Hey Agdal!

At last. Time to sit down and write. The past week I’ve been in Morocco has been non-stop sen­sory over­load. I’m talk­ing thing-after-thing-after-bread-after-thing-after-exhaustion-after-Arabic-after-being-touristy-after thing. There’s a lot to write about and a lot to tell you all, but there’s not a lot of inter­net nor is there a lot of time, so let’s see how this goes.

Like a brothel but with more women!

Arrival

This was my least favorite part of the trip so far. I arrived at the air­port, disheveled and filled with Swiss egg­plant parme­san, to find another stu­dent on my pro­gram named Sarah who is very funny and reminds me of my friend Rena. That was com­fort­ing, but after being dri­ven by a man bear­ing only a sign read­ing AMIDEAST and speak­ing in what I can only describe as parsel­tongue, we were deposited at a hotel. And I don’t mean just dropped off. I mean straight up deposited. As in no com­mu­ni­ca­tion with any­one save our room­mates until pro­gram­ming the next day… pro­gram­ming which took place at AMIDEAST’s loca­tion in Agdal, which we had to get to our­selves. Some­how. After this cul­ture shock and fend­ing for our­selves, I slowly began meet­ing every­one (all twenty!) and begin­ning ori­en­ta­tion week. I could describe the lat­ter more in detail, but most of it was exhaust­ing and exhaus­tive pro­gram­ming. Let’s just say I’m excited for classes to start. But more on that later.

Home­s­tay

My home­s­tay is incred­i­ble. Or miziyan as they say here, which means every­thing from “fine” to “good” to “per­fect”. I’m liv­ing with my friend Eliot, whom I met on this program—he’s a 21-year-old junior from NYC who goes to school at Amer­i­can. He has an awe­some sense of direc­tion (earn­ing him the nick­name GPSe­liot), adven­ture, and downtime.

We’re paired with a fam­ily in Agdal, Rabat which is about a ten minute walk from our school. It’s sur­rounded by bars, restau­rants, cof­fee shops, and the best gym in Rabat. Addi­tion­ally, it’s close to many things by foot and a short tram or taxi ride away from the med­ina (the old part of the city), the souks (the mar­ket), or the muHeet (the ocean).
I have a mother named Miriyam, a father named Abdul, two older broth­ers, and a younger sis­ter named Lat­ifa. Who is arguably the cutest, pink-cladiest 11-year-old in the world. Mar­wane is a total bro and loves hang­ing out with us, speaks incred­i­ble Eng­lish, and knows all the cool places around Rabat. He took our entire group to the hand­ball cham­pi­onships here in Agdal where we saw Tun­sia vs. Alge­ria, the last game before some sort of Olympic con­clu­sion of all the hand­ball play­ers in the world. (Side note: as lame as it sounds, hand­ball is totally baller, pun intended—it’s a com­bi­na­tion of lacrosse, soc­cer, and ulti­mate Fris­bee and is all the rage here in al-maghreb.)

Miriyam, or umee, is per­haps the best cook in the world. Every­thing we’ve eaten is ladeed bizaf and sprin­kled with cumin and salt and magic. When we have to be at AMIDEAST, she packs us lunches (sand­wiches, she says) that are equally bineen. She speaks both fusHa (Mod­ern Stan­dard Ara­bic) and dar­ija (Moroc­can col­lo­quial) as well as French. She’s great help for improv­ing my Ara­bic because unlike the rest of her fam­ily, she doesn’t know much English.

Abdul, or abee, is incred­i­bly intel­li­gent. He used to work as a lawyer or in the gov­ern­ment or no one really knows but then retired only to now work at a French call cen­ter with his two sons. He’s also an incred­i­bly tal­ented nijaar—appar­ently he made lit­er­ally all of the fur­ni­ture in the house. Includ­ing beds. And the doors. And I’m not talk­ing blocky mod­ern fur­ni­ture. This is intri­cate Moroc­can pat­terns made out of seven dif­fer­ent types of wood. Yeah.

The house itself is beau­ti­ful. Inshal­lah, I’ll put up some pho­tos of it. It fea­tures two sit­ting rooms, a bed­room for me and Eliot, a bed­room for our par­ents, a bath­room with a shower and a Western/French toi­let (alhamdilu­lah!), an eat­ing area, and a kitchen. Then we have a ter­race that we share with our friend Tamar who is stay­ing with the fam­ily next door to us. And on our ter­race is a lit­tle look­out where we can spy on the peo­ple in the souk below us. Lat­ifa loves it.

Rabat

This city is so cool. It’s an inter­est­ing inter­sec­tion of moder­nity and tra­di­tion, and there’s an explo­ration around every cor­ner. Most of my urban trav­els have been at night so far as ori­en­ta­tion has taken up most of our time, but I can’t wait to explore the ins and outs of Rabat dur­ing my stay here. There’s stuff to do at night and there’re great places to eat, yet there’s also a call to prayer that begins every morn­ing and an enor­mous palace in the mid­dle of the city.

Classes

The amount that my GPA has been beaten to a pulp by Ara­bic has appar­ently paid off as I got placed in the high­est Mod­ern Stan­dard Ara­bic and Dar­ija classes here. Which is excit­ing! Besides that, I’ll be tak­ing a con­tem­po­rary Moroc­can cul­ture class as well as a course on the Arab Spring, or the Mid­dle Eastern/North African upris­ings and revolts. Finally, I got placed in an intern­ship pro­gram as a part of community-based learn­ing where I’ll be work­ing at the Ara­bic orga­ni­za­tion Aadela, which from what I under­stood works with refugees and human rights in Rabat and may or may not have to do with the west­ern Sahara.

So things here are great so far. The peo­ple on my pro­gram are dynamic and dif­fer­ent and mostly female. Amid bursts of girl talk, I have found ways to elude their estro­gen and seek refuge with the Men of the Group (all 3 of them, though one is 40 and mar­ried… long story) or Mar­wane. Using Ara­bic to get around is get­ting eas­ier and eas­ier and always evokes a pos­i­tive response from the per­son with whom I’m talk­ing. Also, every­one here assumes we’re Euro­pean before they assume we’re Amer­i­can which I’m totally fine with.

I hope all of you are well. I have absolutely zero idea what’s hap­pen­ing in the world except for that cruise ship that tipped over. I’m excited to get set­tled here, get into a rou­tine, and bum Inter­net from Café La Une so I can Skype and catch up with you guys.