a very impressive number, and about 40% of people farm either in larger industrial farms or as subsistence farmers, meaning they grow what they need using more traditional methods and sometimes have a extra to sell for additional income. As we were driving near Meknes for the second time in our program, the expansive vineyards I saw lining the highway began to take on another meaning. Those large vineyards are part of a new trend in agriculture in Morocco that puts more emphasis on industrial farms like the ones I saw, and pushing subsistence farmers away from growing cereals to a type of farming based on harvesting from trees. Why trees you may ask? Because Morocco is being increasingly affected by drought, and trees like olives have a better resistance to those droughts and don’t need as much water as growing grains like barley. This seems like a logical initiative for the government to take, especially in areas where rainfall is becoming increasingly scarce, but what will happen when the country that eats bread like it’s going out of style doesn’t produce as much grain? I’m sure the government has already considered this issue (at least I hope they have), but I still just have to ask.

To add to the increasingly somber mood about deforestation, water mismanagement, and climate change, we next ventured into the Sahara. On all counts a spectacular place to visit, however, we happened to arrive in Rissani, a major town that is on the border of the desert, just as the wind was picking up, and dust storms were a significant issue. Yet, we still managed to visit a private co-operative initiative, which worked mostly with women and children to help create a more sustainable and diversified economy to the areas and villages it works with. They provide literacy, weaving, and math classes as well as daycare so that women can not only contribute to the family economy but also take on an informed role about their rights. This was very inspiring for me because I am so interested in education in all forms, and I couldn’t resist buying a couple handkerchiefs when I knew that the women who made them would be getting a fair price for their work. Next, we ventured out into the desert area where the co-operative had developed an oasis project that allowed people of the area to have water provided by the wells dug by a government initiative by irrigating a small plot of land on which they could grow grains. After that, the not-so-educational fun started. As we checked into our hotel, it was hard not to notice the Saharan sand dunes looming behind it. This was quite possibly the thing that I have anticipated the most throughout this entire trip, and I was not disappointed! The Sahara is a stunning place that can only be partially captured in pictures, so I won't try to explain it in words except for these: vast, sandy and mountainous.

Casablanca, Casanegra

This past week has been filled with adventures of various kinds, from food to visiting the Institut Royal de la Culture Amazighe.  The former is always an adventure, and sometimes taken at one's leisure.  Today, after running along the Bou RegReg river boardwalk area, I decided to stop at one of the many hanouts (little grocery stalls) in the Medina along my way back home.  Fortunately, the one I picked sold fresh squeezed orange juice, a real treat in the muggy heat of the morning.  Ever since my Arabic professor told my class about this grain flavored yogurt, I had been wondering what it tastes like, so I decided to grab a little breakfast.  One of my first nights in my homestay, Mami gave me pistachio yogurt, so I had already conquered that flavor and now it was time for something new.  You'd think that yogurt with flakes of grain in it would not sound appetizing, but it was actually quite spectacular.  It reminded me of the taste of granola and yogurt, minus the crunch.  So if you ever see "cereales" flavored yogurt anywhere, take a step out of the American flavor box and go for it!

Many of my posts lately have dealt with food, and for good reason.  A lot of Moroccan social interaction involves food.  Throughout the day there are not just three designated eating times, but four; breakfast, lunch, what I call teatime, and dinner.  Why the teatime you ask?  Because Moroccans generally don't eat dinner till between 9 and midnight, and so need something to tide themselves over till the later dinner time.  And a very important component to the teatime and to breakfast is, naturally, the tea.  Moroccan mint tea is unlike most teas I have seen prepared--granted my only tea experiences have been in bags and some loose leaf tea that you can get in the States, but bear with me.  Moroccan mint tea is made by putting a little bit of green tea, some fresh mint, Sheba (something that my Arabic professor said made you "feel warm" in the winter time), and a block (or 3) of pressed sugar in your teapot, then add the boiling water and boil it just a little more.  The end result is what I consider a spectacular concoction of mint and sugar that makes me anxiously await teatime every day.

