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



Catchy Title for a Blog Post

I've still got homework to do, so I'll have to make this quick.

J has had a bit of a cold and a cough since last week. It's no fun at all, but so far she hasn't had to miss class because of it.

Other than that, class work is taking up most of our time. A necessary sacrifice. My Arabic has already improved tremendously, and I'm not covering half the material J is. That's mostly alright, as I doubt I pick up vocabulary nearly as quickly as J. Still, sometimes my class moves a bit too slowly for my taste.

We did some wandering over the weekend. I think J already posted some of the pictures. I'll be putting up more soon as well. In the meantime, I have some newer pictures to show you.

You might know (but probably not, if you aren't our parents), but the program offers lots of extra activities and excursions each week. Some are in the morning (when we have class) and some are in the afternoon (when other people have class). J hasn't gotten to go on any yet, but I went to a museum last week (without my camera), and today I when to the Exotic Garden of Sale (across the river from Rabat). The pictures along the side are from the garden. 

Anyway, we're keeping busy. Hopefully one of these days I'll manage to get my homework done quickly enough to do a real post.

Arabic: Classical vs. Colloquial, Part I

Note: This post is very long. So long, in fact, that there's more coming - I had to break it up into a few parts. It's mainly focused on something that I (and, I think, some of you) find fascinating, but many of you probably just aren't interested in. I'd encourage you to at least skim this first post, as it will make a lot of our other entries make more sense. Beyond that, though, you have my full permission to skip it. I won't be offended!


Although I've known since high school that I wanted to study Arabic, I had no idea just what an undertaking it would be. Sure, I'd realized that it's widely considered one of the world's most difficult languages for English-speakers to learn, but I've always had a knack for languages, I love learning them, and I've been studying them for as long as I could remember. I knew it would be a challenge, but it was one that I welcomed.

The fact that it uses a completely different alphabet didn't really concern me. I'd taught myself the sign language alphabet when I was 8 and, although I've since forgotten it, my dad had taught me the Greek alphabet at about the same time. I knew that it would be challenging at first but would quickly become second nature - which it has.

All the strange sounds in the Arabic language didn't particularly worry me, either. They were challenging but fun, and I'd spent enough time studying singing to know how to analyze sounds, figure out how they were made, and, in time, be able to closely imitate them.

I welcomed the fact that the language was based on an entirely different logical structure than English. I guess I'm enough like my (philosophy-studying) brother that paradigm shifts make me happy: I like being confronted with the fact that what I've always accepted unquestioningly is not necessarily "normal," nor is it the only possible approach. Some days it makes my head hurt, but some of my favorite moments in studying foreign languages come when I suddenly realize that, gee, the Latin/Greek-root system isn't the only way to go! Nouns and adjectives can actually be really fluid concepts! It can be totally logical for the numbers 11-99 to be followed by singular nouns, while the numbers 3-10 are followed by plural nouns of the opposite gender of the numbers themselves, and for non-human plural nouns to be treated as though they were feminine singular!*

Anyway, I welcomed all of those challenges, both the expected and the unexpected, in studying Arabic. For me, the ultimate purpose of studying a language is being able to communicate with the people who speak it (and on their terms), but I still thrive on the process of getting there. What really got to me was the realization that, for my purposes, what I was pouring myself into at school was practically useless.

As anyone who has taken high school Spanish and then tried to go to Mexico already knows, studying a language in school is very different from actually being able to use it in the real world. Much of that is due to problems with how we teach foreign languages in the U.S., but that's another story entirely. Anyway, I've studied (and at least tried to use in the real world) Spanish, French, Turkish, and American sign language as well as Arabic, so I'm quite aware of that phenomenon. The issue with Arabic, though, goes way beyond issues like "they speak too fast" or "they use lots of slang."

Basically (and this is definitely an over-simplification), the Arab world has been politically and socially fractured for quite a long time. It has been divided into more than 20 countries that often have poor relations with each other, and many of those nations have experienced long periods of European colonialization. Over time, these different countries have seen some very significant shifts in the way they speak Arabic, and obviously those shifts have been different in different parts of the Arab world.

