Aaand normal life begins...

Before I start in with the rest of this post, I thought I'd just follow up with the juice bar thing that I ended with in my last post. I went back for a second time today because the juice bar was just that good. The first time I tried the avocado juice (didn't have much of a choice actually...) and OMG it was delicious. It was mixed with a lot of milk and I think honey, so ended up being relatively thick and almost like a smoothie, but was surprisingly light and refreshing. And today I had papaya juice, and I think they literally just blended a papaya and maybe added some water. I'm considering opening up a juice bar back in the states because I can't think of any place that has stuff like that, or at least not at a reasonable price. They didn't have it today but I'm going to have to go back for the hazelnut juice... yuuum.

But back to the rest of the post! So I guess I last left with you with the soccer game. It's kind of hard to keep track of everything but I guess I might as well start with last Thursday, since we had Thursday off (4 day weekend whaa). Actually I guess nothing too exciting happened... my friends and I had a little picnic by the river, lots of walking around the medina and the Ville Nouvelle at night. Oh! Thursday night we did get henna done though - I went with my friends host mom, her daughters, and a couple more of my friends to some ladies house to get it done. She did one of my hands and one of my feet and aahh it looked so good. We were sitting there for ages though but it was kind of funny being there - henna seems to be a little girl thing, so 4 college students looked a little out of place there. This was clearly a popping place to get henna done though, people kept coming in and out and dropping off their girls and coming back later. Awesome. After that we dropped by McDonalds to hear some live music (by the time we got there it had kind of died down). Yeah, McDonalds. Only in America is McDonalds somewhat sketch and just a place to grab some food - here it's actually considered a good meal, and apparently a place to host a band. The inside is much nicer here than in the states, for the record.

Then Friday was Aid (pronounced ay-eed). That's the celebration of the end of Ramadan, and what some people told me was roughly the equivalent to Thanksgiving/Christmas because of all the food/fam time. Sooo I woke up, got to have breakfast with my family for the first time since I've been here, and then went to put on a long dress since I'd have to sit and greet people with the rest of the family. But oops, dress is not the proper attire for Aid. My host mom (sister? whatever.. the younger one) brought out one of her fancy shmancy satiny djellabas for me to wear for the day - pics will go up eventually, but I can tell you that I still looked pretty damn American. The two women made me put on makeup too and then wanted pictures of me in a couple of the rooms wearing the djellaba - it felt like prom all over again ha. Felt cool wearing my Moroccan slippers and with my fresh henna though, to complete the look. But anyways, two men came over first, my host mom's brother and his son (too many new names/can't spell any of them, so sorry for not writing those down). I thought the two women I'm staying with are pretty religious, but whoa I think my host mom's brother and nephew are more so. I stood up to greet these two men in skull caps with long beards (and the younger one with kohl-rimmed eyes) as I have every other person I've met at the house (including other guys) and was quickly told that that's a no-no... these men don't touch women, so shaking their hands wasn't going to happen. Oops. The other brother came over, who is not as orthodox and who I've met before, so I shook his hand and met his nephew? who was 12 and super adorable. At first it was a little annoying, because they were looking over and laughing and clearly talking about me (as have most everyone who's come to visit. It's the same with everyone else and their host families - the Moroccans that come into contact with us seemed fascinated with people hosting Americans, and so talk about them right there for a long time). But then the little boy came over to sit across from me and said "You speak English?" Ah, the first English I've heard in the house since I moved in. So, I proceeded to talk to this little boy, who was clearly excited to be able to communicate with me and get some practice in with his speaking. I felt like I was reviewing one of my beginning language textbooks - "What kind of music do you like? What foods do you eat? Do you have any brothers or sisters?" was how most of the convo went. It was cute when we got to the age question though, because I asked how old he was and he said twenty. When he asked me I said I was twenty, and he said O no wait! I'm 10 and 2... so I told him he was twelve. He burst out giggling then and thought it was so funny he'd said he was 20. Gah he was so cute, it was fun talking to him.

Wow I'm writing a lot, I'll try not to ramble so much. So I left around 3ish that day (the most important part of the Aid celebration apparently happens in the morning) to go to a beach house with a big group of people about 20 minutes south of Rabat. That was a huuuge mess at first, because my friend who was organizing it thought we could fudge the numbers a little and fit a lot of people in the house we rented. It was a house for 12... and we showed up with about 30 ha. Oops. The landlord was not happy. About 10 people broke off and found another apartment nearby, and we ended up fitting the rest into the first place where I stayed. By the time we got everything settled it was later though, and so we ended up just going out to dinner basically and then coming back and hanging out at the house. It was really nice actually - I liked all the people there, but we usually can't do stuff like that altogether because going out in public with that many people doesn't work well. So it was fun to actually hang out with everybody for a while. Also watched a bootleg version of Titanic 2 that someone bought in the street that day - the movie is actually way more horrible than it sounds. I'm pretty sure it was trying to be serious, but it was like watching one of those parody movies like "Scary Movie.." "Date Movie.." "Sinking Ship Movie." God it was terrible. But as much as I hate to support the whole pirating industry, it is pretty cool to be able to pick up some movies on the street for 5 dirham (50 cents) to watch later. Inception anyone? I guess it's not out in the states yet but we've got it here :) Some of the movies are burned copies of an original DVD, but a bunch of them are filmed theaters and then sold on the street. Pretty entertaining.

