Tuesday, January 31st.
Finally made it to breakfast, but my roommate accidentally ordered a tea somehow??? Unacceptable. I finagled a coffee out of them, but the waiter was visibly unhappy. We then boarded the bus for our "drop off" exercise. It was really amazing. I was in a group with my roomates (kind of annoying bc I want to meet new peeps, but it was done alphabetically). We were the second stop, and we were dropped off in the French Embassy neighborhood. We walked around a bit. It was very different from the Medina... Very clean and beautiful. We found an area that some people think are roman ruins, and others say it's an unfinished mosque... Just got confirmation that it is the "Hassan Mosque and Tower", an unfinished mosque. It was guarded by two guards on horses who were totally straight-faced. Very cute... We walked around and it was beautiful, but uninteresting, We then walked across the street, and I found this path so we could walk alongside the body of water that is between Salé and Rabat. It was UNBELIEVABLE and reminded me exactly of the East River. I really was SO happy and smiley- I think my roommates thought I was a little weird... We then kept on our way back to school and we stumbled upon a different part of the Medina that had less junk-y gifts. There was one shop with a lot of beautiful leather gifts, and (be proud) I resisted the urge to buy two bags. I wanted to wait for our "Bargaining 101" session that was to happen the next day. We were on our way back to the CCCL and we didnt reallllyyyy know where we were going (despite my keen sense of direction ha...). We passed a jersey shore looking guy who was surrounded by pink. The picture is on my Flicker (http://www.flickr.com/photos/74920199@N06/?saved=1). We asked him for directions (in French) and they got us back to where we wanted to go. We didn't buy juice from his stand though, and I feel a little bad. We made it back to the CCCL and had some time to spare, so I sunbathed (my face) a little. It's really amazing what a little vitamin D will do for you. We had a de-briefing session (boring). Then we had lunch (outside on the roof!!). The next item of discussion was family life and homestay issues. The woman who organizes everything, Souad, was SO funny. They type of funny that is like funny without trying to be... She did not speak very "good" english, but we could understand her... She stopped at a lot of words and looked around to see if anyone knew what she was trying to say. I think a lot of people were sleeping... I helped her out alot. She taught us how to eat with our host families- stay in your "zone" & eat with your right hand... the left is used for "other things...". She also broke the news about the "turkish toilet" (Spoiler Alert: I have one in my host family... it's the only toilet) Click HERE if you are unfamiliar. She demonstrated how to use it and everything. Funny. She made light of the entire situation, and promised that we would be happy. I am trusting her. We then visited the annexes and library (and I though Shain was bad...). Then dinner which was "special" it was called Pistella, and was like puff pastry chicken nuts. Basically like chicken baklava but less sugary. I died. A really interesting Academic Director sat next to me at dinner and we talked a lot about globalization and stuff that I don't want to write about in this blog post. I like her though. Okay enough of yesterday... It's getting late here
Today will be a short description. (hopefully...)
Wednesday FEBRUARY 1
Wednesday FEBRUARY 1
Woke up late (8:13... we were supposed to LEAVE the hotel at 8:15- thank GOD for secular time) my roomate was FREAKING out, but I was CCC. We realized that they hadnt even left yet, but we did miss breakfast... We had our first arabic class (BTW IDK if I said this, but I am in the 2nd highest level- Intermediate Mid). Nice girls and teacher- she said that she is our friend and wants us to approach her with ANY problems. We started to learn Darija, the moroccan dialect, and it is HARD. So different, and hopeless to master. We are only studying Darija for 2 weeks and then back to good old MSA- Modern Standard Arabic. I will prob learn enough to communicate with my host family, but not much more than that. We went over CCCL regulations- boring, and then had the introduction to bargaining. A lot of stuff I had already known (helloOoOOO I LIVE IN NYC) but we got some helpful vocab. then we had lunch. Then we had a 1.5 hour presentation on "Health Issues in Morocco" by another funny without knowing it Moroccan. He was not funny enough to keep me interested for the 1.5 hours, and I got incredibly antsy. I am going to drink the water here because he said I can, and it really pains my heart to use a bottle a day. (hi Abbey!). U must think that I was dying without coffee from breakfast, but there is a coffee dispenser at the CCCL and we tried it for the first time, so I was okay. The coffee was too. After the poor doctor finished his too-long presentation, we were sent on our way to "bargain". We had another assignment and my group was supposed to look for the post office. I was way more into looking for the post office than bargaining- most people wanted to just look it up in their guide books... I said "nooo!!!that's cheating!!" (ew. Annoying of me, I know.) We bopped around and some peeps in my group bought some things. (Stupid things that were not worth all of the effort that they put into bargaining for