Today, the Arabic language is typically viewed as having a number (at least 4, depending on who you ask) of different dialect families. If they are divided into 4 groups, they would be Maghribi (covering northwestern Africa), Masri (mostly Egypt) Shamsi (Syria and the surrounding countries) and Khaliji (the Gulf states.) You could, however, keep dividing the dialects almost indefinitely - there are often significant differences between, say, the Arabic dialect spoken in Rabat and the one spoken in Fes, just a few hours away.

Anyway, these "dialects" really only all fit under the heading "Arabic" for political, religious, and sociological reasons. In reality, it is often very difficult, if not outright impossible, for Arabs from one region to understand Arabs from another. Just to give you an idea, here's how to say a few basic phrases (randomly chosen) in Maghribi, Masri, and Shamsi (I don't know any Khaliji, so I have to skip that one):

Phrase	Maghribi	Masri	Shamsi
I am American	Ana merikani	Ana amriki	Ana amerki
How are you?	La bas?	Izzayak?	Kiifak?
[Response]	La bas	Kuwayyis	Ana mniH
Excuse me, sir	smH laya, as-sidi	La mu'akhaza, efendim	3afwan, ya akh
How much is this?	B-shHal had?	Bi-kam da?	B-ad-dish hada?
My husband	rajli	goozi	jozi

As you can see, in many cases the expressions have absolutely nothing in common. In no case are they exactly the same. So...which dialect did I study in school?

Well, none of them. See, there's a sort of "standardized" Arabic called Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), or (in Arabic) Fusha. It's actually much closer to the language of the Qur'an than to any modern dialect, and while theoretically it's the dialect that you're supposed to be able to use anywhere in the Arab world, the reality is much more complicated than that for a number of reasons:

1) Fusha is essentially an artificial language (it's not the native language of any country) and its grammar rules are extremely complex (much more so than the grammar rules for any of the modern dialects.)

2) Although students throughout the Arab world are supposed to learn Fusha in school, educational attainment in a lot of these countries is low enough that many students never really master it.

3) Even for those who do, in my experience it's a lot like students who master advanced algebra in high school: they might be really good at it at the time, but it doesn't take long for them to forget almost everything.

4) Some people try to argue that Fusha must be widely understood because it's the written languages (the modern dialects are almost never put to paper) and the language of newscasts, formal speeches, and the like. While that's true, illiteracy rates are alarmingly high in many (although certainly not all) parts of the Arab world (more on that in an upcoming post) and many people never listen to TV and radio shows where Fusha is spoken. Indeed, just the other day I heard a Moroccan man rather sadly joking that when the king speaks to his people [in Fusha] no one understands what he's telling them.

5) Even for those who do read and listen to Fusha, they rarely hear it enough to be able to understand it when Americans come in and try to speak it with their broken grammar and heavy accents. To get some idea of the effect, try to imagine a Chinese man approaching you on the street and trying to speak to you in (Chinese-accented) Chaucer English. Even if you were a English literature scholar, you'd have quite some trouble understanding him.

6) Even when they can understand you, it's very difficult for them to respond in Fusha. After all, Arabs are rarely expected to use the language actively, and there's a big difference between understanding Fusha when someone else speaks it, and being able to speak it yourself (to return to the Chinese man, even if you could understand what he said, could you respond in kind?)

I could go on, but I think you get the point. Almost anyone who has exclusively studied Fusha and then tried to interact with native Arabic speakers (and I've talked to many, many of these people) will share similar stories: that people didn't even realize they were speaking Arabic, that they were outright laughed at, that (at best) they were understood but responded to in a dialect that they couldn't follow at all.