But food isn't the only thing on my mind, I also get to travel!  Yesterday, I spent the day in Casablanca and got my first taste of what most Americans consider summer, but to Moroccans is still early spring.  Personally, I'm siding with the American viewpoint on this one not only because I am American, but also because it was the first time this year that I officially got a bit burnt.  It was such a nice day that I wanted to spend it all outside, but that ended up wreaking a bit of havoc on my poor skin.  However, meshi mushkin (it's nothing), as Moroccans say.  In Casablanca, I got to see the third largest mosque in the Muslim world, Hassan II Mosque.  Just to give you a sense of how large this building is: it can fit 25,000 worshipers inside at one time.  It was truly spectacular not only because of its size but also because roughly a third of it was built on the ocean.  It was commissioned by King Hassan II in the late 80s and early 90s to be what it is and to use mostly materials found in Morocco.  Every little detail was ornately decorated in a carefully planned pattern, even down to the ablution room that had carved fountains in the shape of flowers.  Most of the marble used came from the middle of the country, with a small minority coming from Italy, and we're talking 9 hectares (22 acres) of marble.  Truly spectacular in every sense.  Next I naturally moved on to the beach!  I did set foot in the Atlantic, though it was truly just a foot because while the air was quite warm, the water was absolutely frigid.  There were so many men and boys playing soccer on the beach that it was a little hard to actually get to the water.  They had built their "fields" back to back so that one group used the same goal as the other, so it was sometimes difficult to see what was going on in any game and navigate safely.  After spending a couple hours at the beach pondering the meaning of life and trying to figure out what was going on in the game in front of me, I proceeded onward to the Medina.  I feel like it's impossible to truly get a sense of any Moroccan city without visiting its Medina.  The Casablanca Medina was very complicated, this coming from the person who has learned to navigate the streets of Rabat's Medina.  What makes Casablanca's Medina so disorienting is that the streets don't go the direction you think they do.  If you want to end up in some general direction and don't know what street to take, you can generally find your way anyway in Rabat, but in Casablanca, I definitely had some trouble.  By the time I had sufficiently walked around the Medina, it was already pretty late so I decided to catch the train back to Rabat, which only took about an hour.  My sister, Amal, doesn't like Casablanca as much, so she always refers to it as Casanegra, but I didn't have a bad experience in the commercial center of Morocco.

Casablanca is not my only excursion, as SIT calls it, this week.  Tomorrow I board a bus that will whisk me away to the Southern and Eastern parts of the country.  It's to the Middle Atlas Mountains and then the desert for me!  This time next week I will have ridden a camel.  To me, that's the most exciting, so I'll keep you posted on how that goes.

Bovines Beware!

Going from one family to another is always a challenge, and going from the youngest to the oldest in a family even more so.  Every day my siblings find new and exciting ways to provoke reactions from me.  At the beginning, it was little things like pointing at me and saying something in Arabic that I had no idea what it meant, so I would simply respond with a funny face.  However, now the youngest, who is 4, has taken to gnawing (yes, I really mean gnawing) on my leg, arm, or anything he can get a hold of that is obviously mine.  I know he's not teething--he should be far past that stage, according to my very limited knowledge of small children--so it must just be for kicks.  One time it got so bad that I had to carry him out of the room and drop him in the kitchen with mami, which caused a chain reaction of laughter throughout the house.  Needless to say, it has been interesting, and has exposed me to a very different side of family life.

On another but similar note, I got my first real taste of something completely different for the first time the night before last when mami put cow's feet in front of me for dinner.  She had told me before what we were having, but I just thought I misunderstood something.  However, that wasn't the case.  She fully intended to say cow's feet, and there they were sitting on a plate of beans in front of me.  I did gag a little at first when I tried it, but it turned out to not be nearly as bad as I had imagined. I thought that cow's feet would be the strangest thing I would try in Morocco, but I was sorely mistaken.  Last night I had something I never thought you could eat: meat from a cow's head.  I won't go into vivid detail about where it comes from, but suffice it to say it is mostly from the back part.  Luckily, the meat did not come intact with the bones like the feet did, so it was not at all an unenjoyable experience.  There was still a lot of fat with the meat, which is most likely why it is so expensive, but I could tolerably push past this fact and ended up liking it.  Also, like most Moroccan dishes containing meat, it was served with a plate of white beans, so it was not the only thing to eat.  Although a good dollop of mashed potatoes would be fantastic, white beans are a fairly good substitute when paired with the excellent sauce Mami makes.

