First week with the host family... shnoo?

One-week anniversary of living with the most generous, friendliest, funniest family in Morocco. In the past week, we have finished orientation, moved in with the families, and started classes.

After various lectures on social differences, educational differences, and what to expect, harassment-wise, we moved in with the families last Wednesday.  The next day, which the hottest day of the week feeling somewhere around 110 degrees F, we had to do a "Rabat challenge", which entailed walking around the city finding everyone's new house. Tempers clashed, people were sweaty, and there were no restaurants... it was a McDonald's sort of day, or "MacDo" as they call it here. Oy.

Finding a "paper store" on Rabat Challenge...

Nora and I are living with the El Bouhaili's-- Rachida, Hamid, Yassine, and Rihab. Yassine is our 23 year old brother, who is very nice but doesn't talk too much, and Rihab is our 19 year old sister. She is very fashionable and extremely sassy-- her favorite English phrase is "I'm sorry, I don't have time.", said with a hair flip and a roll of the eyeballs. I love it. And our host dad, Hamid, is very soft spoken, but extremely nice-- he drove me and Nora to do some errands shortly after we got to the house, and then he took us on a walk through the medina and he drove us all along the coast. People just fish off the rocks of the beach, it's gorgeous. And the mom, Rachida, is so sweet. As soon as we unpacked a little, she called us in for (more) delicious mint tea and some food, even though nobody else in the house could eat.  The apartment is within walking distance to the ocean AND the old medina/the souk... I could definitely get used to this.

Me, Rihab, Rachida (mama), and Nora

The second night with the El Bouhaili's, we had ftour around 7, and then around 12am we ate again, because that's what they do during Ramadan. But, I'm pretty sure we ate squid, or octapus. One of those things with tentacles. In a tomato sauce.  But at the first meal, ftour, we had falafel that the sister made herself, and the best harrira (lentil soup) that I've had yet.  We keep hearing that people tend to eat more during Ramadan (all after sundown), and I sincerely hope that's true.  You wouldn't think being practically force-fed delicious beef and potato tagines at midnight would be the worst thing in the world, but it's a difficult thing to adjust to, and probably isn't the best idea if I want to keep wearing the clothes I brought with me here.  Rachida will make coffee and bring it into the living room on a little gilt tea service every night, and since classes started she actually brings it into our room where we're studying.  And she gets up early to make breakfast for us before we leave for school, and then goes back to sleep on the couch.  It's incredible.  They've had 10 other American students over the past years though, so they're used to what our routines are, and they have their own routines that they just alter. 
 
Aside from being the wonderful cooks and genuinely kind people, it turns out our whole family is extremely talented.  Hamid, the dad, played jazz guitar in a group that toured around North Africa and Europe, back in the day.  Yassine also plays guitar, and sometimes after ftour we'll hear a few notes of Hotel California or No Woman No Cry (intermixed with loud Arabic TV, which is always on). Also, one night at dinner, Hamid, Yassine, and Rihab just started doing magic tricks on me and Nora! This family is so nice and fun, and crazy too. That's their favorite/best word to say in English, and also in darija (the dialect). So, Nora is "very crazy" or "hamka bzzzeff!" and I am "a little bit crazy", or "hamka shweea".
 
The whole family is almost too nice and accomodating-- that Moroccan hospitality.  Yassine just came into our room the other day and gave Nora and me this modem stick to plug into the laptop so that we can access the internet. He obviously had to buy it, but he just gave it to us with some paper to make flashcards with (flashcards are apparently impossible to find here).  One of our first nights with the family, he drove us and Rihab to the beach at Temara at night, because women can't go swimming during the day during Ramadan, and that beach is nicer for swimming than the one within walking distance to us.  He's quite the character-- he can speak English, but he won't.  We asked him why, and he says he doesn't like English, he likes Arabic.  He'd probably much rather watch the circus of people talking to us in French, and me translating the French into English for Nora (who speaks Spanish), and us responding in a broken mixture of Fraribic.  I mean, who wouldn't?  He helps us with our Arabic homework though, and the other night he asked me to translate his resume into English for him.   It's normal here for people to live with their families even after they graduate university, like Yassine.  After he gets married, or if he has to move away to work, he'll live on his own.
 
Rachida knows the ropes, and won't let anything bad happen to one of her "three daughters": Nora and I wanted to go back to the beach at Temara during the day on Sunday, and she went into this whole explanation about why we couldn't, because it is Ramadan and all the men would be out on the beach. We said ok, but then after ftour/dinner, she got all ready, and we drove to a beach! Just to walk around! And then she just whipped out a thermos of coffee and some plastic cups, with sugar too!  She's like arabian Mary Poppins.
 
