Finding enlightenment while trying to connect to wifi

My last week has been one of the best. 

This last Thursday was Eid al Ash, the King's birthday. To celebrate, good ole Mohammad VI paid for a free concert series at the Oudaya. My host family and I went all four nights, because clearly we party hard. 

The first night was a flamenco group, complete with a Spanish singer and classical guitar player, as well as a fierce dancer with a wild colorful shawl. Andalusi bzzef, as one might say here. It made me really want to study classical Spanish guitar if and/or when I study abroad in Spain. 

The second night opened with Gnaoua music, which is good, but unless you're really into loud, never-ending drumming, it's very difficult to clap and dance along to. But that problem was soon fixed when the second act came on. Ribab Fusion, as they're called, is essentially a hip Moroccan funk band. The leader of the group wore colorful pants, sang, and played this string instrument that looked like a banjo, sounded like a saxophone, and was played like a fiddle. He was great at hyping up the crowd and I absolutely adored the music. My host sister and I danced and had a thoroughly good time. 

The third night was a bit of a let down after that. I got there late and the group I saw was kind of a lame pop group and the lead singer just held UK the microphone for the audience to sing along, except nobody knew the words. 

But the fourth night made up for it. The first group was called Coton d'Afrik, I think they were from Mauritania, and they played traditional music with a modern, electric guitar twist. Their pants were also colorful and glorious. 

They were followed by Sy Medhi, who is apparently a big Moroccan pop star, and after hearing him live, I understand why. There isn't really an American singer I can compare him to, maybe Gavin DeGraw or Andy Grammar, but he had an amazing voice and exuded fun and likability. His songs were super catchy but not predictable/boring, and the audience knew all the words and sang at the top of their lungs. My host sister got a picture with him afterward, and not gonna lie, I'm a little jealous. But now I can successfully say that I am into Moroccan music. Crossing that off the bucket list. Pardon me in advance if I try to make you listen to loud Moroccan drumming when I get home. At least I warned you. 

Another adventure of the week- PAINTBALL! I almost didn't go because I had class and I was afraid it would hurt too much, but my group convinced me and I think part of me definitely wanted to go. And I'm glad I did. 

The "Paintball Mini Golf Discoteque Barbeque" is as awesome and sketchy of a joint as it sounds. Actually, it wasn't that sketchy.  We got jumpsuits, helmets, and paint guns, then headed out to a fenced off yard with fake cement barriers and old car tires and sand bags. The war-zone scenery was made even more life-like by the incessant sounds of jackhammers working on the half-built apartments in the background. We essentially played capture the flag but with paintball. I managed to stay in the game for pretty long. 

If you know me, which I'm assuming you do if you're reading this, you know that I'm not one for pain or athleticism, and back home I would never have been caught dead playing paintball. 

But here, I'm trying new things and taking risks and stepping out of my comfort zone on a daily basis. In our group, we have a motto: Try everything once, and horror stories over no stories. I tried paintball, I ate a bowl of snails in the middle of the medina, I'm even eating FRUIT! Yes, that's right, I like peaches and grapes and oranges now. Shocking news to most of you, I'm sure. I'm basically a completely changed person. 

So even though this experience has been ridiculously challenging, and even though I may not have pushed myself to speak Arabic as much at home or to study as much outside of class, I still learned a lot and challenged myself in ways that were a little less conventional. And that's ok. 

I spent the majority of my afternoons/evenings this past week in the medina, accompanying my friends on their last minute shopping and doing some of my own. I'm really gonna miss the crowdedness, the aromas of freshly grilled meat and mint leaves and snails and soap and fried bread. I'll miss the nice bearded man who makes personalized key chains, the kind shopkeepers in our favorite shop that sells everything from pottery to scarves to leather to wooden boxes, and give us better prices each time we come back and bring friends. I'll miss being able to buy a delicious, fresh, filling meal of falafel and juice for less than two dollars, and buying amazing soft serve pistachio and chocolate gelato for only 60 cents. 

I'll miss taking taxis everywhere and taking the beautiful, clean tram. 

I'll miss the kind, helpful staff at Qalam. My teacher, Charafa, whom I adore, said the sweetest things to me and gave me five kisses on the cheek when I said goodbye to her on Friday. 

We had our "graduation" on Friday, which consisted of everyone giving a presentation, then we got henna, then we drank tea and ate cookies, then we got paper and wooden certificates and took pictures with our teachers, then we ate cake, then we had a dance party with these awesome drummers. Very informal and very fun. 

