First month in Morocco

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Our first month here has gone as quickly as we had feared. It has been a steep learning curve, as for both of us this is our first time living overseas (deployments don't exactly count as "living overseas").

We arrived on August 11th, and that night we moved into a 3rd story apartment in a a part of Rabat called Agdal ("The Georgetown of Morocco"). It has 3 bedrooms, 2.5 baths, all tile and plenty of windows, with a balcony that overlooks the residential part of the city; with a recently added patio set we had built by one of the local artisans here, its not a bad way to enjoy coffee in the morning, or a drink at the end of the day. The US Embassy, where we both work, is about 3 miles up the road, and between leaving early enough to avoid most of the traffic, and a reverse commute coming home, getting there is a fairly simple affair. As we are only here for a year, and most of that spent on the road, the Army also furnished it so we wouldn't have to bring any furniture. The good news is that we have plenty of furniture here now and were able to travel relatively light; the bad news is that it looks like furniture the Army picked out more than a few years ago. So while we might be due for an extreme makeover, it perfectly suits our needs for our time here.

We arrived the day before Ramadan, which for Muslims is a month of fasting during the daytime in celebration of Allah giving the Koran to the Prophet Mohammed. What it translates to today is a month's worth of hungry, tired, and cranky Muslims, usually going to work and coming home at the same time; driving here is chaotic enough; add in some hunger fatigue, and it can be even more unnerving.

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Photos

The Chellah
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The Chellah
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The Chellah
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The Chellah
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