Aerobics, Islamic Schools, Art Galleries

   This worst thing about having a travel blog is that when all the exciting stuff is happening, there's absolutely no time to write about it. Yesterday I went with Aisha to a Marjane, which is like a Moroccan Target. We took a bus to the edge of the city and the superstore welcomed us with much-needed A/C and all products imaginable (cosmetics, groceries, clothes, tagines, Qur'ans, swimsuits for the more conservative Muslim women, inflatable dolphins, etc.). Most things were dirt cheap, so we stocked up. I love collecting random Arabic books so I bought two colorful children's books on birds and insects, and a book of Moroccan folklore. Shortly after returning home, Aisha went to work at the women's aerobics center and I joined her later in the evening.
   Dancing and doing aerobics with Moroccan women ended up being one of the more surreal experiences I've had abroad. When I got there I changed into my sports bra and shorts after asking Aisha repeatedly if it was appropriate to wear that. She said it was fine. As I was sitting awkwardly in the center of the empty exercise room, hijaabed women poured in through the front door and the privacy  curtain. My outfit seemed more and more questionable but within a few minutes all the women had stripped down to their spandex and began to twerk like I have never seen anyone twerk before. Aisha was blasting generic American hip-hop and dance music, Daddy Yankee, and even Paul Simon (?). As a first time guest to the place, I didn't think I would be exercising as much as everyone else but Aisha had me running around and doing squats while she yelled in French at everyone. The workout was no joke. Especially with the lack of A/C or anything resembling air flow, the place quickly turned into a sauna. Exercising turned into belly dancing after about an hour and, naturally, everyone was laughing at my total ineptitude.
  My plan was to go to Fes today (a 45 minute train ride) but my friends got sick and cancelled. It ended up being good for me because I finally had a chance to explore the old city by myself.

The first place I went was Bab Al-Mansour, the most famous Meknes bab. I saw that one of the large doors was wide open so I wandered inside I found that it was an art gallery. Most of the pieces were pretty mediocre, but it was a nice, cool place and I ended up meeting the curator and a couple of his friends who were incredibly kind and invited my for Friday couscous next week.

After chatting with them for a while, I wandered into the spice souq.

The next place I came across is one of the most famous tourist destinations in Meknes: Madrasa Bou Inania. I saw the sign for it, but it looked completely deserted so I wasn't sure if it was open. A man took notice of me taking notice and invited me inside. I had to pay just over a dollar and I was thrilled to get to see it by myself, without any tourists ruining my pictures...

  I was also able to wander through the halls on the second floor which were once the very modest dorms for the students studying here (dated from 1350).

There was not a soul in the entire place. The guy who welcomed me came in for a minute to offer to take a picture of me, but then disappeared again after saying I could go up on the roof.

Immediately after leaving the madrasa, I met a guide who took me around to all of the shops for different crafts. Silver craftsmen, silk weavers, and woodworkers. Their art is unbelievable and some small pieces can take over twenty days for them to make. They were all happy to show me the machines and tools and didn't try to sell me anything (which I'm not used to in Arab countries).

The first picture is of my guide. You can see next to him all of the silk which is strung down the road in order to weave into different widths. At the end of twenty or more feet of silk there is a young boy with a small machine that twists it all together. The strands are in the middle of the path and practically invisible so I'm probably going to clothesline myself on them one of these days.

The other artisans are for silver (I really like the bird the guy is grinding) and cedar. The woodwork is amazing and the last picture is of a man who makes a Gnawa guitar-like instrument.
This is the main part of it:

Gorgeous. Here are some more pictures of the day. I saw so much but I was only gone for a couple hours. Maybe next weekend I'll see the Saharij and the prison for the Christian slaves.

 

Since the day after I got here I've had a low-level cold that I thought developed because of the extreme temperature and air differences. This morning it became clear that I definitely caught something. It is so frustrating to spend five days in a new country and not feel good for any amount of time. Then again, if this is the sickest I get during my time here, I'll consider myself very lucky.

There are upsides to being sick in a foreign country, though. My host family is taking good care of me and I get to learn about Moroccan cold remedies. My host sister, Aisha, had me lay down on the couch while she rubbed rose water all over my face and head for about 30 minutes. She soaked cotton pads with the all natural, aromatic water and put them over my eyes like cucumbers. Rose water is a really light astringent, so it has a nice cooling effect. I felt so spoiled but I wasn't about to object because it was so relaxing. I said to her in my broken Darija:
!غادية تكوني أم مزيانة بزاف
She laughed, but it's true.

