Day 20: To Eat or Not to Eat

Thursday, July 11

Hold onto your hats, ladies and gents, and if you're not wearing hats, hold onto your pants, and if you're not wearing pants, I don't blame you, but it's time for another exciting episode of Cultural Adventures: Ramadan Edition

Part 3: Cause and Effects

So, it's mini-rant time. Now, all of Morocco operates on the new Ramadan schedule: i.e. everyone is awake at night, and everything is closed during the day. This is all good and fine, except for those of us who still go to school on a Western schedule.

Basically, our program expects all of us students to stay up late to be able to spend time with our families (and eat, of course), but we're also expected to start class in the morning while the entire rest of the country sleeps. This day was the worst. Everyone in class was so sleepy because we were all awake so late feasting.

Fortunately, the program directors took the smallest amount of pity on us, and while our classes used to start at 9, they now start at 10. So, we have 1 extra hour for sleeping. Or for homeworking. Or for whatever.

There are some students in our program who started trying to fast. I don't think it went so well for them, if only because every single person they knew was eating right in front of them and drinking ALL the water.

So yeah. I think they've stopped trying to fast.

Anyway, Thursday was pretty uneventful until the evening. I met up with my conversation partner, and she took me around the New City shops for a while. I was looking to buy some shorts, just some simple elastic waist-band shorts, but interestingly, if you say "short" to shop owners, they think you are referring to jean shorts specifically. I want shorts that I can lazily wear around the house when it's hot (because there are no men in the house, we can wear whatever we want.) So instead we started asking for pajamas, and the only shorts we found with those were the tiniest, most bootilicious booty shorts you could ask for. I was like, "Uh." And didn't buy them. Cuz 'dey ain't comfortable, yo!

I didn't end up finding any normal shorts, and after two hours and I was dying of exhaustion (I'm one of those who suffered from lack of sleep because of Ramadan), I went home and then promptly to bed.