Day 6: Food Swings

Thursday, June 27

I suppose one thing I haven't really talked about are true cultural differences. Naturally, there's a lot.  I'll spread them out over the posts, but I'll discuss one of them here.

Cultural Adventures #1: They like to eat. And they expect you to like to eat. A lot. My body is not geared towards three meals a day, especially when two of those meals are potentially large. Now, that's normal for them. Usually, they have a reasonably sized breakfast, a large lunch, and a smallish dinner. Whereas in America, we prefer regular sized breakfasts, lunches and large dinners (typically). I don't usually eat more than 1-1.5 times a day normally in America, but they want us to eat all the time. Like, all the time. Whenever I don't eat a lot, Noura thinks that I don't like the food. Which isn't true, necessarily. (I'm not gonna lie and say that I've loved everything. Apart from CousCous--of which I am not really a fan--everything kind of tastes the same, which is fine, but boring). But throughout the whole meal, she tries to give me more soup, and more bread, and more chicken/turkey/beef, and more fruit, and then yogurt afterwards. LA! (Translation: NO!) I don't want anymore. I'm done. I'm full. I'll be sick. (Except, more politely: La, la, thank you. I'm full. I'm not hungry. Thank God. I'm full. No thank you. Really, I'm good. Everything was delicious. *repeat*)

They also eat bread with everything. The put things in the bread, or they dip the bread in things, etc. They love bread. It's a staple. They have bread for breakfast, bread with lunch, and bread for dinner. Noura was saying that she hates airplane food because they only give you the tiniest amount of bread. "No, no, no. I'm Moroccan," she says. "I need more bread." They generally refuse.  

I'm over bread. I'm over it. Give mine to some ducks somewhere. Or a homeless person. Yeah, better to give it to a homeless person. (I don't know why I thought of ducks first. I'm a terrible person).  

"But what about homeless ducks?" 

So, along those same lines about eating, on Thursday we had McDonald's! We wanted to try it, and there's WiFi and air conditioning there. The food was actually better than the McDonald's food in America. AND, the burgers do not come with onions, or tomatoes, and they automatically come with mayonnaise. It's like they were made for me.

I had a lot of trouble at the counter trying to order, though. The girl kept trying to speak to me in French, and I was all, "I don't know French!" I was trying to figure out what the sauce was that came on the BigMac, because the only things on the menu were pictures and names of the sandwiches. The guy in line next to me heard my plight. He was German, and spoke a little English, and French/Arabic (overachiever). So, he helped me, which was lovely.

'Muroco

After lunch, I met with my weekly conversation partner back at the school. She's pretty nice, and she's also learning English, so she is able to sympathize when I don't understand her. I had a hell of a time trying to explain daylight's savings time, only to find out that they have it here too.

For dinner, I don't remember what we had, except for the BEST WATERMELON I'VE EVER HAD. (Boldfaced, capitalized, italicized, and underlined. Oh snap.) But, my goodness. You can't imagine the fruit here. It's all so good and fresh. I like fruit here that I don't normally like in America. Like cantaloupe. And some other fruit which I didn't even know what it was. But this watermelon was so juicy and heavenly. It's super good.