I decided Saturday would be a good day to try to upload pics. It turns out that while my internet is helpful and relatively speedy, it does not agree with pictures. I shall try this again somewhere at some point. But for now, you all must be patient. Not fun, I know, but I am quite sure you will survive it!
On the menu for today is a walk through the old city with Karen (that I met in Lisbon) and her host sister and then maybe watching a soccer game with Selma (I'm horrible at fake names) and *her* host sisters.
Week 1 of classes left me tired, and not perfect at everything we're doing, but still feeling like I wish it would go faster. Having to learn a new alphabet for a language makes the process so much slower! And when our professors pronounce words, it's easy to her the long and short vowels/consonants. Not so much from the dvds we work from. Good practice and all that, I'm sure.
Saturday, June 4, 2011
Friday, June 3, 2011
cool
This evening I wandered around the medina a bit with Malika. She got Amira's watch strap fixed (guy did it in 2 minutes and was less than a dollar - people are cool about easily making things usable for longer here) and then bought some chicken. Yep, you may have guessed - whole, live chicken. She didn't kill them, the guy did. But just easy as that, picked out 3, one at a time. She'd kind of point, the guy would grab one, twist its wings together so it wouldn't move, weigh it, tell her a price (I gotta get better with numbers!) and she agreed. Then, slit it's throat, put it upside down in the blood-drainer-thing. Then we walked a bit more to see where they're going to have a bunch of the concerts for the next week (google fez sacred music festival, it's maybe 10 min from my house on foot and I could hear it from the roof this afternoon), bought some soap and noodles, and went back to pick up the chickens. All nicely plucked now, of course. I wonder how long they last like that. At home, it's supposed to be 2-3 days after buying, but clearly these are a BIT fresher....
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Apple, apple, apple!
(Make sure that was in a dancy/singsong voice.) My host family has bread with butter & jam for breakfast. With super sweet tea. Not surprising, not unusual, but I am used to fruit with breakfast. Usually a banana. I have actually been putting butter on my bread in an effort to have breakfast get me through til lunch time. This morning I had to go get a notebook because I didn't bring one (assuming they'd be cheaper here, and I think they are) and once I secured two - using only Arabic - I decided to look for fruit. There was a place that sells fruit juices and stuff, and had a ton of whole fruit. I asked (French this time) if I could just get an apple. She seemed surprised, but said ok. Then she looked for a prettier one, washed it for me, and gave it to me. Before I could even ask how much she said I didn't owe her anything. 'Are you sure?' 'Yes, yes' and I suddenly forgot the word for thank you in Arabic but found it after a second and she was just like 'no big deal' (assuming the words matched the body language.) It looks like they have good juices, too. And they're like 1.50 for a fresh whatever. I will certainly have to go back to try them.
Where I am
I have sthg I wrote on my netbook, but the internet's not connecting right. So a quick note on where I am living. Go to google maps, type in fez, morocco. Once there, type in Batha. I am not too far from the bus stop (comes up on my screen with a bus symbol and on the left says 'Batha bus stop'). A lot of the other students live in this area, too, so we tend to get to/from school together. Taxis cost the same as a the bus if there are 3 of you, and it's much quicker and more comfortable. And that way walking home there is no problem. Class time!
Monday, May 30, 2011
First day of class!
Today went by pretty quickly. There are a CRAZY number of American students at the school during the summer. I heard that there will be about 100. The first session started today, the second starts in 3 weeks. Some people are only staying 3 weeks, but more will be here for 6. It seems like not many are sticking around for as long as I am. I don't think it's going to be a place that I will hang out, though, because today at 6 when I was done with class it was tough to even walk around outside, with few to no places to sit. I don't mind, my main goal isn't to meet other Americans anyway.
I have two class sessions per day, like I said before I think. There are 2 different instructors, which is kind of nice because they have different styles. Today it didn't feel much like they were on the same page with what we should do, but it worked out anyway. Hopefully it will be a bit smoother in the future, though. The first one told us what to expect and all that, and the second one pretended not to speak any English as the start of class. There was one girl who kept translating everything he said at the beginning. I think that she was trying to show that she understood, but I mostly found it annoying. (And if she ever sees this, sorry, it's true!) Luckily the girl next to her leaned over and whispered that she thought he was going for immersion, so the translator stopped.
