Meknes: City of Awesome, Part 1

One of Morocco's famous date palms.

So, lots to talk about. Funny how that happens when you neglect you blog for several weeks.

First, J and I have both mostly been in better health for the past few weeks. We're still too tired because of the bed here. I think it might be older than I am. Other than that, though, we've only had minor aches and ailments. No pink eye, no long lasting stomach distress, no fevers, and no food poisoning. Thanks for all your prayers!

Second, classes are going well. J is making leaps and bounds in her Arabic. She's even able to get a lot out of listening to news broadcasts. She can't understand them nearly to her satisfaction, but she can at least follow the general topic of conversation quite well. My classes are also going well. I'm flying through the material, and I've found that I can stumble my way through reading Harry Potter in Arabic. I probably only follow 25% of what's going on, but I do follow it. It's amazing how important already knowing a story is to understanding. Besides knowing all the names and characters, knowing the general thrust of the plot allows me to figure out much more than I otherwise would.

The platform for Rabat's main train station.

Third (and our final subject for this post), two weekends ago J and I visited the city of Meknes. This is the city that J and spent six weeks in two summers ago. It's about an hour from the city of Fez, of headgear fame.

To put it shortly, our day trip was fantastic. We were expecting to enjoy visiting all of our old haunts, but we were not expecting to enjoy them quite so much.

First, we got to train station about five minutes before our train left. J and I have done a fair bit of travelling in our time, and we can rarely afford to cut it so close. So it was kind of gratifying not to have to wait half an hour in an uncomfortable terminal this time. There really is something immensely liberating about not travelling with most of your earthly possessions weighing you down, but that's neither here nor there.

Anyway, the train ride was uneventful. J dozed most of the trip (got up early in the morning so we could have breakfast in Meknes) and I read a book. We found our stop without too much trouble or stress, and upon leaving the station were accosted by about three cab drivers offering us rides. This was a fun bit of nostalgia for us. In Rabat, taxi drivers almost always use their meters and are rarely aggressive. In our first trip to Morocco, however, we usually had to bargain for our fair, which is a stressful thing to do with tons of luggage. This time around however, we had no intention of taking a cab, so aggressive cab drivers were a fun contrast rather than something to deal with.

Rabat has gates, but they don't have the beauty or
craftsmanship of the gates of Meknes.

Right outside the train station in Meknes, there was a cafe, and since we hungry, J and I decided this was as good a place as any for breakfast. It was a fortunate decision. The food was tasty, as usual for Moroccan breakfasts (usually some combination of bread, sugar, orange juice, and uncarbonated caffieine), but the tea was the best I've ever had. Mint leaves floated in our cups, which left me wary at first. But after one taste I was wondering how I had ever been satisfied with the dishwater (relatively speaking) that I get in Rabat. It was fantastic.

Fueled and ready to go, J and I walked over a few streets to the our old apartments. We had walked these same streets many times before, and it was bizarre to see them again. We saw shops that we hadn't thought about for over a year, places where we had gotten ice cream, and streets that hadn't changed. It's the same place, but it changed without us. Like it's this living thing that won't wait for our return to keep growing and changing. Somehow all the new things we saw made us appreciate the old even more. It felt like coming home to a family member you hadn't expected to see.

That poster of the old woman that looks over the carnival
was there when J and I lived in Meknes. It was gratifying
to see that some things hadn't changed, even if the changes
included a carnival.

But J and I hadn't seen anything yet. When we got to the main square, it became clear that somebody upstairs likes us, or at the very least wanted us to have a good time that day. In front of my apartment had been a large open square. When we came in sight of that square, we were amazed at what we saw.  But when I saw it, I knew that J and I were going to have a good day.

I mean, it's always a good day when the carnival comes to town, right?

Eid Al Kabir

Sorry I've been so unreliable about posting here. I'd like to promise I'll get better (and I really hope to!) but...well, living life here is a lot more interesting than writing about it. So, I tend to get distracted.

Take yesterday, for example. Yesterday was 'Eid al-Kebir (literally, "The Big Holiday*") In most of the rest of the Muslim world, it's called 'Eid al-Adha (or "Holiday of the Sacrifice.") Whatever you call it, it's a holiday to commemorate a story that can be found in both the Qur'an and the Bible: God called Abraham to sacrifice his beloved son, and Abraham was obedient until the very last moment, when God told Abraham not to do so, rewarded him for his faith and obedience, and sent him a ram to sacrifice, instead. Interestingly, the one major difference is that in the Judeo-Christian version of the story, God tells Abraham to sacrifice Isaac (who Jewish people consider to be their ancestor.) In the Qur'anic version, Abraham is told to sacrifice Ishmael (guess who Arabs believe that they are descendants of?)

