the day we went to live with our host families. Anxiety, excitement, fear, anxiety, happiness, nearly every feeling under the sun was building up in all of us in anticipation of this moment. We spent the morning at AMIDEAST and went through another hyper-intensive Survival Moroccan Arabic course. My word for you today is Kol shi bikhir meaning all is fine. You can use this as an answer to how are you, and you better! Then we gathered in a classroom and awkwardly waited as someone from our families came in to meet us. Of course almost all the Moroccan Arabic we had just been franticly learning disappeared from our minds, but we knew enough for the polite greeting. Fatima one of the girls in our family came to pick my roommate Brittini and I up. She is a tiny Moroccan woman who wears a headscarf and speaks what I would say is very good english and she only learned it from watching tv!
We then spent a good 10 minutes hailing a cab during rush hour. Our cab ride was crazy and included a moment when the cab drive, fed up with traffic, simply drove into the land lane of oncoming traffic to go around. Yikes! Luckily we did make it in one piece to the apartment. We met Rabia the house mother and Ali the shopkeeper who came home for lunch. Fatima left for her job with the ministry of energy, pretty impressive I must say. We unpacked and then sat down for lunch with Rabia a kind and welcoming Moroccan woman. We watched a Moroccan soap opera which proved to be pretty interesting. We communicated with Rabia as much as we could and she is very welcome to teaching and learning herself. Soap opera's are pretty universal it turns out, there was a cheating spouse, what we think was a depressed woman because she couldn't have kids, and even a villian who tried to choke another lady in a department store for not coming to work. Anger issues, I guess they've got them everywhere :)
We went to our rooms to relax then and I took a much needed nap. There are so many sounds here you notice when laying down. The call to prayer sounds 5 times a day, people on the street, people in the apartment above, and Rabia cleaning what seemed like the whole apartment and doing laundry. Needless to day I slept very well :)
We gathered in what seems like our women's room, because Ali hasn't eaten with us, for tea and snack time. So much bread and delicious treats and of course Moroccan mint tea complete with a cup or two of sugar. We talked while watching tv, most notably Kung Fu Panda dubbed in arabic. It wasn't quite the same without Jack Black but everyone still found it funny. Then we watched all of Catch Me if You Can with Arabic subtitles and at a light dinner of some sort of pasta in a bit communal bowl and clementine like fruits. So my homestay family is very kind and hospitable and I can see becoming very close with them. Also I am going to bed very full and must make a note to learn "I am full, thank you" in order to keep from gaining 1,000 pounds!
Layla saida (goodnight) from a happy apartment in Rabat, Morocco to anyone out there listening.
oh and lieu of new pictures for tonight and oldy goldy that makes me happy. This is not Morocco but rather high in the Sierra Nevada's, my happy place :)
I'm drinking peppermint tea a continent away from my cousin, who has just enjoyed mint tea. I can't imagine how different our days will be; the different things our eyes will see, the different things our ears will hear. But I'll take comfort in knowing we've both enjoyed warm drinks in the present of pleasant company.
ReplyDeleteLove you cuz, Shayshay