the stomach terrors

have arrived. nothing gross fortunately, but my stomach's doing flips and it's rather unpleasant. had to happen eventually i suppose.

we're in rabat this weekend, the capital of morocco. tomorrow we'll see a couple museums and walk around the historical parts of the city, and head back by train on sunday.

sadly, the sand of the sahara seems to have messed up the focus on my camera, and it only works intermittently.. so perhaps not many pictures to show for the trip, unless i can get my hands on some pressurized air.. doubtful.

hope to post more soon, but for now it's off to bed and hope sleep and drinking tons of water will help fix my stomach.

PS, my family is adorable:

have i mentioned

that there are kitties everywhere here?? i love it.

sahara

arabic and film classes are keeping me rather busy, hopefully i'll get to update about those soon..

on friday, we left at noon (group of 70 students who are studying arabic at ALIF) on buses to get to Erfoud around 7pm. we had a wonderful dinner and a nice time at the pool, then saturday we drove 2 hours further out into nowhere to our hotel and had lunch and an afternoon swim there. at 6pm saturday we got on camels and rode out led by our guides about 2 hours to a berber*-style camp bordered by enormous sand dunes (i climbed the largest one, along with some other adventurous souls). we had dinner there by candlelight, and listened to some berber music. we got up at 5 am to watch the sunrise, and rode camels back from 6-8am sunday morning. the 9 hour ride back was tedious, as everyone was extremely sore from the camels and several girls were sick from either eating too much or not drinking enough water. overall though it was quite the trip to remember, ranking up there with the safari my family went on in kenya.

*the PC term for berber is imazighen, which i fail to spell or pronounce correctly

more pictures i took from my window

last night, a storm that had been looming all afternoon finally broke forth into a rather impressive display.. i took over a hundred pictures, as lightening is awfully hard to catch at the right moment. a few did work, though.


the sky was a beautiful peach color for awhile.. i usually "boost" my photos a little bit in iphoto because my camera takes some out, but i decided to leave these as they are:


































































































(you can click to view them larger)



ps happy birthday, mom!

bon appetit

i've been enjoying the moroccan cuisine here, and have gotten to try a number of different traditional dishes. my favorite thus far is the cous cous, an enormous bowl of fine grain rice topped with steamed vegetables, and sometimes with a delicious sugary raisin dressing.





















the staple here is definitely خبز, traditional moroccan bread that is baked in flat round loaves. "hobz" or baguette is served with every meal, and seems to reflect the moroccan style of practicality as it is cheap and filling. bread here is rarely, if ever, thrown away.

meals with the family usually involve one large, round dish in the middle of the table, with each person equipped with a spoon and a napkin. i've gotten quite used to this style of eating, and in fact it's easier for me to avoid the mystery meat that is often at the center of the dish (most likely lamb). i haven't gotten sick here yet, but if i ate much more than chicken i'm pretty sure that would change..

living in the ville nouvelle is quite convenient because i'm only about a 10-15 minute walk from school, but also because i can drink the tap water here. staying hydrated in 100+ degree weather on bottled water would, at least for me, be extremely difficult.


there is a wonderful abundance of fruit here, including apricots, peaches, nectarines, bananas, cherries, plums, oranges, strawberries, and lots of watermelon. some of the vegetables here i don't even recognize, and don't (as far as i know) have English translations.
























lunch is the largest meal of the day, and most stores, businesses, and schools close between 12-3 so families can eat together. tea time (similar to breakfast) is served around 5, and "dinner", usually a light soup, porridge or another round of bread, is served between 9-11 pm.

mint tea is everywhere, and you can expect to be served when making an important purchase in a store, or if you just stop in and talk awhile with the shopkeeper. it is served at almost every meal, when you go to visit a friend or neighbor, and you can order it at just about any establishment. other herbs and flavors can be added to it, but it tastes more or less the same whereve you go. it also has an unfortunate amount of sugar in it, and i have a sneaking suspicion that the same goes for the homemade jam i've been having at every breakfast..

sefrou

yesterday a few students opted to go to sefrou, a small town about 20 minutes from fes. i'm really glad i chose this trip, because walking around town you got a more authentic feel for moroccan life, away from the tourism and chaos of fes. we learned a lot about bread baking there, got to watch and meet artisans at their shops (including wood carving, weaving, embroidery, and ceramics), and had tea and delicious bread with olive oil in a cozy little tea shop that made me feel like i had been transported back in time at least a hundred years. afterward, we took our extra bread to the orphanage in sefrou, which houses about 150 children between the ages of 7-21.

can't wait for next weekend, which is our trip to the sahara, where we'll ride camels, stay at a berber camp and spend saturday night in timbuktu.

