What to do this weekend

I'm not sure. My plans to go to Larache were just canceled.

There's a bunch of stuff to do around Rabat.

2. Kasbah des Oudaias
• Originally a small fortress, now in the capital. The whole site is visible through the monuments that make up the site
3. Andalusian Gardens
• Gardens laid out by the French during the colonial period, in the grounds of Kasbah des Ousias
4. Zoo de Rabat 
5. Oudaia Museum
• "Museum" of all the jewels and other items in the Kasbah
6. The Currency Museum of the Bank Al-Maghrib
7. National Archaeology Museum
1. Most extensive collection of archeolgoical artifacts in Morocco. Contains prehistory and Pre-Islamic artifcats, including items from Volubilis, Banasa, and Thamusida. Interesting items including human remains from the middle paleolithic period to neolithic. 
8. St Agatha’s Crypt & Catacombs
1. Contain a series of remarkable frescoes dating from 12-15th centuries. Legend holds the catacombs were the hiding place of St. Agatha when she fled Sicily.
9. St Paul’s Catacombs
1. Dated from the 3rd century CE, rediscovered in 1894.
10. Domus Romana
1. "Roman House." Built in the 1920s to incorporate the excavated ruins of a large Roman townhouse from the 1st century CE. Centerpiece is the original peristyle court, formerly an open courtyard surrounded by columns.
11. Casa Bernard
1. From the Domus Romana, walk south along Triq San Pawl for about 200m. You'll be guided through the privately owned 16-th century pallazzi who will explain the history of the mansion and the impressive personal collection of art, furniture, and china. 
12. Museum of Science and Nature
1. The museum explains the history of the earth's geology but is most noted for the reconstructed skeleton of the giant dinosaur Altasaurus imelakei found in the High Atlas in 1979. 
13. Wignacourt Museum
1. Impressive painting gallery
14. The Postal Museum
1. This museum was founded in 1970. It brings together superb collections of Moroccan stamps, envelopes, telephones and telegraph machines, including the Baudot (telegraph with printer), as well as belinographs (machines for reproducing photographs over a long distance) and postal vans.
15. Salle des Bronzes (maybe at the national archeology museum?)
1. Ceramics, statuary, and artifacts from the Roman settlements at Volubilis, Lixus, and Chellah.
16. Theaters
1. Ensemble Artisanan
2. Théatre Mohammed V
3. Cinéma du 7ème Art
4. Cinéma Renaissance

Project Guacamole, Pt. 2

That didn't go as planned.

I guess it's a different strain of avocado here... and I'm a few shades too impatient... So I cut the avocados today, which was a hassle in and of itself. But they definitely were more yellow than green, so not ripe. But at that point I was committed, so I tried to do it anyway.

Ended up blending the whole thing in a blender because it was too hard to mash up by hand. It's in the fridge chilling now, but not the right consistency. Maybe in a day or two? At least I tried.

Preparations! Avocado, lemon, tomato, onion and garlic

Blended rock hard avocado

Chips. And my awkward hand. 

Project Guacamole

I would do nearly unspeakable things for a microwave and mexican food right now. So I'm going to make guacamole.

I went to the market and bought most of my supplies. I'm still missing the cilantro, which I couldn't effectively communicate to the people in French or Arabic but the avocados need a few more days still. I also need chips!

The avocados were the most expensive, and this was about a 35 DH investment. for $4.10 USD. Already more than what I'd pay for a side at Willy's! But the avocados are literally the size of my hands, much bigger than what we have in America and I got two, so it should be a good sized product. I think a reasonable sized back of tortilla chips will be 30DH and probably 8-10 for cilantro bringing my entire adventure to 75DH, or nearly 9.00 USD, but god damn it I want Mexican. 

Fez and Volubilis

Volubilis

I got to go to my second Roman ruin site this past weekend, a town called Volubilis nearby in Meknes. This was a massive (and hot...) site. I don't really know much about the history, but it was very interesting to again be able to touch (and in some cases, climb!) on some of the ruins.

Fez

The ride to Fez was not fun. Small, cramped buses with no space for luggage storage, and one of them had no AC. Our hotel was what I have come to expect out of government accommodations, though apparently the group trip to Fez last year had a nice hotel with a pool, etc. Not that we really had time to swim! 

