jeudi 24 juin 2010

June 24

We have SO much homework!! Yesterday I did work for 4 hours and didn't even finish! I'm now on my break from catching up with yesterdays homework in addition to doing todays! The picture I posted is pretty much a schedule of what we're supposed to do in class and what we have to do for homework each day of the week. As you can see, there's no homework posted for Fridays so all of the work is due during the week. The reason for this is that we have weekend trips and home stays scheduled during the weekends.

I realized I haven't really explained what our days consist of, so maybe this is a good time to do so. Every morning, we have breakfast from 8-8:30am and classes start at 8:30am. My class starts with darijah lessons for an hour (Monday-Thursday) with Younis, the speaking partners' coordinator. Then, we have class in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) until 1pm with a 30min break. My professors names are Halima and Azeez. They are very nice and so far they have proven to be good teachers! After lunch, there are office hours scheduled every day and optional tutoring classes. We also have conversation classes with the speaking partners any time from 2-4pm for 30 mins. Younis is the one in charge of scheduling our appointments with our speaking partners, so each day they are at a different time. After meeting with the speaking partners, we are free for the rest of the day and dinner is on our own.

Anyways, I now need to go do a lot of homework and study for our test tomorrow. Oh, yeah! Every Friday, we will be tested to see how much our level improves from week to week. Should be interesting to see how much we improve in the course of the summer!

June 23

Today was the US-Algeria World Cup game. We went to a big cafe and watched it together with the speaking partners. It was a great experience because, despite the political relationship between Morocco and Algeria, all the Moroccans (in the cafe) were rooting for Algeria. There was a group of us, CLS students, and a fair amount of Moroccans (including speaking partners and other people at the cafe) and we were all having a great time watching the game and learning new words in Arabic.

After that, we went back to the American School of Tangier (AST) and did homework until super late!

June 22

We finally moved in to the American School of Tangier!! This is our incredibly big room. In the process of moving, we changed roommates, because there are two buildings where students can live. One of them hosts 27 out of the 32 students, and the other one hosts the remaining 5 of us. We were the ones who decided which dorm we wanted to be in. The difference between both dorms is the size of the room and the population in the building. I decided to be in the less populated dorm because I figured it would be quieter, but my roommate Michelle wanted to be in the other one so they re-assigned roommates. My roommate now is Martha and she is great! She is really organized and very hard-working. She is in the advanced level 1, I am in the intermediate 4 level, so she helps me out!

In the picture is Ashley, who comes and studies in our room because we have a huge table and because it's easier to focus in the quieter room.

I'm just so happy to be all moved in and having been able to unpack! This place already feels like home!

June 21

Our first official day of classes took place at the American Legation museum . In the picture you can see Ashley and Megan going in to one of the rooms of the museum.

We took a tour of the museum first and then divided up into our levels to start classes with our professors. I'm so excited to finally be getting into a routine!! We will finally move to the American School of Tangier tomorrow!! I'm really glad I'm going to finally have a chance to unpack and get settled in!!

June 20

Today we had most of the day off so I met my dad and his friend Nael for lunch. We went to a beautiful hotel with a very nice restaurant and ate a delicious meal! The view was spectacular! Here's a picture with my dad at the restaurant!
At 6pm the group got together and we got to present about our adventure in Rabat (in Arabic, of course!). Then we had dinner at the hotel and I went to bed early!

June 19

Our first day in Tanjah! We visited the casbah in the morning and met some of our speaking partners. Speaking partners are Moroccan native Arabic speakers who meet with us for half an hour every day for conversation class. It is a great opportunity to practice the language one on one everyday so they can correct us and we can improve our speaking ability. Besides the assigned half hour, speaking partners also join us for lunch and other cultural activities, like touring to the casbah. After visiting the casbah, we walked around and found a place to eat.

Tangier is very different than Rabat. In Rabat, like I've commented before, I felt very safe walking around and didn't feel that people looked at me all that much. Walking around the streets of Tangier is a bit different. I was wearing skinny jeans, which I wore in Rabat (no problem) and guys not only stared at me but also said things that I didn't understand (and probably didn't want to understand). It might be a matter of adjusting and dressing more conservatively, I'm not really sure. Being tired probably doesn't help my views about the city, but oh well! We'll see how it goes!

It just so happens that my dad is visiting for a few days, so I will get to see him a few times while he's here! I'm very excited about that!

mercredi 23 juin 2010

June 18

It's adventure time! We were given a list of three places to go visit in Rabat with no directions as to how to get there. The goal of the exercise was to practice asking for directions in Arabic. The places we needed to visit were the royal palace, the national library, and a store that sold something Moroccan. I must admit, when I first heard what the exercise entailed, I wasn't thrilled. Soon, this proved to be one of the funnest activities.

