First Course Over!

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Sorry I haven't updated in a while! It's been crazy busy here--we finished a single 3 credit course in a span of two weeks so that means 5 hours a day of classtime then homework and whatever else you have enough energy for. I have started to get used to the ridiculous amount of catcalls Moroccan men make, everything from "Beautiful! Bonjour! Hola como estas?? ***kissing noises****" to actually following you around and asking ridiculous questons even if it's super clear you want them to go away. I actually pretended to be mute once. For some reason they also seem to think I speak Spanish, and constantly say things in Spanish to me, which is odd considering I look even less Spanish than I do Moroccan...It happens to all of the girls we are with! My Moroccan friends told me to fight the urge to snap back and to just ignore these men.

Class was crazy. We learned Moroccan Arabic (Darija) which is extremely different from the Arabic I've studied, but it's what they speak here. Part of the class was going up to random people on campus and asking them questions in Darija...most awkward task ever. At the end of the class we all had to do something in Darija, so I wrote and sang a song on guitar with a friend to "call me maybe". Other people taught yoga, dance, baked rice pudding, and wrote poems. It was entertaining to say the least.

A cat literally walked into our house the other day, it saw me eating breakfast and froze then continued to walk in. My host mom is scared of cats so I had to quickly chase him out before she saw him. We had a kitten mewing in our garage the other night too. Cats come into the garage/house probably about once every three nights. We played with the kitten for about an hour and then he fell asleep on my lap so I felt TERRIBLE leaving him.

We also found one of the only bars in Rabat, which was nearly empty since drinking is shuma in Islam--by the way shuma is a word that means shame and has SO many uses so it has pretty much been like the top word in our class's vocabulary. We had a drink for someone's birthday and then awkwardly went home. I don't think nightlife is going to be a huge part of life here, hahaha. But that's good because there are so many other cultural things to experience here (and I get SO much more sleep).

Lastly, we have essentially been living on the beach in our free time. The Moroccan beach is beautiful and the water is much warmer than the Cape Cod water I'm used to. It is so salty and really easy to float. If you can believe it, I'm actually getting pretty tan! My family catches crabs and squids at the beach then takes them home to eat, and always offers me some and laughs. It's super abnormal to be vegetarian (or nabeyti) here. My Moroccan mama cooks delicious food though and she is awesome and always makes sure I have a veggie option. Ugh, and I'm trying to get together my schedule for my last semester at home and it's crazy that I will be graduating so soon!------ I literally just left for two minutes to play with the cat in the garage, who has been meowing for ten minutes, with my host brother. Tomorrow I go to Meknes with the other students, I will let you all know how it is! (and hopefully it won't take me as long as this blog did to post....). Marsalaama!

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