Oh, by the way, remember that chart up above comparing a few phrases in the various Arab dialects? Here's that same chart, with Fusha thrown in:

Phrase	Maghribi	Masri	Shamsi	Fusha
I am American	Ana merikani	Ana amriki	Ana amerki	Ana amrikiyy
How are you?	La bas?	Izzayak?	Kiifak?	Kayf al-Haal?
[Response]	La bas	Kuwayyis	Ana mniH	Ana jayyid
Excuse me, sir	smH laya, as-sidi	La mu'akhaza, efendim	3afwan, ya akh	ismaH lii, ya sa'iidii
How much is this?	B-shHal had?	Bi-kam da?	B-ad-dish hada?	Bi-kam hatha?
My husband	rajli	goozi	joozi	zawji

While you can pick out a few similarities here and there, it's certainly not enough to successfully communicate with. And while I have met the occasional Moroccan (including the owner of our riad) who both understands and speaks excellent Fusha, it's very unusual. I've met far more people here who speak excellent English.

That's not to say that Fusha is worthless. Many Arabs passionately defend the value of Fusha, and their reasons resonate with me. I'll talk more about that in a later post, but briefly, Fusha is - at least theoretically - one of the strongest bonds besides Islam between Arabs of different nations. In addition, because of its similarities to the classical Arabic that the Quran is written in, knowing Fusha brings Muslims much closer to being able to understand the Quran.** As the written language, Fusha is also incredibly valuable to anyone from academic scholars (as A wants to be) to people who simply want to understand their daily Arabic newspaper.

So, it definitely has its value and I understand why schools teach it. Certainly, I want to be able to read and write Arabic as well as speak it. That being said, it can be incredibly frustrating to devote massive amounts of time over the course of four years (I started in my senior year in high school) to a language, often involving extremely complex and nuanced grammar points, all the while knowing that none of this will allow me to have even the simplest of conversations on the street or in a taxi anywhere in the Arab world.

I think the cat is trying to move that jar with her mind. And she might just pull it off.
Oh, right - I'm supposed to be talking about Arabic...

Anyway, that's why, when I'm here, I'm studying the local Arabic dialect (called Darija.) It's also why I'm having to start at the very beginning, even though my Fusha is actually quite respectable. A is, of course, continuing his Fusha studies because he's mainly interested in Arabic for academic purposes (and besides, he's got a free live-in translator!) Sadly, most people (even many Moroccans) are pretty dismissive of Darija because it's one of the least widely understood Arabic dialects, but it just happens to be the dialect of one of my favorite places in the world, so I can't say that I mind too much.



*Ok, I'm lying about that last bit. Numbers really do work that way in Arabic (in fact, it gets even more complicated than that), but I don't think I'll ever be able to accept it as logical.

** While most Muslims have no problem with the Quran being translated into other languages, at that point it is no longer considered the Holy Quran. It is, rather, seen as a commentary on the original book. Only the Arabic version is considered the "true" version. Given the incredible richness of the Arabic language and how much of it is necessarily lost in translation, I have to say that I think they have a point.

Our First Week

Well, A and I have successfully completed our first week of classes, and we're both extremely excited about the program here. Now that we're actually starting to settle into a  routine, I can tell you that our average morning goes something like this:

We get up (reluctantly) at about 6:30 in the morning, get dressed, and head upstairs where the man who runs our riad is preparing us a delicious breakfast of bread, jam, and mint tea laced with diabetes. Now that he knows we're studying Arabic, he loves talking to us in that language and teaching us occasional new words and phrases. Since the caffeine hasn't really kicked in yet, it's all we can do to keep up. When we finish eating, we head off to class.

It's about a 45-minute trip to the school, but after Ankara that feels like nothing. For those who are interested, the trip goes something like this: We leave our riad at about 7:30 and walk for about 10 minutes through the narrow, winding streets. There are no cars that deep in the medina, but motorcycles and bikes are both very popular and a little terrifying when they come barreling down the street behind you. That early in the morning, only a few people are out yet, and they all seem very surprised to see a pair of Americans out for a walk. Easily outnumbering the people are the stray cats, which seem to be everywhere. A keeps complaining that he hates not being allowed to pet them.

To be fair, they are really stinking cute.

Much of the medina is surrounded by a centuries-old wall that has numerous keyhole-shaped gates. We leave through one of them and are immediately plunged into the "modern" part of Rabat, complete with skyscrapers, a metro, multi-lane highways, and palm trees. I love the palm trees.

