Tired. Sums up the days end pretty well. Today was a day of information. It started off early when my alarm clock and phone accidentally went off at 6:15am, 2 hours early, someday I'll get it figured out. The morning was spent in orientation classes learning about Nonverbal communication in Morocco and Home-stays. The orientation classes pretty much consist of the 13 girls and Dohathe program manager, a beautiful and stylish Moroccan woman whom I can already see becoming our second mom while we're here. I learned that many Darija (Moroccan arabic) have nonverbal hand gestures. Forexample the word kyf kyf means same or all thesame to me and you can signify it by putting your index fingers together parallel to the ground and moving them back and forth, toward your bodyand away. Go try it out!
I also received my host family information. I am going to be living with another girl Brittany here with a family of 3 girls one my age named Sara, Amina, and Fatima, and a mother who is a housewife named Rabia and father who is a shopkeeper named Ali. I will meet them and move in tomorrow in their home, eeek!
Later after lunch we went to our firstSurvival Moroccan Arabic classes. We split up according to previous Arabic knowledge. We were waiting in the classroom when in walks the hyper hard to understand woman from the arabic placement tests. We then had an hour long session learning Darija with her. She was funny and quite energetic for someone with gray hair, sorry mom, and I did learn a lot. However we all came out of it feeling quite overwhelmed. No sooner were we about to leave when we were whisked away to a cafe nearby to practice ourjust learned language skills. The cafe was modern and had a dj, awesome! We ordered delicious coffee and danced to YMCA and Night at the Roxbury music. Another highlight of the day was dinner with the group as well as some past students and the staff in the Medina. I finally got to try Tajir, a traditional moroccan dish, in a vegetarian version this time. We were all fooled during dessert when delicious yogurt in ceramic cups turned out to be Dannon. Haha. After we went on a walking tour in the Medin, which is the old part of town inside a large wall consisting of a maze of alleyways and walkways lined with shops and venders selling everything and anything. Dead chickens, live chickens, boots, you name it! We were looked at much and even called spice girls, my favorite greeting yet :)
The night ended with my hotel roomate sara and eyediscussing feminism and literally passing out in bed. Well at least she has, I am not far behind!
Layla saida (Good night) my loves.
No comments:
Post a Comment