School to home and home to school, I don't know how she does it

Still no luck with pictures. I will try again on Friday. Instead I thought I might talk about what I'm learning and my classes...

My normal schedule is class from 8:30 to 12 (with a tea break at 10:15), which is usually spent going through our textbook and doing all the classwork exercises in order. My teacher really tends to stick to the textbook, which is actually kind of good for me. We are starting on chapter seven (I am in the advanced class based on a test we took at the beginning of the program) and in my Arabic classes in school last year and the year before, we did not use this textbook so I am planning on going through the previous chapters and relearning everything - a lot of it I know, but there is also some grammar stuff that my teacher expects us to know and I don't.

Then at noon we have lunch - they have us alternate between eating lunch here at the American Language Center and at home with our host families. I prefer eating here at the ALC with all the students, because lunch at home is very quiet and usually my host family just watches TV and sleeps afterwards. They have rooms set up for us to nap in after lunch here at the ALC but I haven't had time to use them because I have been blogging and trying to upload photos or doing homework. The food is also a little better for me to eat here - my host family has meat with every meal and while I'm not a vegetarian like Rachel Mulbry (another student who is begging me to put her in this blog), I am definitely not used to eating a lot of meat and I would prefer just vegetables and pasta or bread or something, which is what we usually have here at the ALC. When we eat lunch here, we also have tea around 3, but I usually avoid the mint tea because I am already very sick of it (it is so sweet!).

Then we have two more hours of class in the afternoon, and then home. My teacher assigns us usually two or more hours of homework a night, all from the textbook except for sometimes memorizing a dialogue. I am so thankful for my host sister because I need her help a lot, probably more than I should be using her, but I should get better with time. We just finished learning hobbies ("al-huwayiti," I think) and some boring grammar. Our textbook has DVDs with "Maha" and "Khalid" talking about their families and school and whatnot. Sometimes their dialogues are hilarious - we just watched one with a friend ("sadiqa") of Maha's who said that Maha goes from New York University (where all students of Arab descent in the United States go, apparently) to home and home to NYU and she doesn't know how Maha does it (?). The dialogues are always very dramatic and serious.

So that's really all I can write about... besides this morning I saw a woman in a burqa (covers everything except the eyes) riding a scooter which was interesting. So check the Google photostream sometime after Friday morning and you might see some more photos. Thanks for reading!

Top ten things I wish they had in Marrakech

10. bagels
9. sandwiches
8. movie theaters (apparently they exist but I have never seen one... less than three weeks to HP 6)
7. street names (I have no idea how people navigate)
6. a public transportation system less intimidating and expensive than the taxis
5. parks
4. better electricity (my iPod speakers don't work, blerg)
3. Canada Dry
2. Macs
1. air conditioning

Sahara

The Sahara Desert was amazing. We had to ride about an hour and a half on camels to get to our campsite, so that was incredibly uncomfortable. I christened my camel Gouverneur Morris after the Pennsylvania representative at the Constitutional Convention in 1787, and also an all-around cool guy. I took a lot of pictures and in a few minutes I am trying to upload them again. The campsite was very cool - there were eight tents with mattresses in them, but we dragged them out to sleep under the stars. We could also see the Milky Way, which doesn't happen in DC. The first thing we did when we got there was run up the tallest dune surrounding the campsite, then we had some photo shoots around sunset and after that we played some frisbee on the ground (the actual campsite was on a level surface).

Dinner was some Moroccan soup and (surprise, surprise) chicken with vegetables, which is basically the only thing I have eaten this entire trip. I am pretty sick of Moroccan food already. Ahmed, another student from San Francisco, brought a ukulele and I learned a few songs (the little melody from "Measuring Cups" by Andrew Bird and the beginning part of "Portions for Foxes" by Rilo Kiley). Later that night we had a campfire, but the temperature was actually perfect - not too hot and breezy on the way there and cool at night. Two other girls and I tried to sleep in the dunes, but we came back down with the rest of the group after a while.