Ashley, Bess, Michelle and I set off with our not-so-great Arabic and absolutely no sense of direction! After asking a very kind woman to direct us to the royal palace and not understanding the directions, we decided it might be a good idea to take a taxi. There are two types of taxis in Morocco big taxis or taxi kbeer and small taxis or taxi sgheer. The difference is that a taxi kbeer fits up to six people and the sgheer fits only three. Because there was four of us, we needed a taxi kbeer. Patiently, we waited for a taxi kbeer and after 10 minutes we decided to try to walk somewhere else. As we were walking we saw a police car. I asked the policeman if he could give us the phone number of a taxi company (yes, I asked in Arabic!) or if he could tell us where we could find one. The policeman told us to wait there, that he was going to look for one. He got in his car and drove away. Ten minutes later we see a taxi kbeer being escorted by the police car coming towards us and stopping right where we are. The taxi diver gets out of the car and so does the policeman. The policeman says goodbye to us and the driver kindly greets us! We couldn't believe the policeman went out of his way like that to help us out!

We got in the taxi and started talking to the driver, Abdal Latiff, while he was taking us to the royal palace, our first stop. We successfully made it there and bargained our rate with the driver. We thought we had overpaid for the ride, but turns out, we got a pretty good price!

Abdal Latiff dropped us off and we started walking without really knowing how to get to the palace itself so we decided to ask. We found two young ladies walking toward us and Ashley asked for directions to the palace. They kindly walked us there and, in the meantime, talked to us in Arabic. In the picture, you can see our two friends (Asma and Qthia) standing with us in front of the royal palace. After showing us where to go, they were nice enough to give us a brief history lesson on Morocco (in Arabic, of course!). I understood more than I thought I was going to, so it felt great! There were also parts of the explanation I didn't quite understand, but I'm also very good at pretending to understand! :)

By the time they finished the explanation, we asked them for directions to the national library. They told us they were walking to take a bus to go run some errands at their school, and that the same bus could drop us off at a nearby location. So we all walked toward the bus stop and meanwhile stopped to take pics in front of the parliament. We also passed by a newspaper/magazine stand (owned by Asma's cousin) and bought the equivalent of the "National Inquirer" in Arabic. We had, thus, completed two of our tasks: the first, to visit the royal palace, and the second to go to a store that sold something Moroccan! We only had one more place to visit, but we ran out of time, so we had to head back.

We returned to the ryad and had our last meal there: couscous. After lunch, we hopped on a bus that took us to Tangier. Because the American School of Tangier (where we're staying) was not ready for our arrival just yet, we stayed at a hotel for three days until Tuesday. Our hotel, the Tanjah Flandria is very conveniently located, but not that nice of a hotel when compared to the incredible places we've been staying at so far. We got to Tangier around 7pm and had dinner at 8:30pm. I was pretty tired so I went to bed early.

Overall, the trip is going really well, but I just can't wait to finally get to a place where I can unpack!

mardi 22 juin 2010

June 17

This morning we had Darijah classes in small groups. I feel a lot better about my Darijah skills than I did before! Learning in a small group is so much better! We actually had a chance to carry on practice conversations with each other. We're learning the basics, so besides introductions, it was essential to start learning the words to help us bargain! My favorite word is "bzaf", it means "too much"!
We had most of the day off, so I just added a picture of the Hassan tower, which, I forgot to mention, we visited yesterday as well!
I am having an incredible time in Rabat!

June 16


We made Couscous today! A very kind family welcomed a group of us to their home and Saadia taught us how to make couscous! We had a great time and the food was unbelievable!
We also visited the Roman ruins in Chellah. There are so many intersting places to visit in Rabat!

June 15


Today we had a Darijah lesson in the morning; learning darijah is like learning a whole new language! The pronounciation is very difficult because there are hardly any vowels! An example to say I live, you say knskun.
In the afternoon we had a lecture about...well, not really sure because it was all in Arabic and the woman spoke really fast and used a lot of technical language! Then, we toured the Oudaya casbah. This is a picture of the view from the Oudaya. Oh! How I love Rabat!

June 14


This is my room in the Ryad where we stayed at. A ryad is the Moroccan version of a bed and breakfast. The green one is my bed, or as I like to call it, the princess bed! I am sharing a room with Michelle, Mari and Vanessa.
This is our first full day in Rabat. We had a lecture in the morning on the history of Morocco and then a brief Darijah lesson (Moroccan dialect). We then went to the U.S. Embassy and got a security briefing. After that we were free to go out and explore! Rabat is a very nice and safe city. I've been pleasently surprised!! I think that after all the warnings on the pre-departure packet about dressing conservatively and holding on to our belongings, I was a little more paranoid than I needed to be! :)

June 13


Arrival to Casablanca after many hours of travel. A bus was waiting for us to take us to Rabat, where we spent the next five days. Even though it was a very long trip, it was a great opportunity to get to know people a little better.
That's Sarah in the foreground of the picture- we shared many laughs during the trip...I think this is the beginning of a great friendship!

Thank you

I would like to begin my blog by thanking everyone who has made this trip possible. First, I would like to thank the U.S. Department of State for offering me the Critical Language Scholarship to study Arabic in Morocco. Thank you for considering me a deserving candidate of this very prestigious award.
I would also like to thank my references for this scholarship for making my application a more competitive one. Thank you for believing in my potential.
Last, but not least, I would like to thank my family, friends and professors for being so supportive of everything I do. Especially, I would like to thank my mom, Jennifer Rayward, for always motivating me to be the best that I can. Without her and her support, I would not be the person I am today. Thank you for all your hard work and for giving me all the opportunities you have to accomplish my dreams.