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!
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