We woke up at 5:30 the next morning to watch the sunrise, which was not quite as pretty as the sunset but still very cool. We went back on our camels right after breakfast - I was on a female camel on the way back, who I named Margot after the character from "The Royal Tenenbaums." Then we went back to the hotel we stayed in on Friday night to shower and swim, which was heavenly. Later that afternoon we had to leave for a different hotel about half the distance back to Marrakech. We toured the "casbah" (the old walled city) - where several movies were filmed, including the snake pit from the first "Indiana Jones" movie and parts from the beginning of "Gladiator." It was quite neat, but I can't really describe it without pictures - check out http://picasaweb.google.com/k.zitelman sometime for some photos.

Then unfortunately I was very sick on Sunday night/Monday from eating over the weekend, so the bus ride through curvy mountain roads at 70-ish miles an hour was not pleasant. However, I was able to listen to Andrew Bird's "Fingerlings" and "Fingerlings 2," which were both excellent. I am about halfway through "Homicide" and I will resume reading "A People's History of the United States" when I am done with that. I think I have gotten over whatever sickness I have, so I am feeling a little more confident. Yesterday I had some crepes at a French restaurant here in Marrakech, but they were not nearly as good as Crepes a Go Go back in DC. The schedule for the next few weeks is just straight classical Arabic from 8 to 5 (with about three hours off in the middle of the day). On July 14 we leave for Essouira on the Atlantic coast, where we will live in a hotel for a week before returning to Marrakech for an exam and then a day of concluding activities. We are going to have some guest speakers next week after school but I am not sure what they will be talking about.

I am usually online between 1 and 2 in the afternoon my time (8 and 9 a.m. EST) so if it is easy for anyone to be on Gmail, feel free to Gchat me any day except July 1, 3, 8 and 10. I heard Billy Mays died... how heartbreaking. Any other news from home? I would love to get some more emails in addition to the frequent Kensington news updates (ha) from the parents.

At the souk

Of the week I have had here in Marrakech so far, the other students, host siblings and I have been to the souk at the "Square of the Dead" three times. It gets its name from a period in history during which enemies of the state and rebels would be executed and then their heads would be displayed in the square. Now it's busy pretty much all the time. The square itself is very big and open, with shops and cafes lining it and a view of the Koutoubia Mosque (the biggest one in the city). It is populated by tourist attractions mostly: snake charmers, monkey handlers, orange juice sellers (we have been told not to accept juice because the cups are not washed), henna artists and whatnot.

At the edge of the square, the souk (marketplace) begins. It gradually turns into a very narrow alleyway with shops back-to-back on both sides. After a few minutes, you have pretty much seen everything - leather purses, shoes, counterfeit sunglasses and soccer jerseys, scarves, etc. All the shops offer virtually the same prices and goods, so I don't really like staying there for too long because it's rather claustrophobic. You have to barter for everything, but now that I know Moroccan numbers it's not so hard. So far I've picked up a few gifts for friends and family and a shirt, camel shoes and necklace for myself. It seems like it's the place to go at night. There's really not a lot to do here in Marrakech. Most of the economy is supported by tourism, but this is not a city I would recommend as particularly historic or tourist-friendly. Lots of locals go to the shops as well, so it's not quite as easy for shopkeepers to take advantage of the other students and me especially when we bring our host siblings with us.

One of our favorite pasttimes here is spotting Inappropriately Dressed Europeans (IDEs) and taking stealth pictures of them while shouting "ya haram" which means "forbidden." We have also developed a system of "rajul" ("man") and "imra'a" ("woman") points that we give each other when someone does something stereotypically male or female. It's not very funny but somehow we always laugh at each other whenever someone brings it up. Well, time to try again with pictures... this computer lab is not as well-equipped as I was made to believe, but at least it has air conditioning.