Friday night dinner we went to a little restaurant called Puerto Rico, which had the most absurd mixture of cultural food items I've ever seen. I ended up having a vegetarian pizza with peppers, tomatoes, and onions, and it wasn't too delicious. Went to bed early because oh my god early bedtime is awesome. 

The next day we started out early with a miniature English lecture about the history of Fez and Meknes. Then, I went on the mandatory tour around Fez. It was supposed to be about an hour long and cover the "New Fez" areas of the city (Fez has three basic areas, I think). We ended up walking for four hours in the heat. It was preposterous. I was so pissed, hot, and tired. We thankfully got a bus back from the medina we ended up at. I went to lunch, again at that Puerto Rico, with some friends. The cheese panini I got wasn't cooked all the way through and was a disgusting waste of 30 DH. I feel sick now even just thinking about how gross it was. 

Mosque

There's a beautiful garden oasis in the middle of the hot city

Entrance to the old Medina

I took a well deserved nap after that. The next tour in the afternoon was optional and covered the old medina. I went with the group but I didn't go on the tour, which would have been another three hours of walking through the maze that is the medina. 

Instead I did some of my first shopping! The first purchase I made was a little blue leather (camel?) purse. The guy started at 250, but said he'd give me a good price of 150. I bargained down to 115! 

I also bought these little tajine items, they are two miniature ones stuck together. I didn't really want them, and they really aren't very nice once I finally took a look at them. The shop keeper was very pushy though and tried to sell them to me for 100, I wouldn't budge from 30 and I didn't even really want them. But I kept trying to walk away and he kept asking me what I would pay. Wouldn't budge from 30 and he finally settled on it so I got them. It comes to about $3.50 USD though, so I'm not entirely upset. 

After that, I took another nap, and since I didn't really have lunch I was getting quite the headache. I was tempted to stay in bed but instead decided to explore on my own. I asked the receptionist where I could find a book store. He gave me the name and how to get there and said about a 5 minute walk. Ha. Ha. Ha. I walked for a good 45 minutes turned around every which way to try to find this place that I thought was a bookstore. Nope, it was a freaking super market. To be fair they had some books but they were all in French. I wanted Arabic or English. On the plus side, I did find some tupperware for snacks for school which was super useful. And I do love my tupperware. 

I went to bed early still sometime around 9:30 PM, man was I tired!

The next day we went to some look out with some castle type of thing that was okay, then we were free to roam in the medina from 10:30 am - 2:00 pm! I walked for hours through the medina. Problem is going deeper is all downhill, but when you try to go up you are literally going up at like a 45 degree angle. That sucked, especially cause there's no where to sit in the middle of the medina without being sketchy so I had to keep going in and out. 

I must have walked about an hour in to try to find a large dark blue, flat bottom, zipper top, shoulder bag for my grandmother. I settled on a store I went to twice, and he started at 380DH.I started at 150 maybe. We went back and forth a few times. I took out my wallet, and I had a 100DH, two 50 DH, and a 20DH bill, and some coins. I hid one of the 50 DH bills, and at this point he had settled on 220 DH I think. I showed him the 100, 50, 20 DH bills and some coins, which summed to 185 and said that's all I had. He asked if I could come back, I said no, I had to go to the airport. He took the 185! My resident director says it's probably worth around 300 for a foreigner so I did pretty damn well. In Arabic, no less!

I also got a scarf and some bracelets. On the way out, I wanted to grab lunch before the bus left, and found a cute little french shop that offered harrira soup! Traditional moroccan food, finally! I love soup! It was only 10 DH too, which is a $1.17 USD. Came with plenty of bread and olives too. It was more than filling and entirely delicious. I need to find a place that sells that in Agdal. 

Purchases in hand, we took the long journey back to Rabat!

Week 2

Not much going on really. I've gotten into a routine really I guess, lots of class, lots of naps :)

Class is still making me ridiculously bored, I don't know why we aren't going so much faster.  We are never going to get through a year's worth of material. I also don't understand why we need two teachers. They're both in there during the entire time but only one teaching. Clearly they're being paid for the whole time regardless. It seems like a waste of time and money. Plus I can only understand one of them.

Regardless, this weekend we're going to Fez and it should be pretty good!

In the meantime I'm just going my homework all ahead of time so I can just sleep.

