I HAVE INTERNET IN MY HOUSE
Finally! I don't want to be anti-social with my host family, so I am going to try to limit my internet time. It is much more comfortable here now that I have internet, which is terrible, but true. Yesterday was another great day! Firstly- I showered. I hadn't since Thursday morning, and you could definitely tell. The Turkish aspect of my Turkish toilet is that the shower is located in the bathroom and the entire shower is like the bathroom… idk it's hard to explain, but whatever. I asked my sis if I could shower and she was like "yes yess of course!!". She turned on the hot water downstairs and showed me a big bucket. She instructed that I was to fill the bucket with water from the shower head, and use a smaller bucket to put the water on myself (very green, but looked difficult and cold). I obeyed her orders, and filled the water bucket up with piping hot water- mistake number one: like DUH it is going to get cold as it sits there… whatever. The shower was actually pretty okay- almost great, and i felt good that i wasnt wasting a lot of water. I actually didn't even need all of the water in the bucket, so i felt that i was being wasteful. After my shower my mom called me into her room and said "why don't you use water" which i translated as "why did you use so much water??" and i felt TERRIBLE… My brother clarified that she was saying that i did NOT use a lot of water, and that I can use as much as i wanted to… Great news! I met up with my friend Alexa and we went to the internet café for a lot of the day, catching up. A TON of my friends from my program were coming in and out. There were a lot of problems with the internet while we were there, but I had great service pretty much the entire time- lucky me. After my eyes started to hurt, I left with two girls and we walked around to look for a supermarket (one of them needed toilet paper…TMI). We stopped at a little outdoors restaurant and decided to eat something because I had only eaten cookies and coffee all day. I wanted to get a salad because I haven't been eating a lot of veggies, but I decided that protein was more important, so I went with the omelette champignon (mushroom omelet). It wasn't good, but was bc I was hungry and needed eggies. Then we went home, but my friend Sara was with her family all day and she was craving some quality time with American youth, so we said we would hang out with her. I dropped my bag off at home and we were going to go to another girl, Daisy's, house. When I came home my brother was there, and asked what I was up to. I said that I was going to hang out with some friends and asked if he wanted to come, he said yes, and called his friend (who also went to Rabat w/us) and we all met up outside of our house. It was perfect timing because we still have not figured out the media yet-- it's a total labyrinth, so it was good to walk with (male) moroccans who knew their way around. My bro and his friend told us that they would pick us up in a half hour and we would do something. I had literally 10 dirhams (a little more than one dollar- to charge my internet stick) and my cell phone. My friends and I went upstairs to our other friends house, and hung out for a little. My friend Sara was a little upset because she is having a different experience with her host family than I am. Her house is incredibly small (smaller than any of ours), she has two young siblings, and practically no privacy. It is really an intimidating experience for us all, but I am not sure how I would feel if I was in her position. At first I was kind of upset that my family did not take me out of the house, and I had to make my own plans etc. But after thinking about it I realized that they are not required to do that necessarily, and that i am very fortunate in my home stay situation. My family is definitely the cool family out of anyone that I have heard about (more to come…) Regardless, I put on my therapist hat and told her that everything was going to be a-okay. Simo (my brother) called me and we went downstairs. We walked to Eyoub (my brother's friend/my "mom's" friend's son) car and we all got in. It was very small, but nice. We waited for another friend to come out of the Medina and then we were on our way. As we were driving Simo asked "soooo….. what do you want to do???" he is very funny, and i laugh A LOT here (my favorite thing to do). They had a plan. We drove around and pulled up to a place called "The New Yorker Billiards Club"- FUNNY. We waited in the car for a second (there is always a lot of waiting in the car…) and we saw some people like try to go in and then come straight out. My "getting in" anxiety struck, AND I remembered that I was literally going into this place with a cell phone and an internet stick. No form of identification and no foolooooose ($$$). Yikes. We get out of the car and go inside. It was the exact replica of a teen club that I never went to in middle school. A machine to get soda, a ton of pool tables, and even more teens. Oddly enough there were also a number of men playing pool. It was great, really really great. A lot of laughing. Pool is on my to-learn list… I was really really terrible. The boys were good (obviously) and they all like fought for who would NOT be on my team… it was funny, not mean. We played a lot of rounds, and my friend Sarah started to worry about her host family being nervous about her whereabouts. We went to the (toilet paper/soap-less) bathroom (with an unflushable toilet) and called them. It is much harder to speak with Moroccans on the phone because 3/4ths of the conversation is hand gestures & reading lips. It was a long & confusing conversation, but she finally got the a-okay to stay for another 2 hours!!! (It was ~8pm. Again, middle school.) We literally shut "the New Yorker" down and then went to get pizza. We got it to-go and the boys brought us to what we later deemed "the playhouse". The boys converted Fasil's (one of the other friends) grandmother's house in the Medina to an area where they can hang out. I didn't really understand when they said that it was his grandmother's house, and I asked where she was… The house has like nothing in it and is dimly lit, and was DEFINITELY not his grandmother's house… Apparently she died a few years ago, but left the house in the family…. obviously. Anyway we ate the pizza and talked and laughed etc, and Sara (the worry wart who i don't think reads my blog, but if she does it's ok bc I call her that to her face, AND tell her to take a chill pill at least twice a day- namnamaste) started to get nervous about her host family (it was probably like 11 o'clock… maybe later at this point). Daisy said that Sara could sleep at her house, and called her parents to see if it