Don’t share sharp objects with blood on them.
That’s the great advice we got from Doctor Hassar who came to speak to us about “health issues” yesterday. I think I should be able to avoid that. Yesterday was ridiculously busy so I’m trying to squeeze in a little update sesh before I have to meet up with the group for a bus tour of Rabat. I’m hanging out with the chef right now and he’s telling me about all the different kinds of bread that Morocco is known for, so please excuse me if my writing is more random than usual. I’m having a little trouble carrying on a conversation in French and Arabic while typing in English…
Yesterday we had a couple great informational sessions about Morocco in general (the health one was kind of pointless, nothing I didn’t already know) and in addition to the sharp object advice we were also told to avoid public transportation because “the drivers aren’t always as sober as they should be.” Here are a few facts about Morocco, if you were wondering:
Population: 30 million; life expectancy: 69 (vs. 77 in US); Area with Moroccan Sahara: 275 000 sq miles; Area without Moroccan Sahara: 172 000; approximately on the same latitude as the state of Georgia. The region of Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria is called al-Maghrib (“where the sun sets”), but usually people will just assume you’re talking about Morocco. Al-Machrik (“where the sun rises”) is used to refer to more Western countries (like the US). There’s tons more information but that should hold you over until I get more time to type up the rest.
In between sessions, we had a little free time so some of us decided to wander around the medina a bit. We ended up walking into a 12th century Kasbah that overlooked the ocean…I got one picture in before my camera died and I had forgotten to put extra batteries in my bag so I took a lot of mental pictures. The weather’s been really rainy and chilly lately (everyone keeps saying this is very unusual for this time of year) so we didn’t do much walking on the beach. The waves are huge right now and one of the guys in our group (who showed up with a surfboard bag, but no board b/c the airline confiscated it) wants to go out, but the program won’t let him because of insurance reasons. We’ll see who wins this fight.
After our orientation sessions yesterday, a group of us met up with some people in the Boston University group (who are also at the CCCL) to go out for a little night on the town. Traveling in large groups is definitely not my favorite thing to do and it took us awhile to get the huge group filled in on what we were doing, but we all eventually made it to a random Rastifarian bar. Yes, it is as weird as it sounds. There was live reggae music with a little Ricky Martin thrown into the mix and lots of dancing. It was one of the few bars where women aren’t automatically assumed to be prostitutes if they’re in there (though there were a few “working girls”), so it was a nice low-key place to de-stress after the craziness of the past few days. Don’t worry, I swear I’m being very safe…the guys in the group are awesome and make sure we’re never wandering the streets alone or taking cabs by ourselves.
This morning we had our first big assignment…our Program Directors, Asmael and Nawal, herded us all into a bus and dropped us off in random parts of the city with 20 dh, no map (the compass came in handy, Dad!), and no cell phones. They gave us an assignment of something to observe and report back on and wished us good luck before the bus driver closed the doors and left us with a cloud of exhaust fumes. This is where my competitive edge kind of gets in the way of things…while I made sure I was still paying attention to the hustle and bustle of the city around me, I made it my first priority to make it back to the CCCL in under an hour (they say it can take up to 2 hours…or more if you really have no sense of direction). I ended up finding the hotel in 30 mins and getting to the Center in less than 45 mins. There was definitely some speed walking going on when I should have been admiring the views, but I fully intend on walking everywhere so I’m sure I’ll make up for this little mistake.
We’ve had a couple more info sessions today but those can be talked about later…we have a bus tour of Rabat in just a few minutes so I need to get going! As always, keep me updated with whatever’s going on with you!