It's Friday

[Sorry for the lack of updates...]

Life's a Beach

Well.

It's been more than 3 months now. 3 months and 2 weeks to be more precise. Last time we were only here for 8.5 weeks, or something like that. So, this is definitely the longest period of time I've ever been away from home -- or hell -- out of Texas. But hey! Every day after September 20th is more than halfway to Christmas break. Soooo... yep. 

I suppose I should wrap up the summer program for y'all, since I tooootally did not get around to writing anymore during those first two months (in sharp contrast, you may have noticed, to the excessive posting I did when I was here the first time). So here goes.

The summer was hot. The end.

No. I guess that wasn't all, though it was certainly a distinctly memorable factor. HOWEVER. It was not neeeearly as hot as it was when I was here the first time. We actually had a few nice days of summer where it didn't feel like your face was going to melt off all the time.

We did have a real 4th of July party this time (which was a Saturday this year, thank goodness). Our program booked this swanky hotel's pool for the day, and we spent the whole day there. 

Strangely, and I frankly don't understand this about people, everyone spent more time outside of the pool than in. Why are you at a pool party if you're not going to be in the pool? Oh, you're tanning. Right. Because you don't get enough sun in Morocco as it is.

Personally, I wore as big a hat as would fit in my suitcase, and darted deftly from shaded area to shaded area in order to avoid cooking my skin.

By the time evening finally rolled around, after being energy-sapped by the sun all day, everyone -- including myself -- felt suuuper hungry, and we all rushed towards dinner, so excited........ooooooonly to find out it was Moroccan food. On America Day, the ONE day we get to pretend like we're not in Morocco for a year. And we had Moroccan food.

Needless to say, there was much grumbling at dinner. I ate a roll.

Things picked back up again once the hotel bars opened and the drinks started flowing. That is until another group of American students showed up. They were from A&M, strangely enough, and they were carrying some sort of virus. Whatever it was, our party promptly died shortly after they got there.

Later the following week, I went to see a Moroccan play with my language partner. It was interesting, from the 30% that I understood. (That's not to say I'm that bad at Arabic. That is to say that it was veeery heavily buried beneath the Moroccan dialect. Even the Egyptian teachers who went to see it only understood 80%, and Arabic is their birth language). I got the gist of the story though, just not the details. Story was about some dick guy trying to juggle being in a relationship with three women-- all flight attendants-- who were never in town at the same time, until, well, they were all in town at the same time. [Insert ensuing shenanigans here]. There were some seeeriously stereotyped characters in there, too, namely the Italian, Spanish, and American flight attendants. The American girl said, "How sweet!" and "Oh my god!" in English every few seconds she was on stage (which has some truth in it, I'll admit).

On July 17th, our program had a 4-day weekend in which we took a beach trip!

We went to three different towns: Asilah, Tetouan, and Martil. Our hotel was in Asilah, and we traveled to Tetouan one day, and Martil the next.

Asilah is almost all beach, and it's probably the prettiest town I've been to in Morroco.

We spent time at the beach there on Thursday, then went out for a nice meal of, well, seafood that night. I'll have you know that I ate all kinds of fish that weekend. I ate calamari, clams, swordfish, and shrimp.

Friday we went to Tetouan. It's not actually a beach town, but a mountain town, and very very pretty IF you can actually make it to the top of the town. Which I did, thank you very much. 

[This is before I died of heat exhaustion.]

And here's some other pics from inside the town.

Saturday, we went to Martil, and it's liiiil' bitty. Just beach, and a few restaurants. We got there early enough that the beach was relatively empty, and the water was so, so clear. Also, there were jellyfish. And yes they stung, as someone so stupidly bravely tested. 

But again, I was basically the only one in the water. (See the note above about how no one is ever in the water because they're too concerned about altering their skin color). At least, I was the only one until the beach got super, super crowded with Moroccans. 

Moroccan beaches are not like American beaches.

Then I got out and sorta napped under a beach umbrella. Sand is not as comfortable as one might hope.

If I'm being perfectly honest here -- I think beaches are really, painfully boring. Unless you're swimming with someone else (which I wasn't), there is literally nothing to do but feel really, really hot and sweat a whole lot. I suppose in non-Muslim countries you could drink on the beach, but even then; it's so goddam boring. Peaceful, but boring.

Ramadan ended that weekend, which was good, at least. But that also meant that the time changed back. Aaaaaaand we lost an hour.

Because this post has gone on for as long as it has, I'll cut it short, and finish up the summer with my next one. Peace out, homes.

Not Quite Dead

Based on the frequency of my blog updates (or lack thereof), you are probably wondering if I have died. FEAR NOT. I haven't. 

I've just been hella busy, as you can imagine, the tales of which I shall regale you with hopefully sometime in the near future, as they are plentiful and wondrous. 

I know that some of you have been eagerly waiting for my next post, and I hate to disappoint with this one, but I need more time yet. 

Sit tight, my friends. 