Ah sidetrack! Ok so the next day we went to the beach and walked around for a while - there wasn't really a good place to swim it turns out, but it was really pretty and fun to walk around. We came back on a bus, when I had my first introduction to a shanty-town. So yeah, let me digress and explain the class structure a little bit, as I'm experiencing it anyways. As I'm sure you can guess already with the prices I've been throwing out, Morocco is not a rich nation. We learned a little bit about the budget in one of my seminar sessions and let me just put it all in perspective for you - the GNP for allll of Morocco is roughly $80-85 billion/year. The budget for the U.S army? $700 billion/year. The budget for the Ministry of Education, which deals with all the public schools in the nation is something like  $5 million. Harvard's endowment, ONE college (which yes, I know is absurdly wealthy... but just work with me for this comparison) is around $14 billion. So as I'm sure you can guess, we're not exposed e to loads of wealth, unless you go to some 4-5 star hotel or hit up the palace.

The old madina where I'm living! (sorry, stole the pic from a friend)

The Ville Nouvelle (part the French colonialists built) is definitely the nicer part of the city and cleaner, but we're in the old madina, which when looking at it through Western eyes, could probably use some fixing up. It's pretty dirty, there's trash everywhere, stray cats roam the streets, and people live pretty modestly and don't have much in excess (TVs are a must, however) and for the most part buy for necessity. Most houses are relatively small, and most people have something like 3 rooms and a kitchen in their house - and this is all pretty nice. But, I realized, even in the madina ghadima, which definitely has its fair share of beggars, we're in a bubble. The shanty town which we passed along the coast was enormous, and exactly like how you see it in films/news reports. I think it was good to see though - Rabat is the capital city, so things are at least decent here. But seeing the shanty town definitely brings home the idea that even if the government here has started some programs to improve the welfare of the nation, they still have a loooong ways to go. I know we have poverty in the U.S, but this was different. Might consider this for my independent study project later this semester...

The shanty town all passed by in a hurry, though, and we found ourselves back in Rabat. The rest of the weekend was fairly uneventful. A group of us went to the beach again on Sunday (it apparently doesn't start really cooling down til mid-October? looks like the beach will be on my agenda for a while..). This time though, we met an interesting guy. He told my friends and I that he would teach us to make tajine (like a casserole, the dish and the actual food have the same name. The kind of tajine we'd be making would most likely consist of cooked eggplant and whatever else). There's a picture by the way. He said we could make it on the beach - ahh fun. And that he'd teach us to surf. Who needs the expensive surf club when we can have a surf buddy.

Mausoleum at Hassan Tower. And I know, getting all
fancy with all these pics. But still not my own picture ha

Let's see I guess I can tell you one more thing. FINALLY went to the Hassan Tower - a mosque that was started in the 11th century (or a little later) by Yacoub el Mansour, and which was destined to be the biggest (or maybe 2nd largest, next to the one in Mecca) mosque in the Islamic world. But alas, it was never finished, and so now is just a huuge huge tower with rows of half columns and a mausoleum (which I'm pretty sure the previous king, Hassan II, had erected). Sadly it was closed when we went, so I guess I'll have to go again sometime soon to see the inside of the mausoleum. But there's still plenty of time.



Well. I think you have a pretty good idea of what I've been up to lately. I start fus'ha tomorrow! Standard Arabic, and finally the alphabet. And oo yeah, the title of this post is in reference to the end of Ramadan and the beginning of normal life here (no more eating at midnight or 3 am, night life's dying down, people are resuming regular schedules, etc). Hopefully this means less sweets too - I think I'll be on my way to developing diabetes if I keep the Ramadan diet up. Although I just found out today that some people continue to fast 6 days after Ramadan to make sure their prayers are heard, like my family. So things aren't completely normal in all the households, but in the streets/public life they are.

That's all for now. Good night!

WORD OF THE DAY:
Darija

mdegdeg(a) - pronounced ma-DIG-a-DIG-(a - fem version). Ana mdegdega - I'm tired! Useful phrase, and oo so much fun to say.