To get to the school, we could take a bus, a "petite taxi" (which runs like your average U.S. taxi), or a "grand taxi." We've done all three, but we think that the grand taxi offers the best combination of speed and affordability. To take one, we walk about 5 minutes to the nearest grand taxi station, which is essentially a parking lot with dozens of gray Mercedes Benzes. The are a number of drivers (all male) standing around waiting to make their next trip. We only need to say one word, "Souissi" (the neighborhood our school is in) and, after a bit of shouting back and forth, we're pointed in the general direction of a car headed that way. It usually takes asking a few more times before we're able to make it to our exact car and driver, but we always do in the end. Once 7 people are inside (the driver, two passengers up front with him, and four in the back) we take off. Somehow, that never takes more than a few minutes, and often only takes a few seconds, even when we seem to be the only ones looking for a taxi. It's really one of this country's great mysteries.

The seating is, of course, extremely cramped, but luckily it's a short drive. Plus, Moroccan men are generally chivalrous enough to have women sit by women whenever possible and, when it isn't, not to try anything "unseemly." The only time I have ever seen a Moroccan man acting inappropriately in a taxi (using the cramped space as an excuse to put his arm around a woman), the taxi driver stopped the car and ordered him to get out.

After a 10-15 minute drive, the driver stops to let us out. We're almost always let out a little before the spot he's "supposed" to take us, but getting to that spot takes some complicated - and time-consuming - traffic maneuvering that most drivers just don't want to do. Since we're paying about $0.60 each for the ride, we really aren't too picky about the customer service.

The 15 or so minute walk to our school couldn't be more different from the medina we just left. Souissi is one of the ritziest parts of Rabat, and for most of the walk there's a gorgeous park to our left and a row of embassies, as well as the occasional mansion, to our right. Before long, we arrive at our school which, let's just say, looks like it belongs in the area.

Because I'm studying the colloquial Moroccan dialect I was automatically placed in the beginning level. (I'll be talking about the dialect versus "traditional" Arabic in an upcoming post. For now, just let me say that the two are very, very, different.) I only have three other classmates: a 26-year-old man from Seattle who had, like me, studied some traditional Arabic before coming here; a 52-year-old French man who lives in Marrakesh but came here to learn to speak the dialect; and a 23-year-old female Fullbright scholar who is doing a research project with the U.S. Embassy here in Rabat.

The teacher is a very sweet Moroccan woman who speaks adequate English and excellent French. So, since all of us (except the student from Seattle) also speak French, we probably use English and French in equal proportions. While I feel badly for him sometimes, he doesn't seem particularly bothered by it and one of us always tries to translate for him. Personally, of course, I love it - it's like getting two languages for the price of one, especially because the teacher usually switches to French for more complex issues that she can't quite convey in English.

Anyway, my class moves very quickly, which is great by me. All of us have had a fair bit of exposure to Arabic, either through studying the "classical" language (me and the guy from Seattle) or from living extensively in Morocco (the other two.) Even so, the class is moving fast enough that we all have to really be on the ball to keep up. Just in the five days of class so far, we've learned:

• Basic introductory conversations (how to introduce ourselves, talk about our age, where we're from, why we're in Morocco, etc.)
• Days, months, and seasons
• Question words
• How to talk about our families
• How to talk about the weather
• How to talk about the time (much more complicated than you'd think)
• How to talk about our daily routines
• How to count to 999,999,999,999
• How to go shopping (including the names of lots of common items, how to talk about price, how to bargain, etc.)
• How to order food from a restaurant (including lots of food vocab)
• About 50 verbs (including many irregular verbs) and how to conjugate them in the past, present, and future tenses
• About 30 adjectives (including their masculine, feminine, and plural forms)
• Negation of verbs and adjectives
• Demonstrative adjectives and pronouns (this, that, these, those)
• Possessive pronouns
• The imperative (the verb form that gives commands, like "Eat" or "Go away!")
• Lots of general expressions, including many phrases so that we can conduct class in Arabic as much as possible (phrases like "How do you say....in Arabic" or "What does...mean," or "I don't understand...")

