First week of classes and thoughts

Aselamu Aleikum Everyone,

Sorry I haven't posted in awhile so lets recap last week

Not the most exciting, but it was very busy.
We had our first week of classes, with my day beginning at 6:55am (Has not been that early since high school), I leave the house by 7:30am and am sitting in Arabic class by 8am, after a 30 minute walk through the city, which is not bad in the morning, but by midday, the heat make walking uncomfortable. Every morning is a battle with my host father about whether I am running late enough to skip sitting down for breakfast, I always lose this argument as he finishes pouring the coffee with Halib (Milk). (I had never even tasted coffee until I arrived in Morocco, or soda, but it is rude to decline food and drink here).

On Mondays and Wednesdays I have very long days, not returning home until 8:30pm, I have four classes on those days, with each class being two hours long, and a two hour break between each one except my last two, these breaks are nice, but I wish things were more condensed.
On Tuesdays and Thursdays I have been able to return home after my daily Arabic class, and go back to sleep for a bit before waking up and eating lunch here at the house with my family, and then returning to school for one more class.

The Muslim cemetery on my way to school, notice the sheep

On Friday the only class I have is Arabic, and it is over by 10am, which leaves us time to travel and effectively have three day weekends

My classes:

Intermediate Modern Standard Arabic
Magrebian Francophone Literature in Translation (Which I very much like so far)
North African Politics
Islam in Morocco and North Africa
and Cultural Identities in Morocco and North Africa

All the professors seem very smart and have interesting quirks about them, one thing I find interesting is and Anti-French sentiment that has remained from decolonization in 1956

I also had one lecture a few weeks ago on media in Morocco, where the Moroccan professor spent time bashing Fox News as a biased news network that tells lies, I was amazed that the liberal streak of college professors has made it to Africa.
Everyone in this country are huge fans of President Obama, and have very negative feelings about President Bush.

I want to take a moment to talk about some aspects of Moroccan culture that have stood out to me as very different from back home

One thing  that I find slightly disturbing is the level of begging in the streets. Living in DC, I am used to seeing homeless people in the city, but here it is rampant. The thing that is the most upsetting is that it seems that those in Morocco with disabilities are relegated this position. There seems to be many "blind" people here, blind is in quotations because I see some of these same people walking around perfectly find the next day, but there are also handicaps that I have never seen before in the United States, which makes me think they would have once been very treatable. 

The other poverty demographic seems to be those from Sub-Saharan Africa, who sell all kinds of goods along the road outside of the Medina, mostly cell phones and other electronics, and also begging.

Another difference here culturally speaking is how women are treated. While you will see a fully veiled and covered woman standing next to a girl in a tank top, Morocco overall is much more conservative then the US. However, there seems to be a level of acceptance of sexually harassing foreign girls. I have not seen anything drastic, but know some girls in our group have been groped and grabbed at, and gotten called to. While walking with them I often catch men looking back and staring at the girls and I find the best thing to do is give them a death stare which usually ends their curiosity. Girls cannot walk alone after dark.

While there are some big Moroccans, I would say overall they are smaller then most of the guys in our group. 

Another thing I find interesting is the daily schedule these people adhere to. The streets are relatively quiet until around 9am, and then remain crowded well into the night. Even now as I approach midnight, I can still here a soccer game being played in my ally, along with motorbikes zooming by from time to time, leaning on their horns (this is incredibly annoying).

Now back to this weekend

On Friday we attended a going away party at the Marine House, the house where the Marines who protect the American Embassy here live.

They periodically hold small parties for Americans in Rabat, and you have a mix of embassy employees, and expats. This was very nice as it reminded me of home, hearing English, and basking in the air conditioning (rare in Morocco). For those over 21, there was even American beer.

Saturday was a bit slower, until the evening when we all gathered at a wine bar to celebrate one of our classmates 21rst birthday.

Holly's Birthday Celebration 

Sunday began with mass at 8am, at The Church of Saint Francis

The first time I went to this church was for daily mass on Tuesday in French, where it was just me and several French nuns, one who took me under her wing after I told her I only speak English.

This Sunday mass was very interesting to me, as it is the only English language liturgy in Rabat on Sunday, I thought I would see Americans and possibly other Europeans, this was not the case. The Church was filled with Filipinos, a demographic I was not even aware was present in Morocco. 

On Sunday we celebrated another birthday, and a few of us went to a nearby beach to celebrate. This was also an interesting experience as the moment we got there the lifeguard came to rent us an umbrella for 50MAD (6USD), I was able to rent a kayak for 20MAD for 45mins and we all had a good time with that. We later went out to hotel bar and had some Moroccan sweets to finish off his celebration. 

 The Beach

Artistic Beach Yoga

A Fire Burning in a field, and no one doing anything about it.....really no one

For the first time in the almost month I have been here did someone mention the cross that I have tattooed on my leg. On the way home from the beach I stopped to kick a soccer ball around with some younger boys outside my house, I assume he thought I was Muslim because I was speaking to him in Arabic and seeing my tattoo he started asking questions about my whether I was a Muslim or not, tattoos are not very common in this country, and tattoos of a cross and a bible verse are non existent. 

 The ugliest dog I have ever seen, dreadlocks and massive overbite 

The largest Cat I have ever seen, cell phone placed to show scale

The Cranes all over the Country

We have started planning some of the trips we want to take this semester, which include a trip to a few European countries, as well as trips to numerous cities here in Morocco, and hopefully we will climb the summit of Mount Toubkal, the tallest mountain here in North Africa.

This coming weekend we will be driving ten hours south to the Sahara desert, where we will be camel riding through the dunes for a few days, and I will update after that.

Allah M3ck

Kevin

Arabic Word of the day

عيد ميلاد- Ieed MelAd- Birthday

Ford