For my runny nose, they suggest drinking and snorting some olive oil. I'll be trying that tonight.

Today was my second day of classes. The class schedule is really confusing, but since we use the same room for all of them, I just sit at my desk and see what subject comes up next. Today we had Arabic Media, FusHa, and a round table discussion (complete with mint tea and cookies). We discussed al-hijra, and were required to research it beforehand. I stupidly thought that meant to research the Islamic Hijra, so I came prepared with information about why the Prophet Muhammad left Mecca for Yathrib. We ended up discussing immigration (another meaning of hijra) in the Arab world and in the U.S.
The author of my textbook (Al-Kitaab, the foremost Arabic textbook), Mahmoud Al-Batal, is in Morocco and came to AALIM. He sat in on all three of my classes (with me and six other students). It was intimidating at first, but he's so helpful and patient. At the end of classes, I ran into him downstairs and he said repeatedly that my Arabic is excellent. That means so much to me and it's such an honor to get a compliment from someone like him.
All of the professors at AALIM are enthusiastic and really kind. I've learned so much in just a few days. Even though classes are only from 9-1, the rest of my day is filled with homework, and when I'm done with that I speak with my host family in Darija. Or I should say they speak in Darija and I do my best to follow. I'm so excited to see what my Arabic will be like by the time I leave Morocco.

More pics of the markez

Day 1

I had my first experience of being able to confront a stranger for talking about me in Arabic. It was pretty much the most satisfying thing ever. I was eavesdropping on three Saudis in the security line at Frankfurt. They mentioned the girls in front of them (including me). I was standing with my back to them, but they must have known I had checking them out (trying to figure out if they were Yemeni).
In Arabic, one of them said- "Look at this one, she's not scared of me."
"Which one?" his friend said.
"This one, the girl with the green eyes." He said.
"What about me?" I said to him. They were all shocked and his friends started laughing at him.
"She speaks Arabic!"
I told them I was sorry for listening to their conversation, but they said they were the ones that were sorry for talking about me.
We talked about Morocco and Yemen a little bit. They were really nice and ended up being on the same plane to Casa Blanca.

During the flight I met Hisham, a Moroccan man returning home. He spoke to me in perfect fusHa and told me where all the best beaches in Morocco are. After talking for most of the flight, I asked him about the situation between Morocco and Western Sahara. I later found out that this is considered a sensitive topic that maybe shouldn't be broached, but I am glad I learned that afterward because he had some interesting things to say. He considers it part of Morocco because of the strong similarities between religion, language, culture, etc. We talked about the Polisario and the difficulties surrounding Western Sahara's independence.
We finally got to Meknes at 4am, exhausted beyond description. We slept in the riad at the college, which looked to us like an Orientalist painting come to life. We met our host families in the morning. I got introduced to bastila and my host family couldn't be nicer. More on that later...

My first blog. I leave in eight days to Meknes to study at AALIM for two months. Since it will be an intensive program aimed at teaching me Darija (the Moroccan dialect) and improving my FusHa I will be (or I like to think of myself as) more of a full-time student than a tourist, but I still hope to visit different cities on the weekends. I am planning trips to Al-Hoceima, Chefchaouen, and Merzouga for the beach, scenery, and sand dunes, respectively.
Looking through the guidebooks, I realize I have less interest in spending time in the major cities of Casablanca and Marrakesh. There is so much to see there but the tourism and the traffic seem overwhelming. Every block is said to exude different European flavors-- there are areas reminiscent of Switzerland and houses that make you feel like you are in an Italian villa. So many Moroccan streets are compared favorably to those of Greece and Spain and it just reminds me of  all the reassurances I have heard about my trip: "Oh, you'll love Morocco. It's very European!" Of course, that must be why I am studying Arabic, so I can be in "European" countries.

ساكتب بالعربية ايضاً و ساستخدم هذا الblog كمورد للدارجة التي اتعلمها و اذا كان عندكم اي اقتراحات أو معلومات عن أي شيء مغربي (اماكن و أشخاص و السياسة إلخ.) خبرني لو سمحتوا!