Anyway, the central part of the celebration involves each family that can afford it buying and slaughtering an unblemished ram of their own. Afterwards, they eat one half of it themselves and give the other half to the poor. For the past month or so, we've seen a steadily-increasing number of rams in our neighborhood, and during the last week especially it seemed like they were everywhere. By the weekend, you could barely have a single conversation without being interrupted half a dozen times by the bleating. And while the smell wasn't quite as bad as you might expect, it certainly wasn't enjoyable...

On Sunday, H (the father of the family we live with) had bought a ram of his own. I don't know if we've ever described this house in detail, but it's very, very nice. Old (we have strong reason to believe it was built in the 1300s) but still lovely with some incredibly ornate mosaic decorations. And it's clear that the family is pretty well off...so try to keep that in mind when you imagine walking in through the (big, ornate) front door and see a ram standing calmly in the front entryway (just below an beautifully decorated calligraphy painting), held back by a table that's been laid on its side. H was clearly very proud of the ram and eagerly asked us what we thought of it. After we assured him that it was beautiful (and it really was), he introduced us to the ram as his friends from America. So that was nice, I guess. H and Y (the younger daughter) both seemed quite taken with the ram in general. H mostly seemed excited to have such a lovely animal (and he's just a cheerful man in general) while Y, who can be quite shy, seemed to love quietly petting it.

Anyway, H and M (the mother) had already made it clear that we were invited to spend the day celebrating the 'Eid with them, and we - eager to be good guests - had asked around to see what would be expected of us for the celebration. We were told by several people that there were two important things: first, to bring some sort of gift (ideally something white, such as milk or sugar or a sugary snack); and second, to buy and wear traditional Moroccan clothing, which should be new and relatively fancy.

The gift was easy, but the clothes were a bit of a challenge. We had both actually bought some clothes last summer, the first time we were in Morocco, but as we had been planning on being in Turkey, we had left them behind. Since money's pretty tight, we debated skipping the new clothes, but decided to go ahead and splurge because (a) we hadn't bought much of anything for souvenirs yet, (b) we wanted to be good guests, and (c) we're hoping to come back to Morocco plenty of times in the future, so we should get plenty of use out of any outfits we buy. 

Unfortunately, we didn't have a chance to go clothes shopping until Sunday, and by then all but one of the clothes stores in our area was closed. That one had a lot of lovely outfits, but most of them were WAY out of our price range (as in, $150-200 each.) On top of that, there was the fact that we didn't really know what to look for. And the fact that I way overthink things. So, for example, I knew that the best thing to wear was something white. But I couldn't find anything that fit and was affordable in that color.  But then I started worrying about how other colors would come across (like, would I inadvertently do the equivalent of wearing black at a wedding or bright pink at a funeral or something like that?) And then it really hit me that I was completely clueless about Moroccan fashion. Like, obviously I know what people on the street wear, but I don't have the first idea about what different styles convey. So I could easily show up dressed in the equivalent of a 40-year-old housewife's outfit, or a 16-year-old's prom dress, without realizing it. And then I tried to just ignore those voices in my head, do the best that I could, and trust that at a minimum they'd appreciate the effort...but then somehow all the outfits I was picking were WAY too big. But because the style of clothing was something I was completely unfamiliar with, I seemed to be incapable of eyeballing anything and figuring out how it fit on me. Apparently it was bad enough that the 20-something man who worked there stopped me, on more than one occasion, before I even made it to the dressing room, to tell me to put the clothes I had picked out back because they were way too big.

Anyway, the pressure of needing to find something RIGHT NOW plus the money concerns and the color/style concerns and the fact that I seemed to be hopeless at finding anything my size really started getting to me. I think one of the other men working there (who was probably at least 60 years old) realized it, because he called me over and handed me something to try on. Which, amazingly, was one of the least-expensive items in the store. And fit perfectly. And was really pretty. And mostly white. So, the good part is, a really nice man helped me find the perfect outfit for the 'Eid! The bad part is, I'm apparently so hopeless that I need fashion advice from little old Moroccan men! Oh well...I think I've said this before, but Morocco really has a way of making me swallow my pride, which certainly isn't a bad thing. Mostly.

So. Yesterday morning, Andrew and I set our alarm extra early so we'd be sure to be ready when the family called us down for breakfast (we had asked what time it would be, and just got the response "Oh, we'll call for you.") We dressed in our brand new Moroccan party clothes, took lots of pictures, and when the time came, gave ourselves one last look in the mirror before proudly coming down to meet H...who was wearing blue jeans and a sweater. And then we saw M, who was wearing khakis and a T-shirt.  And soon after, Y joined us, wearing jeans and a long-sleeved black shirt. For what it's worth, though, they both seemed to love our (apparently completely unnecessary) new clothes. Although H did mention that A looked rather like Osama bin Laden. He really needs to shave his beard...

After breakfast, we joined the family to watch (on TV) a concert that had apparently been put on last night. There were an enormous number of musicians, including (according to M) some extremely famous ones. We noticed that the area they were playing in looked very familiar...and M confirmed that it's a part of the city that we literally walk through every single time we go to school.