Prologue: Part 2

I realize now that when I said I was going to write on this every week that I was being optimistic to the point of foolishness. I do not have too much free time on my hands, and I find that when I do have these rare spats of free-time, I spend them sleeping or not-thinking, and unfortunately, writing a blog requires a bit of thinking, if only a bit. (Although, I read some of the other students' "Travel Blogs", and I must admit, mine is certainly the most unique in that I don't always write in complete sentences and I intersperse my thoughts with unrelated tangents and inappropriate language.)

Well, we just started week 7 of the program. This past week was a struggle, I'll say that at least. I've found that I've blocked a lot of it out. I literally don't remember Monday or Tuesday. Surely they happened. Surely.

I suppose I'll continue where I left off, leaving out the less important details for the sake of not-boring-you-to-death.

We arrived in Morocco on the first day of Ramadan (the month of fasting, as you may recall). 

Having Ramadan just off-the-go like that was both a good thing and a bad thing. It's good, because we got it over with and now we don't have to worry about it for the rest of the time we're here. It's bad because all the shops were closed during the day, and its 8 billion degrees outside, and you couldn't eat or drink anything (publically) until 7:35pm at night when the sun goes down.

Our first night here we ate fish-soup. Mmm-boy. Those of you who know me well will know how excited I was to learn what dinner was going to be.

We got to meet our language partners that first weekend. They didn't assign us to language partners this time. They just sort of dumped us all together like M&M's into a bowl, and whoever you were talking to last at the end of the meeting was your language partner. It was weird, but it worked out for me at least, because my language partner, Chaymae, is a sweetheart.

The next day the program forced us and our partners out on a scavenger hunt without telling us beforehand that we were going out on a scavenger hunt. It was 8 billion degrees outside (as previously described), and they made us roam all around town on foot trying to find these points of interest for 2 hours without water. Apparently it was also a competition, and my group finished last because 1) another girl we were with had a leg brace on, and 2) we didn't care. Nobody won anything in the end, so who are the real winners here? The people who literally RAN all over town, or the people who briskly walked and didn't die from heat exhaustion?

Chaymae is the one in pink.

There are 17 students in the year-long program: 9 girls and 8 boys, [4 from the University of Maryland, 1 from Michigan State, 1 from the University of Arizona, 3 from OU, and 8 of us are from UT, because our program DOMINATES THE OTHERS.]

We've been taking 3 classes for the summer session. We started with just 2 weeks straight of only Moroccan dialect classes, so that we could develop  survival tactics for living with host families. But now we have three classes (and thusly more homework), and in addition to Moroccan, we're also taking Egyptian dialect classes and Modern Standard Arabic, or MSA. It's tricky, trying not to speak Moroccan in Egyptian and vice-versa, and trying not to speak in any dialect in MSA. We tend to trip up a lot.

I think I've rambled on for long enough this time. Next time I'll try to update you on our holidays and trips, though they are few and kind of boring. 

Prologue

Alright, friends. Today I'd like to catch you up on some of what you've missed since I've been here (which is kind of a lot since I've been here for more than two weeks now). So, I might split this into several blogs, and then things will eventually level out as my life stabilizes. 

To start things off, I left from Austin for Washington D.C. on June 16th at 6:20 AM. At least... I certainly would have if I had caught my flight on time. Buuuut I didn't. And it's not that I didn't give myself enough time. I tooootally did. Chris and I got to the airport with 2 hours to spare. But the lines. THE LINES. I never would have thought they would have been so bad. And I've been to a lot of airports and been on a lot of planes. But the United Airlines line was just RIDDIKULUS.

The line was bursting at the seams, and where there should have been a worker at each one of the 15-20 stations, there were 5. To give them all due credit, they were dashing about like mad in order to help everyone, but it just wasn't enough, and by the time I got the front of the line, they were no longer taking checked-baggage for my plane, and I got a 49lb pound bag over here.

That's 1 pound under the maximum weight limit, bitches.

The lady said I could try to check it at the terminal and kind of dismissed me, and I was like, "O-oh, okay." So walked with Chris through the security line with my giant bag (in addition to two stuffed carry-on's) for a few minutes before I decided, "This is stupid." So we jumped the line and got back in the original United Airlines line and waited again until I could just get the next flight out.

And that's how I missed my plane. But honestly, my solution was the far less-stressful one. Much, much easier than trying to take 49lbs of clothing, liquids, and razor blades through security.

On the first plane, I sat next to someone who didn't have their window visor up, so there was nothing to look at. The second flight, however, I got a whooole row to myself, including a window.

I like how the clouds were kinda in these weird parallel lines.

D.C.

So much leg-room back here in coach for once.

I arrived in D.C. at 3-4ish pm. First thing on my agenda after dropping my stuff off at the hotel: find a delicious sandwich place (because they do not have 'sandwiches' in the traditional sense in Morocco). And so I did. I ate at Capriotti's, a sandwich shop a few blocks from my hotel. They did not disappoint. Those sandwiches are MASSIVE.