Travel Plans = Cancelled

Upon hearing that all trains to Tangier were canceled this morning, I am actually quite happy that I dropped my plans to got to mountainous Chefchouan in the northern part of the country.  It has been raining almost non-stop in Morocco for the past week, and with the unreliability of the roads and trains, I figured I'd pass on that venture for now at least.  I definitely plan on going to Chefchouan for one of my free weekends, but not this one!  So what to do this weekend? Explore Rabat's surroundings! There is apparently a zoo and garden to the north of Sale, Kenitra--a 30 minute train ride away--supposedly has a fantastic beach and is a very nice smaller city, and there is always more to see in the city of Rabat itself, considering I have only really been in a small part of the Nouvelle Ville and mostly in the Medina.  So it's time to be a tourist in my "home town" and surroundings!

An integral part of my weekend plans will also be studying Arabic.  Since we started learning Fus'ha in class this past week, we have covered the Alphabet and basic vowels, but while it is nice that Arabic has a separate letter for each sound, it is extremely frustrating to try to find a coordinating sound in English or Latin script.  My only options were to remember the sound (not really an option) or try to write down some strange and most likely not accepted transliteration of what they sound like to me.  I have been ok with sounds like "a", "f", "g", and "s" but when it comes to what my professor calls the stronger letters, things can get a little hairy.  So for the past week I have been making a fool of myself in front of my family as I attempt to mimic their pronunciation and how they write each letter.  It makes me feel like a child all over again, despite the fact that I'm 20. I have seen some of the fruits of my labor, however, because when I look at Arabic words spelled on an orange juice bottle, for instance, they no longer look like just a bunch of squiggles and lines with dots, they actually look like letters and sounds.  Just a little bit more effort and I might be able to read. 

Another one of the uniquely Moroccan encounters I have had to deal with lately was a different form of harassment.  As I was walking home from belly dance class with my sister, Amal, this one man started saying something very extensive in Darija, and after a bit, Amal turned around and started saying something back to him.  At first I thought she was just giving him a taste of his own medicine, but I noticed that she never got that upset about harassment before.  I asked her what he had said, and she slowly replied in mixed French that he had called me a U.S. spy that her family took into her home so that I could take all of the secrets of Morocco back to my government.  While I had been warned that people might say this upon seeing hordes of foreigners in the Medina, I had not expected that I would actually be accused of being a spy.  While not extremely disturbing, it was definitely a moment that made me stop and realize how foreign I can seem to some people.  Homestays are a relatively strange concept when you think about it: going to a country and staying with someone you have never met so that you can study their culture.  It makes sense to me as an anthropologist, but that's only the emic perspective; I need to think outside of my ethnic box.

Fez, Meknes, Volubilis oh my!

Traveling can really take things out of you. After two days of straight travel and many hours in the bus sleeping, somehow I am still tired. We started the "Four Dynasties in One Weekend" tour of the middle of Morocco early Saturday morning. At 7:45 we boarded the bus and began the two and a half hour drive to Meknes, and upon arriving (after sleeping the majority of the time of course) I found it to be very beautiful, even in the occasional rain. We first saw the beautifully decorated Thursday Gate (Bab El-Heftouh), proceeded onto another gate, which was also very beautiful, and then went to the Mausoleum of Moulay Idriss, who fought against four enemies in the 15th century to keep Morocco from submitting to a foreign ruler. Quite a spectacular achievement considering the force of the Ottoman Empire and Spanish alliance. To fight these formidable foes, he had to be sure that his army would always have supplies, and in order to do so he created a massive granary to store enough barley for his 12,000-horse army for three years. You could never predict when another Moroccan drought would strike the countryside, and since he asked for a certain amount of barley instead of money for taxes, he knew his granary would always be full. After this brief sojourn in Meknes, we departed for the nearby town of Moulay Idriss, a holy city where the ashes of this great sultan reside. What was truly spectacular about this city was the fantastic view of the valley and adjoining ridge. There we had lunch at a local restaurant reserved solely for tourists that day. Afterwards we descended the very steep side of the ridge, and it definitely reminded me of driving in the moors of England; when dad attempted drive away and we came upon a winding, 12% grade road in our relatively large van. Just substitute "bus of 41 SIT students" for "large van".