Like I kind of expected at first, I have a definite advantage over the others from learning to read the alphabet in Tunisia and the studying I've done since then. Things like vowel and consonant length distinctions don't surprise or bother me. For example, there could be a word ba and baa that have the exact same vowel sound except that the second one is longer. Same goes for a word like hamock or hammock. Actually, the words for pigeon and bathroom are distinguished (phonetically) by just a double consonant in the middle.
I'm typing this from the roof of my host family's place and will post it tomorrow. I did my homework here and really like being able to come up here. It's quieter, there's a nice breeze, and of course a gorgeous view. I finally paid attention to the sun, too and realized that the windows of my room face NE, as does the view from the roof. My host mom is really upset right now because there is a sort of bed & breakfast next door that has decided to build a patio on their roof. Nice for guests - awful for her and her privacy. Normally, she walks around in the house however she wants and won't feel able to do that with peeping tourists 10-20 feet away. The new patio is higher up, too, so the 3-4 foot wall on the roof won't help. What makes it worse is that the whole medina is a UNESCO world heritage site. In theory, you can't make changes to the outside - it's all protected. In practice, if you pay off the right person you definitely can. And if you are a small hotel/B&B, you probably have that money.
I have two class sessions per day, like I said before I think. There are 2 different instructors, which is kind of nice because they have different styles. Today it didn't feel much like they were on the same page with what we should do, but it worked out anyway. Hopefully it will be a bit smoother in the future, though. The first one told us what to expect and all that, and the second one pretended not to speak any English as the start of class. There was one girl who kept translating everything he said at the beginning. I think that she was trying to show that she understood, but I mostly found it annoying. (And if she ever sees this, sorry, it's true!) Luckily the girl next to her leaned over and whispered that she thought he was going for immersion, so the translator stopped.
Like I kind of expected at first, I have a definite advantage over the others from learning to read the alphabet in Tunisia and the studying I've done since then. Things like vowel and consonant length distinctions don't surprise or bother me. For example, there could be a word ba and baa that have the exact same vowel sound except that the second one is longer. Same goes for a word like hamock or hammock. Actually, the words for pigeon and bathroom are distinguished (phonetically) by just a double consonant in the middle.
I'm typing this from the roof of my host family's place and will post it tomorrow. I did my homework here and really like being able to come up here. It's quieter, there's a nice breeze, and of course a gorgeous view. I finally paid attention to the sun, too and realized that the windows of my room face NE, as does the view from the roof. My host mom is really upset right now because there is a sort of bed & breakfast next door that has decided to build a patio on their roof. Nice for guests - awful for her and her privacy. Normally, she walks around in the house however she wants and won't feel able to do that with peeping tourists 10-20 feet away. The new patio is higher up, too, so the 3-4 foot wall on the roof won't help. What makes it worse is that the whole medina is a UNESCO world heritage site. In theory, you can't make changes to the outside - it's all protected. In practice, if you pay off the right person you definitely can. And if you are a small hotel/B&B, you probably have that money.
Questions?
I just posted two things that I wrote over the weekend, so ask me questions and I will answer them.
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Slowly, slowly
Things are getting better already. The first day (and the following morning) the about-to-leave student, Jamie, wasn't around at all. She had a farewell dinner for her program that went late, then slept late. But it turns out that she is really nice. After the initial shock of seeing a new student walk unannounced into her host family, she cleaned up her room, and made it so I could put some stuff in there. She packed up one of her suitcases, so there is some room on the shelves. Wednesday the rest of her stuff will be out, so I can put all mine away and banish the suitcase.
