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!

Orientation

Orientation was a bitch. Entirely.

I can't even begin to recount how much conflicting information we've all be given, but I guess that's like that like from the first Men in Black movie... "You're everything we've come to expect from years of government service."

Our program director is a 24 year old person with no government service at all, who's a year post peace corps in Morocco. At least she knows Darija.

Our academic director is a guy from California somewhere that they flew out, and at least he seems to know what he's doing. It's stressful to see what class I'm going to be in! I have an email from my professor at GT though telling me what I need to have done for 3001 in the fall. So I should be able to make sure that I at least get that work done.

Our other program coordinator at AmidEast is a Moroccan woman who seems to be good and competent. I've heard horror stories about AmidEast from kids at my university, who now refuses to work with them, so I'm just keeping my guard up to make sure I get done what I need to academically. I think our excursions are planned through DC not AmidEast, which I've also heard was a problem, so that's good.

I had my first taste of Moroccan food at Dar Naji, an authentic (obviously...) Moroccan restaurant. Seats low to the ground, servers wore traditional fancy dress, it was really quite lovely. The food was better than I was expecting, and I was full by the time my main dish came around. Lots of bread. I need to watch that! Being vegetarian seems like it's going to be some work but not the nightmare I was expecting.

We had a welcome reception at the Head Director's house as well in the evening. All of us were full from lunch and the only goal was to keep us awake. It was painful! His wife served us some sweets though but I have yet to see any hummus or baklava, both of which I was very much looking forward to seeing.

Tomorrow we have some more orientation (orientation on orientation on orientation) and then we get our host families!

Rabat!

We've landed in Rabat! Very small international airport in the nearby city of Sale. I don't think we technically went through customs, no bags were searched or anything. We did go through passport control which took forever, and naturally I picked the slowest line ever. Though I did have a short conversation in Arabic with the Passport Control Officer in Fusha. My first real interaction! I totally messed up half of it, but I got my point across and she was very receptive and nice!

I'm not very tired yet but I can imagine the rest of the day is going to be long. I basically haven't slept in something like 36 hours.

We went via bus to a hotel where we'll be staying for the next few days. Not like the 4/5 star hotel back in DC but nice for international standards? Two twin beds (in fact my bed at GT might have been wider, imagine that), a mini fridge which wasn't plugged in, and a nice bathroom suite.

On the program for the next few days is just in country orientation and at the end getting our host family!

Time to get settled in! Time for a quick change of clothes, off to lunch, and then orientation already.

Bonjour, France!

Bonjour!

We've arrived in France.

Everything is massive and us 30 loud, obnoxious Americans took a good two hours to figure out where to go. Embarrassing. Luckily everyone seems to speak English, so that's nice.

Just killing time until our next flight. Took forever to get boarding passes, since basically no Air France officials exist. We asked for some, the airport person said basically "leave me alone this is France, what do you expect/I dont know."

I also can't manage to figure out how to work the whole power adapter thing to make my laptop work so I'm on a public computer with two minutes of time left.

It's 9 am and sunny local time, we take off at 10:30 am. Arrive to Rabat around 12:30 noon. I won't really sleep until tonight, which will come to about a grand total of 36 hours with no sleep. Bring it on. Coffee on coffee on coffee. The like five cokes I got on the United flight also didn't help. Their vegetarian food also sucks, and they dubbed their movies in improper Arabic. So, less than impressed.

Anyway, catch you in Rabat!

And we're off!

Kind of, at least.

Pretty sure I see my bus outside the window. It's raining awfully here. It's sad. I was gonna go walk to the white house but noooo.

We're about half an hour to the airport. Then that whole security customs thing. I got way too lazy to try to repack my luggage from unpacking for the last few days so I got a cloth grocery bag and just threw everything else in there. Haha. I hope it's not overweight.

Eight hours to Paris. Get there at 3 am. Which totally screws my plans to grab a glass of wine or something in the airport since it'll be legal, haha. Four hour layover. Four hour flight to Rabat. An hour to the hotel. The next seventeen hours are going to be a blast. At least I'll have time to study some Arabic so I don't fail my placement test on Monday...

Dunno much else what to say. My host family is two minutes from the school, which is great. A husband and wife, and their two year old son. 

I'm in D.C.!

After a very stressful few days packing and realizing the ATL airport doesn't have free wifi (say what?), I'm checked into my fancy as hell hotel in D.C.!

I know I brought way too much stuff... but I also can't think of what I could cut out. The good part is most of it is disposable (so bath stuff, meds I'll finish up over there, school supplies). I had no idea note cards weighed so much. My back hurts from carrying my backpack around cause it's super heavy with my laptop and all, but my checked luggage came to exactly 50.0 pounds. The limit. I was shocked, haha.

Got through security, waiting for the plane to start boarding. Come to find there's a seemingly Christian youth group of maybe 25 kids on our flight. That's fine. But then they start introducing themselves and playing games and stuff, and it sounds like an AA meeting... "I'm Abby", one person would start. The group would scream back, "HI ABBY NICE TO MEET YOU". So that didn't bode well.

Finally get on the flight, it's a small little airplane. I'm next to this kid who introduces himself as Adam. Fine, whatever. Clearly a high school kid, starts blabbering about how he's going to Kosovo. I nod once or twice and start reading a magazine. He continues talking. Asks if I know what Kosovo is. Uhm, yes, I am educated thanks. So flight takes off and I'm finally able to use my ipod. Pretend to be sleeping. We make good time, landing about 20 minutes early. They tell us to turn off all our stuff to land, and this kid asks me if I fell asleep. I'm like ... yeah. And starts talking again. I seriously make no eye contact or anything, nodding once or twice. I am clearly not interested. Just keeps asking me questions. As soon as the seat belt sign is off I am out of that seat so fast. Get off the plane without even looking back.


The Dulles airport is really nice, and I'm coming to grasp exactly how big these places are. Before I got to the train to take me to baggage claim, they had a walking runway thing in a white tunnel with flashing color lights. It was pretty awesome. Got my stuff, then had to pay 30 bucks to get driven to the hotel in a cramped shuttle with no air conditioning for about half an hour. That sucked. They assured me it was cheaper than a taxi though.

Check in, walked around DC a little. Nice place, but hot and humid. Don't know what else I expected, haha. My program officials are finally starting to check us in and I got my first info packet. I got a sheet on my host family too! I'm 2 minutes walking from the school, private room and bath, and wifi in house. I have a roommate but I think she has her own room too. From what I can tell they have a son who just was born in 2011, so he's a baby! Unfortunately no pets :( Maybe I'll buy them a cat.

So all in all I'm just waiting for program orientation tonight and tomorrow and then flying out to Rabat on Friday!

Snapped a picture of the plane we took. I literally had to climb down the stairs of it, they didn't attach us to the fake hallway to get into the real airport. 

Fancy hotel. 

Really fancy. Free aveda products. 

Massive straw from a local burger place. 

Like as wide as my finger big. 

D.C.'s version of Flip Burger

Some statue in a square. 

It ain't 1600.... but it's close. 

Spanish Embassy

They give you a minute to walk across. Unheard of. 

The lights aren't in the middle of the street. Took me forever to catch on. 

That circle thing again. 

Aaaaand again. 

Flags!

Drug Free library. As opposed to all those libraries with drugs.