Classes/languages...
 
It turns out that Darija, the Moroccan Arabic dialect, is the furthest from Modern Standard Arabic, which is what I took freshman year.  Listening to the family speak is like listening to a lot of "shhhhhshshshhhWAHshh!" all the time.  There's one television channel that is only in Darija, so after a few days of listening to the family and watching TV, the sounds are more familiar.  The most useful word, "Shnoo?"  means "What?"  Nothing like the "metha" of Standard Arabic.  Our brother says it all the time now to make fun of us, because he thinks that's the only word we know.  It's a spoken language and isnt' really written, so our exams will all be oral.  MSA is increasingly annoying me, because if you try to communicate to someone speaking in MSA, they laugh or don't understand you. We have MSA every day at 8:30am, and every other day I have either Darija or a Moroccan literature course in French.  My other courses, Islam, Gender, and Society and a North African sociology class, are taught in English.  My head is continually spinning.  Every little cousin or relative who we meet can speak at least Darija and French, and knows a little MSA and even English.  Why don't we do this in America?  Knowing languages is the best education and opens so many doors, and there are so many Americans who haven't even fully mastered English.

First week/Orientation

Ssalamu 'alaykum!  For our first week in Rabat, everyone on the program is staying in a hotel in Agdal, which is one of the nicer districts of Rabat.  We walk to the program building every day for lectures, and had our Arabic placement exam today.  It is Ramadan right now, so during the days and especially on the weekends, the streets are fairly empty.  Goint into the medina (the old city of Rabat) at night, there is so much more life.  People were packed into the narrow streets lined with stalls, with vendors yelling things-- just for fun, it seemed at times-- and the smells of the food and the music were incredible.  Some pictures:

The street we walk to get to the program building.  This was at about 9am on a Sunday, and it was dead.  Note the green "Sandway" sign, looking suspiciously like a "Subway" sign...

 The souk (market) at night, same day as the above picture.  During Ramadan, life seems to do a complete 180 here, with everything coming alive at night.  It's difficult to find food during the day, especially on the weekends, but we manage to find a few snacks and then eat "ftour" (breakfast) around 9pm with everyone else.

The ruins of the minaret, mosque, and cemetary complex at Chella, an ancient Roman city near Rabat.  There were storks' nests built on top of tall trees, as well as one on top of the minaret-- it's the brownish top part, and the little dot on top is a stork.  There was a hammam inside the mosque ruins, and similar to the top of the minaret (below) there were some tiles which were still painted their original colors.  Behind the mosque in the cemetary, the main tomb belongs to a sixteenth(ish) century sultan whose wife was English, according to our program/tour guide, which influenced the sultan's governing policies.  There was also a small tomb and a small building dedicated to teachers of the madrassa located on the complex.  It's doors and the roof were painted a minty green/icy blue color...

The city of Sale is in the distance, and the stork's nest/stork is on top!  A river separates Sale from Rabat. 

 

The teachers' tomb and building. 

There are so many malnourished cats everywhere here. At Chella, in the streets, at outdoor restaurants, just scrounging around for garbage or scraps to eat. This man is at Chella, and our guide told us that Americans brought would bring cats over to Morocco a few decades ago and take care of them, but then they would breed and now they're everywhere.  So, nice people, or "cat lovers" as he called them, will feed the cats (and chickens, in this case) from time to time, or in certain places.  Finally saw a man feeding one leftovers in the souk tonight, but I think that is a rare occurance.

(the beach/Sale is through those far windows)

The blue walls of the kasbah in the old medina of Rabat. I always have such a hard time describing my favorite color of blue, and this is it, all of them painted next to each other like that. It's a winding uphill walk to the top of the kasbah-- an old fortress-- where you can see down onto the beach, the Atlantic, the city of Sale across the river, and the rest of Rabat off behind the kasbah. See below:

We move in with our host families tomorrow.  Apparently there is an older brother and an 18 year old daughter in my family, and I'll be living with them and another girl from the program.  We had our first lesson of "Survival Moroccan Arabic", or "darija", today, and even by knowing just that little bit of vocabulary it is easier to accomplish things around here, and people are much nicer to us and willing to help.  I''ve only been here a few days and still feel touristy, from living and going most places with our huge study abroad group, but already I love it.  More to come, eventually.  Bisalaama!

first post/T-3 days

This is my attempt at blogging, otherwise known as keeping those who are interested in being informed of what I am doing on my year abroad, or rambling senselessly due to overstimulation. I leave for Rabat, Morocco in three days.  I'll keep you-- whoever you are-- posted!