And that's the short list. So, again, it is a VERY intensive class. I absolutely love it, though, and the other students seem to appreciate it but also get frustrated sometimes (although much of what we're covering is completely new to me, the fact that I've studied "traditional" Arabic more than anyone else in there does often give me an edge.) Already, I'm being able to carry out basic conversations in Arabic with real, live Moroccans, which is incredibly exciting. The only sad thing is that, this being an embassy town, people in Rabat aren't nearly as impressed with seeing a foreigner who can speak a bit of their dialect as the people in, say, Meknes (the city we were in last summer) would be. So, I don't get quite the ego boost that I'd like...oh well. At this rate, I'll be debating 17th-century politics by the time this program is up. That'll show 'em! 

My Arabic Class

Well, the weekend is finally here, which means you are all owed a post about what I did during the week.

On Monday, I took the placement test. For Arabic, almost any place that instructs in English will use one textbook series, and in that series there are three books: Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced. The program J and I are in now divides each book into three seperate classes: I, II, and III.

Last semester I covered the first three chapters of the Intermediate, but that ended in May. What with getting married, moving to a different continent, and then moving again, I have to say that my Arabic has suffered.

These are a few of the knicknacks placed around the school
we're attending.

So we were nervous that I wouldn't be placed high enough. In many ways, I probably didn't go into the test deserving to be placed at Intermediate I or II. So I was very nervous when I ended up in a room with six other people who were also taking placement tests.

Fortunately, God is good, and students everywhere are uniformly ill prepared. After a test and a discussion group with the other students being placed, I ended up in Intermediate II. While all of the other (three) people in my class seem to have some Arabic skills which I don't have, they also all seem to have some areas where they need to be whipped into shape.

Class, as you might remember, is divided into two parts. Two hours before the tea break, and an hour and a half after it. Our teacher, H, never explained the format of the class, but as nearly as I can tell, the first half is dedicated to discussion and the second half is dedicated to covering material in the textbook.

That sounds straightforward, right? Well, if so, I'm not doing a good job of explaining how class actually goes. In the middle of the discussion, H might start giving a long explanation of a grammar rule. While covering material from the book, he might ask us what we think about what we're reading.

This little courtyard is one of the first things you see when
you walk into our school.

So, for example, on Friday we talked (in Arabic) about the role of the media in the Arab Spring. This sounds impressive, and I'm hoping in a month or two it will be, but for now it means taking turns at expressing  relatively simple ideas to the other people in the class. So for instance, H (who often seems to play the devil's advocate in these discussions), said that he thought the media was a negative influence because they often spread false information. I responded, "The true information which is published is more important than the false information." That sounds good until you take into account how long it took me (a minute or two at least) to stumble that out.

Still, I'm not really frustrated. As someone interested in academia, I've grown accustomed to the idea that success only comes after you have payed your dues (five years of dues for undergrad, six years of dues to get the PhD...). My Arabic is rusty now, but that rust is already starting to be shaken off, and if I have twenty hours of Arabic a week for several months, the conversations in my classes will get much more fluid and interesting.

And that's why I'm doing all this. J loves the process of learning a language and the thrill of success (among other things, to be sure). There's some of that for me, but really it's about opening the doors and windows on the minds of other people. What did Moroccan diplomats think about four hundred years ago? What do Moroccan scholars think today? I'm thrilled that soon I hope to be able to converse fluidly in Arabic, but really the thing that makes me happiest about it is being able to converse fluidly.

A Short Update

J and I had been hoping to post a bit more regularly than we have been. Personallly, I am still hoping for that. But for the present moment, it looks like we'll mostly be getting people caught up over the weekend. This post should help you understand why:

Turtles! I love the souq here.



What My Day Looks Like:

6:30- Wake up and go through morning ablutions.

7:00- Eat Breakfast (compliments of our hotel). Includes fresh sqeezed orange juice (seriously, he makes it in the other room), tea (fantastic!), and peach or strawberry jelly on fresh bread (Last two mornings, it was still warm).

7:40- Leave for school in a grand taxi (Mercedes stuffed with six passengers and a driver).

