Confused about why we're in Morocco and not Turkey? Start reading here.
A and I were very excited about spending an academic year in Turkey. As we brought up in one of our first posts, we were both eager to learn the language and come to understand the country better, and we both believed strongly that Turkey would quickly become an increasingly influential player in the region. None of that has changed. The school seemed excellent, the people we had the chance to interact with were incredibly kind and helpful, our apartment was lovely...but almost immediately, we began running into significant complications.
The first (and biggest) problem, as A mentioned, was the Arabic classes. Certainly, before we had left, A and I were fully aware that Turks speak Turkish, not Arabic, so we weren't going to get an "immersion" experience. However, Bilkent University was supposed to offer a number of Arabic classes. Unfortunately, after we arrived in Ankara, we found out that (a) many of the more advanced Arabic classes wouldn't actually be offered, meaning that I wouldn't be study at the level I needed, and (b) although normally Bilkent's classes are offered in English, its foreign-language classes are taught in Turkish. So, even if they had offered Arabic at the level I'd needed, I wouldn't be able to take it - and obviously, A couldn't take anything, either.
Fortunately, A and I had come up with a back-up plan before even leaving for Turkey, just in case the Arabic classes at Bilkent weren't what we were looking for. If that happened, we were planning on taking classes at Tomer, a very reputable language school in downtown Ankara. Unfortunately, that didn't work out as planned, either. Although our planning had gone so far as to plot out the public transportation we'd need to take to get to Tomer (to make sure we could get there and back without too much trouble), apparently some of the bus stop listed online didn't really exist...so it would easily be a 2-hour trip each time we wanted to go to a class. Then there was the fact that we'd have to take at least 6 hours of Arabic each week, which would have been fine except that we also had to be full-time students at Bilkent - the Arabic hours wouldn't count. Oh, and also - despite what I had been told before we left - the Arabic classes at Tomer were also offered in Turkish.
So, it quickly became obvious that there was no good way for us to study Arabic while we were at Bilkent. That alone was a huge blow: we're both Arabic majors who want and need to use the language regularly for our careers, and we've still got a long way to go in mastering it. We weren't ready to throw in the towel yet, though: there was still a lot that we could get out of the program, and we were quite happy there. We had a lot of long talks about our options, including just staying for a semester and independently studying Arabic for that time, trying to get involved with the Arab immigrant community and finding help with Arabic that way, etc. At the same time, we agreed that we should start looking into other options, just in case. We knew that whatever we decided, we would need to do it soon: it was already too late to go back to OU for the semester and classes at Bilkent would start in just a few weeks.
Unfortunately, the problems just kept piling on. Although our apartment was lovely, it was basically all a single (large) room and the mattress was very hard. As most of you know, I have some significant health problems that make it very difficult for me to sleep well at night (which, of course, makes the health problems much worse, and the cycle continues from there.) The mattress and the fact that A woke me up practically every time he moved were causing some major problems. And this was before classes had started or A and I had any sort of real schedule at all, so we were getting very concerned about what would happen as we got busier.
Church was another challenge. We had researched church options before leaving and found (we believed) three excellent options. Unfortunately, the information was apparently very outdated (if it had ever been accurate) as only one of those places actually offered services. It was, of course, the furthest church from our apartment, and (because of the previously mentioned non-existent bus stop), it was a massive ordeal to get to. Basically, to make it to service at 10:30, we had to:
1) Be up and out the door by 8:20
2) Walk about 1 mile downhill to the nearest bus stop to catch the first bus of the day at 8:40
3) Ride the bus for about 40 minutes to downtown Ankara
4a) Either power-walk about 4 miles (almost all steeply uphill) and (if everything went well) arrive slightly late; or
4b) Take a taxi and risk having the driver deliberately drive around in circles so he could run up the meter, realize exactly what he's doing but not be able to stop him because of not speaking the language, and wind up late to church anyway but this time with a $45 taxi fare to boot (all of which happened on our first Sunday.)
