Did my laundry the other week and when I was going to bed, was putting my pajama pants on and they were definitely a lot tighter than the last time I had put them on before I had washed them. They’d shrunk a good inch or two. Oh well, its Morocco. I was talking to this other girl the other morning when we were at breakfast, and we were talking about how things aren’t always the way we expect them to be, when she discovered that her ‘hard-boiled’ eggs were in fact not hard-boiled, but quite liquid inside still. We came to the conclusion that we’d just say, ”it’s Morocco” and that would be our answer for anything that went wrong or was just out of the ordinary, so I’ll live with my shrunken pajama pants. It’s Morocco after-all.
Things have been going pretty good lately, since my last blog post. I decided about two weeks ago to try to work towards a half marathon that’s going to take place on the first of April in Rabat, so I’ve been trying to run at least 3-4 times a week, and so far its not going too bad. My legs were a bit sore after the first couple of runs, but the last couple that I’ve done have all been quite a bit better. I think it also helped that I switched to running in the afternoon instead of in the morning when it was a lot colder, so maybe that’s why. I just tell myself that my body is getting more used to it. Ha It will be pretty fun either way, even if I don’t get a really good time or anything, because there’s about ten of us that are thinking of doing it, so we’ll probably all go down to Rabat together and just make it a fun weekend. I’m looking forward to it.
School is also going pretty well. I figured that since I am here at AUI on a semester of exchange, I should probably mention schoolwork at least a couple of times. I can’t lie, I don’t have a lot of work to do for some of my classes, compared to what I’ve had in the last couple of years back at TRU so I’ve had more time to do other things, but my classes are all pretty interesting and I’m really liking them.
History of the Arab world can be kind of confusing at times when we go off on tangents about random stuff, but other than that most of what we learn about the rise of Islam and the disorganization of the world of Islam in the years afterwards is really cool. The professor can get pretty distracted sometimes though, it’s pretty funny.
And then my French class is a lot of fun, and I think I’m actually learning quite a bit, so I’m really happy about that, and the trips that I’ve done around Morocco have given me good opportunities to practice my French. I definitely think it’s improved. Either that or I’ve just gotten more confident with the French skills that I already had.
History and culture of he Berber has been an interesting class, learning about how the Berber’s first originated in North Africa and what roles they have played in the history of this area as well as that across North Africa throughout the past centuries. The professor is quite funny, a short little, mostly bald Berber man, also quite disorganized sometimes, and quite biased a lot of the times, though he tries not to be biased he told us. It does get some good discussions going though, as there are a number of other ethnic berbers in the class. The exchange students that are in the class usually just sit there and listen to them argue about stuff, because we don’t really know what’s going on half the time, not having grown up in a Berber context. That class is also my only class that I have twice a week, so it’s 80 minutes long, and I’ll have to admit I’ve almost fallen asleep sometimes when the professor goes on some long ramble about some organization or something that exists today that’s trying to bring back Berber culture into Moroccan culture. I tried to help myself stay awake throughout class by bringing some m&ms and lining them up in front of myself and eating them one at a time after every five or ten minutes or something to help the time go by. I think it worked for the first class, but last class it didn’t help at all. I’m good for the first 50 minutes, which is the length of my other classes, but anything after that it seems, my brain just wants to shut down and do nothing. It’s pretty terrible, so I’ll have to try to find some other way to entertain myself now.
Then my geography class isn’t too bad. Once we got over the boring section at the beginning where we were just covering basic geographic concepts that are used and moved into more looking at how people migrate around the world and different factors that affect migration patterns, etc it got a bit better, but the professor just moves really slowly it seems in that class.
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| This is just an awesome picture all around. and yes, we did get stared at while trying to get this picture. |
This past weekend I went to Casablanca from Friday until Sunday with five other exchange students. Had some good adventures, including one right away when we got to Casablanca. We took the usual route of grand taxi to Meknes, and then the train from there onwards to Casablanca. One guy though had forgot his passport at AUI though, and as foreigners in Morocco, whenever you check into a hotel, they look at your passport and have to get the number that is stamped into it when you enter the country for their records and technically they’re not supposed tolet anybody stay at their hotel without that number. So that caused some problems for us.
The first three hotels that we went to, refused to let us stay there without having that number, (like they are supposed to, which at the moment wasn’t the best for us though). Finally, however, we found one who agreed that we could stay there, as long as we went down to the police station and got some kind of form filled out and stamped by them, so that we would still all be following the rules and nobody would get in trouble. I don’t know why any of the other hotels didn’t suggest that, because they just lost business from the six of us, but anyways.
So, Brian, the one who had forgot his passport and Beth, who probably had the best language skills of our group headed off in a taxi to find the police station, and thankfully after about an hour and having to find a second police station after the first one they went to proved pretty empty which they found out by pretty going into it and finding nobody there and everything dark they finally got back to the rest of us who had stayed behind with the right forms all filled out and stamped, so we were good for the night.
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| Part of the Morocco Mall, huge aquarium, and there was some kind of music afternoon or something going on, because there were a couple different groups that got up and played songs while we were there. |
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| Found ourselves a Starbucks and enjoyed a caramel frappuccino, which tasted pretty much the same as one you'd get back home, expect for the whipped cream on top, which was weird and not the best. |
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| Pigeon plaza in Casablanca. Actually I don't know what it's called, but it should be called that. |
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| Hassan II mosque in Casablanca, third biggest mosque in the world, can hold 20,000 people inside and the outer square can supposedly hold another 80,000 |
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| One of the many massive doors of the mosque |
We spent the next day and Sunday morning wandering around Casablanca, exploring the mosque and Morocco mall and some other places, before heading back to Ifrane. We stopped in Rabat for an hour on the way and got ourselves almond/avocadoe smoothie things, which are awesome, and some pastillas and oranges for the rest of the train ride back to Meknes. Good weekend all around.
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