DJ Yousef got Bill (the 18 year old version of Ron Swanson) to dance!!

Dance party

My henna

Me and Nabibi

Me and Kali 

I did it!!

One thing that I think I'm going to miss more than I anticipated was my host family. I finally had the chance to experience life with siblings, and I'm really going to miss it. Yes, there were times when I was really tired or frustrated and I didn't want to play with my host sister, and sometimes she would win every single game and bend the rules a little bit, but most of the times I pushed those feelings aside and hung out with her and I'm very glad I did. I'll miss our games of uno and war and slapjack and checkers and hide and seek and FashionStar, our favorite game on her phone. She told me she wants to be a police woman and a fashion designer at the same time. Power to her. I wish her the best of luck.

My host mom was so selfless and kind. Her food was straight up some of the bet food I ever had, and she went out of her way to wake up early to make me tea and bread and jam for breakfast each morning after Ramadan ended. Even when she was tired or sick, she was always kind and patient with me. My host dad had such a funny sense of humor and was always very calm and friendly and approachable. He helped me a lot with my Arabic. Honestly, they were amazing, and I know that if I had pushed myself more, I probably could have learned a lot more about them and gotten even better at Arabic. But I was scared and shy and exhausted for the first three weeks, and they had a routine that worked for them. It all worked out though. If I study abroad in the future, I now know what to expect if I stay with a host family and I know how challenging and also how nice it is. It really was great having a place that I could come home to  in a foreign country, especially a place with delicious food that I didn't have to pay for :))) 

I'm writing this on our connecting flight from Madrid to New York. Only today when trying to speak Spanish at the airport did I realize how much my Spanish has deteriorated. I can understand it but I can't recall simple words, because I'm pretty sure Arabic is taking up all the room in my brain for foreign languages. Not sure if this is good or bad, but to be honest, this trip has made me question whether I want to stay with Arabic and travel to more Arabic speaking countries, but has confirmed that I want to continue to improve my Spanish and I definitely want to travel and study in Spain. 

I think, however, that since I've invested so much time and emotional distress into learning this crazy difficult language and I've already made substantial progress, I owe it to myself (and to the U.S. government for paying for all my taxis and avocado smoothies) to continue studying Arabic. I take a placement test for UMD when I get back, and that will determine whether I place into second semester freshman Arabic, or first semester sophomore Arabic. If I place into first semester sophomore Arabic, it will mean dropping a class I like and a really hard first semester of college. But, I would have learned nothing from this trip if I didn't enroll in the harder class and deal with the trade offs and challenges, just like I did here. We will see what happens. 

Either way, this experience has prepared me so well for college. It was a wake-up call to the fact that I completely forgot how to actually effectively study and motivate myself to do challenging work. I need to learn how to focus for at least two hours at a time and figure out on my own what kind of work I need to do and when to do it. I can't just go on the internet whenever I want, and I can't procrastinate my work till the night time. I need more sleep than I think I do and I work best with other people. I was able to advocate for myself and find words of advice from administrators amidst a slightly disorganized system, and now I know what being completely clueless and lost and struggling to pass feels like! Good thing that grades don't affect anything here.... 

This has boosted my confidence in my ability to make friends and have conversations with strangers and find people with similar interests as me. I'm also a lot more confident in my ability to spend extended amounts of time without my parents or high school friends. This experience was a rollercoaster but hopefully it will help smoothe the ride during my first semester at college. 

Honestly, I feel like there's a lot of pressure when teenagers do exciting things over the summer to feel deep things and have life changing experiences. I don't feel like my life has been changed, I don't feel like a different person, and I don't feel like I experienced any deep moments of enlightenment. The closest I came to enlightenment was when I was trying to connect to wifi at school but it wasn't working, and I remembered that I had homework to do. So I thought that the wifi not working was a message from God telling me to do my homework. Boom. 

However, I feel like I have learned a lot of little, very practical life lessons. Which, for a rather practical person like me, is even better. 