It was definitely an interesting experience, and well worth it because upon descending the ridge, we came upon the ruins of the Roman city, Volubilis. Although it was raining part of the time, it was absolutely gorgeous, especially when looking out upon the surrounding farmland. The mosaics archeologists were able to find there were also spectacular and almost completely intact. Being there was odd in a way though because it felt like a part of Italy with all the olive trees along the hillsides and the Roman ruins, but there was still a Moroccan vibe to the whole area. I really felt at a crossroads, as odd as that idea may seem. Overall, it's an experience better conveyed through pictures (in other words, check out my stuff on Flickr: Pictures)

After Volubilis, we proceeded onward to Fez! We arrived at night and had the opportunity to wander around the city for a couple hours (in groups of course) before we went to dinner. The dinner was probably the most interesting variety show I have ever seen. It began as a simple dinner with music experience, but then the acrobatic drummers came out and the whole evening really began. There was a magician, belly dancer who also played with fire, singers, and even a fake Moroccan wedding just for all the tourists. In addition to all the interesting events (again, see Flickr), it was nice to just relax and talk for a couple hours with people, and then go to bed early! That is one thing I've noticed about Moroccans, they never seem to go to bed before 11 or sometimes after midnight, and then most get up around 7 or 8 each morning. It took a while to get used to after having a steady sleep diet of 8 hours, but now I think I've adjusted. But I digress. Fez: absolutely crazy in the Medina, which was where the majority of our tour took place. The Medina of Fez has much smaller streets than the one in Rabat, and it truly is like a maze! But the artisans there are amazing. They work in what appear to be museum set-ups of how people used to work in other times, and turn out some of the most beautiful metal-work I have ever seen. We also (unfortunately for my nose) visited the tannery. Apparently the entire process has not changed much since the middle ages, and there are still earthen pits where they treat and dye the skins. While interesting to see how the craft has not changed much from the past, it does raise some serious health concerns for many of the workers, who spend all day in vats of chemicals or dyes. I should mention that all the dyes come from natural sources, but are still probably not good to be steeping oneself in day in and day out. Otherwise, the leather they make is the best I have ever seen. It is all very soft and I just couldn't resist purchasing a pair of blue-green sandals. The other craft we explored that day was weaving, and went to one of the guild houses in Fez to see how scarves and other textiles are made from the Agave plant. Previously, I had only known agave as a source of wonderful sweet stuff that I put in my coffee, but apparently if you work with it you can get some almost silk-like material that is fantastic for scarves and bedspreads. I was tempted to purchase a scarf, but had unfortunately already spent all my money on the wonderful leather goods at the tannery. However, I have a feeling that I will be going back to Fez at some point because they call it the intellectual capital of Morocco and possibly the oldest university in the world is there, built in the 9th century. So even though I was a tourist this weekend, I think I'll be getting to know Fez in the future.

David Guetta in the Souk

So it really is true: American rap/pop is absolutely everywhere. Before, I had only remotely recognized that this could be possible but now it is definitely confirmed in my mind.  Why, you may ask? Because I heard "Sexy Bitch" as I walked down the Souk street (aka the street I live on and the main market street in the Medina) and a couple seconds after that Lady Gaga.  Then I get home and Amal (I finally figured out the spelling) is blasting Sean Jean (sorry if you have no idea what I'm talking about right now, but suffice it to say that these are big names in American pop), and I had no idea what to make of the whole situation.  It's somehow extremely disorienting to hear American music while in a Moroccan market or kitchen.  Either that or just extremely unexpected.