Trip to Chellah, Hassan 5 tomb, mosque

We had our first cultural excursion!

Friday after couscous with our family we went around on a tour of Rabat. We visited Chellah, Hassan 5 Tomb, and what was to be the largest mosque in the world, I think.

Chellah

The first of the three ancient Roman ruin sites in Morocco! The Roman town was known as Sala Colonia. The remaining Roman architecture shows a traditional principal Roman way (decumanus maximus), a forum, and a triumphal arch. It was abandoned in 1154 for a nearby sity, Sale.

It was interesting being at an ancient history site because there is no restriction upon touching anything, within reason. I was able to touch actual ancient Roman artifacts. It was pretty damn cool. A flock (?) of storks has taken up residence atop of the buildings and they are very loud and do this hilarious little dance! Chellah is maybe less than 20 minutes from my house, so I might go again one afternoon.

 

قطة قطة قطة

Hassan 5/Mosque

I obviously didn't really care for this part much but it's cool what they tried to do. It has the tombs of some of the really important people in Moroccan history. They tried to build the largest call-to-prayer tower in the Arab world I think. They got 2/3rds of the way there, an earth quake tore it down, and they only built it up to a third of the original intended height. 

Couscous

So apparently couscous every Friday is a thing and our first experience was today.

I was supposed to have a Darija test after school which I took, and then I had such a migraine I was just going to go to bed, because we have an outing at 4 pm today. Instead, I find out we're going to my mom's mom's house for couscous with the family. And I couldn't find a graceful way to get out of it. Raging headache and nausea in place, I embarked on the 20 minute car ride there.

Nice house, they are near the ocean. Everything is very tall instead of wide here. The view from the top of their house is magnificent. There were also so many people at the house I have no idea who I met and who they were. But the grandmother keeps birds (though it looked like too many birds in too small a cage...). So we sit down to eat couscous and I'm like about to puke and just want to sleep. It's a bunch of couscous and vegetables in a huge tajine. Like, huge.

So maybe 10 or 12 of us are squeezed around this tiny table to eat from this huge tajine. We got spoons, thankfully, but everyone was eating from the same bowl. No individual plates, which I've sort of gotten used to. I didn't eat much. I didn't know it at the time, but my roommate told me after the fact the family was complaining or whatever in some mix of Fusha and Darija that I wasn't a good "player" because I wasn't eating. I must be pretty good at hiding the fact that all I want to do is puke, apparently. But I don't really care. I really hate that food, love, and hospitality are all linked to your appearance in a family setting or whatever. I don't care, I'll eat what I want, thank you. 

Cats

Cats are everywhere. Which would be awesome, but most of them are sick. :(

There's this one sick one that I see outside of my apartment sometimes. One day I had some free time so I went and bought a water bottle and tried to get kitty to drink it, but she wouldn't. Wouldn't come too near me either, but was sneezing and wheezing. Most cats have some hair disorder kind of thing too.

There are a few kittens near my school too, I played with one with some local Moroccan students once. She was small and orange and adorable and looked very much like one in Oudaya on the ocean. I also gave one bread outside my school and some guy in Arabic started to try to talk to me and I have no idea what he was saying, but got the idea that it was something like stupid American we don't play with cats here. But she was clearly hungry and just wanted food! I'm going to always try to carry something they can eat on me.

They are also all over the Medina, which also has a lot of canaries for sale too. Doesn't seem like the best combo! There was the most adorable little kitten curled up and asleep in a basket but I couldn't get a picture.

Other cats though...

Girl the back of yo' head is ridiculous. From Volubilis

From Fez!

Yep, I'm trouble!

Money

Even though the cost of living here is cheaper, I live in a fancy area and seem to be going through money like crazy...

115 USD = 977.5 DH. Which I managed to go through in two weeks. I guess that comes down to 70 DH a day, when my budget was 90, so that's good... I was hoping to be spending less though! I did have a couple of one time fees for a phone and stuff. I managed to find a grocery store which is semi-expensive but that stuff will last a while too though. Plus it took some figuring out to determine where the cheap lunch places were! You can't really get away with less than ~40 on a meal, maybe 30 if you're vegetarian and just want  pizza. I've been eating lots of pizza and french fries!