I've been able to ask her a lot of things, like 'how do you say x' or 'how do you get this message across?' Seeing her talk with them as well gives me an idea of the level of words she does/n't know and how they get around it. As always, lots of gestures, no fear of looking silly, and plenty of sound effects all help. Even the mom said today that I'm learning more words. Ha, starting from 2-3, it isn't hard to add more! With Jamie on her way out, too, there are some things that she isn't taking with her, like a different travel guide. I have found it useful for the different language section in the back. They complement each other fairly well. Plus in her program, they take 2 content courses (culture/history stuff) and a language course. She chose to take the local dialect since she doesn't study Arabic at home and came more to experience everything. From the class, she has a textbook that I also got to flip through and pull out more basic words to add to my gestures and noises.
Right now Jamie is writing a paper on arranged marriages in Morocco. She's gotten a wide variety of information about them, from those who are (or were) in them to those that say only rural people, and maybe just 30 percent, still do them. Today we got more information from a guy that she knew already that owns a cafe close to our house and a snack stand at the language school. I'm not sure how old he is, but I'd guess 35-40. It was fun - she speaks some darija, but obviously it's a complicated topic. He speaks some English, but again not enough for the topic. So I played interpreter, with some conversation directly between them, and he could understand me well enough to correct anything that I might have forgotten or severely misunderstood.
Basically, arranged marriages definitely still happen. From what I can tell from her notes/reports, they are more common with poorer people and more rural people (of course, those can overlap.) The man often has some say, sometimes a lot, and the woman's say depends on a lot of factors. Even when they both are allowed to agree to it, the families have to agree as well. I think it goes back to times when marriage was more about the money and connections than anything else. In some areas, it still seems to be.
All of the young people she talked to are happy to wait. They are not in any rush. They all say that a man needs to have enough money first. The guy today added that this shows he is responsible. 'Enough' varies widely, of course, and while he insisted that it doesn't have to be a lot, he himself owns two places and seems fairly comfortable, but isn't married (yet, inchallah.) I only saw her talk to one girl, who was with a bunch of younger guys, but from what Jamie has seen there tends to be an age difference of at least 10 years. Yikes. I know that she talked to a 20 year old about to be married to someone 16 years older, and a 22 year old that has a kid and is either divorced or separated, I forget which.
A common thread is that they all agree that family is the most important. If you don't have money, your family will help you. If you get married really young, that's fine because both families are around to help you out, give you tips, help take care of things while you finish school. Even if you have a kid relatively younger, you might still go to college (according to the guy today... I wonder how many actually do.) If you have more kids than you planned on (natural birth control methods are the only ones ok w/ religion, but others are used by some people) then your family is expected to help you make ends meet. As you might guess, some families are better at putting this into practice than others.
Divorce is seen as a last resort, but sometimes necessary. The guy today said that if people get divorced, it tends to be after just a couple of years and that after 28 (an American he knows) it's basically unheard of. Traditions and expectations vary by region as well as by class, so in one area he heard that girls get 'married' for the first time at 13-14 (first period), and if it sticks, cool, if not, no big deal - she'll find a 'real' husband later. The point is to have a kid and show you are a woman (gross oversimplification, yes.) The younger people in the city said that they think it's normal for girls now to get married closer to 25-28, and the girl there thought that 25 or 26 was the right age, but they were all hanging out at a cafe - not exactly a traditional thing to do, but with a high level of unemployment, a relatively common reality.
Classes start tomorrow, so I'm enjoying bumming around right now. Looking over my textbooks, the travel guides, Jamie's stuff. Lazing about because I can. Playing spider solitaire on the computer, snake on my new phone. And writing to let you all know that I am still alive and well. I have had some slight allergies since Lisbon, but nothing else yet.
I don't know why still, but the time zone in Morocco isn't what I thought. I am 6 hours ahead of central time, not 5. But the 2-3 sites I saw had Morocco 5 hrs ahead. And someone else's iphone said the same. We asked a Moroccan on the train from Casablanca to Fes if the whole country shares a time zone as the answer was a confused yes. We explained why & he was confused, too. His only guess is that they just started doing summer time a couple of years ago, so maybe the sites weren't taking that into account. It's the most logical explanation, but still weird. Why wouldn't the iphone ppl and others just get it right?? The world may never know...