All I could think of was last summer, when we celebrated our first Moroccan holiday (Throne Day) with a family we'd gotten to know in Meknes. We had asked them what they recommended we do to get the most out of the holiday, and they'd quickly invited us to spend it with them at their house. We had eagerly agreed and had a lovely meal together. After eating, everyone was relaxing and watching the TV when we heard a succession of startlingly loud booms.  We asked the family what the noise was, and the father casually replied, "Oh. That's the cannons." The moral of the story being, of course, that while hanging out with Moroccan families is fantastic, sometimes they fail to mention things that we might find interesting. Like cannons. Or live world-class music events taking place less than a mile away. But back to yesterday.

A little while after we began watching the concert, the TV switched to show a mosque where the king (among many others) was praying. Watching the service felt surprisingly like viewing a Christmas or Easter Christian service on TV in the U.S. Which, I suppose, shouldn't really be a surprise at all. Once the service ended, the TV showed the king slit the throats of two rams, which was the official "go ahead" for our family to kill theirs (the king is supposed to be the first one to do it.)

WARNING: FOLLOWING IS A BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF OUR RAM BEING KILLED. IF YOU'D PREFER TO SKIP IT, SCROLL DOWN TO THE NEXT MESSAGE IN ALL CAPS.

Ok, for those of you who are still here, we turned around and saw that a butcher and his assistant had arrived at some point during the show, and they were ready for action. A and I had briefly debated whether we wanted to watch the ram being killed, and basically agreed that we should both be able to handle it just fine, and it was probably a chance that we'd only get once. For anybody who cares, I have a lot of problems with excessive cruelty to animals, but I've got little problem with eating meat otherwise. This ram had obviously been treated well and was going to be killed quickly and humanely, so besides being a bit nervous, I didn't have any real objection to what was about to happen.

Basically, they pulled the ram to the inner room, where all the furniture had been moved out of the way and a big tub of water had been brought out. H and the butcher's assistant held the ram down, while the butcher quickly slit the ram's throat. The most disturbing part, I think, came next: A and I aren't entirely sure just when the ram died, but its body definitely kept twitching well beyond that. That was...unpleasant. Anyway, after that it was basically a process of the men gradually draining the blood while M  kept busy in the background keeping the floor as clean as possible with the use of the water in the tub. Next, they removed the legs and head, and then they hung the body upside down in the doorway to the kitchen, and from there the butcher began skinning it. Mostly, A and I were able to watch with a detached curiosity, but  M clearly hated the whole thing. At one point, she had to sit down and looked close to throwing up. (I can hardly blame her, as she was the one who had to clean up most of the blood, while A and I could - and did - keep our distance. I do have to wonder what the butcher and his assistant thought of the two foreigners - and the only ones present wearing traditional Moroccan clothing - just standing off to the side and staring at the whole procedure.) The entire process took about an hour, at which point M and Y got to work in the kitchen while A and I returned upstairs.

A few hours later, we were called back down to join the family for a (very late) lunch of the ram they'd just killed. I think it might have bothered us more if it weren't so ridiculously tasty. Although it certainly didn't help that H liked to report what part of its body we were being served - mostly heart, if anyone's wondering.

OKAY, EVERYONE SHOULD BE FINE TO START READING AGAIN.

After our meal, we sat back and chatted for a while (mostly in Darija, which I can totally do now! Well, if they talk slowly and are patient and stuff. But it's still really cool!) And then we all went our separate ways to nap and digest. Later that evening, A and I went for a rambling walk that ended up taking us to the end of a rock outcropping at the beach. I really wish we had brought our cameras, because it was one of the clearest days we've seen yet. And then we watched the sunset behind the lighthouse with the waves crashing up against the rocks and it was all so beautiful that it felt too cliched to be real. But it was.

Not a bad way to spend a holiday, if I may say so myself.

Eid mubarak sa3iid!

* To my fellow Arabic nerds: Ok, yes, technically it's "The Holiday of Big." But I'm trying to translate it in a way that doesn't sound ridiculous to non-Arabic nerds. So hush.

Rain, Rain, Stop Being So Loud

So, J and I have had the last two days off because of a big Muslim holiday here. J will (maybe) write about that soon. Anyway, I’ve promised myself I’m actually going to get a post off with this time, so here goes nothin’.

I don’t remember if it was my last post or not (gosh, I really do need to write more), but one of my recent posts talked about how fun it was to run through the rain. I stand by that. However, the weather on Thursday and Friday took something of a nasty turn, so I guess not all rain is so much fun.

When J and I were leaving our school Thursday afternoon, we decided to take a cab because the weather looked bad. When we got out of the cab, J was almost blown down the hill from the wind that had started up during the ride. I don’t know if it’s just our proximity to the coast that made the wind so bad, or if it was bad all over Rabat, but that was some of the strongest wind that either of us has ever been exposed to.