Zagora, pool hall, and MSA

Hello from Zagora! Yesterday we drove about ten hours through the Atlas Mountains, which were really cool. The landscape is very versatile and varied - we passed through mountains covered in trees that looked like they belonged in North America, and there was also a desert section that was pretty flat and bland. There was also a section that looked like the Grand Canyon - it had huge rock formations and a very twisty road. We spent last night in a hotel, which was incredible because it had air conditioning. It also has a pool! And delicious food. I have lots of pictures but uploading is a lot of work to make happen. Hopefully I will be able to when we get back from Zagora on Monday. There are about 30 up already on picasaweb.google.com/kzitelman, mostly of the plane ride and drive home. I have around 300 to upload.

I also meant to write a post last week about going to a pool hall in Marrakech but I never had time. I went with about 15 other students and host siblings. We probably stayed for about three hours; it was a lot of fun. I had my first "asir banan" (literally: banana juice), which is kind of like a banana milkshake and very tasty. We actually spoke darija (the local dialect of Arabic) to one of the waiters and he kind of understood.

On Thursday, we started lessons in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). I moved up to the advanced class, and my new teacher is much more focused than my teacher for darija classes. I find MSA much easier to make sense of so I am glad we are done with darija.

The schedule for today is visiting a village in the morning and then camel riding in the afternoon! I think we are leaving around 4 or 5 to go to another town. We will leave there on camels for an hour-ish ride into the Sahara Desert, where we will sleep in tents (or outside) for the night and then return on the camels tomorrow morning. Someone is bringing a frisbee so there might be some ultimate on the dunes. Pictures will be taken but who knows if they will be seen by you all. I am very excited for my first camel ride! Next blog will probably be Monday or Tuesday when I get back.

Driving

Driving in Marrakech is crazy. The most common cars are hatchbacks and these sort of minivan-station wagon combinations, mostly Renaults and Peugeots. I have seen one Hummer and it was shocking. The roads are mostly very straight, and none of them have names so I'm not sure how people navigate.

Our host mother is very intense about driving. She goes way over the speed limit most of the time and when she wants to pass, she leans on the horn - which never has any effect - until the other side of the road is clear (or not clear, she doesn't really care) and then zooms by the slower car, moped, bike, pedestrian or horse. Most of the scooters are Yamaha Mates, which look a little bit like old Vespas but not nearly as pretty or well-made. They also don't go as fast as the cars, but scooter drivers do frequently run red lights. Apparently traffic tickets are very expensive here, but that does not seem to be a deterrent from running lights or stop signs (they are rare, most cars just turn without stopping).

Crossing the street is another story. Just as cars don't normally stop for red lights, pedestrians are either ignored or unnoticed entirely. Horn-honking is basically a perpetual sound here. One must sprint across the street, stopping between mopeds, cars and trucks to avoid being hit. It's very frightening.

Parking, however, never seems to be an issue.

Tales from the airport

Hello from Africa! After nightmare upon catastrophe upon fiasco upon disaster getting here, the city is really interesting. On Thursday morning (still in DC) we went from our hotel in Arlington to Reagan National Airport to arrive around 8:15 for a 10:40 flight to JFK Airport in New York City. After checking our baggage, we went to our gate and waited. Our plane was delayed until noon. We waited more, and it was delayed again until 2 and then again until 5, and then only after 5 was it canceled entirely. Then our group leader, Christine, had to run around in a panic to try to get us onto another flight. (I was traveling with 10 other students; the other 10 had already caught flights to New York.) Our plane to Casablanca left JFK at 8:45, so it was unlikely that we would make it but there was still an 11 p.m. flight to catch. Finally we got on an 8:30 flight to JFK, landing there around 10:40. So then we had to run (literally) through the airport to the Royal Air Maroc check-in area with all our carry-ons (no one even tried to worry about our checked luggage, which just came yesterday). We had to beg them to hold the plane, then we ran through security and to the gate, getting on just in time. The flight to Casablanca was sevenish hours, then we had to wait about five hours in that airport for a flight to Marrakech. Then we finally got there, without our checked bags of course. Unfortunately I have to log off now to go back to Arabic class, but I will try to write another entry tomorrow or Wednesday with pictures. Ma-salam'a!