Today I finally got the chance to explore the city a little bit more after being enlightened by our bus tour of the city, and a few friends and I went to Agdal.  Agdal is a very wealthy and European section of Rabat, with plenty of cafes, wider streets and plenty of shops containing plenty of actual Gucci, Prada, and other designer names.  While there are plenty of cafes no matter where you go in Rabat, the main difference between ones in Agdal and ones closer to the Medina is that you almost never see a woman sitting outside a cafe near the Medina, but in Agdal women are all over the place and in high heels of all colors and styles.  After living in the Medina for the past week, I've come to expect a more modest, though still very fashionable, mode of dress and to see so many seemingly and actually risqué outfits was almost a shock.  I'm heading to Fez and Marrakech this weekend to be a tourist so I will probably be shocked once more, but more on that later.  Look for pictures and see you after the weekend!

J'ai parlee plus en francais que j'ai pensee!

My host family has been fantastic.  After the initial shock of having a turkish toilet/shower (aka squatting over a porcelain hole) and having to live with 7 children, things have gone great with my family; 4 girls and 3 boys, all under 19.  I am very lucky because my host mom, who insists I call her Mami, speaks French very well.  When she was my oldest sister's age, she was at the top of her class in school, but unfortunately couldn't continue her studies after her surrogate mother died.  Needless to say she is a very informative informant (not in the spy sense, in the anthropological sense!), and has given me much to think about in the coming weeks.  On Saturday, for instance, we stayed up till 2 am talking about what it means to be a Muslim and particularly what it means to be a Muslim in Morocco.  Her generation fell between those who were very strict and more lax on the definition of a Muslim woman, and so while she wears hijab (the headscarf) whenever she goes out, for any reason, she allows her daughters to leave the house in whatever they choose to wear.  Her logic is that if you follow the correct way of living, according to Islam, then it shouldn't matter exactly what you wear.  A very moderate position to take on such a controversial issue, I think.  Mami also places a great emphasis on education.  She expressed to me numerous times over the past few days how much she dislikes the government for shutting down several of the public schools in the Medina, and combining them into one that is right behind our house.  However, like our homestay coordinator said about Morocco, the more you attempt to understand of the country, the more confused you get.  While Mami doesn't like the images of crime and illicit behavior she sees on the TV (all Moroccans have satellite TV by the way), she really wants to send her oldest daughter, Aman, to the States to study.  Denounce one moment, praise the next.  Just as Morocco is part modern and part traditional.  It's quite an interesting mix to learn about and live among.

As for a description of my house: it's fairly modest but has lots of stairs!  From the gigantic front door, you go upstairs to the second floor of our house.  It's kind of like living in a condo.  You have people with a door next to yours but living on the first floor of the structure, while you live on the second.  So you go upstairs, turn down a long hallway, and all of the walls are covered in this decorative tile, which I think is unique to Morocco.  Then you come to the entrance to one of our small salon rooms (kind of like a living room) that has couches lining two of the walls, and TV on another, and a doorway at the far end.  If you got to the doorway, you come to a hallway that leads to another living room which also has a TV, Mami's room, and a more formal salon for greeting and meeting distinguished guests or having parties.  One thing I instantly found out upon my arrival is that Moroccans love the TV, even if no one is watching it, the TV will still be on.  If you go back the way you came, you'll find a fairly large kitchen on your right and a small set of stairs on your left.  You take the set of stairs up to my room, which is very modest, and my sister's room.  If you open the little hatchway/door next to her room, you'll find yourself on the terrace looking out on the soccer field for the school and the Medina wall.  It's absolutely beautiful up there, and I love to spend some rarely found quiet time there in the evening just before everyone gets home from school.

