Last days in Marrakech

We just took our final exam here at the American Language Center in Marrakech after returning from Essaouira yesterday (there were a few near-collisions due to our risky driver). This may be my last entry from Morocco - my schedule for today is lunch, leave for Rabat with my host family to attend a wedding tonight, seeing Rabat tomorrow and returning to Marrakech on Friday morning. I will have Friday to pack and then depart at 4:30 a.m. Saturday, arriving in DC around 7:30 p.m. It is extremely hot here in Marrakech, averaging aroud 110 during the day. I think I'm ready to come back home to air conditioning.

Now we are off to lunch - for my MD friends and family, see you soon, and for others, I will see you when I see you! Expect a gift and/or postcard. So long.

More from Essaouira

Essaouira is superb. Today I had breakfast at the hotel, Arabic class from 8:30 to noon, then a three-hour lunch break to order shawarmas (chicken, cabbage, mayo garlic sauce, tomatos, onions, etc. wrapped in pita-ish bread) and eat them on the beach. I read a lot of "A People's History of the United States" on the beach also, but the sand gets everywhere. It's really fine and sharp, and also incredibly windy on the beach so it really sticks to your body. Then after that we had two more hours of Arabic, I came back to the hotel for a while, and then I went shopping with some friends and got a load of gifts and stuff for myself - gnaoua music from the 2006 Gnaoua festival and Moroccan reggae. I think Jimi Hendrix and Bob Marley used to hang out a lot here. Shops are always playing Bob Marley covers. There's also a rumor that Jimi Hendrix wrote "Castles Made of Sand" about the beach here, but I'm pretty sure that's false because it was on the "Axis: Bold as Love" LP which came out two years before he visited Morocco for the first time. He was definitely here at some point, however. And Essaouira is not that big so there's a pretty good chance that I have walked the same streets that he did, which is pretty cool. Also on the beach there is a man selling coconut slices, which I buy every time I go there - they are unsweetened and so tasty. Until they get sandy. 

Unfortunately I have not seen any movie theaters, so seeing Harry Potter 6 even in French won't be happening. But I am very excited for the next few days. Essaouira is a lot of fun to walk around and eat in (today I had a delicious Nutella crepe made by my new friend Ahmed the crepe man) and we have an entire day off (the only one) on Sunday. I think we are required to go to a group soccer game on the beach but aside from that I will be spending the day shopping, swimming and reading on the beach. 

Today I got a super cool wool hat that's red with a Moroccan green star on top - the current flag is red with a hollow green star in the middle, but it used to be a Jewish star actually. I'm not sure when it changed. I've seen a few really cool pieces of pottery with Hebrew on them. Also beautiful bowls with fish painted on them, but unfortunately pottery would be too difficult to transport. Today we walked through the spice/fish section of the medina here for the first time. There are all these places that sell "Viagra Morocain." I have no idea. 

I have to go now and study for my Arabic test tomorrow. I hope all you loyal readers are having as much fun at home as I am here. Only a week until I come back to the States! 

Essaouira!

After a long bus journey broken up by the breaking down of our bus and our hanging out on the side of the road for two hours in the afternoon, we are finally in Essaouira (pronounced Ess-ooh-weer-a). It was definitely worth the trip. Our hotel is at the very edge of the medina (walled old city) surrounded by shops and restaurants. The streets are all cobblestones and really narrow. Essaouira is very much a tourist town, but the cooler weather is much appreciated - it's very windy here and in the 70s and 80s during the day and chillier at night. There is also delicious fish and other foods here that aren't really present in Marrakech. I am actually able to post pictures now because the hotel has reliable wifi, so pictures from today (and several other days) will be on http://picasaweb.google.com/k.zitelman.

Yesterday after school a few other students and I went to a women's Quranic school in Marrakech. Some of the women there had been studying and memorizing the Quran for years. Hearing it sung was a really cool experience.

After that our host family let us invite our friends to a pool party ("hafla") at our house. The pool had just been filled up that morning. There was only about two feet of water but it was nice and warm, and we taught the Moroccan host sisters how to play drip drip splash (like duck duck goose but with water). Lots of fun.

Our hotel here is amazing. Somehow my new roommate Mariam and I lucked out and got one of the suites, so our room is huge and super nice. We have a giant picture window that we can throw open to feel the wind coming off the Atlantic. There isn't a beach below us but there are a lot of rocks, so the sound of waves is really loud. I can't wait to sleep with the window open tonight.

Well pictures are now up on the Google page, so I hope some of you loyal readers can take a look. I'm off to dinner here at our awesome hotel. I will try to write another blog in a few days - thanks for reading! (Oh also stuff here is really cheap - lots of cool wooden boxes and other typical Moroccan things, so if anyone would like anything special please let me know so I can bring it back for you!)