That was mostly just fine. While the storm started and stopped intermittently between Thursday morning and Sunday afternoon, J and I were snug at home for all of the nasty parts. We live in a house at least as old as our parents’ parents (and probably a good deal older) made out of hard clay or cement, for all I can tell. The walls seem to be half a foot thick, so there’s not really much chance that we were going to be blown away anytime soon. (Which, as you can see in the picture below, isn’t necessarily universally true)

However, there is one quirk of Moroccan architecture which was an inconvenience, if a minor one. In order to keep cool in the long Moroccan summers, our house was built with a large central courtyard open to the sky. This courtyard is somewhat protected from the elements by a raised tin roof that covers the opening while still letting air flow through. That roof keeps out any rain that isn’t blowing sideways.

Problem is, the rain was blowing sideways. A sheet of plastic had been put up just before the storm (because, like I’ve said, we’ve entered the rainy part of the year here), to keep out the rain, but I was concerned the tin roof would blow off. The plastic never had a chance.

So our hallway got wet. No big deal, by itself. We weren’t in the habit of storing anything out there, so other than getting your feet wet to move from room to room, it wasn’t really a problem.

The cold that came with the storm was less fun. I’ve been congested and coughing all weekend, and I have a suspicion that cold and wet feet are why.

Probably the worst aspect was the noise. Like I said, we have a slab of tin between us and the elements. More than enough to protect us from any weather except some leaks from bothering us during the worst of storms, but not much in the way of sound proofing. Really, the noise of the plastic flapping and the tin buckling was probably the most unsettling of all the things we dealt with. It’s a bit difficult to sleep when it sounds like the world is ending in the next room. I’m pretty sure I heard some noises the likes of which I haven’t found since I watched Jurassic Park.

But then the sun came out. It’s still a bit chilly, but all the puddles have dried and my cough is clearing up. A meal of veggie tagine (kind of like a stew with more veggies and less broth) put J back into form. It’s funny how this trip has caused me to miss so many things I’ve never thought about before at the same time it caused me to realize how little I need them. Heating is nice, but a good blanket works too. Sound proofing is helpful, but life goes on without it. I’ll be glad to get back these conveniences when I return, but I’m just fine without them.

That’s my bit of reflecting for this post. In other news, J and I have completed the second of our four week sessions with our school here. We both learned a lot, and look forward to learning more in the coming month.

Our health is has continued to fluctuate. We’re not really sure why exactly we did so much better in Meknes, though the no heating thing certainly isn’t helping. It’s strange, J seems to feel the cold more than I do, but I’m the one who’s had a runny nose and cough for the last four days. I won’t mind when we can go more than a week without one of us getting sick.

 

J and I had lunch yesterday with our Moroccan family. It was Eid Al Kabir, a Muslim Holiday. I could go into that more, but I think J is planning on doing a post about it. For now, I’ll just say it was the tastiest lamb kabobs I’ve ever had. Also, we got to dress up for the occasion. Hence, our shoes.

One last note. Reading back through my post, I feel that I might have given a false impression about Morocco. The house we’re in does not have heating. Most places in Morocco don’t, but heating isn’t uncommon either. The apartment we stayed in for a week did have heating. What our house does have is satellite TV, as most Moroccan houses do. We constantly hear the father of the family downstairs talking on his cell phone, and the younger daughter is usually on her Nintendo DS (which I didn’t realize they come with cameras now, but they must since she’s always taking pictures with hers). Heating isn’t popular because it isn’t necessary most of the year, and people here have better things to spend their money on. And we live in an old Moroccan house, newer ones don’t have a courtyard that lets in rain. Honestly, I think J and I prefer the rain if it comes with a courtyard. We certainly like our current housing more than the more recently constructed housing we were in last.   

Rain and Early Modern North African History

I took this when I woke up to find it raining one morning.
Generally I'm not a fan of how early I have to get up for
class, but it does have it's perks

So I promised myself that I’d write a substantial post if it killed me this weekend.

So, I got better, and then I stayed up too late reading, and felt like junk at the end of the school week anyway. J has slowly been getting better, but then yesterday her problems started all over again, so healthwise, we’re not doing great.

We’re also a bit disappointed with our interactions with the Moroccan family. We haven’t been up for much, so mostly they’ve been perfunctory. “Hi, how are you?” kind of stuff. Better than nothing, but not significantly better than our relationships with people who run the little snack stalls we frequent.

This lack of real interaction has been harder for J than it has been for me. She’s studying Arabic because she wants to understand how Arabs think, how they live, and who they are. Interacting with people is precisely the reason she wanted to learn Arabic in the first place, and not being able to do that much has been frustrating.

For me, it hasn’t been so bad. I’m less outgoing by nature, and anyway I want to learn Arabic primarily to do stuffy old history things. I hope to be able to converse with Arabs in Arabic, but all I really NEED to do is read. And on that front, it was a fantastic week for me.

