I may have more to write when I get home but I want to get these down while I am still in Morocco. I just finished my final exam which was divided into two parts, reading comprehension and grammar. It wasn't too hard and I am not too worried about how I did. Overall my satisfaction with AmidEast is mixed. The homestay has been awesome because I have been able to improve my speaking (in modern standard Arabic) ability exponentially. But as for the classes, I found them to be a little disappointing. I don't feel like I have learned all [View Full Entry]

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I apologize for not making a post sooner but to be honest there hasn't been anything post worthy in Rabat, probably because I am used to being here so it feels "normal" to me, well as "normal" as Rabat can be. Anyways, here goes... After class on Thursday (7/9) MSJ took a train from Rabat to Marrakesh. We shared a cabin on the train with a family who had a little girl The girl really liked playing with my watch so I took it off and let her play with it for a while. When we arrived in Marrakesh it was [View Full Entry]

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So I got back from Asilah at around 8 pm on Saturday night (4th of July) and as I got close to the apartment I heard really loud music. When I got to the apartment building entrance I noticed that a large truck was parked right up to the door and there were men in uniforms scrambling around carrying things up the stairs. As I made my way past them I was eyed cautiously because they were probably wondering "Who the hell is this French tourist crashing this family's party." I say French because in Morocco if you are white they [View Full Entry]

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(I know this is a day late, whatever) Happy Independence Day! عيد الاستقلال سعيد Today AmidEast went to Asilah, a small beach town to the north of Rabat (a little south of Tangier). We rode on a bus up there for a couple hours, it was really hot. Once we got there we walked around the Medina, then ate some lunch. Then MSJ walked sort of out of Asilah (for some reason we always find ourselves way outside of the tourist areas) and we found a cool beach that had rocks and kids and fishermen. We then [View Full Entry]

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On Thursday night my family brought a rather large sheep home for the party they were having on Friday and Saturday. The sheep was delivered in the trunk of a BMW sedan and the dad, the butcher, and I carried it up 3 flights of stairs in their apartment building to the apartment where it was tied up outside. Then a bunch of female relatives and the daughter of the family, who is married and just had a son, who the party is for, started rearranging the apartment and I kept offering to help because they were moving some pretty heavy [View Full Entry]

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well today is wednesday, and i havent had much to write about but id figure id try to put another post up. i guess ill do one about an average day in rabat and then some just funny stuff ive seen. typical day: wake up between 7 and 7:30am. Then breakfast from 7:45 to around 8:10. 8:10 I get a taxi to AmidEast. 8:30 through 12:20 class. Then lunch from 12:20 to 1pm. Then Darijah (Moroccan colloquial) class till 2pm. Then MSJ usually do homework and surf the internet from like 2 to 4pm or so. Then we might go somewhere, [View Full Entry]

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This post takes place from Friday 6/26 to Sunday 6/28 Friday After our quiz MSJ went to the train station in the Agdal neighborhood in Rabat. We ate at a restaurant and had some really good cheeseburgers and then got on the train to Fez. We shared a car with two Moroccan men who listened to Arabic music over speakers. The ride was fairly uneventful, it was around 3 hours. When we got to Fez we realized that we didn't have a map and had no idea where we were. We hailed a cab and asked him to take us to [View Full Entry]

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This post picks up from where the last one left off. So Jess went to have tea with a Moroccan family and Sara and I decided to take a cab to her neighborhood so she could figure out exactly where it was. After riding from Agdal to Hassan and walking around for a bit we found her house. She went inside and I continued to explore the area on my own. I walked to the Hassan Tower and took some pictures, spoke Arabic to horse mounted guards, and just wandered around aimlessly. Me, Sara, and Jess (from now on will be [View Full Entry]

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Yesterday was the first full day of classes. The morning class is Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and the afternoon class is Darijah (Moroccan colloquial). The MSA class is kind of intense and we get a lot of homework. The Darijah is fun b/c the teacher doesnt speak English and it is all oral with really no homework. After spending the afternoon doing MSA homework Sara's home stay family came and picked her up. Jess' host dad was going to come to get her but was busy. My family doesn't have cars so they expect me to be able to maneuver my [View Full Entry]

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Well my first night here Michael took me to get some leather slippers to wear in the house. It was hard to find some that would fit me but once we found some we bartered the guy down to around $10 USD. The slippers are really nice, hand made. When we got home Rashid asked what I got and so I pulled em out and handed them to him. He thought they were cool and put them on. Yesterday I couldn't find them and asked Rashid where he put them. He got this sad puppy face and went and got them. [View Full Entry]

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