With 7 kids, you'd imagine the house would be filled with noise day in and day out, and you're most certainly right! Debates, fights, jokes, and crying are no strangers at my house.  Either the youngest, Abdellrahaman (you'll have to excuse the spelling), and the next youngest, Idriss, is crying, screaming, or doing something they're really not supposed to be doing.  For instance, one time I walked into the room to find Idriss and Abdellrahaman playing with the lighter we use to light the stove.  Just about what you'd find any boys that age attempting to do when they think no one is looking.  And I must say it is definitely a change going from being the youngest to being the oldest.  Kudos to the older siblings for being able to put up with anything and everything little boys can dish out!  But apart from the fights and the jokes, my family has really helped me adjust to life in Morocco by making me feel as welcome as possible.  My sisters already laugh and joke with me, though sometimes I have to ask them to translate, and my oldest sister, Aman, took me to her Egyptian dance (belly dancing) class Saturday night.  I'm definitely considering paying for the month so I can ward off at least some of the incoming pounds!

The culminating experience of the weekend, however, was the visit to the hamam, Morocco's version of the Roman bath house.  Aman took me there on Sunday, and it is definitely an experience I won't soon forget.  We donned djellabas, put our toiletries in a little bucket, our clean clothes in a bag, and off we went.  The real experience started when she told me to strip naked upon arriving; what?!?  Aman bought black soap, bain noire, at the front desk, which is supposed to bring out toxins in your skin and help take off the dead skin, and then we went into the actual hamam rooms.  There are three rooms, which vary in temperature from steaming hot to a little warmer than room temperature, and we filled the large buckets we had gotten at the front desk with hot and cold water from the spigots at one end of the room.  The bain noir isn't like any other soap you'll ever encounter.  It's a goopy, semi-solid the color of oily mud, so I was a little apprehensive about spreading this stuff all over my body.  However, we then proceeded to spend the next hour exfoliating (aka scrubbing the living daylights out of all the skin on my body), washing, and rewashing.  It was very relaxing but at the same time I couldn't figure out what to do for remaining 40 minutes.  All in all a good experience, and very cleansing, though I still took a shower yesterday...

Fin Medina?

Just to allay some fears, I was not harmed in this portion of the SIT program.  My drop off was actually surprisingly easy and didn't reveal as much of the city apart from the synagogue.  However, I did get an appreciation of how large the Medina is.  For some reason, I was one of the last people to be dropped off on our independent (and somewhat clueless) excursion of Rabat, which happened to be quite fortunate or unfortunate depending on how you look at it.  I ended up being only 2 blocks away from the Medina wall and could easily find my way to the part of the Ville Nouvelle that I have explored a lot already.  So, sadly, I did not have quite the exploratory adventure I was hoping, but I did end up feeling very comfortable walking around by myself and asking women which way I should go.  At one point just to make sure I knew where I was going, I stopped and used some broken French/Arabic to ask four women which way to go.  They immediately smiled and told me the way to the Atlantic (they had no idea what I was talking about when I attempted to say the name of the CCCL in Arabic or French), so I don't think the rest of my stay here will be too bad.  At the moment, I am waiting for my host family to come pick me and my massive amount of stuff up from the center and take me home with them.  Hopefully all goes well!

As the end, to my Orientation experience, we also went on a bus tour of Rabat and a little bit of Sale.  I'll tell you more about that later, and I promise I'll upload the pictures from that soon!