8:00- Arrive at our stop. Begin Walking.
8:20- Arrive at our school.
8:30- Class begins.
10:30- Much needed break (with more fantastic tea provided by the school).
11:00- Class resumes.
12:30- Class ends. J and I share lunch of tagine and bread at the school.
13:00- (Weird system, isn't it) Leave from school.
13:40- Arrive back at hotel. Study.

15:00- Run errands. Bring back food, water. Look fruitlessly (so far) for a place to exchange Turkish Lira for Moroccan Dirham.

17:00- Return to hotel. Shower Immediately

17:15- Begin studying. Occassional blogging.

18:00- Supper of health shakes and bread (made that day).

18:30- Go to one of the two churches in Rabat (optional).

20:00- Return to hotel. Resume studying.

21:00- Much needed downtime.

22:30- Lose consciousness in order to repeat the process.

As you can see, there isn't a lot of time in there for blogging. I'm hoping that as my Arabic improves (and it will, I've hardly touched it all summer, and I'm paying the price now) more time will be freed up for other endeavors.

In the meantime, classes are still going very well, and we're both learning a great deal. I'll write in more detail on that over the weekend.

Happy Anniversary to Us



This is a view from our airplane into Morocco.

So I'm in the middle of writing a post about our first few days of class (spoiler, they're going really well). In the meantime, I couldn't let the day pass without recognizing the fact that J made the dumbest decision of her life exactly one month ago. I'm a nerd, and sometimes numbers really entertain me, so here's some numbers about our first month of wedlock:

In our first month of marriage, J and I have had seven hotel rooms and an apartment. We have slept in two towns in the States, Munich, Ankara (downtown), Ankara (Bilkent), Ankara-Istanbul (sleeper train), Istanbul, Madrid, and Rabat.

We have been in seven airports, one train (two attempted), four planes (five attempted), nine buses, and thirteen taxis. We have been to four continents and spoken (With other people) English, Turkish, Spanish, French, Arabic (Modern Standard), and Arabic (Moroccan Colloquial).

It has been a fantastic month, and I need a nap.

Today

We get up at 6:30 tomorrow morning and I still have homework, so this will be a quick update, but today was absolutely fantastic. Classes seem great, classmates are interesting and very impressive (several Fullbright scholars, at least one person who works with the U.S. Embassy, a few military officers, and a woman who's worked with the U.S. State Department for over 20 years), coursework looks like it will be very challenging, but in a good way.

Dinner tonight was, I think, one of the best evenings we've ever had in Morocco. Fantastic food, fantastic company, conversation in three different languages, and an invitation to come back soon that we definitely hope to take advantage of.

We'll try to write more soon, but for now...good night!

Safety in Morocco

We know that a lot of people are worried about our safety while we're in Morocco. Since, again, we're a little cooped up today, A and I found a few statistics that we thought might help:

The violent crime rate (which includes murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, and larceny) in the United States is 3503.8 per 100,000 people. In Morocco, it is 19.94.

In the U.S., there are 39.2 rapes per 100,000 people. In Morocco, there are 3.59.

In the U.S., there are 3,025.4 thefts per 100,000 people. In Morocco, there are 7.05.

In the U.S., there are 5 murders per 100,000 people per year. In Morocco, there are 0.4.

So yes, while it's absolutely true that bad things can happen anywhere, I was being quite sincere when I said that we're a lot more worried about all of you back in the U.S. than we're worried about ourselves. We're actually quite a lot safer here.


On a lighter note, just as I was finishing this post, the man who runs our riad invited us to his home for dinner tomorrow night. We like him quite a lot, so we're very excited.

Also, classes start bright and early tomorrow morning. We're looking forward to the class part, not so much to the "bright and early" part. Still, it will be nice to feel a bit less like lazy bums...

A Question For Readers

So everytime I put up a new post with a lot of pictures on it, loading that post to look at it seems to take forever. I can't tell if that's the internet here, or if the pictures I'm uploading take up too much memory.

Is anyone else having problems with the site? Do they seem to occur more frequently when we put up posts with lots of pictures on them?

Let me know by commenting on this post. Your feedback is appreciated.