Hello again. I'm writing during our break between classes in the morning and intercultural dialogues in the afternoon - our last one is today, the one I have been in hasn't been that great but hopefully it will pick up today. Yesterday we had a really interesting guest speaker here who is the grandson of a former slave. He talked about the history of Morocco and the ethnic and cultural divisions between Berbers and Arabs here. He speaks seven Moroccan languages (variations of Berber and Arabic dialects) in addition to English and maybe some other ones.

On Thursday night we had an evening of gnaoua music, which actually originated from slaves in Ghana. It's about 80 percent percussion, and there's also a guitar-ish instrument that I forgot the name of. We had giant dance circles and lots of fun with the band.

Tonight is a birthday party at a Moroccan restaurant and I will be sleeping over at another student's house. Tomorrow we go to Mhammid, a village in the Atlas mountains, to do some community service (I think we are painting a school) and then hiking and a picnic in the mountains - no class! Monday is a regular day of class in the morning but I think we will be visiting a woman's coop in the afternoon, which should be really interesting. Then Tuesday morning we leave for Essaouira.

Yesterday I finished "A Street in Marrakech" after eating some delicious cous-cous (although my host mother always complains that I don't eat enough of it). Several chapters were on festivals and museums that I unfortunately won't be able to visit. A lot of the rest of the book chronicled the author's relationship with the other women on her street. So now I will resume my pursuit of "A People's History of the United States" and also "The Arab-American Handbook." For example, did you know that neither Iran nor Afghanistan are technically Arab countries?

Well, I don't have a lot more to write about. Tonight should be fun, tomorrow should be interesting. It is still very hot, obviously - I can't wait for that cool Essouira Atlantic ocean breeze. Our hotel is right on the beach!

Top ten things about Marrakech

10. Hawai tropical and Schweppes Citron soda
9. lunchtime at the American Language Center
8. cous-cous
7. the souk at Djemma el Fna
6. silver jewelry and leather stuff
5. Arabic classes at the ALC
4. lack of pedestrian safety laws
3. mint tea
2. the wool jacket I got at the souk
1. nice people

[some new pictures up on http://picasaweb.google.com/k.zitelman]

In reading news, I have finally finished "Homicide" which was a superb piece of investigative journalism. I have moved on to "A Street in Marrakech: A Personal View of Urban Women in Morocco" by Elizabeth Fernea. It's so interesting to read because I actually know a lot of the places Fernea writes about - not the street that she lives on but the school she sent her children to during her year in Morocco (it's right on the way to the American Language Center, where my Arabic classes are) and where she bought her djellabas, the long dress-type clothing that men and women wear, in the Djemma el Fna, the square and souk where the other students and I usually go when we have a night off.

Last night we went to Catanzaro Pizza. It was delicious. Unfortunately we also stayed out until about 11 and I hadn't done any of my homework, so it was a late night and I have been exhausted today. But the pizza was delicious, and before that we went to what I guess would be the Moroccan equivalent of Gap - "Zara." We are also planning a dinner out on Saturday to celebrate the 18th birthday of one of the students here.

I am writing here just after lunch, which today was lentils, rice, corn, Moroccan meatballs and, of course, bread. I think I will have to do some bread detox dieting when I get home. But before lunch we got to visit a synagogue across the street from the main building of the ALC. There are only about 200 Jewish people in Marrakech now, but there used to be a very sizable Jewish population - since post-WWII it has been decreasing steadily though and there are very few left in the entire country. The synagogue looked basically like an American one, although it was built for about 30 people.

Yesterday and the day before we also had guest speakers after school - Tuesday was a woman who spoke about non-governmental organizations here and yesterday was an imam and the female equivalent of an imam who talked about Islamic education here. The philosophy here in Morocco is that education and upbringing are the school's responsibility, not that of the parents.

I have to use the outdoor wifi here to upload pictures, and it's a little over 100 degrees and - as always - sunny here, so I am going to sign off now before I melt. Ma-salaama.

Arabic Arabic Arabic

More computer frustrations means there is a good chance of no more pictures going up before I return to the US (I was able to get about 100 posted on http://picasaweb.google.com/k.zitelman). Today I finally caught up on all the blogs I follow, each of which is about either typography or music.

As for Arabic classes, we are getting a truckload of homework every night - it usually takes me around three hours. Our schedule this week includes some "intercultural dialogues," which is when groups of four American students and five or six Moroccans learning English talk about... well, I don't really know. We have one today so we'll see if it gets interesting.

Lately I have started doing my homework around 8 in the evening, when it gets nice and breezy outside. I have found a few good homework background albums: Iron & Wine, Fleet Foxes and the Submarines over the past few days.

Not much else to report from this end. In a week, we leave for Essouira, which I am very excited for - so I'm pretty much just counting the days until then. I'm listening to Wale to remind me of DC; unfortunately his album came out recently and I will have to wait until I get back to the States to listen to it. Nothing else new here. We might get thunderstorms this weekend?