Moroccan Momma

So after a week of anticipation, the moment I have been waiting for and simultaneously dreading since I got accepted finally arrived today: I met my Moroccan momma!  After another lecture about the potential issues that could arise from dealing with miscommunications with the homestay family, we finally received a little fact sheet about the family we would be spending the next 8 weeks with.  On said sheet included the names of all the family members, what kinds of facilities they had (shower water, toilets), what language(s) they spoke, and any other relevant information.  I received my sheet and it had the names of the nine people who would make up my host family: 3 brothers,  4 sisters, mom, and dad.  It kinda reminded me of my wonderful family back home :) Then we were told that all of our families were waiting for us downstairs at the center, and I just about had a heart attack.  However, once I met my Moroccan mom, who insisted I call her mami, I instantly felt welcomed and at home.  She spoke fluent and very rapid French, and began to tell me a little bit about her very large family.  She apparently sells food at a street shop, so I am basically guaranteed fantastic food while I stay with her.  Hopefully she will teach me some of her skills so I can bring them back to the States with me.  I will have two sisters living in the house with me: one is 19 and the other 14.  Both of my host sisters are in school, and one of them takes Egyptian dance classes, which I took to be belly dancing.  One of her other 4 daughters lives in a small town outside of Casablanca with her own family.  And she has another relative who lives out in the countryside of the middle of the country.  She didn't tell me much that I could understand or pick up about her sons or husband, but I am sure I will learn whatever I need to know when I move in tomorrow!  I am so excited to finally meet the family I will be spending the majority of the next 8 weeks with, and I can't wait to move in tomorrow.  Another activity I am not looking forward to as much tomorrow is what SIT calls the "drop off" exercise.  We will each be dropped at some point in the city, and we will have to find our way back to the Center for Cross-Cultural Learning (CCCL) in the Medina. I'll let you know how that goes...

Raining in Rabat

Since my first impressions of Rabat, I have been able to explore the Medina and a very small part of the Ville Nouvelle (aka the New City) and not much has changed.  The houses are still amazingly beautiful in their very Moroccan way, and while I did not mention it before, the food here is fantastic!  The combination of the French, Moroccan, and Arabic cuisines creates a very interesting mix.  For instance, here is a typical day in food: Breakfast-cucumbers, salted tomatoes, thinly sliced oranges with cinnamon, pastries (croissants, pain au chocolat, something akin to danish), and thick coffee (with plenty of sugar and milk of course!) or the incredibly sweet moroccan mint tea (I think it puts the South to shame); Lunch-either steamed chicken or beef, beans/potatoes, salted tomatoes, bread, stewed carrots or quince, and either a piece of fruit or honey-covered semolina cookies; Dinner-same as lunch with whichever meat (chicken/beef) you didn't have at lunch and most likely a different veggie (though they do like their carrots...).  That is basically a day of food in Morocco, massive amounts of carbs and all. 

Apart from the massive intake of carbs, things have been very interesting the past few days.  SIT has been very good about teaching us all we need to know about Moroccan culture, history, hassling, bargaining, and Arabic (Darija is the name for the Moroccan dialect, in case you were wondering) but we have not had much time to go out and explore Rabat, until yesterday and today.  Yesterday's outing was preceded by a lecture on how to bargain, phrases we could use to help us get a better price, and, of course, a lecture on how to deal with hassling.  After the lectures we were sent out into the city with 10 Dirhams (a little more than US$1) to try to see what we could get for it.  So with a couple friends, I went out into the soukhs to see what I could find for 10dhms.  Sunglasses are generally 50, scarves 30, bracelets 10.  I didn't really want to buy any of the others, so I decided to go for the scarf.  After browsing the many shops that sell scarves on the street, I walk into what appeared to be a frequent of tourists looking for souvenirs.  It seemed promising--there was so much to choose from!--so I began talking to one of the men who worked there.  He showed me some leather and cloth bags, scarves of varying degrees of quality, leather pouches, silver and ceramic cups, but once he pulled out a beautiful scarf from amidst the rows and piles, I knew what I wanted.  I feigned disinterest and asked him the price, just as I had done for every other piece he put in front of me, and he quoted 60dhms.  I looked appalled because others had said only 30, and I was determined to work on my bargaining skills.  As instructed, I asked about other objects, how much they were, etc. trying to strike up a conversation and make it more of a social rather than a business interaction.  A little later I brought up the scarves again, and asked for one for 30 dhms, he flat out refused, and I changed the subject again.  So after about 30 minutes talking and shopping I finally got him to agree to sell me the scarf for 30; mission semi-accomplished!  However, as I was about to walk out, he said "so you come back for business or not for business?" I was so flabbergasted at the insinuation he was making, and immediately realized this was one of the great traditions of the relations between the sexes in Morocco, also known as street harassment.  As quickly as I could, I said "Ca suffit!", paid for the scarf and practically ran out the door.  Since then, I have experienced much more harassment on the streets, but it has been harmless.  Just men passing by on the street saying "hello" or other phrases as quickly as they can in as many different languages as they can.  This harassment is actually a form of courtship for Moroccans, who are largely unable to meet members of the opposite sex in any other place but the street.  So I will just have to keep my head about me as I go about my business in the streets of Morocco.  And I can't forget, I did get a good deal on a very pretty scarf. 

