TGIF

The good, the bad and the ugly.

The good: Friday is couscous day!
My very first Moroccan friend is a girl I met in the internet cafe by our apartment. Noujood is 26, wears a veil and long skirts, and works every morning at the cyber. She invited me to eat couscous with her for lunch today, so I went to the cafe while she was working and we shared her home cooked plate of couscous. Yum.

The bad: no alcohol on Fridays.
We're leaving in a few minutes for Ceuta, one of the Spanish enclaves in the north, and we promised to bring along some beverages for the soiree this evening. However, since Friday is the day of prayer in the Muslim culture, all the alcohol sections in the supermarkets are closed. I guess we're bringing some juice for the party tonight!

The ugly: central heating is a foreign concept.
As the temperature gets colder and rainier, my nose is continually cold and my mood changes just as quickly from sunny to gray. It sure would be nice to have central heating, in the apartment, at school, at the office...

The Morning Commute

I swallowed a big dirty gulp of bus exhaust today on my morning walk to school. So much for a breakfast of champions.

It's usually so early in the morning that I don't pay attention to the sights, sounds and smells around me as I run out the door to school, but today my senses were on overload. Do drivers think that honking their horns endlessly when caught in traffic will really clear the intersection? Do buses always spew out such disgusting brown clouds every time they stop and go? Do the jackhammers always make so much noise when tearing up the sidewalk? Whatever happened to waking up and smelling the coffee?

Soiree Traditional at ISIC (my journalism school)

Celebrating the Beaujolais Nouveau!

Seeing BLUE in CHEFCHAOUEN

Jane and I decided last minute to join the Rabat Rotaract Club on their road trip to Chefchaouen last weekend, and it was totally worth the 6am Saturday reveille and loud 80s music during the epic car trip to arrive at the the most beautiful city in Morocco. Nestled snuggly between jagged mountain tops, Chefchaouen translated means "look at the mountains shaped like bull horns." Well, maybe not precisely, but it means something like that anyway. Unfortunately, between volunteering at the orphanage and hiking in the hills, we didn't have much free time to wander the old city. Hence, I will certainly be going back to Chaouen for another dose of the blues, to get lost amongst azure alleyways and tranquil squares bubbling with mosaic fountains.

FES continued...

Weekend in FES

Marine Ball, November 3rd

Halloween Hotties

Creativity at its best: one eggplant, a pretty pirate and the honorable US Ambassador and his wife. Also, three Theta girls together clearly necessitates a Theta kite picture. :)

I got a dress!

Jane (roommate n° 1), Liza (fabulous fulbrighter friend) and I are going to the US Marine Ball this Saturday and the only dress I brought with me from the states is a blue flower sun dress, one that is probably too short to wear in Morocco anyway. So yesterday after class, I set out to Mango in order to find a dress I would be excited to wear (no small feat.) After trying on every single possibility in sight, I was resigning myself to the idea that I was not destined to be Cinderella at the ball when the sales girls told me she had one more dress that was not out on the floor yet. Skeptical, I tried it on and, to my astonishment, I loved it! Brown, with gold beads and a low slung satin ribbon belt reminiscent of the 1920s, I'm all set to be the bell of the ball... if only I could find some glass slippers.

WORDS WORDS WORDS

If you don't know where you are going nobody can help you get there. -Kofi Annan

Some people walk in the rain, other just get wet. -Page Miller

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a common place thing, but burn burn burn like a fabulous roman candle exploding like spiders across the stars. -Keravac

C'est parti...

Smeeti Julie.
Ana min meerikhan.
Shnu smeetek?
(My name is Julie.
I am from America.
What's your name?)
So I started Arabic classes!
We had a fast-paced first lesson on Tuesday night at the Center for Cross Cultural Learning in Rabat and our second class is tonight at 6:30. During class I realized that I love learning languages, I'm just not very good at it. I think something is wrong with my mouth- I can never make the right sounds. Or maybe it's my ears and I can't hear the right sounds. In any case, it's only taken me about seven years to feel comfortable with French, so we'll see how long I stick with this third language. The class consists of my roommate Aura and our French friend Josh and me. So it's like a semi-private lesson, on speed, since we all catch on pretty quickly. I can't wait till I can actually communicate with taxi drivers and the concierge and the cleaning lady. Meezien, great!