them). I asked one shopkeeper where the post office was and he was nice, cute and helpful. I was on a mission. I told everyone to follow me and off we were. We made a FEW stops, and time was running down. Finally we made it to the post office, and I mailed someone whos birthday is coming up very soon a card... That was the real reason why I wanted to find it so badly. Sneaky Claire. We were supposed to be on our way back at 4:15, but at 4:15 we all agreed that secular time meant that it was coffee time. Delicious café au lait for ONE DOLLAR !! We drank quickly and I told the rest of the girls to follow me. My NYC instincts come in handy slithering thru the Medina. We took one more pitstop to get an elephant ear (I thought of u Aunt Peggy- Look at the PIC here). We were SO late to the debriefing sesh (late day... :/) But it didnt matter because people were just telling their experiences and I didnt really care, honestly. Then we had 30 mins before our next lecture, so two girls and I took it upon ourselves to find SIM cards for the phones we already had (THANKS ETHAN!). That took more than a half hour and we were late to the last session of the day lol, but its not really funny, i know i know. This one was serious, and it was a lecture by a Professor from the area about the holiday that is happening on Monday (No school!!! 3-day weekend!! yippeeee!!) "The Prophet's Birthday"- Mawlid. I was pretty tired, but it was interesting. Again, I do not want to type out everything that was said, but basically- it's not Christmas. You DO eat cookies- fab, and there is some celebration in Salé that I hope to attend. Apparently people march around and hold candles, and it's beautiful. Then we had dinner (not good....) where I realized that because we were late to the final lecture we missed receiving our info about the homestay assignments.... Okay, now I regret it. I ate the bad dinner and went downstairs to get my assignment: A mom, a dad, a brother, a sister, a TURKISH TOILET , potentially no hot water, and I have to share a room. I do not want to talk about it, and am trying as best as I can to be optimistic. I have decided that I am definitely going to join a gym (and pay an extra fee to have access to the shower). I didn't say this before, but in one of our sessions we learned that Moroccans don't shower a lot, but are NOT dirty. They go to the Hamam once a week, and TOTALLY scrub every inch of their bodies. For those of you who know my showering tendencies and schedule, I really I actually think I am going to fit right in.... Anyway I got this assignment and was really holding back tears (honest truth) and forgot that we had a "special surprise" after dinner. They brought in four REALLY fun drummers and we had a little dance party. I spent a lot of time taking pix, but I caught the beat at times. Here is what it looked like from the second floor and the bottom floor. I walked back with a nice kid on my program. Very friendly and easy to talk to, and then I hung outside the hotel with some kids from the Journalism program (they're not in the same hotel as us). I went into the hotel to find a lot of kids on the couches in the lobby frowning. The internet didn't work!!!!! I usually go back to my room and spend time on fb chat talking to peeps and catching up, and normally I wouldn't care about the internet because it would have been an excuse to go to sleep early, BUT my Jordan Summer Application is due today, and I didn't get to send it yesterday because the internet didn't work. Leave it to Nicole Moomjy to scare me by sending me an email during the day about the necessity of getting the application in on time in order to make sure enough people were interested. I started to visibly freak out, and someone said there was a cyber café down the street. The guy who told me about it, Chase- "the tall ging", is very friendly, and sympathetic. He offered to bring me there. I ran up to my room and grabbed my computer and our mission began. He wasn't exactly sure where it was, but he had an idea. We walked past the main square that was by the post office (people were protesting there kinda- more like a sit-in) from earlier today, and the people were still there. We got to the café as they were like literally closing up shop. Chairs put away, freshly mopped floor. I turned on my puppy eyes, and started to beg. Not necessary. They were VERY friendly and welcoming. They gave me the code and I sent my application (and an email to my mom...) it was very nice and I insisted on buying something, but they wouldn't have it. As I left I had to walk on the mopped floor, and I left a trail of black footprints. I will go back there and buy a lot of stuff sometime soon. We walked back to the hotel, and everyone was engrossed in their computers in the lobby. Apparently the internet turned on like one minute after we left, obviously. I stayed in the lobby and socialized with peeps here and at home (and wrote this post) . All's well that end's well, except for the fact that it is 12:26 and I want to wake up at 7 (yea rite, but multiple alarms will be set). Meeting the fam tomorrow- wish me luck!!!! I'll take a self portrait from the turkish toilet, jk, not funny!!! Love and miss my real fam.. ni niiite
PS- There are other pix that I didn't give the link to on my "Flicker" so click this or copy & paste this: http://www.flickr.com/photos/74920199@N06/
PPS- not proofreading, just going to bed XOXOXOOXOXOXOO
No comments:
Post a Comment