I've been able to ask her a lot of things, like 'how do you say x' or 'how do you get this message across?' Seeing her talk with them as well gives me an idea of the level of words she does/n't know and how they get around it. As always, lots of gestures, no fear of looking silly, and plenty of sound effects all help. Even the mom said today that I'm learning more words. Ha, starting from 2-3, it isn't hard to add more! With Jamie on her way out, too, there are some things that she isn't taking with her, like a different travel guide. I have found it useful for the different language section in the back. They complement each other fairly well. Plus in her program, they take 2 content courses (culture/history stuff) and a language course. She chose to take the local dialect since she doesn't study Arabic at home and came more to experience everything. From the class, she has a textbook that I also got to flip through and pull out more basic words to add to my gestures and noises.
Right now Jamie is writing a paper on arranged marriages in Morocco. She's gotten a wide variety of information about them, from those who are (or were) in them to those that say only rural people, and maybe just 30 percent, still do them. Today we got more information from a guy that she knew already that owns a cafe close to our house and a snack stand at the language school. I'm not sure how old he is, but I'd guess 35-40. It was fun - she speaks some darija, but obviously it's a complicated topic. He speaks some English, but again not enough for the topic. So I played interpreter, with some conversation directly between them, and he could understand me well enough to correct anything that I might have forgotten or severely misunderstood.
Basically, arranged marriages definitely still happen. From what I can tell from her notes/reports, they are more common with poorer people and more rural people (of course, those can overlap.) The man often has some say, sometimes a lot, and the woman's say depends on a lot of factors. Even when they both are allowed to agree to it, the families have to agree as well. I think it goes back to times when marriage was more about the money and connections than anything else. In some areas, it still seems to be.
All of the young people she talked to are happy to wait. They are not in any rush. They all say that a man needs to have enough money first. The guy today added that this shows he is responsible. 'Enough' varies widely, of course, and while he insisted that it doesn't have to be a lot, he himself owns two places and seems fairly comfortable, but isn't married (yet, inchallah.) I only saw her talk to one girl, who was with a bunch of younger guys, but from what Jamie has seen there tends to be an age difference of at least 10 years. Yikes. I know that she talked to a 20 year old about to be married to someone 16 years older, and a 22 year old that has a kid and is either divorced or separated, I forget which.
A common thread is that they all agree that family is the most important. If you don't have money, your family will help you. If you get married really young, that's fine because both families are around to help you out, give you tips, help take care of things while you finish school. Even if you have a kid relatively younger, you might still go to college (according to the guy today... I wonder how many actually do.) If you have more kids than you planned on (natural birth control methods are the only ones ok w/ religion, but others are used by some people) then your family is expected to help you make ends meet. As you might guess, some families are better at putting this into practice than others.
Divorce is seen as a last resort, but sometimes necessary. The guy today said that if people get divorced, it tends to be after just a couple of years and that after 28 (an American he knows) it's basically unheard of. Traditions and expectations vary by region as well as by class, so in one area he heard that girls get 'married' for the first time at 13-14 (first period), and if it sticks, cool, if not, no big deal - she'll find a 'real' husband later. The point is to have a kid and show you are a woman (gross oversimplification, yes.) The younger people in the city said that they think it's normal for girls now to get married closer to 25-28, and the girl there thought that 25 or 26 was the right age, but they were all hanging out at a cafe - not exactly a traditional thing to do, but with a high level of unemployment, a relatively common reality.
Classes start tomorrow, so I'm enjoying bumming around right now. Looking over my textbooks, the travel guides, Jamie's stuff. Lazing about because I can. Playing spider solitaire on the computer, snake on my new phone. And writing to let you all know that I am still alive and well. I have had some slight allergies since Lisbon, but nothing else yet.
I don't know why still, but the time zone in Morocco isn't what I thought. I am 6 hours ahead of central time, not 5. But the 2-3 sites I saw had Morocco 5 hrs ahead. And someone else's iphone said the same. We asked a Moroccan on the train from Casablanca to Fes if the whole country shares a time zone as the answer was a confused yes. We explained why & he was confused, too. His only guess is that they just started doing summer time a couple of years ago, so maybe the sites weren't taking that into account. It's the most logical explanation, but still weird. Why wouldn't the iphone ppl and others just get it right?? The world may never know...
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