J and I were browsing through a bookstore when I found a book called Morocco and Europe, What Happened Between the Fifteenth and the Eighteenth Centuries. Honestly, I think I almost wet myself when I saw it (and that’s not nearly as much of an exaggeration as it ought to be). This might seem strange to some people, but it should only require a little explanation.

I’ve been interested in history since I was young. Back then, it was mostly the battles and armies that caught my attention, but it was still interest. When I got to OU, one of the first things I decided was to go into either history or political science, preferably both. When I met J, my interests shifted a bit. I had always been interested in European history more than anything else, probably because I lacked the basic context required to think about history for any other area. Dating a person studying Arabic will tend to pull a person in that direction, and anyway I’ve always liked history for its own sake.

Right before I decided to take up Arabic myself, I had gotten myself interested in Early Modern European (1500-1750 roughly) history. I could write for a much longer time than I could be interesting in talking about how criminal it is that we don’t know the basic outlines of history for this period, but that’s another post entirely. Suffice it to say, I was hooked on this time period.

Then I spent six weeks in Morocco with J, beginning my study of Arabic. There’s not much better at sparking the interest of a historian than plopping them into the middle of strange country which they immediately fall in love with. So when I got back last year, I did a research paper that combined all of my interests. I wrote almost thirty pages about the relationship between Britain (because my favorite professor specializes in British history, and I’ve taken five classes from him) and Arabic speaking North Africa in the Early Modern period.

So when J and I decided to return to Morocco this fall, I decided one of my top priorities would be finding books about my topic. I finished the paper, but I plan on submitting it to graduate schools, so I want it to be as impressive as possible. If I can incorporate Arabic sources into my research as an undergrad, I become a much more impressive candidate for grad schools.

So, when J and I explored several bookstores and found that most of books were written in French, it was a bit frustrating. French is the language of the intellectual class in Morocco (which was occupied by France for quite some time), so it wasn’t a huge surprise, but it’s still frustrating. It became especially so when we found several books that would make fantastic additions to my paper, except that they were in French. I plan on learning French eventually, as most of the best work about North Africa will be in French, but I won’t learn it in time to include French sources in my paper.

Thus we get the near pants wetting when I read, in Arabic, Morocco and Europe, What Happened Between the Fifteenth and the Eighteenth Centuries. Not only was it cool that I was able to read the title at all, but this book promises to be exactly the kind of thing I had wanted to include in my paper.

So that was cool.

In other news, winter has set in here. That tends to mean temperatures in the seventies when the sun is out, and the forties and fifties when it isn’t. It also means a decent amount of rain.

The rain is kind of a switch. J and I have spent most of the last couple years in our college town in the States, which due to some weird quirk of elevation, only rarely gets real rain. What it does get plenty of is drizzle, fog, and general ickiness.

So having it raining for two days straight has been odd. We’re talking drench you in seconds kind of stuff. I can probably count the number of times our town has had that kind of rain during the day on my hands. It’s a nice change. It reminds me of when I was younger and used to play in the rain. For just a few moments (before I remembered I was wearing a book bag with lots of stuff in it), the rain was just this friendly presence that it was fun to run through. I don’t think adults get enough of that kind of thing. At least, I haven’t in the past few years.

That’s the news. I’d say I’m going to try to post more regularly, but that never seems to lead anywhere good. Until next time…

***************************************************

PS

J’s hoping to put up some posts soon. We’ll see if it actually happens, but that’s the plan.

Pink Eye, Chocolate, and a Birthday!

So, you may or may not have noticed, but J and I haven’t posted for a little while. At least for me, I can assure you it isn’t because I stopped liking the sound of my own voice (in my head, as I type this).

Rather, class is keeping us on a punishing schedule. Well, the combination of class and distance anyway. You see, while J and I are thrilled to be settled in with our Moroccan family, the location isn’t as good as it might be. A trip to the grocery store is a thirty minute walk, which isn’t bad by itself. The real problem is that the trip to school involves thirty to forty minutes of walking each way. That takes a toll after a while.

Why we’re getting a bit run down can be better illustrated by running through our schedule. Our day starts at six or six-thirty (depending on whether we had shouldered through all our homework the night before). We leave to go to the taxi station at about seven-twenty, and arrive at eight-twenty (at least half of that time is on foot, with our books).  At eight-thirty, classes start. Imagine the next four hours being one long meeting that’s conducted in a foreign language, and you’ll have some idea of the mental drain it entails (and given how poor the chairs are, a physical drain as well).

We eat at the school, and after lunch we’ve started taking some optional tutoring. So we’re not back until three-thirty at the earliest, and by then we need to crash for a bit. After crashing, there’s a decent chance we need to run out to the grocery store or the pharmacy (more on that later). Homework hasn’t been too bad for J, but it takes me probably three hours a night, so between supper and other necessary breaks (necessary to keep my head from exploding), that’s my day.

