Answering questions

K, I'm not feeling so hot this morning, so I guess it's a good time to answer questions. Several asked about the marriage conversation - the guy was speaking in French, so I was translating that to English for the girl. Every now and then, she would ask him questions directly in Moroccan, or he would clarify a bit in English.

I am sure that the chicken will last just fine, but 3 chickens and only 3 people, one of whom is an 18 yr old who almost doesn't eat... it seems like a ton at the moment. We'll see how it goes.

My classes are at a place called ALIF. It's actually a bit like the place I worked in Tunis. They mainly offer english courses, and have a bunch of centers that do, but they also offer arabic - standard or Moroccan - to foreign students. Mostly, if not completely, American students. The instructors are all Moroccan as far as I know. I have two and they both are. One teaches us for two hours in the morning, the other for 2 in the afternoon. They definitely have different styles, so it's nice to have them both. I think some of the teachers may do it as a summer job, but others it's definitely their full-time job. One of my instructors is the language coordinator, so he would be there year-round. I know there are 4-5 times as many Arabic students in the summer than the rest of the year, so I imagine they must pull in extra. Or maybe they all just work more in the summer, who knows.

I live in what I guess is an apartment. It's in a 3-story building that probably used to be a big house. We live on the top floor, there are 2 bedrooms, a big main room, and a tiny kitchen. At least the kitchen's its own room. On the roof there is what I think of as a study/relaxing room, as well as plenty of space to dry clothes. There's also a storage room up there. The bathroom is sort of separate from the apartment, but we have it to ourselves. It has a western toilet and a shower whose drain is not in the curtained off shower 'space,' but on the other side of the toilet near the sink. Unfortunately not quite the lowest spot in the bathroom (anymore?), so you get to use the squeegee the excess water into the drain. I have practice with such things from the Taos kitchen. There isn't a yard, but there are trees here and there because some people do have them in courtyards. The streets are sort of a modern cobblestone, I guess. Bricks that are laid in together. On the bigger streets they are big stones that have a very pretty pattern to them. I'll try to upload some pics sometime, I just don't know where I might. There are also poured concrete sidewalks that are sometimes funny because they look like they were 'leveled' with a rake. (At least there ARE sidewalks, unlike some parts of Austin.)

I had some cheap local chocolate last night. I don't know how it passes for 'chocolate.' It's all waxy and doesn't taste like much. Mostly left my mouth feeling like I'd eaten 5 cookies worth of oreo guts. gross. My stomach doesn't feel great today. My host mom gave me some tasty instant coffee stuff made with milk. How to explain that milk will NOT help my stomach? I just took some lactaid and drank it anyway.