Fes

View of Fes from the tannery

This weekend we had our excursion to Fes, a city two hours away from Rabat via bus. Our host dad told us that Fes was the cultural center of Morocco. Our program leader described it as being more conservative than Rabat with a more traditional approach to life. So, with our duffel bags and very modest clothing, we set out for Fes on Saturday morning.

We didn’t have loads of time to meander around the city itself, but we did spend a long time in the Old Medina. The Old Medina is like our medina in Rabat, only pushed to an insane level. It’s bigger and more like a maze than the medina in Rabat. This medina tries to get tourists lost so they spend more time and money.  Speaking from the perspective of someone who is directionally challenged, I would’ve been in there for weeks if we didn’t have a guide. I mean, we had a guide and I still got lost 3 times. I’m not kidding.

Our first stop in the medina was at a restaurant near the Blue Gate of Fes. We ate on the roof of the building after climbing up a 4 story narrow staircase. I still don’t know how they managed to bring us our food. I ordered the camel burger. That’s right, I had a camel in burger format. Contrary to what I’d heard, it tasted nothing like chicken. It was a little tougher than normal hamburger meat but I can’t really describe the taste. It had a very unique tint to it. It was good, for sure. It's not lost on me that I've eaten a camel here before I've ridden one.

My camel burger

After lunch we trekked around the old medina. It was disorienting, but completely worth it. We visited the tannery (Fes is known for its leather), the old mental institute that sits in the center of the medina, and a large conglomeration of copper-workings with a lot of smaller stores in-between. Not to snitch on gifts, but I got Evan the one present he asked for, so older sister mission accomplished. The best part about the medina was probably how people would walk through the narrow streets with their donkeys just about every five minutes. It made you feel pretty cultural.

After we all made it through the medina, (why yes, the group did have to wait for me to find my way yet another time), we went back to the hotel and had iftar. My host mom does it better. Just saying. After dinner the group went to the hammams in Moulay Yacoub, a city known for the healing power of its sulfur water.

The next day our group visited Volubilis, a ruin of an ancient Roman settlement. Gaius Octavius extended the Roman Empire into Morocco during the Pax Romana, and that’s how we got Volubilis. Lauren, one of the girls on this trip, is very into Roman history and she was running me through the elaborate past of the ruins while we visited. She pointed out the aqueducts, would say whether the tile had Islamic or Roman origins, and she actually cried when she saw the bath houses. I was not that well-informed about Volubilis before going, nor am I incredibly passionate about Roman History, but I definitely could appreciate how gorgeous it was. What was even more impressive was how magnificent it was on such a massive scale. It was pretty amazing.

This week has been a pretty intense week language-wise. They really push through the material. One week ago we were going over simple nouns and now this week we’re doing irregular plurals, possessives, and verb conjugations. In fact, I have a test tomorrow over all of this. As you can imagine, I’m slightly less prepared than I want to be.

One thing that we did this week to work on our Darija (regional dialect) was a facilitated language learning activity. We had to find around 6 locations by asking different civilians where things were.The problem is that Morocco has a certain custom about directions. Basically, if you ask where something is and the person doesn’t know, they make it up. So we got quite a few detailed directions to absolutely nowhere. Our Language Learning Partner was being very obedient to the rule that he shouldn't help us, so we pretty much trekked across the whole city. We walked past one building five times before we realized it had been what we were looking for. Such a fun time.

The secrets of mint tea

In other news, I have seen two semi-riots and four fights in the past couple of days. It was explained to me that this happens during Ramadan because people are reacting to the lack of nicotine. It’s a little nerve-wracking to see, but the police are on high patrol during the month so I've never seen it get to an intense level.

But by far the most important thing that happened this week was that my host mom showed me step by step how to make mint tea. My life is absolutely complete. There is nothing more I need to do here. Well, except learn how to make all of this food. That might take a while.

I Wasn't Good at Fasting

Ramadan has begun.

I thought I knew this city. Since Ramadan hit, everything has changed. Not exactly in a bad way, but in a “is there a restaurant still open where I can eat lunch” kind of way. The city completely shuts down during the day. There’s very little honking, the streets are quiet, and it’s incredibly hard to find an open store. The stores that are open have turned all of their lights off. The will leave the door slightly ajar, so as not to draw attention, and then those exempt from Ramadan know that it's open. Then at night, everything wakes up. I didn’t know that there were so many teenagers here. Masses of them emerge at night and fill the restaurants and parks. The honking that was blissfully absent during the day returns with a vengeance, and the community comes together to celebrate their successful day of fasting. It’s pretty awesome.

                I did try fasting and made it all of two days. The first day I tried the traditional Ramadan fast that everyone does. No food, no water. At first, it wasn’t nearly as hard as I thought it would be. I don’t generally drink that much in the first place, and I just had to wait a little later for dinner. But around 5, I was really starting to feel it. Iftar starts at 7:45 or right after the call to prayer. I was skyping my brother at the time when our host dad called us to dinner. I stopped Joshua in the middle of a sentence, told him that I was far too hungry to delay dinner any longer, slammed the computer shut and pretty much bolted to the table. Our host mom had 2 tables set up with all of this gorgeous food out. I recognized only the dates, everything else was something I’d never seen before.

               

                My host sister, Manal, told me that since I had been fasting, the first food I needed to eat was a date. In Muslim culture, dates are considered to be the healthiest food you can eat, which is why you use them to break the fast on a day when you had no nutrients, I’ve got to say, I’m not a huge fan of dates. I thought they would be another Moroccan food that vastly improves overseas, but it wasn’t the case. I just don’t like dates. Everything else was absolutely amazing. Everything was very new to me, but it was still incredibly good. Completely worth the wait.