Volubilis

a long overdue update about Volubilis and Meknes, which we went to see last Sunday. the drive was about an hour, and we saw a lot of beautiful scenery along the way..





















the temperature was at least 100 degrees as we hiked around some of the best preserved Roman Ruins in the world at Volubilis, a Roman trading post which was only located about an hour away from fes. only about half of the city has been excavated so far, but they have unearthed what would have been the heart of the city: the main roads, aqueducts, main entryways, roman baths, and the amazing mosaics of the floors of patrician houses. the lisbon earthquake (1765 i think?) flattened the walls and standing structures of the city, but columns and arches have be re-erected to give visitors a better idea of the size and grandeur of the city. an olive press was also reconstructed, as olive oil drove the local economy.



























although volubilis was at its prime in 200 AD (most of the mosaics and buildings date back to theis time), it was inhabited for centuries afterward, until attacks from Berber tribes in the area and lack of support from rome caused it to eventually be abandoned. excavations were begun by the french around 1912, are continued by archaeology students in the summer and have been supported and protected by the moroccan government since morocco gained its independence from france in the 1950s.























after volubilis, we drove to the city of meknes and had a wonderful moroccan lunch, followed by a few hours of exploring the city on our own. the buildings there are fantastic, and we got to see where several spiritual leaders who were important in spreading Islam to morocco were buried, as well as many other beautiful buildings and arched entryways that are so enormous and fantastic that pictures really can't capture them...

may angels lead you in.

This was the graduation benediction at Wake this year, and i'm reminded of it today..


May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships so that you will love deep within your heart.

May God bless you with anger at oppression, injustice, and exploitation of people and the earth so that you will work for justice, equity, and peace among all people.

May God bless you with tears to shed for those who suffer so that you will reach out your hand to comfort them and to transform their pain into joy.

May God bless you with foolishness to think that you really CAN make a difference in this world, so that you are able, with God’s grace, to do what others say cannot be done.


[An adaptation of a Franciscan Blessing]

thank you, lord, for my allergies?

at the end of the meal, or after one sneezes or burps, one should say "al-hamdelelah", or "thanks be to god". same with any response to an inquiry such as "how are you doing/ca va?", because god is to be praised at all times. i like this, especially with sneezing, because it feels like i'm saying "well i may not be feeling great, but i'm still hanging around here on earth, and that's pretty sweet". i get plenty of practice with this because there's some kind of pollen here that has been making me sneeze about 34 times a day.

also, to say grace for a meal, one simply says, "bismillah", which makes me smile every time because it reminds me of queen's bohemian rhapsody.

we tour the medina

(from yesterday, now have wireless)

the medina, or the old city, was founded in the 9th century and is full of surprises for the adventurous tourist. most streets are too narrow for much more than a donkey with cargo to pass through, but once you enter a home, you'll find a vast courtyard with bordering rooms on two levels. there are shops for just about anything you might want, mosques and qur'anic schools at every turn, and a deluge of varying smells to make your stomach churn. we hit all the highlights on our tour, including the karaouine mosque (one of the oldest universities and largest mosques in the world), a weaver's shop, a traditional bread bakery, and the famous leather tanneries of fes (pigeon poop is still used in some of the dyes. yeech!). a couple highlights...



























































tomorrow we journey on to volubilis, some of the best maintained roman ruins in the world..



quote of the day: hello ladies, would you like a berber husband?

my roots are showing

last night, a conversation on religion with my host father extended from the dining room to the living room over a course of two hours. pretty intense. it was fascinating to discuss ideas with him though; i managed to explain in french my personal answers to his questions about christianity, which ranged from the trinity (jesus is the son of god, and became god, but he is not god because he is not omnipresent? that one was hard, even in english, to go through) to the literal application of religious texts (the bible was translated many times, and written over a long period of time, whereas the qur'an is still in the original classical arabic, and was written during mohammed's lifetime, so should its message be taken more literally?). i'm terrible at recreating a conversation, but it was fascinating to me to be able to see how christianity looks from a muslim perspective. we'll continue our dialogue during my stay and i hope to learn more about islam and how it functions in society. 

toto, we're not in kansas anymore

a few words on cross-cultural communications today.. which is amusing because we're listening to simon and garfunkle, and "i've gone to look for america" was playing as i started this entry.. 

