Getting Lost and Gangster Rap

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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 way around Rabat. I am starting to get the hang of it and don't feel so overwhelmed in the streets.

So me and Jess decide to share a cab. Her neighborhood is to the northwest of mine by about a half mile. We started walking north from AmidEast and found a cab depot. People were in line waiting for cabs but the line never moved. The cabbies seemed to ignoring the people in line and taking people who walked up to them. So I tried to talk to a cabbie and I asked one in my slow broken heavily American accented Darijah if he could take us to L'Ocean, where Jess lives. He basically told us to F*** off from what I could gather.

We then found a cab right near the depot who was happy to take us to L'Ocean. When we got there Jess didn't know where we were since she hadn't explored her neighborhood because her host family is a little overprotective. We began to walk around and try to find the house. After getting semi-lost a guy started to speak to us in French, took my map, and tried to help us. After that didn't work we walked back to the old church, a landmark in the neighborhood, and called Jess' host dad. He picked us up and dropped her off at the house, we had walked within a block of it without knowing it.

He then took me home. When I got home Rashid and his parents were watching Moroccan Idol again. Rashid then told me he likes American music better and got a stack of burned CDs he has collected over the years of having students live with them. He got out a CD by NWA and put it on the boom box. NWA, one of the first "gangsta rap
groups from the early 90s, is not the most appropriate music to blast out of a boom box, especially in front of one's parents. But, Rashid's parents don't speak English so they had no idea that their son was rapping about dealing drugs and killing people. His parents just smiled, nodded, clapped occasionally and asked me in MSA, "Jim, tuhib almuseeqa?" I had to muster all of my energy to not burst out laughing as Rashid spewed expletive after expletive right in front of his parents as they sat there sipping tea.

More to come later, tonight I am going to the market in the Medina again, should be fun. Oh, and I'll try to get some pictures up soon, but I have to take some first lol. I haven't found a good time or place yet.

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