was okay… it was. Sara called her family AGAIN and asked if it was okay to sleep at her friend Daisy's house, and after a lot of miscommunication (the mom offered to pick her up) it was okay. These are pointless details, but whatever. We hung out more, and actually NOW it was 11 o'clock and Daisy started to get antsy herself. We were all having a lot of fun, but because of the time and us needing to be aware of our surroundings, it made sense that they would get anxious. Lucky me to have Simo as my brother- I did not have a care in the world!!!! The other aspect that causes worry is our inability to navigate thru the Medina at this point in our stay. I literally got lost going to the CCCL (3 doors to the left of my house- i went right….). We also usually have to be with a boy/man when we are outside after the sun has set. These boys were not jumping up to walk Daisy & Sara home, so they were kind of (not uncomfortably) stuck. Finally someone suggested that they BOTH sleep at my house. I have absolutely NO say in that decision so I looked at Simo… He said "yea yea is okay" I WISH you knew how he spoke because it is great. I didn't really believe him, but THEN i realized that Imane, my sister, told me earlier that she and her parents were going to go on a trip for the night to visit her aunt for aid (the holiday)-- NNNNNOOOOO PARENTSSSS!! Just kidding, my 30 year old cousin was there still, but she said it was fine. We needed to make one more phone call. Sara was so nervous I really thought she was going to cry… I pushed her to call, so she did. They really could NOT communicate and we were all quietly laughing, which was not helping. Daisy took the phone (bad idea-- she is not good at french…) and that made the situation worse. When it finally seemed like she was getting somewhere with Sara's mom I heard her say "D'accord… shukran… Sara retournai aujourd'hui" (okay thank you sarah will return today) We all screamed "DEMAIN!!!!!" ('de-man' Tomorrow) and Daisy said "DE-MAIN DE-MAIN! Maa Salema" and hung up the phone. It was funny, but might not seem as funny on this blog… I will tell u in person I guess. Anyway it was a really great night as a whole, AND i got to host my first moroccan sleepover!!!
Sunday, Feb 6th
We woke up a little later than usual and had a delicious breakfast (hardboiled eggs-- another food that I did not think I liked until i tried them here, bread- duh, baby bell cheeeeeese, and a lot of cookies) Simo and I walked the girls home in the morning and then I did some reading for CLASS TOMORROW and then Sara invited me to see the unfinished mosque (again-- this time we went inside and saw the tombs CLICK HERE) with her family. I did not want to do my reading and wanted some fresh air, so I agreed. Her family is really great, but I can see how it can get exhausting/hard. Her siblings are young, and her mom really only speaks french. Anyway they picked me up at my house (again, I can't make it ANYWHERE alone). As we were walking Sara's "mom" pointed to my feet and said *something "Kabeera" (big). I am not sure if she was talking about my shoes (clogs) or my feet, but it made me decide once and for all (after a 10 minute conversation at Saturday lunch with Alexa & Daisy that consisted of me SWEARING that they were cool back home--- good thing Colby wasn't in the conversation, Ali & Emily McKeigue would have backed me up, AND a Facebook chat where Nicki was asking what shoes i was wearing in all of my pictures, and that she was loling about them) that the only pair of actual shoes that i brought to Morocco was a total mistake. I later kinda tripped over my own feet and I blamed it on the shoes- Sara's mom laughed a lot. The mosque was CROWDED, and we took a lot of pictures, and looked around. It was nice, very nice. BEAUTIFUL actually We then took a different route home, and stopped for "fro-yo" and a snack that was like an entenmann's cake stick. PICTURE So yum. Sara mentioned something about buying boots, and i joked that i needed a new pair of shoes to wear around (not a joke) so her family took us through the market and we looked at shoes. The majority of the selection was not good, but there were a few boots that were wearable. Sara tried on a size 40 of one pair and they were too small… the shop keeper did not have a size 41 but told us to go to the store next door. 6 stores later we came to the conclusion that size 41 did not exist. We couldn't figure out how to say "its okay we feel bad… we do not need boots today", so the mission continued. Finally we went into a store that was an actual store as opposed to like a shop off the street, and I saw a woman who gave me directions earlier this week… she asked if i found my way and wished me luck the rest of the semester (SO NICE & pretty too-- we were told to only ask women for directions… I guess it makes sense?). I became VERY tired VERY quickly, so thankfully this store had cute boots in size 41. The sun was setting, but there was one more stop to make. Eyoub (Sara's 10 year old brother, not my brother's friend…) was getting an iPod today. Sara's family does not have a computer, but we found out that the iPods have preloaded verses of the quran on them, and that is why he got it. He was so excited and kissed his dad all over. Sara and her sister walked me home, and I was ready to rest. My sister and cousin were the only ones who were home and we bonded a lot. Imane was very crazy and was singing and bopping around the house and we were just watching her and laughing. She read us a love letter that she wrote to her ex boyfriend, who she was fake crying over, and then went through the entire list of her ex boyfriends and current boyfriends, and told me stories about each of them. We ate popcorn and drank tea. It was a lot of fun… I then tried to do some more reading- it is dry history, so I gave up & I just chatted w/Imane & wrote this blog post some more. We had a late dinner (as per usual of soup, FIGS YUM, the traditional moroccan chick pea/rice/veggie soup, and a delicious cookie that i don't know the name of- Sara describes it as funnel cake (its not THAT good) and i added that it's like concentrated/fossilized and looks like sesame chicken-- sesames and all! I wasn't involved in the conversation at dinner, but I think it was religious because my "mom" went to the Mosque today (I THINK, but I have been wrong almost every time that I have made up a back-story for the arabic conversations that I have heard)… I went back into my room and finished this post. Now I am done and need to go to sleep because tomorrow is my FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL! it's going to be so long… I hope I make it!
A DEMAIN!! lol… get it??
XO
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