The bright side is that class has picked up in a big way. Most of the problems I was having last month have been resolved and I’m progressing quickly. So basically I’m tired, but it’s worth it. I’m hoping to use this weekend to get ahead (I know my homework for the next three weeks), so hopefully next week I’ll be able to post more regularly.

In tragic news, J’s kindle busted about a week ago. I hadn’t realized how fully we relied on them until we started sharing the remaining one. They really are incredible little machines. I don’t think I ever posted about this, but when J and I were in transit between Morocco and Turkey, we used the 3G on them to send our parents regular updates. It’s so weird to think that ten years ago I had barely used the internet, and now I have access to it on this little slab of plastic.

Don’t get me wrong, I dream of library with book covered walls (and a fireplace) when I get older, but the kindle is just too useful not to love. I can get books more cheaply (many for free), search them by keyword, and take my entire library with me when I travel. J’s kindle breaking has forced me to realize that we both use them several times a day every day.

Speaking of convenient things (for lack of a better transition), I really like Moroccan medicine. Yesterday I woke up with one eye all pink and puffy looking. When it didn’t get better by lunch, I went to a pharmacy five minutes from our residence, pointed to my eye, and a small Moroccan man sat me down, used a dropper on my eye, and gave me some more medicine for about five dollars. As I write this, my eye is still a bit red, but it will probably be all better by tomorrow.

This is the third time J or I have had to use a pharmacy here. The other two times (in two different pharmacies) have been similarly efficient and cheap (and effective). And that’s just pretty cool.

Finally, I wanted to wish Grandma S a happy birthday from both J and I. In her honor, tonight we will celebrate the occasion with a piece of Pralinutta bread. Similar to Nutella, this chocolate/hazelnut spread lists sugar as its first ingredient, and will have to do in the absence of cake. We love you, Grandma!

The WWE, Oprah, and People

So J and I definitely made the right decision to move in with the family. And not just because we can watch the sun set over the Atlantic, either.

No, right now I’m glad we moved in with the family because of the family. Not because they’re Moroccan (though that’s cool, too), but because they’re them.

Last weekend they sent up a few plates with some tea and some food (which was fantastic, by the way). When we took the plates back down, we decided to try and chat with them a bit. The whole point of moving in with the family was so that we wouldn’t create an American bubble around ourselves. We wanted to genuinely get to know some Moroccan people, and in order to do that we decided not to be the tenants that never leave their rooms.

So we went downstairs, and for the next thirty minutes, we laughed our butts off.

For starters, the dad is hilarious, and he’s hilarious in a way that crosses language barriers. Which is a good thing, since at any given time any one of four languages might be in use. Both the dad (H) and the mom (M) speak excellent Darija (Moroccan Arabic), Fus-ha (Classical Arabic), and French. They also have some English (It sounds like H served some time in the Moroccan military in the Gulf with Americans), but that’s a bit shakier. Meanwhile, J has good French and English, some Darija (way more than she should after a month of study), and some Fus-ha. I have English, a bit of Fus-ha, and some scraps of Darija and French that I’ve picked up from J.

So with that kind of language situation, just trying to figure out what’s being said can send the whole group of us into fits of laughter.

Anyway, we’re down there talking with H and M, with the younger daughter (Y) sitting near. Y is very shy. She’ll give us a both a big smile when we see her, but after a few days in the house, we couldn’t remember if she’d said more than a few words to both of us put together.

Anyway, we’re sitting there talking, I think about the television that was on in the background, when H just starts exclaiming, “John Seena! You know John Seena?” In the back of my head, I’m thinking, “Isn’t that the wrestling guy? But no, that can’t be right.”

But it was right. In no time, Y had jumped up from the couch and was yelling, “John Seena!” right along with her dad. It turns out that H and Y (an eight year old girl) love watching WWE wrestling together.

Speaking of stuff you don't expect to see in Morocco...

I have to admit, I hadn’t seen that one coming.

It then came out that M liked watching the Oprah Show, which is less surprising, but still.

It just goes to show that putting people into boxes is silly. I have described the people we’re living with as “a Moroccan family,” and I had certain preconceptions about what that meant. Some of those preconceptions might still be true, but I have to admit that others have been smashed like a folding chair over the back of a large sweating man.

It just goes to show you. Generalizations might be accurate, or even helpful, but if you think generalizations will really help you much with a particular person, you’re likely to be surprised (generally speaking). I learned that I was living with two WWE fans after two days with this family. I’m sure I’ve barely scraped the surface of who they really are.

Our New Digs

J and I, finally, are set somewhere to stay. At least, we hope we are. Right now, we’re renting the entire second floor of a Moroccan family's house. The house is in the Oudaya of Rabat, a fortress from the olden days where the populace would hide out if Rabat was invaded. As our hosts said, “Rabat is the capital of Morocco, and Oudaya is the capital of Rabat.