However, that was about the only non-disappointing thing about D.C. Not only was it actually kinda hot when were there, but the A.C. was not working in our very expensive, luxury hotel. That's pretty unacceptable. I am not about to travel to the Middle East where I'm not gonna have A.C. for a whole year, and not have A.C. on my last nights here in my swanky digs. But lo. That is how the story goes.

The next day we had our official Pre-Departure Orientation. Again. It was the exact same information as last time. Don't eat anything. Don't pet the adorable street kittens. Don't drink the water. Etc. It's all pretty mind-numbing after a while. However, my favorite part was the security presentation, when the FBI guy very seriously talked for an hour and a half about how we should definitely not get recruited by foreign governments because that's bad. Finally, when he reached the end, he asked if there were any questions, and after a very pregnant pause one lone student raised their hand and asked, "Does the U.S. government try to recruit foreign students?"

Silence.

He had clearly not been asked that question before.

After a few delicate moments where everybody just sat patiently staring and waiting, he finally cleared his throat and said, "I'm not at liberty to answer that question."

After orientation finished on Wednesday, we ate at a fancy, but not-very-good, restaurant. AT LEAST they served American food! Thank goodness! (You may recall from two years ago that we had Middle Eastern food as our last meal in the States, to which I had a lot of things to say about on our final evaluation of the program. I didn't forget.) 

Then on Thursday, we needed more orienting before traveling, so after another 4-5 hours of mind-melting information, we were finally done, and back to the hotel for our stuff. Then we were off to the airport so that the adventure may begin!

You know, after 28 hours of plane flights and layovers and whatnot. 

We had a 10 hour layover in Germany this time. It wasn't so bad. We had an entire end of the airport all to ourselves. I mostly napped. 

We got to Morocco at like 1am, and to Meknes at 5am. After a few hours and an appetizing bread breakfast, our host families came to pick us up. Fortunately, I'm living with another girl from UT this time, so I am familiar with her and we can fight the mysteries of language barriers together. Funnily enough, her name means something very, very inappropriate in Arabic, so we had to alter it a bit before meeting the family. Admittedly I did not encounter the same issue. I'm quite certain Stephanie is never going to mean anything in Arabic ever. As a matter of fact, it's been 2 weeks, and the host family still thinks my name is Stephan, which is fine. 

Anyway, I gotta work on homework now, but I'll get back to this blog when I can.

The Heat Cometh

It was always going to happen. You knew it. I knew it. But here it is. Temperatures were at 106 yesterday, and 107 today, and may continue this way for a while. And there is no air-conditioning in sight.

I find that the heat affects me more than it does other people. While everyone else is like, "Oh, I think I'll just wear jeans and a light sweater today," I'm all over here in my t-shirt and skirt like:

"I'm fine."

BUT.

I came prepared this time. Let no one say I didn't plan for this Moroccan summer. I brought not one fan (like last time), not two, not even three, four, five, six, or seven, BUT EIGHT FANS.

BEHOLD.

BAM.

ALL SHALL WITNESS THE ARCTIC POWER OF MY MECHANICAL WINTER AND DESPAIR.

I especially enjoy the brisk winds of my USB powered fan, which not only keeps me feeling breezy, but when pointed at my laptop, also keeps it from spontaneously combusting.

But enough of that. I'll complain about the heat some more later, I assure you.

So. It is the end of week one, and I'm already used to living in Morocco. I think it's because I've been here before that adjusting to the way of life was so easy and quick, and I was hyper mentally prepared for what it would be like. What's more, I basically live in the same neighborhood as before, so I know where the train station and the supermarket are, and that's nice.

I really like my host family, too. It's just a woman (Khadija) and her husband (Hassan). There's no children, so it's quiet. They live in a lovely apartment, similar to my last one, but much more colorfully decorated. I share a bedroom with my roommate (also from UT), and we basically have one end of the apartment to ourselves, including our own bathroom!

And the toilet and shower are in the same room this time. Whaaaaat?

Our room. 

My side.

Our closets. Mine are on the left.

There's also WiFi here, which is very important. On our "Family Preferences Form" that we got back in April, where we could fill out things like, "I don't want to live with smokers," or "I want to live within walking distance of school," the only thing I put on my form was, "I WANT INTERNET AT HOME." Priorities. (And I'd like to add that some other people in the program thought that this was a silly request. That is... until they got here and didn't have internet at home. Who's laughing now!?)

Me. That's who.

Anyway. I'll add more pics of the apartment later.

All in all, it's been a pretty lazy weekend, but after traveling 3,000 miles and going-and-doing things literally every single day since getting here, I don't really mind. I spent most of yesterday sleeping, reading my Kindle, and talking with my Habiib on Skype.

I would like to make this blog at least a weekly thing, but of course I can make no guarantees. Next post I'll try to catch you up on some of the things that have happened since getting here, but for now my computer is getting too warm and needs a break.

Peace.