The one bad thing I have encountered since being in Rabat is definitely the pouring rain that came in full force today.  Everyone has told us that it is unusual to have this much rain in the city, but one day in four isn't a bad ratio for rainy to sunny days since arrival.  However, the major drawback about the rain is that it turns all of the ever present dirt in the street to a silty mud, making the markets and streets a very real hazard especially when crossing the street in the bright of day is hazardous enough.  I was able to make this leap with relative ease, but the survival Moroccan Arabic (aka Darija) was much more difficult to maneuver.  We started with the customary hello, return greeting, my name is..., and what is your name... that usually punctuate any beginning language course.  But even that was very hard on the brain.  Here's a sample conversation (this is all phonetic spelling, so don't expect much): j-assalaam ulikum, k:-walikum salaam, j-anna taliba. Wennti? k-heta anna taliba! Anna mericanea, menn wisconsin. Wennti? j-heta anna mericanea! Menn Pennsylvania. k-mutchelfin! j-mutchelfin! (hello; hello; i am a student, and you?; i am also a student! I am an american from wisconsin. And you?; I am also an american! From pennsylvania.; nice to meet you!; nice to meet you!; end conversation) While that's the quick and dirty version, that's pretty much all I have learned at this point.  All this in preparation of meeting my host family tomorrow, and I can't wait!

Im in Africa?

After 3 hours of waiting at the Philadelphia airport I am finally in Morocco! It has been great so far, everyone is very courteous and our program coordinators are great. My compatriots in this venture also seem pretty cool, so on the whole it has been a very good experience. I am still getting used to using the Arabic keyboard on the computer provided by the hotel, so youll have to forgive the lack of apostrophes and the short messages (for some reason, I have figured out just about everything else about this keyboard except for the apostrophes...) First impressions upon arriving at the airport: it is a lot warmer here, the people are friendly, the roads are crazy (trying to cross is taking your life in your hands sometimes), and there is an ocean! It hit me as we were driving by the coast in our bus that I am actually on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean; it is a very surreal feeling and just a little disorienting at first. However that feeling goes away when you fully take in the coastline in all its beautiful glory.  Upon landing I had originally asked myself: what in the world am I doing here, in Africa and in Morocco? But luckily that soon went away, and I was able to appreciate everything around me.

As for the SIT group as a whole, everyone seems nice (despite the jet lag and being tired from traveling for 24+ hours) but there are about 54 of us between the two programs, so to say we stick out like a sore thumb would be an understatement. Just imagine 54 white and mostly females walking in a pack down the Rue London in Rabat. We ventured into the Medina (the old city) this afternoon to go to our very informal beginning to Orientation week in the Center for Cross-Cultural Learning. I was immediately blown away by the spectacular houses and the narrow walkways of the Medina; it ends up being much more serene than the newer French Quarter where our hotel is.  One of the biggest advantages of being in the Center for Cross-Cultural Learning is that the terraces look out onto absolutely stunning views of the Atlantic and the river that separates Rabat from its twin city, Salé.  I cant wait to sit up there and study (aka just enjoy the view).  Thats all for now, but more (including pictures) will come soon!

The Countdown Begins...

Welcome to my blog!
It's just a little over a week before I get on the plane in Philadelphia and begin my trip to Morocco.  I'm getting more and more nervous as my departure gets closer, but I know this will be a great experience and I can't wait!  I'll update my progress as things come along, but for now I must go and find where in the world I put my backpacking backpack...