Then, we had to quietly slip into the back of church, try to focus on mass when really we were just hot and sweaty and tired and dehydrated, only to have to repeat the trip in the opposite direction less than an hour later, not arriving home or eating until after 2:00 in the afternoon and bringing our total walking distance to 10 miles (almost all up and down large hills.)
All of that was bad enough in August and September, when the weather was actually quite beautiful. It would be much, much worse in the winter once the snow and ice came.
In fact, transportation in general was a fairly significant issue. The nearest grocery store was about a mile away, which wouldn't have been so bad except that it was (surprise!) steeply downhill, meaning that the walk back, carrying all our groceries uphill, was exhausting. The only affordable way to get anywhere off campus was by taking the bus, which was slow and left both of us painfully motion sick every time.
There were a number of other complications, similar to the above in that yes, we could have come up with manageable solutions for some things and sucked it up and dealt with the rest. But now that studying Arabic - our primary motivation for delaying graduation and studying abroad in the first place - was clearly not going to work out, was it really worth dealing with all the other problems on top of it?
Eventually (as you've probably figured out) we agreed that it wasn't, especially because we had several good alternatives in the works. As some of you already know, A and I had previously considered studying in Morocco over the summer before logistical complications made going to Turkey for the school year seem like the better option. Luckily, that meant that we had already done some significant research into Arabic programs in Morocco and had been in fairly extensive contact with several schools. So, we were able to simply reinitiate contact with what had been our favorite options, see what was affordable and could take us, and sign up. We probably wouldn't have been brave (or reckless) enough to make the switch if it weren't for the fact that we'd already spent two months in Morocco last summer. We already knew we loved the country and that many of the complications we'd faced in Turkey just wouldn't be a problem here.
So, here we are in Rabat, Morocco's capital, planning to start classes at Qalam wa Lawh Center on Monday. Trust me, though, there's plenty more to tell about our adventures in getting here - and we will, soon. Sorry again for keeping you out of the loop for so long, but with everything so up in the air, we needed some time to sort things out together before we filled everyone in.
I have a feeling, though, that over the next few days you'll be getting a lot more details than you necessarily care to hear. If you hadn't noticed, A and I tend to be people of extremes with things like this.
A and I were very excited about spending an academic year in Turkey. As we brought up in one of our first posts, we were both eager to learn the language and come to understand the country better, and we both believed strongly that Turkey would quickly become an increasingly influential player in the region. None of that has changed. The school seemed excellent, the people we had the chance to interact with were incredibly kind and helpful, our apartment was lovely...but almost immediately, we began running into significant complications.
The first (and biggest) problem, as A mentioned, was the Arabic classes. Certainly, before we had left, A and I were fully aware that Turks speak Turkish, not Arabic, so we weren't going to get an "immersion" experience. However, Bilkent University was supposed to offer a number of Arabic classes. Unfortunately, after we arrived in Ankara, we found out that (a) many of the more advanced Arabic classes wouldn't actually be offered, meaning that I wouldn't be study at the level I needed, and (b) although normally Bilkent's classes are offered in English, its foreign-language classes are taught in Turkish. So, even if they had offered Arabic at the level I'd needed, I wouldn't be able to take it - and obviously, A couldn't take anything, either.
Fortunately, A and I had come up with a back-up plan before even leaving for Turkey, just in case the Arabic classes at Bilkent weren't what we were looking for. If that happened, we were planning on taking classes at Tomer, a very reputable language school in downtown Ankara. Unfortunately, that didn't work out as planned, either. Although our planning had gone so far as to plot out the public transportation we'd need to take to get to Tomer (to make sure we could get there and back without too much trouble), apparently some of the bus stop listed online didn't really exist...so it would easily be a 2-hour trip each time we wanted to go to a class. Then there was the fact that we'd have to take at least 6 hours of Arabic each week, which would have been fine except that we also had to be full-time students at Bilkent - the Arabic hours wouldn't count. Oh, and also - despite what I had been told before we left - the Arabic classes at Tomer were also offered in Turkish.