To sum it up, here are the overall things I have learned:

-Always pack light, meaning one suitcase, one carry on, and one small bag, and make sure none of them are overweight 

-Never take wifi, toilet paper, tissues, normal toilets, tap water, free public bathrooms and water fountains, clothes dryers, dishwashers, talks with your parents, and home cooked American food for granted

-More people in the U.S. need to learn languages, and learn then at a young age

-It's ok to struggle

-Try everything once

-Horror stories over no stories

-Never judge a person based on their Facebook profile (seriously, all of my friends here are the opposite of what I expected when I first saw them) 

-Better to challenge yourself and make mistakes early on than to slow yourself down and be bored

-Always talk to people! And don't wait too long, otherwise you will have missed your opportunity

-Food in Bethesda is way too expensive

-Orange juice and peach smoothies are delicious

-There are never enough ways to say thank you

-Bringing chocolate or cookies to someone's house as a guest is never a bad idea 

-Always offer to help with dishes

-Taxi drivers and grandmas are amazing 

-Six weeks is a perfect amount of time to be in a foreign country, anything less than three weeks is too little 

-Street food > restaurant food

-I need way more sleep than I got in high school 

-With the right attitude, any painful or uncomfortable experience can be made into something amazing. (Examples- the hammam, snails, climbing sand dunes, paintball) Just stay positive and don't think about it too much. 

And I guess I learned a little Arabic, too. 

Thank you all for following me throughout my summer and I can't wait to talk to you all whenever I next see you, because though I tried to make these posts full of detail, there is so much more that I can tell you that so can't accurately express through the Internet. I leave for college August 23rd so find me before then! 

Thanks again, 

شكرًا لكم

مع سلامة 

Sahara (for real)

Riding a camel is not quite as uncomfortable as everyone says it is, but it's still kind of uncomfortable. Every time you get on and off you jolt forward and backward and you feel like you're gonna fall. But we all made it on fine.

I named my camel Gary. He was quite the steadfast desert companion. 10/10 would recommend. Here is a glamour shot of us together:

Side note- yes, we all wore turbans. It keeps the sand out of your face and prevents your head from getting sunburned. I am proud to say that I have become an expert in turban wrapping. People even asked me to do theirs! And here are some of my shameless turban selfies.

Headphones and turbans are my new aesthetic. 

Queens of the desert, basically. 

The desert was so beautiful. The best way we could come up with to describe it is that it was like a Windows screensaver. It looked like a painting. It didn't feel real.

Our guide was really nice. He spoke French and even new a few words of English, which impressed me so much. Even people living in the middle of the desert can learn languages. I'm realizing how much English is taking over, which makes me sad because it isn't even that pretty or logical of a language. The ride was bumpy and the second I got off I could feel my inner thighs burning. But it was worth it. 

Once we got to our camp site, a bunch of us decided to go climb this really talk sand dune. I almost didn't, because I was tired and it looked really steep, but I went up at my own pace and crawled on my hands and feet and eventually made it to the top. And it was beautiful. It was too dark to take pictures, but I could see so much of the desert. We were so high up and looking down would normally have terrified me, but I just felt excited. We talked for a while but then got really quiet because we heard a voice. DJ Yous was singing the call to prayer from the camp site at the bottom of the dune, and we could hear him all the way up where we were. It was beautiful. We stayed silent and could here what sounded like people laughing and talking from far away in the desert. It was so quiet, and the sand absorbed a lot of sound so there was no echoe, but we could also hear things far away. It was beautiful. Sitting on top of that sand dune felt magical, like we could have been in any time period. It could have been 500 BCE or 1200 CE for all we knew. 

I brought my copy of The Alchemist with me on the trip. Though I didn't have time to read it, it was amazing being in the exact same setting as Santiago. I've picked out some quotes from that book that I love, and here are a few that have resonated with me most on this trip:

"Here and there, he found a shell, 

and realize that the desert, in remote times, had been a sea."

"Maybe God created the desert so that man could appreciate the date trees, he thought"

"When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better, too."

"There is only one way to learn, the alchemist answered. It's through action."

"There had been a time when he thought that his sheep could teach him everything he needed to know about the world. But they could never have taught him Arabic"

Especially that last one :)

So we came down from the sand dune and ate tagine by candlelight. We were all pretty tired so we fell asleep quickly. The stars were out but the moon was so bright that we couldn't see too many when we went back. 

However, we woke up at 4 am to head back to where the cars were parked, and by then the moon had calmed down and there were SO MANY STARS. I never wanted to look down. We got on our camels and headed out while it was still pretty dark. But as we rode, it got lighter and lighter, and we made it back just in time to see the sun rise over the sand dunes. 

We ate some more good Moroccan bread and cheese and drank tea, then we headed back to the vans for a crazy long ride back. One thing I like about the bus rides is getting to have random debates and discussions with my NSLI friends. Jack has been my main man to discuss things like that with, and we had a long talk about the future of American politics. Good thing we're both poly sci/IR majors! 

