First Couple of Weeks here at AUI:

This is where we went hiking, south of Azrou, in an area called Zuid-Ifrane

     So, for those of you who think that I’m not doing any school at all while I’m over here, I’m just letting you know that I am.  Not a huge work load, that’s for sure, but I am now in my second week of classes, though start thinking of where I want to travel to the next weekend, usually starting on Mondays. Ha

     It’s crazy that the first two weeks here at Al Akhawayn University are already past.  Not going to lie, orientation wasn’t all that fun the whole time, but there were some parts that didn’t make me want to go to sleep right away where I was sitting, and I did get to meet all the other exchange students, the ones who I’ll be with along with Moroccans for the next four months.  Orientation also included filling out a bunch of forms for our residency cards, which is nice, because now we don’t have to do anything else about that anymore, just go pick up our passports when they’re done. So the entire weekend wasn’t totally wasted.

     

     One nice thing that they did do though, well kind of did. It was organized for us, and we paid our own way, was to take us, using grand taxis, down to Azrou which is about 30 minutes south of Ifrane.  It was a really cool little town, actually slightly bigger than Ifrane I was told.  We spent 4, 5 hours or so on the Sunday during orientation, and were able to see another little corner of Morocco and taste some more of their good food at a little restaurant place our group descended upon for lunch.  It was really good food. We had what they called keefta, or ground beef kebabs with some kind of spices in them, stuffed into a half circle of bread, along with amazing French fries.  They actually tasted like real potato, and were quite delicious with salt and a bit of red peper or some sort sprinkled over top of them.  A little group of us even managed to get a bit of hiking in during that afternoon when we ditched the rest of our group and hiked up through the houses until they ended and then up into the forest a bit until we had an awesome view of the city.  Overall it was a pretty fun day.  A good way to get to know some of the other exchange students as well, especially in the grand taxis on the way there and back, squished 4 in the back seat and two in the passenger seat in the front of an ancient Mercedes that sounded ready to fall apart at every little bump in the road.  Our particular Mercedes on the way down had around 550,000km to its name and had the drivers shade thing stapled into place, it was awesome. And you couldn’t open the doors from the inside on the passengers’ side. Where the handle should have existed, or did in past years, was now no more than home to a couple of random wires and electrical tape.  To say nothing more, I can’t wait until my next trip in a grand taxi. 

In Azrou on our little trip that we took during orientation

      Classes started on Monday the 23^rd, but I didn’t actually get all the classes that I was going to take finalized until Thursday, so I kind of went around not sure about things. In the end though I think I figured things out for the better or worse, and ended up with 4 classes, cultural geography, history of the Arab world, History and Culture of the Berber, and a French class.  They’ve all been pretty interesting so far, and I’ve really enjoyed the French class over these first two weeks as well, so I’m happy about that. I’m hoping I’ll be able to learn a good amount of French while I’m here. History of the Arab world is a bit of a dysfunctional class some days.  Today, two guys were supposed to give a presentation on the specific chapter that we are working through in the book. It was supposed to be 10-12 minutes, or so they were told, but it was more than half an hour before they finally came to the end. The professor told them it was way too long on the spot in front of everybody and even said that a bunch of the time they were just repeating what they had already said. In some ways I like the class, I find it pretty interesting, learning about the rise of Islam and the different factors that contributed to that, and the professor can get really excited about the topic when he’s lecturing, but he can be a bit blunt sometimes.  He also refuses anyone to leave the room during his lectures. One guy got up the other day, probably to go use the washroom or something, and was promptly told to sit back down again and that he couldn’t leave the classroom.  No freedom here. Anyways, I’m glad my presentation isn’t due until week 8, so I can sit through a couple more and figure out what to do and what not to do when my turn comes.

     History of the Berber is taught by a short little, half bald Berber man, who, in the first lecture, told us that calling the Berbers, “Berbers” is what we would call politically incorrect today. They are technically known as Amazighen, and we’re not allowed to call them Berbers in that class anymore.  So much for the name of the course. I’m pretty sure that instead of just teaching us the history and culture of the berber, or Amazighen, the professor is set on having us reading and writing in Amazighen by the end of the semester.  He’s constantly writing stuff in Amazighen on the board and telling us how to pronounce the words in class, almost as if it was a language course and not a history course. He even sent us the Amazighen alphabet, so that we could learn to write our names in Amazighen.  It’s actually pretty cool.

     The food here isn’t really that bad either.  From all the stories that I’ve heard from others living in dorms, I was expecting something along the lines of MRE food, or those German rations that we had in Kabul a couple times that were super processed and about ten years old, but so far I haven’t really had much to complain about concerning the food except that sometimes its almost cold.  There’s 4 different places where you can eat on campus, a grille, where they serve burgers, fries, paninis, etc, a pizzaria that serves different types of pizza as well as spaghetti and some other pastas. There’s a café where you can get little snacks, such as heavenly chocolate crepes that are quite the snack if you’re feeling down, or just want a lot of chocolate in your system, and then there’s the main restaurant that has a variety of different meals available depending on the day, Moroccan and other.  And there’s also awesome chocolate and caramel, (not together, but they have both flavours) puddings that are quite good to end a meal with and not even that expensive, which might prove a problem after I eat too many of them, but for now I’m enjoying them immensely.

On the edge of the Plateau that we hiked up on to, looking out over the Zuid-Ifrane valley. 

     Actually went on another trip already last weekend with a group of ten others down south of Azrou to where we hiked to some waterfalls, which was really neat.  It was a pretty awesome day, complete with having breakfast and then a really late lunch in a local Amazighen house, that our guide took us too.  Really good food, served in two communal dishes with lots of bread to eat it with.  It was a good time.  We finished off the day by going to find some monkeys in a cedar forest, where I guess they just wait for the tourists to come feed them.  Quite the greedy little things, pretty much grab anything that was edible out of your hands eat part of it and then grab for more, but they were pretty cool.  It was a good trip all around, and I can’t wait to do more like it in the future.

     

The day after it snowed, on our way to the main gates where we caught our van to go hiking. 

The last couple of days have been like this, super blue skies.

     So, things are going pretty well over here in Morocco, nicely settled into my dorm room by now, and have even done laundry since getting here too, so I guess that makes me fully settled in.  It was nice though, the semi weekly cleaning of our dorm rooms happened today, so after lunch I walked into a cleaner room than I had left. It’s quite a novel thing, having someone else clean your room for you, or most of it.  Something to look forward to every two weeks. Ha but for the most part we keep the room pretty clean, so it’s not too bad.  We actually got a big dump of snow on friday, making our world all white for about 24 hours, but it all melted really fast, and the last couple of days have been super nice, blue skies with absolutely no clouds. I can't wait until the days are warmer to stay.  Sadly though I have some homework that I have to get done, so this will have to be all until next time. I’m sure I’ll have had some more adventures until then, so will have more to write about then anyways.