                Anyway, fasting wore me out so I went to bed at 9:00 and was woken up at 2:30 am for suhoor. This is the last meal that can be eaten before the sun rises. At 3:36 the canon goes off which signals the end of eating and the beginning of the fast. The suhoor consisted of beef and cauliflower plus the ever-present Danon. Neither of my roommates wanted to try fasting, so it was just me and my host family. It was a really lovely meal but it was far too early in the morning. I went back to bed around 3.

                The next morning I felt very dehydrated and sick. I was contemplating calling the program coordinator and asking to stay home. However, with the amount of Arabic we go over in a day, I didn’t think I could afford to lose any class time. I was really determined to make it through fasting for a week though, so I did a water fast that day, where you can drink water but not eat. My roommates and I went to see the Mausoleum where Mohammed V and his two sons are buried. There were men on horses guarding the grounds, a lot pillars in rows, and these white and green buildings that held Mohammed V and his sons. I thought the most interesting part was the Koran reader in the corner. Multiple things in Rabat are named after Mohammed V (a tram stop, a university, the airport), so it was interesting to see another way Moroccans commemorated his life.

                That evening I told my host mom over (a once again delicious) iftar that I have gotten sick this morning. Apparently, if you get sick you aren’t supposed to fast. So it was kind of decided for me that I had been kicked out of the fasting program. I didn’t really know that I had been removed until I woke up at six the next morning and realized no one had knocked for suhoor. So that was that. I felt ill again anyway, so maybe it was better to stop fasting altogether. Consistently being sick in a foreign nation is not my idea of a fun time.

                So I ate breakfast which my daily dose of Laughing Cow Cheese. There is an obsession with Laughing Cow Cheese over here. I have yet to see another kind of cheese. I’m a little obsessed with it, mainly because we eat it every day at almost every meal. I think at college I’m going to stock my dorm room with Laughing Cow Cheese and mint tea. I don’t think that I could live without them at this point. Anyways, after breakfast my roommates and I headed off to school.

                So I lasted 2 whole days of Ramadan and I feel like such a weakling. I was going for a week and just didn’t get close at all. I thought I gave it a nice effort, but it turns out that I'm not all that great at fasting.

                In other news, I finally found Balghas in my size. Yes, in order to do so I did have to get the men’s shoes. They are incredibly comfortable. The best way to describe them is that they are like slippers that have a harder flat bottom so they double well for walking. I told Manal that they looked kind of life elf shoes. She didn’t know what an elf was, but once I looked it up and showed her, she laughed and agreed.

 

The World Cup is still going strong. I watched Algeria’s painful loss to Germany and the US losing to Belgium. Not a good week in terms of teams I was rooting for. I love watching the games with my host father. In the US versus Belgium game, it was a lot of "USA" chanting and the return of the good old Washington DC hat. I also took some photographic evidence of how much of a community affair each game is. 

Paris and I at the ruins

              Our group trip during this week was to the Chellah ruins. I’m not the best at Roman history, but it was explained to me it’s the ruins of an ancient Roman settlement. There was some kind of earthquake and the city was abandoned in favor of its neighbor, Sale. The ruins were pretty amazing. There were no posted rules anywhere, so people were walking wherever they wanted and climbing down into the crevices. It was so different that the strict reinforcement the US has on many historical items. I was just beginning to think that there wasn't any enforcement of policy at all, but then, the security system emerged. It was a guy with a whistle. What a fun country. The Chellah ruins get a thumbs up from me.

               But the best part of my week was definitely when I went to a Moroccan TGI Friday’s. Because it's Ramadan, the crowd started to appear around 9:30/10:00. I went with Lauren, who is another girl in the program who had just been to the restaurant the night before. The Moroccan TGI Friday’s is a party. The music is blaring, every chair is full, and there is this huge Karaoke screen taking up the front wall.

               

Lauren, my karaoke buddy 

                I never really had a dream of one specific thing I needed to do in Morocco. I didn't have one overarching experience I had hoped for going into the program, but I discovered it on a Wednesday at 9 pm in a packed restaurant.

                Singing karaoke in a Moroccan TGI Friday’s was and is my dream. I couldn't keep still once I realized how much I needed to be a part. Lauren, who had sung the night before, went and got the karaoke book. There was a section for Arabic songs and a section for English songs. Flipping through, I noted the vast amount of Billy Joel tunes. I picked “Only the Good Die Young." It's one of my favorites and it was the last song he sang on his recent tour stop in St. Louis (which was the first time I ever saw him sing live). It all came together so nicely. Although the song isn't really in the best place for me range-wise (I have to shift octaves every once in a while) I had to do it.

               

                The DJ handed me the mic and I got up and stood in between two tables packed with Moroccan guys. One guy asked “What are you singing, America?” I told him, and he replied “Interesting, America, interesting.” Then the DJ actually told the crowd that I was “America” and the song started.
                 It was the most positive karaoke environment I've ever experienced. There was constant commentary and yelling and shouts of "America!" I have found my place in Morocco. It was amazing. I was followed by a man singing the most flamboyant version of “Don’t Stop Me Now” that I’ve ever heard. It's my place.
            
                Anyway, that's what's been happening recently in Rabat, Morocco. Tomorrow is America's birthday and then we depart for Fes. No one here really considers America's birthday to be a big deal (we have our first test on Independence day, for goodness sake). I'm planning on walking around in red, white, and blue and singing every patriotic song I know.