Marrakech

I have found the only hebebe I care about. His name is Marwan, he is five years old, and his parents are the caretakers for the building I live in. Every time I pass him on my way out the door, I’ll ask him “Lebes?” and he’ll reply “Lebes.” We’ve been doing this for about 4 weeks now. I eventually worked up to asking him for his name and his age. Then I met his brother, who seems to be about as old as me. He speaks English very well, and I told him that his little brother was absolutely adorable. He then called Marwan out of his room and into the hallway, and told him to give me a kiss on the cheek. I died. I have found the only hebebe I need. He’s one of those five year olds who rides a plastic tricycle around the lobby and makes the car noises while he does it. Or he will throw the ball at the wall as hard as he can and chase it around until he catches it. What a cute kid. I asked his brother if I could take him home with me and he said “my mother probably wouldn’t like that.” I definitely couldn’t fit him in my suitcase anyway. Oh well.

I’m getting the point of have a daily example of how klutzy I am. We live on the 2^nd floor of a 4 story building, where the ground floor is considered the 0 floor. One morning, the caretaker of our building was mopping 1^st floor, (one floor below mine but one before I get to the ground floor.) I stepped off the stairs and slid a little. I did the windmill arms to keep myself upright. He looked very concerned and did the stop-sign hand that’s kind of double as a “do you have your balance” and I gave him the “I’m good” wave, the “thanks for being so concerned but I totally got this.” I painstakingly walked over the incredibly wet floor, and got to the next set of stairs. I was unaware he had mopped these as well. I put one foot on the stair, and watched in slow motion as my foot swung vertically into the air. I smashed backwards into the top stair. It was not fun. I now have five very colorful bruises because of it. When I got home that night my host family had a good laugh over how all of these accidents seem to happen to me. It's just a gift that I have.

Our Arabic class during break

We've still been hitting the Arabic grind hard. Next week we have Eid so there won't be class until Thursday, meaning that we've have about 2 days of class left. We've been speeding through rather quickly. One of my favorite language disparities that happened this week had to do with my host family and some glass coke bottles. In the Oudayas there’s a café that serves Coke in glass bottles with the words “Coca-Cola” written in Arabic on the side. I thought that was the coolest thing in the world, so I down a coke just to have the souvenir. I asked some of the other members of the group for their bottles as well. Anyway, I brought these bottles home with me, and they sat on my shelf for about a week. When we returned from Marrakech, I asked my host father where they were. He said something along the lines of “Sellway” and I thought he was saying “Sale,” like the city right next door. I figured this meant he had thrown them away and there was some kind of dump in Sale. I later asked a Moroccan friend and he said that “Sellway” is the word for garbage. Incidentally, the city of Sale is sometimes called “Sellway” by outsiders because they think it’s a dump. Either way my coke bottles are gone so I’m going to have to go back and down some more Coca-Cola. Ugh.

On my 3rd glass of orange juice

We went to Marrakech this week, and I really enjoyed it. We only went to the medina and the Majorelle gardens, so we didn’t get an extensive view of the city, but I did enjoy the parts we visited. I spent like 8 hours in that medina. The shopkeepers there are incredibly impressive- they can converse in multiple different languages on the turn of a pin. Although it’s kind of disheartening when someone immediately begins the conversation in English because then you just know that you reek tourist. Great. I also had like three glasses of orange juice there. There have got to be 50 orange juice shops, all selling 4 dirham glasses of orange juice. It was amazing. I’m also almost done with gifts, alhamdulilah. I think I have something for every family member, except my father, because he is impossible to shop for.

Marrakech at night

I wore a new jellaba in Marrakech, and I got 27 comments on it (a boy in our group counted). Random shop owners would be like “beautiful jellaba, Fatima.” I have no idea if they were trying to lure me into their shop, or if they were just mocking me, but I thanked every single one who said something. I felt so good about that jellaba when I left. Like, according to the shopkeepers in the Marrakech medina, I pretty much had the most beautiful jellaba known to man. Yeah, the more I think about it, the comments probably weren’t genuine. Ah, whatever,

 We went back to the medina at night, and it was incredibly cool. There were snake charmers and monkeys, contortionists and thousands of lamps. It had totally transformed since that afternoon. The change was amazing.

One stairway leading to the house

             The next day we went to the Marjorelle gardens. It had been the former home of the Yves Saint Laurent. There was a whole garden segment with extensive trees and flowers and sharp contrasts of blue and yellow. It was absolutely beautiful. There was also a large blue house in the center of the garden. He patented this specific shade of blue and used it throughout the garden. It was such a gorgeous shade of blue. I can't get over how absolutely stunning it was.

Anyway, we’ve got exactly one week left before we head back to America. I would like to take the next few lines to question why on God’s green Earth I am being flown back through New Jersey. Why am I not going to Chicago? That makes no sense to me. We have a boy here from New Jersey, and I was explaining that there is probably only one flight to Iowa because Iowans don’t tend to go to New Jersey, so if I missed it I was screwed. We got into this whole tizzy about New Jersey, where I learned that no one says “New Joisey” and that only one member of the “Jersey Shore” cast is from New Jersey. He also tried to claim Billy Joel, but I firmly believe that New York gets to lay claim to Billy Joel. But still, why not Chicago? If I get stuck at an airport, I do not want it to be in New Jersey. At least if I was in Chicago, I would know exactly where to go if I got stuck.

I’ve also started to put together a list of food that I really need to eat in the 14 days I have before I head out for college. Mom, this section is specifically for you. My list of foods that I miss: sweet corn, raspberries, bacon, ham balls, actually just anything made with pork, sesame chicken, sweet corn, Qdoba, pad thai, cheesecake, and sweet corn. The repetition of sweet corn was intentional. I need to get my hands on some sweet corn. Really badly. We talk about it a lot on this program due to my love of Iowa, a

nd the more I talk about it, the more I realize I would really like some good old Iowa sweet corn. A boy from upstate New York said that they had pretty good sweet corn, and I told him he had no idea how good sweet corn could get unless he went to Iowa. I also need some Dr. Pepper, because I haven’t had that for 5 weeks. That’s longer than when I gave it up for Lent this year, and it was willingly when it was for Lent.

When we started this program, they told us that we were citizen ambassadors for the United States. I feel like I am doing a much better job acting as a citizen ambassador for Iowa. Because I can rave about Iowa for hours. Is there a state that has nicer people, cuter towns, and better sweet corn? No, there isn't. I've had four people tell me that they would like to visit Iowa after hearing me talk about it. I never thought I’d be sitting on a bus preaching about how much I love corn mazes, but that has happened more than once. I get a bit of crap about my enthusiasm, but I feel like it is my sole duty to promote Iowa’s tourism industry. So far, I’m doing a pretty good job, If I do say so myself. It’s not like a have a lot of work to do though, Iowa pretty much promote itself.

Now the group is headed up North for the weekend. I’m pretty pumped about finally getting to use some Spanish, and also seeing the Mediterranean. Hopefully I won’t trip over too much while I’m there.

I also apologize if the blog posts are pushed together in the coming days. Due to a lack of wi-fi this weekend, I'm going to have to push a couple of events together that happened quite a few days apart. Just pretend along with me.