Settling In

Woo! Sooo I'm going to try to be good about this whole blogging thing so it's easy to keep people updated, but I'm sorry in advance if I don't do it often enough/my blog doesn't look all sweet and flashy. I'm gonna be real happy when I figure out how to add pics to this page. And I actually have a few to put up! I'm just too lazy to load them right now/want to actually catch up on sleep tonight.

I guess now I'll just get some basic info out of the way right quick. So! I'm based in Rabat, Morocco (the northwestern area of the country) and oo, right on the ocean. The beaches are a little dirty but otherwise look pretty cool - big waves, lots of guys fishing on the rocks along the side. Apparently we need to get to the beaches soon before Ramadan's over, because then they get real crowded again. We have about 10 days left of Ramadan, which means for the most part that people are either more pious during this period and purifying themselves, or they're real cranky during the day because they're fasting and occasionally take it out on customers, people in the streets, but most often it seems while they're driving. But it's poppin at night, cause everyone wants to go out and have a good time and it seems like it's the best time for us to be out and about. Night life dies down a lot after Ramadan's over apparently.

But besides going out to experience Morocco, I'll taking classes during the week. It'll be 3 hours of Arabic every morning (some darija, the Moroccan dialect, and then mostly standard) and then an hour and a half of a themed seminar, which will have something to do with multiculturalism and human rights. Woo. Taking a bunch of excursions at some point too - we'll be going to Fes one weekend, Casablanca for a day, and then will have a southern excursion and a week of a rural homestay. So tons of traveling, which should be pretty exciting.

So yeah, for my living sitch I'll be staying with a family in the medina (old part of the city - maze of small streets and markets and all that) for the next 2 months and actually just moved in today! There are two women - an older one, and her daughter, who looks like she's in her 30s. They're both super nice and def have made me feel welcome. I got lucky and landed myself with a Western toilet, hot water, and a room to myself, not to the mention that the house is absolutely gorgeous (pics to come). But ooo hey, the older woman only speaks darija - so little difficult communicating with her. And her daughter speaks darija and French - and that's it really.  So I realized today I have to learn Arabic (standard but some darija for communicative purposes), try and dig out French from the deep recesses of my brain, and also not be a horrible Italian major and forget all my Italian. Awesome. But turns out my French isn't as terrible as I thought and I was actually sort of able to have conversations/understand most of what the daughter was saying to me. So that's something. Also, the brother was over tonight for ftour (breaking the fast), and I was actually able to understand him asking his sister in darija if I was French or American! Granted the words are similar-ish to ours, but clearly our darija lessons kicked in a bit. Woo

So hmm what else do I need to update you all on. There's 60 people in our program, whaaa. I had no idea it was going to be so enormous. Most of the people are from the east coast/go to an east coast school, but there's a good number from Minnesota too. Haa I'm not the only midwesterner. The people I've met so far are pretty cool, and it should be fun to get to know them more. A group of us went to a carnival last night that's by the river and that I'm pretty sure is only up through Ramadan, so that was pretty tight. The rides were sick actually - so awesome and I've never seen them in the states. And I'm not sure if that's because the design simply hasn't made it over to the states yet or if they wouldn't pass our safety regulations.. but regardless they were sweet and gave you tons of butterflies in your stomach so were awesome.

Oo yeah, little side story that was kind of great - met 2 Moroccan hipsters. One of the dudes had suspenders, and both had great hair. Omg it was great. They came up to 2 friends and I at a cafe at night, which was a bit of a sticky situation because for orientation they definitely drilled it in our heads that we should not talk to guys we meet on the street or respond when they say something to us cause it can be sketch, and esp since there was no guy from our group around it was kinda vague whether or not we should talk to these guys. But they ended up being super nice and totally harmless - they were both learning English and asked us if we would be at the cafe later, and that they could bring some books by to 'discuss literature.' So cute. They were asking us what kind of music we liked, and the one guy said he liked old school music. Definitely old school. But also liked rap and hipster music.  Baaah it was so adorable, too bad we didn't see them later. But yeah, found out hipster is universal and crosses all kinds of cultures! So that was one fun little discovery.

Well this post looks pretty long so Ima go to bed now. Leila saeeda! (Night!)

WORD OF THE DAY:
2 actually, both in darija.
Zwina - beautiful. Used that a lot when taken on a tour of my home.
Hamak (sp?) - crazy. Brahim, the cook, taught my friend and I. And then my homestay mother said it while watching some Moroccan soap opera, so clearly a useful word.