So, it quickly became obvious that there was no good way for us to study Arabic while we were at Bilkent. That alone was a huge blow: we're both Arabic majors who want and need to use the language regularly for our careers, and we've still got a long way to go in mastering it. We weren't ready to throw in the towel yet, though: there was still a lot that we could get out of the program, and we were quite happy there. We had a lot of long talks about our options, including just staying for a semester and independently studying Arabic for that time, trying to get involved with the Arab immigrant community and finding help with Arabic that way, etc. At the same time, we agreed that we should start looking into other options, just in case. We knew that whatever we decided, we would need to do it soon: it was already too late to go back to OU for the semester and classes at Bilkent would start in just a few weeks.
Unfortunately, the problems just kept piling on. Although our apartment was lovely, it was basically all a single (large) room and the mattress was very hard. As most of you know, I have some significant health problems that make it very difficult for me to sleep well at night (which, of course, makes the health problems much worse, and the cycle continues from there.) The mattress and the fact that A woke me up practically every time he moved were causing some major problems. And this was before classes had started or A and I had any sort of real schedule at all, so we were getting very concerned about what would happen as we got busier.
Church was another challenge. We had researched church options before leaving and found (we believed) three excellent options. Unfortunately, the information was apparently very outdated (if it had ever been accurate) as only one of those places actually offered services. It was, of course, the furthest church from our apartment, and (because of the previously mentioned non-existent bus stop), it was a massive ordeal to get to. Basically, to make it to service at 10:30, we had to:
1) Be up and out the door by 8:20
2) Walk about 1 mile downhill to the nearest bus stop to catch the first bus of the day at 8:40
3) Ride the bus for about 40 minutes to downtown Ankara
4a) Either power-walk about 4 miles (almost all steeply uphill) and (if everything went well) arrive slightly late; or
4b) Take a taxi and risk having the driver deliberately drive around in circles so he could run up the meter, realize exactly what he's doing but not be able to stop him because of not speaking the language, and wind up late to church anyway but this time with a $45 taxi fare to boot (all of which happened on our first Sunday.)
Then, we had to quietly slip into the back of church, try to focus on mass when really we were just hot and sweaty and tired and dehydrated, only to have to repeat the trip in the opposite direction less than an hour later, not arriving home or eating until after 2:00 in the afternoon and bringing our total walking distance to 10 miles (almost all up and down large hills.)
All of that was bad enough in August and September, when the weather was actually quite beautiful. It would be much, much worse in the winter once the snow and ice came.
In fact, transportation in general was a fairly significant issue. The nearest grocery store was about a mile away, which wouldn't have been so bad except that it was (surprise!) steeply downhill, meaning that the walk back, carrying all our groceries uphill, was exhausting. The only affordable way to get anywhere off campus was by taking the bus, which was slow and left both of us painfully motion sick every time.
There were a number of other complications, similar to the above in that yes, we could have come up with manageable solutions for some things and sucked it up and dealt with the rest. But now that studying Arabic - our primary motivation for delaying graduation and studying abroad in the first place - was clearly not going to work out, was it really worth dealing with all the other problems on top of it?
Eventually (as you've probably figured out) we agreed that it wasn't, especially because we had several good alternatives in the works. As some of you already know, A and I had previously considered studying in Morocco over the summer before logistical complications made going to Turkey for the school year seem like the better option. Luckily, that meant that we had already done some significant research into Arabic programs in Morocco and had been in fairly extensive contact with several schools. So, we were able to simply reinitiate contact with what had been our favorite options, see what was affordable and could take us, and sign up. We probably wouldn't have been brave (or reckless) enough to make the switch if it weren't for the fact that we'd already spent two months in Morocco last summer. We already knew we loved the country and that many of the complications we'd faced in Turkey just wouldn't be a problem here.
So, here we are in Rabat, Morocco's capital, planning to start classes at Qalam wa Lawh Center on Monday. Trust me, though, there's plenty more to tell about our adventures in getting here - and we will, soon. Sorry again for keeping you out of the loop for so long, but with everything so up in the air, we needed some time to sort things out together before we filled everyone in.
I have a feeling, though, that over the next few days you'll be getting a lot more details than you necessarily care to hear. If you hadn't noticed, A and I tend to be people of extremes with things like this.
This was kind of a depressing post, and this picture makes me happy. That is all.
