Greetings from Al-Maghrib! I am writing from an Arabic keyboard, so it may take awhile to type this, and it will contain little proper grammar. Sorry for the delay in updating you; life has been busy. As mentioned in the title, we had some difficulty getting here. Between flights from St. Louis to JKF to Charles de Gaulle to Rabat-Salé, I spent well over 30 hours in terminals and the air. I slightly misinformed all of you in the last entry; I learned the names of students on the program a whole 4 days early. There are 40 of us, one of the largest programs they have hosted. The nice thing about getting stranded in the airport is that we now know more about one another from those 30 hours than we might have learned in several weeks; everyone seems great.
We are currently staying at a hotel on Hassan II Boulevard, one of those beautifully stereotypical streets clogged with people and cars and shops and smells, etc. In the mornings, we walk to our program center in the medina, or old city (after being woken by the call to prayer around 4 am). In many Moroccan cities, there is a medina (literally the Arabic word for city), and the ville nouvelle, the more spacious French-built, boulevard, administrative part of the city. The medina is like something from a dream with the narrow streets, whitewashed walls, and decorative windows. Our program house is a former residence of four stories, one of which is a terrace with spectacular views of the surrounding world. To our east, the ocean is a few blocks away, to the north, Salé (the sister city), and to the west and south, incredible views of the medina and the ville nouvelle. I would post pictures, but it seems that somehow, I have miraculously forgotten my camera (do NOT trust me with your camera ever; this is the third in a year I have had trouble with). I was bound to mess a few things up, so really, it could be much worse...
I am so impressed by the people here. They are incredibly friendly and helpful, and they have so much patience with my nearly incomprehensible Arabic-French. Surprisingly, the majority of students on the trip have never taken a minute of Arabic; I think I would have been too intimidated to do that. On Saturday we move in with our homestay families. Each student has his or her own family, and we will be expected to live strictly by their standards (which means that I could potentially be given a curfew of 8 pm). For the most part, the weekends are our own to plan. Talks are underway between several of us girls to go to Casa for a big soccer match. Unfortunately, aside from weekends, we are scheduled pretty tight, so it doesnt look like I will be leaving for any Europe trips. I will update as more information becomes available. For now, Ill leave my new number and my skype name: (country code 212) 015 78 37 48 and alison.maassen (if you call the number from the US, it shouldnt be too expensive).
Let me know how you are all doing; talk to you soon!
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