Friday, April 30, 2004
heading to the desert. hopefully my isp (independent study project) will write itself there. wish me love ad sandstorms.
Thursday, April 15, 2004
michelles here!
ok fine. truth is that michelle is writing this blog because hannah is busy working on her paper about the discrepancy between moroccan policies towards jews, the US, and israel and commonly held public moroccan veiws of these issues. shell tell you about it someday. also, btw, french keyboards are wack.
hannah gets mad at me when i dont use paragraphs in emails so the above line of empty space is in her honor...so i got here 2 days ago after 3 straight days of trazvel. hannahs host family welcomed me with open arms and lots of kisses and kept saying welcome, our home is your home, you are family. they are wonderful. we then went out to meet some sketchy moroccan boys that hannah had met for 5 minutes while away somewhere and we all squished in a car and drove to a place where we sat and they played guitar and sang really loudly. it was fun although their motives were quite unclear. they sang nirvana and pearl jam.
next day went on a straange field trip with hannahs class to a hospital. then had a class where we discussed with some moroccan students the results of a recent survey about moroccan views toward jews, americans, etc. quite interesting. last night we went to the hammam with hannahs host sister, aka get naked and scrub yourself down with moroccan women (talya and alyssa, we thought of you), it was way fun and very different from my experience at the banya in st. petersburg last week in which i stripped down and sweat it all out with old naked russians who beat me and eachother with bunches of tree leaves (a story for my own blog if there were such a thing).
today hannah had a final arabic exam and i did what i do best (slept in). then we walked around the souq and through the kasbah and i took lots of pictures that hannahs embarrassed to take because she likes to pretend that she is moroccan and uninterested in such touristy activities. then much of the day has been spent at the internet place writing hannahs paper, with a short excursion to the university for a meeting with a potential independent study project advisor who never showed up, but its all worked out now.
tonight we are taking her arabic teacher out to dinner and hittin the town. tomorrow the rest of the weitzers arrive to take morocco by storm.
i love morocco, everyone should see it someday, preferably with hannah as your translator and hannahs host family as your home away from home.
it has been a pleasure writing a blog for hannah and her readers. ps - copenhagen rocks, everyone should come visit
hannah gets mad at me when i dont use paragraphs in emails so the above line of empty space is in her honor...so i got here 2 days ago after 3 straight days of trazvel. hannahs host family welcomed me with open arms and lots of kisses and kept saying welcome, our home is your home, you are family. they are wonderful. we then went out to meet some sketchy moroccan boys that hannah had met for 5 minutes while away somewhere and we all squished in a car and drove to a place where we sat and they played guitar and sang really loudly. it was fun although their motives were quite unclear. they sang nirvana and pearl jam.
next day went on a straange field trip with hannahs class to a hospital. then had a class where we discussed with some moroccan students the results of a recent survey about moroccan views toward jews, americans, etc. quite interesting. last night we went to the hammam with hannahs host sister, aka get naked and scrub yourself down with moroccan women (talya and alyssa, we thought of you), it was way fun and very different from my experience at the banya in st. petersburg last week in which i stripped down and sweat it all out with old naked russians who beat me and eachother with bunches of tree leaves (a story for my own blog if there were such a thing).
today hannah had a final arabic exam and i did what i do best (slept in). then we walked around the souq and through the kasbah and i took lots of pictures that hannahs embarrassed to take because she likes to pretend that she is moroccan and uninterested in such touristy activities. then much of the day has been spent at the internet place writing hannahs paper, with a short excursion to the university for a meeting with a potential independent study project advisor who never showed up, but its all worked out now.
tonight we are taking her arabic teacher out to dinner and hittin the town. tomorrow the rest of the weitzers arrive to take morocco by storm.
i love morocco, everyone should see it someday, preferably with hannah as your translator and hannahs host family as your home away from home.
it has been a pleasure writing a blog for hannah and her readers. ps - copenhagen rocks, everyone should come visit
Saturday, April 03, 2004
the past few days i feel like i have been in several different worlds.
first the village. much to my relief we were not each sent alone to a family, so i was with 3 others from my program with a small family about 6 km outside of town and another 1 or 2km from the road. Our family was just a father, mother and 4 year old girl, but mommy was 8 months pregnant so they are about to add another. the house had electricity and even a tv, but with only 2 channels. we were surrounded by fields, beautiful green hills and lots of farm animals, within sight of 4 or 5 other houses but there was definitely a feeling of isolation, self-sufficiency and a much more calm and simple life. we helped get water from the well, learned a little bit about weaving carpets and sheep hearding. tuesday was yom al-souk (market day) in town where dad bought everything they would need for the week and i purchased my first djellaba. cant wait to wear it back home! in town many people, including our dad spoke moroccan arabic, but in our home it was tamazight only.
then i came back to the rabat medina. a crazy bustling area with vendors on every street selling everything from chickpeas to djellabas to faux adidas sweatsuits to turtles. almost all the houses have satellite tv bringing them their egyptian soap operas and news from all over the arab world, and of course the prevailing language is arabic.
then last night i was invited to dinner at a jewish moroccan home where i entered a world almost as different from the medina world as the village was. they live on a quiet suburban-like street in a massive villa on the outskirts of rabat. their satellite tv brings them all of the french channels and none of the arabic. and although they speak to the maid and garderner in arabic, to each other they use only french.
and tomorrow i am going to tangier where i may find spanish as the language of choice and who knows what other cultural differences. so this is what they mean when they say morocco is a multi-lingual country.
first the village. much to my relief we were not each sent alone to a family, so i was with 3 others from my program with a small family about 6 km outside of town and another 1 or 2km from the road. Our family was just a father, mother and 4 year old girl, but mommy was 8 months pregnant so they are about to add another. the house had electricity and even a tv, but with only 2 channels. we were surrounded by fields, beautiful green hills and lots of farm animals, within sight of 4 or 5 other houses but there was definitely a feeling of isolation, self-sufficiency and a much more calm and simple life. we helped get water from the well, learned a little bit about weaving carpets and sheep hearding. tuesday was yom al-souk (market day) in town where dad bought everything they would need for the week and i purchased my first djellaba. cant wait to wear it back home! in town many people, including our dad spoke moroccan arabic, but in our home it was tamazight only.
then i came back to the rabat medina. a crazy bustling area with vendors on every street selling everything from chickpeas to djellabas to faux adidas sweatsuits to turtles. almost all the houses have satellite tv bringing them their egyptian soap operas and news from all over the arab world, and of course the prevailing language is arabic.
then last night i was invited to dinner at a jewish moroccan home where i entered a world almost as different from the medina world as the village was. they live on a quiet suburban-like street in a massive villa on the outskirts of rabat. their satellite tv brings them all of the french channels and none of the arabic. and although they speak to the maid and garderner in arabic, to each other they use only french.
and tomorrow i am going to tangier where i may find spanish as the language of choice and who knows what other cultural differences. so this is what they mean when they say morocco is a multi-lingual country.