(if i haven't mentioned this before, "we" generally refers to me and my roommate, kate, who is my year at wake and was in a french class with me my freshman year. we're taking introductory arabic together and sharing a room with the Alami family  in the ville nouvelle, the newer part of the city, about 10 minutes from ALIF.)

Morocco, we are starting to see, is an interesting and rather complex mixture of Western and Muslim traditions and ideas. our student orientation, as well as a conversation with ryan, our 16 year old host brother, has helped us better understand what is and isn't acceptable behavior in Morocco, which is more than the usual warnings about pickpockets, scams, etc. 

we were warned before we even arrived on the trip that foreign women are bound to get a lot of attention on the street, solicited or otherwise. wearing modest clothing, ie long skirts, loose pants, and shirts with sleeves lessens the attention, but just being white and female will mean that about 80% of all males on the street will greet you in some way, ranging from  "bonjour" or "hello" to whistling or other undesired compliments. such behavior is also common in Italy and other places in Europe; the difference in social norms in Morocco, and even more so in many more conservative Islamic countries and societies, is quite dramatic.

though i imagine it would be easy for a foreign tourist to fail to realize this difference right away, the repercussions would almost certainly be unpleasant. responding to a greeting from a stranger on the street without being introduced is unheard of, although many foreign visitors to morocco must make this mistake. a smile or any facial reaction whatsoever to a simple "bonjour" communicates a great deal more than it would in most American settings. any reaction whatsoever might say "no, thank you" or "oh, hello to you to" back home, but in Morocco tells your audience far more about you than you'd want them to know. 

for example, to a potential pickpocket, thief, or robber, acknowledging a stranger on the street announces that you are a tourist, unfamiliar with the area and customs, and most likely gullible, unwary, and easy to manipulate or scam. 

a response to most compliments or greetings, however, signals that you welcome attention from the opposite sex, and are interested in meeting that person and establishing a relationship. dating as we know it does not exist in morocco; teens simply do not go out, or even have friends of the opposite sex outside of their family. it is also illegal (and a very serious offense) for an unmarried couple to share a hotel room. what they term "dating" here is what can best be described as looking for a spouse between the ages of 20-21, and even then, dating a person "seriously" (seeing them more than a few times) is expected to lead to marriage. ryan, for example, could not even conceive of having more than one girlfriend, or maintaining a relationship that would not lead to marriage. 

pda is also socially taboo, as it is in many other countries. even married couples do not hold hands in public, and for a couple to kiss or show affection outside the home is unheard of, and could bring public shame to one's family. 

well i could go on and on about this, but suffice it to say it's startling to realize what unconscious gestures can communicate. ladies, as you go about your day, you might be extra appreciative of being able to walk around and smile/laugh at your whim. until i return, i'll be practicing my poker face..

first day of classes

just had my first arabic class (we're learning MSA - Modern Standard Arabic) and we're taking a lunch break before we head back at 4pm. we'll have our North African film class on tuesdays and thursdays at our professor's apartment, about 2 minutes away from school. 

turning 20 in morocco was pretty fun, we had a picnic with extended family and they sang happy birthday to me in french, arabic, and english. last night we went to the local music concert(s) that are going on at 11pm all week. taking a cab was... an adventure and if we do that again we'll probably just spend the night in the medina. kate (my roommate, also a rising junior at wake) and i felt pretty uncomfortable until we met up with the other 3 guys on the trip, but once we were all together it was fine. 

we get by mostly in french, which is nice because i can tell mine has already improved/been refreshed. most moroccans start learning french in the second grade and it's the widely used lingua franca here. derija is the colloquial arabic, which is rather different from MSA, but MSA (very close to Egyptian Arabic) is also fairly understood. 

my host family is great, there's a son who's 16, and two daughters, 18 and 9 (i thought the 16 and 18 year olds were more like 12, which was confusing). no one in the family exceeds about 5 foot 3 at the most, so i feel like a giant, especially with 6 or 7 of us crowded around the dinner table in the kitchen.

speaking of which, the eating setup is quite interesting. we share just a couple cups for water, and often eat with forks/spoons from a communal serving bowl in the middle of the table. oh and we realized about 24 hours in that we've been drinking tap water from refilled water bottles. which would be fine but they also served us well water on the picnic yesterday. not so sure about that... it's so hot here that you have to drink water constantly, so if you restrict yourself to bottled water, there's a good chance you could get severely dehydrated and run into other not so fun problems. hopefully our bodies will adjust to the water without too much excitement.

headed to pick up a bite to eat and get school supplies (better pens/paper for writing arabic, etc)... a bientot!