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!!!