Anyway, it’s a great set up. We have a goodish sized bedroom, a smaller bedroom, a large living room, a kitchen and a bathroom. The family (husband, wife, and two daughters) lives downstairs. The whole thing is set up in the traditional Moroccan way, with rooms on all floors opening into a central courtyard that keeps the whole thing cooler in the summer. Above us is a rooftop terrace for hanging laundry out to dry, though I suppose it could be used for watching the sun rise over Rabat and set over the Atlantic, if a person was so inclined.

We're pleased to be away from our last apartment for several reasons. First, it was loud. We were on the second story, and there was a salon on the first one that liked to blast music all day. The stairs smelled like smoke. It seems like many of the other occupants were about our age, and people in their early twenties are not a quiet age group when you stick a bunch of them together.

Another reason we made the move was the price. Even without all the noise, our one room studio had no place for laundry.  We had a better kitchen set up in our dorms at OU. And our beds (yes, two twins) had some of the worst mattresses we've ever used. It was fine, but it wasn't a four room place. For the price we were paying for it, that just wasn't going to work. Right now, with this family, we're looking at paying half as much in rent as we would at the studio.

Then there's the location. We are farther away from the school we're attending, but we're also across the street from the medina. That's the older section of the city, the part that's been inhabited for hundreds of years. Everything is squeezed into these narrow streets. During the day, most of the medina becomes a market place or crafts shop. In a hundred yard stretch, you'll probably have a

leather shop, a traditional Moroccan shoe shop, a tennis shoe shop, a juice shop, a rug shop, a shop for traditional Moroccan clothes, a shop for t-shirts clothes, and a shop for touristy knick knacks. Repeat that a hundred times, toss in the odd shop for everything else, and you've got the medina.

This is our part of Rabat. The medina has more character. There's more to do there. And, importantly for us, you're a lot less isolated there. In newer parts of Rabat, you might end up walking for a while if you wanted a cheap bottle of water, a loaf of bread, or any other item. That will never be the case in the medina.



So, we have the medina on one side. On the other is the ocean. We're maybe a five minute walk from the beach here, a beach which isn't really that crowded this time of year. I don't think I need to explain why that's cool.

Ideally, we'll be here until about May. That'll be a nice change for us. We haven't stayed in the same place for much more than two weeks since August, and our luggage is starting to show the wear.

This is basically our front porch.





Roof of the Mohammad V Mausoleum,
 where I went for my excursion.

So, right now J and I are at a fantastic restaurant with Wifi. We’re only getting some juice, because we don’t need a meal, but it’s still really tasty.

There’s quite a bit to catch you up on. Both of us have been sick. You might actually get a rant out of me about the Arabic language (I usually leave that up to J). I went on an excursion. I went to a meeting of the Islamic Studies Club. We may be switching apartments again this weekend. Oh, and yesterday we informed our program (from whom we’re renting our current apartment) that a light bulb had gone out, and a couple of workmen showed up and replaced the entire light fixture.

So it’s been an odd week so far.

Sickness



Both of us have been suffering from some sort of weird stomach bug. Basically, when we eat or drink something, there’s about a fifty-fifty chance that our stomachs will flip out and start hurting really badly. Sometimes it lasts for half an hour, other times, it will last all morning. It’s certainly 

Our current apartment.

taken the wind out of our sails. We’ve gotten some medicine for it with mixed results. Also, vinegar seems to help me, though J hasn’t really tried it. We seem to be getting better, but there’s definitely some real hesitation before I eat or drink anything substantial.



I got sick first, and the medicine seems to be a bit less helpful for me than it is for J. This illness is a first for us. We’ve gotten a bit puny before from being so worn out, but this sickness is the first real Morocco caused illness that either of us has had. And that only came after a full two months in Morocco without any real problems (six weeks last summer, two weeks this trip). You can chalk it up to luck, but we prefer to chalk it up to a smart approach to travelling. Start out with a few sips of water a day when you enter a country and slowly wean yourself off of bottled water as you go. If you think you might be getting sick, go back to the bottled stuff. Overloading your immune system from the get go usually doesn’t go well, but trying to isolate yourself completely won’t work either.



Off in the distance, Oudaya,
where we hope to be living soon.



Switching Apartments

So, I said last week I was looking forward to getting settled somewhere, and I still am. Actually J and I had been anticipating that we might switch apartments at least once after we moved into the school apartments. Our current apartment is fine, but it’s needlessly expensive, and it just so happens that one of J’s classmates is a Frenchman, is a longtime resident of Morocco, and has several different friends who are trying to rent apartments with a view of the ocean.

So, hopefully we’ll be settled for good by Saturday.

Light Fixtures



This is not our old light fixture, but it
gives you a good idea of what it
looked like.

So, J and I have had some issues with our current apartment. We’ll go into that more later, though. For now, it’s enough to say that when our light bulb burned out when we returned from class yesterday, we were thoroughly frustrated.



The light in the apartment wasn’t great to begin with, but this would prevent us from being able to study or read, and doing anything else would have given us headaches. We had to call our program (from this same [noisy] internet café) twice before anybody finally showed up (just before the sun went down and we were left in the dark).

