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.