I did find this little hole in the wall restaurant where I got a donut that was literally the size of my face for something like 50 cents. so major win there!

I'm trying to be better about budgeting because I'd like to use the money to travel instead and buy presents instead of food! 

First days of Class

and I want to bang my head against the wall. It's going to be an interesting summer if this is how's it's going to go...


I'm in the lowest class, which is more or less what I expected. And actually will cover what I need to for Tech in the fall so that's fine. But we clearly have a wide variety of levels and previous experience in this 12 person class... We're starting 3 chapters behind what I've done and taking a slower than glacier pace. Spending two hours conjugating two verbs in the past tense. Like what. I also dont see why they have to individually correct everyone's work if we're doing the same work sheet. Like just go over it on the board...


Also surprise that schedule I found in our program handbook was wrong. #governmentwork

I have Darija class from 8:30-9:20, Fusha from 9:20-11:00, Break from 11-11:30, and more Fusha class from 11:30-1:00 pm, except for Friday's when I have a test from 12noon - 1 pm as well.

The Darija is interesting... there's a pattern for verbs in the present tense and most of the verbs themselves are the same but there's a few important ones that are quite different. Whereas the Shami dialects seems to be more vowel based, Darija is very much consonants. and like everyone, they speak so fast.

On the plus side, I've already done all the homework so I have lots of free time to explore. By which I mean nap. 

Host Family!

So after yet another wonderful day of orientation, where some director from the consulate or something came to scare us (and I learned that I'll be attacked and mugged by sword point, if anything), we got to go home with our host families!

I've known a little bit about them since D.C. orientation, and surprise, the information provided on the sheet wasn't exactly correct. But whatever. There's a mom, Fatima, and a dad, Aziz, and a little ten month old girl, Lee Ann. There's also a boy, Heron, almost 3 years old, but I've gathered that he lives with Fatima's mother until school is over. Haven't met him yet.

We have a shared room, I have a roommate Natasha. She's British. It's like living with Harry Potter haha. We each have a bed and a massive wardrobe that I couldn't possibly fill up with what I brought but would be nice to have back at home... I definitely didn't bring too many clothes but somehow, like I always do, managed to bring so much more stuff than I strictly maybe need. I also wish I had packed those ziplock bags I swore I wouldn't really need. And some safety pins would be nice.

There's American style appliances, a family room, kitchen, and extra room that might be cleared out for our use later. We're also within a two minute walk of the school, which is super convenient in case I'm feeling sick or have to deal with that whole class at 8:30 am thing...

First Hannut and Taxi Experience!

A Hannut or (هانت ?) is an Arabic little store that sells food or bath items like soap, shampoo, etc. They are, as I came to find out, all over the place and usually quite small, and seem to basically have all of the same items. For my first experience, I ended up not actually sleeping after the party at the directors house and walked for about a minute or two down from the hotel. A creepy french man tried to solicit my attention by saying Bonjour but I just walked by. 

The store I picked was right next to the hotel and I shopped around a little bit after greeting the shop keeper with standard Moroccan greetings. I know no darija at this point, so it's a little awkward to try to have conversations because no one speaks in Fusha. But I ended up buying a yogurt (which they like never refrigerate here) and a coke. After I checked out I saw that they had kinder eggs (OMG!) so I want to go back before we leave. Oh, I also had to steal a spoon because they seemingly have no disposable silverware anywhere here, so I stole it from the hotel buffet area. The woman there gave me a weird look but didn't say anything presumably because I looked foreign and stupid, haha. 

I've also taken some taxi rides to get around places, but they've always been with the program director or resident director or the like. I took one by myself on the way home from school today. I was super nervous because like I said I know no darija and the first one I took, the RD was chit chatting in darija the whole time. Luckily I managed to pick a driver (after taking a good ten minutes to flag down a cab cause I'm rather incompetent) who spoke French only, so after finally communicating my destination, the ride was silent. However not all Arabic-intent was lost because he had an Arabic news channel on the radio or something, and I figured out that they were talking about sports and recognized a few words here and there. Got back to my hotel no problem. Why the taxi home cost more than the taxi there that morning, I'll never know... but it was still only 1 USD yet about half an hour by foot, so I guess that's pretty okay! 

I'm pretty beat but I can't wait to meet my host family tomorrow!