They came in as we were walking out. We got dinner, and expected to find them gone upon our return. They were not. We walked into our apartment to find a tool box next to the door and a new light fixture hanging from our ceiling.



This is our new light fixture.
Much nicer and brighter.



Not wanting to be in the way, we beat a hasty, confused retreat and wandered around a bit. Twenty minutes later when my stomach demanded we be done walking, they were still there. I have no idea why they installed a new light fixture, but apparently it was a complicated process.



Tucking ourselves into the couch, which seemed as out of the way as our apartment would allow, we were present when a spark lit up the room like a lightning strike.

“No problem?” one of them said to the other (in Arabic, which we both understood, go us!). “Problem,” the other replied. After another fifteen minutes, they had cleaned everything up and gone, leaving a substantially better lit apartment behind them.

Just another of the mysteries of Morocco…

More cats!!!

A Short Update

J and I, as people seem to have noticed, haven't been posting. Believe it or not, stuff keeps happening even when it doesn't show up on the blog. Right now, we're moved into our new apartment and we're both a little sick.

That's a very short version of what's been going on, and it's being posted from an internet cafe here. We hope to be posting more detailed accounts of our lives soon, now that we know there's a cafe less than a block from our apartment. Stay tuned for more.

Moving On Up

Hey everyone!

J and I, as previously mentioned, are going to be moving into our new apartment tomorrow. We neglected to say, however, that we won't be posting as regularly for a little bit. Our new apartment, while we're sure it's very nice, doesn't have internet. So while we will be posting, we probably won't be posting quite as much. We'll see. Anyway, if you don't hear from us for a few days, we didn't drop off the face of the earth.

We'll write again soon (hopefully) with pictures of our new place.

A Longer Update

I have a test tomorrow, which actually means more time for the blog, as silly as that might seem. That means you get a longer update on our situation.

J is doing better, sort of.  She stayed home from school today for the first time, and that's sad. However, yesterday we went to the pharmacy to get her some medicine, and between that and the rest she got today, she is doing better. Besides, staying home today means she's less likely to stay home tomorrow. Since they serve Couscous (our favorite dish) on Fridays, this was an important consideration. We have our priorities.

Speaking of the pharmacy, J got three items of medicine: cough drops, an Airborne type supplement, and some regular cough medicine. She got all of this for about ten dollars. Have I mentioned that we like the prices here?

*****

In other news, we're supposed to be moved into our apartment by Monday. I'm a little afraid to write about how excited I am, as you might understand. I am also not going to rehash all of the travelling we've done, again.

I am going to try to explain why we keep looking forward to settling in, and why we keep complaining when we find out that we're moving again. It might surprise you to hear it, but J and I don't really like to travel.

Seriously, we don't. We didn't sleep on four different continents (okay, so I'll do a little rehashing) within our first month of marriage because we wanted to see as many hotel rooms as possible. We did it because it's what we thought we had to do to get to the place we want to be in life. If it weren't for that, we never would have left.

Travelling, for us, is exhausting, frustrating, and expensive. It's a bunch of waiting around punctuated by frantic worry made all the more awful by the necessity of having to babysit (and transport) hundreds of pounds of luggage most of the time. That's not our idea of a good time.

On the other hand, we love being places. We're really rather boring, in that respect. Here in Morocco, our idea of a good time is strolling through the souq (market place), digging through a Moroccan bookstore, or reading through a good book in some idealic location, preferably on a balcony. That's part of why we wanted to be abroad for so long this time around. We don't mind seeing strange things, but the real attraction is making the strange things familar. The parts of Morocco that we like, we like because we think they're good, and not because they're different.

This is a picture of one of the local parks from across
the street.

We didn't come to Morocco so we could visit twenty different sites, race camels, or meet an exotic stranger (though J insists that I either let her adopt a Moroccan child or she'll find a way to make one on her own, whatever that means). We came here because (most importantly) we want to learn Arabic, we want to understand this part of the world, and we like quietly sipping strong mint tea with our simple but delicious breakfast.

Moving around casts a pall on all that. Living out of a suitcase is a constant reminder, "You won't be here long. Don't get comfortable, you'll be gone soon." Reading a book is less satisfying in those conditions. In many ways, I don't really understand the attraction of a weeklong vacation. I understand the attraction of a weeklong break, but not a weeklong vacation. If you don't have time to unpack, I don't see the point in packing in the first place. It reminds me of a quote from my favorite author, "Man cannot love mortal things. He can only love immortal things for an instant." If I can't spend the rest of my life doing something, if it won't make me happy at least that short speck of time, it isn't enough.

So you see, J and I are both just domestic, boring people. We just happen to prefer being domestic and boring in North Africa to being domestic and boring in the States. It might be an odd preference, but it's ours, and having a home to be domestic in for more than a month is wonderful.

So we'll keep you up to date on the apartment.



And besides, we have all the comforts of home right here in Rabat