FYI...

Several people have expressed their concern for our safety today. We just wanted to let everyone know two things:

1) We aren't worried. We have never hidden the fact that we were Christian Americans, and we have never been treated badly or felt the slightest bit unsafe because of it. Many Moroccans dislike many of the things our government has done, but we have NEVER seen anyone take it out on us. Just the opposite, in fact - we have consistently been treated with warmth, kindness, and hospitality everywhere we have gone.

2) That being said, we are being careful today. We're planning on only going out once, to get some food and a few other necessities. Other than that, we'll be staying in our riad, which is tucked in the center of the medina and should be perfectly safe even if anything were to happen.

Expect more posts later today. We've got a lot of time to kill, being cooped up in here like this! Meanwhile, be safe - we're a lot more worried for the people in the U.S. than we're worried for ourselves.

Off-Balance

It's been interesting to see how quickly I've slipped back into my old "Moroccan" habits. I've only been here two days, yet already I seem to have remembered how to give wares in the souq a sort of sliding gaze, looking just long enough to take them in, stopping just soon enough to avoid indicating the degree of interest that will bring a merchant to my side. I've become sort of unconsciously conscious about things like where I'm pointing my feet (to avoid facing my soles towards anyone, a serious offense) and where I'm pointing my fingers (which can also be quite rude.) More than once, I've begun a sentence in French and ended it in Arabic without even realizing it until the conversation was over.

Yet for all that, Morocco still finds plenty of ways to keep me off-balance. It's exhausting and exhilarating at the same time, as I am being constantly reminded how much more there is to communicating with people than speaking their language. There are so many layers beyond that, from facial expressions and body language to different cultural expectations to "assumed knowledge" in the forms of history, politics, religion, and media...all of which make up a much greater part of communication than I think any of us realize until we try to get by in a place where we don't understand those unspoken aspects.

Unfortunately, being too aware of that fact can also cause problems, because it can make you seriously overthink things. Yesterday, A and I were out for a walk in downtown Rabat, and saw a huge crowd gathered around a car. Most of them were grinning and looked very excited, and A and I decided that there must be some sort of celebrity or politician inside. After several minutes of speculating about who it might be (and talking about how frustrating it was to be so ignorant about the "Who's Who" of Morocco), we got closer and saw that, actually, it was just a really big dog* that people were wanting to pet. Go figure.

Just an hour or so later, A and I were sitting and eating lunch at a cafe when we saw an enormous mass of people begin marching down the street chanting some sort of a slogan. There was too much background noise for us to even make out what language they were speaking, much less understand it, but we imagined it must be a political march of some kind.  While we were a little nervous, there were several police officers nearby who were carefully watching the marchers, and no one at the cafe seemed at all concerned, so we contented ourselves with trying to speculate about what they were protesting. Finally, I decided to just ask someone else at the cafe. She laughed and said that they were cheering on their football (soccer) team. Oh.

As ignorant as it can make me feel, I love that Morocco resists my most intellectual attempts to pin it down. I love that one day I underthink it, the next day I overthink it. I love that it keeps me off-balance, because that's the best way to stay willing and able to learn. Besides, I can always find some comfort in the fact that, as a white American Christian who speaks Arabic and sometimes wears the hijab, I throw them off-balance, too.

* You may have heard the common claim that Muslims/Arabs hate/fear/are religiously offended by dogs.  While there's some truth to that, it really just depends on the Muslim. Basically, there's very little in the Quran about dogs, but there are some Hadiths** of debateable reliability that call dogs unclean. In our (limited) experience, there are a lot more stray dogs in the Middle East than in the U.S., and those dogs would be considered "unclean" by almost anyone. At the same time, it's not at all unusual in Morocco to see people who are, by all appearances, observant Muslims outside taking their pet dogs for walks.

** Hadiths are records of Muhammed's life and sayings. While Hadiths are taken very seriously by Muslims, there are a vast number of them and they have a huge range of "reliability" (basically, the likelihood that they are accurate and truthful.) To further complicate matters, different schools of thought in Islam may have radically different ideas about the reliability of any given Hadith.