All in all, I feel incredibly blessed. I got to see a part of the world that otherwise I would likely have never even considered travelling to. I also got a pic with a camel named Gary. Pretty good weekend, I would say. 

Here is a description of the trip in Arabic:

And here is the English translation:

One more week left in this amazing place, let's hope I make the most of it! 

Sahara

Too much happened this weekend and it was too beautiful to accurately describe in words. But here is a brief summary:

On Friday afternoon, we left on a 600 km journey from Rabat to Merzouga. After a couple hours, we stopped on the side of the road and got to see wild apes. A couple people fed them peanuts, and I got close enough for a selfie:

My hair was lookin good that day, too 😎

Once we got out of Rabat, we were driving through beautiful mountains, and eventually through a plain/steppe kind of terrain.

We stopped a couple more times at gas stations and cafes, but finally made it to our hotel around 8. 

Our hotel was BEAUTIFUL- it had Berber designs all over the outside and our rooms were huge and had sitting rooms and Berber rugs and huge beds with blankets. We ate a delicious dinner of salad, chicken kebabs, French fries, potatoes with cheese on top, and melon. And bread of course.

 After dinner we went to the POOL (!) and swam around. It was so cold, quite possibly the best feeling ever after a long, hot bus ride. After the pool, Jack, Lexy, and I went up to the roof of the hotel to see the stars. We ended up bringing blankets and pillows up with us so we could sleep outside. Cameras don't do s good job of picking up stars, but here's a picture of the view before it got dark:

It was just a wide open plain. It was a little hard to fall asleep because some non-NSLI students were up there talking and laughing pretty loud, but they eventually left. The stars were beautiful and it got so quiet. The breeze was blowing and when it was dark, it was so cold. But I just curled up in my blanket and it was okay. It was a nice kind of cold.

John and me looking out into the sunset

We woke up around 5:40 the next morning, right when it was starting to get light out. Around 6:20, some other kids came up, and we watched the sun rise. It just looked like giant orange circle and it rose pretty fast. There weren't any clouds or pollution to give it cool colors, but it was still beautiful. 

We had the most delicious breakfast yet- a buffet of juice, tea, coffee, Moroccan bread, cheese, honey, jam, and scrambled eggs, the first non-hard boiled eggs yet! My new favorite thing to eat is Moroccan bread (mesmen/ragheefa) with honey and spreadable Les Enfants cheese, and a glass of mint tea. I ate a lot which was good because I wasn't hungry during the long bus ride. We spent a lot of time winding down the sides of mountains, making lots and lots of turns. 

The landscapes are so beautiful out here- so wide and open. You can see foggy silhouettes of mountains in the background and we went right in between two mountains in a little valley. I feel really out in nature here. Men are selling honey in coke bottles along the side of the road. 

It's so cool being here and seeing how simple people live. They farm or shepherd and eat the food they make, or will go into town only occasionally. And everything they have at home is hand made. 

We stopped over this oasis valley called Ziz. People bought scarves for turbans and took photos at the overlook.

We also stopped at this fossil museum because apparently fossil museums are big in desert towns? And apparently they make stones with fossils in them into plates and tables and decorative objects?? And toilets???!?!

There was a point in the drive when we switched from our nice tourist vans to these four wheel drive Chevy SUVs. Good thing we did, because we had a very bumpy ride over the desert. We went to this restaurant where we had Saharan pizza (bread with spiced chicken, onion, and eggs inside) and tea that for the first time ever wasn't mint flavored! It was gingery.

Then we listened to live Gnaoua music, which was just guys in white robes and turbans playing drums, metal castanet-type things, a stringed guitar-like instrument, and singing. 

They were really good! Muhammad and Yousef (another Qalam teacher who we call DJ Yous because he would come on our bus and jam out to Nikki Minaj and Enrique and Moroccan pop and sing on the microphone and try and get everyone to sing along and dance. He also dresses impeccably. I'm a little obsessed with him) joined the band and played along:

Muhammad was getting so into his drumming and Yousef was just dancing and jamming on the castinet things. Look how happy they are!!!!! 

After that, we took the SUVs across more bumpy sand. It felt like a crazy roller coaster safari, which reminded me of one of the bonus features in the Lion King 1 and 1/2 DVD, when you take a roller coaster across the savannah. It looked just like it.

But FINALLY we made it to our destination!! We had to wait an hour for our camels, one of the most suspense-filled hours of the trip. And because I'm evil (also because my wifi doesn't like long blog posts) I will leave you in suspense until the next blog post to find out about our camel ride! 

Selfies with giraffes, dance parties with orphans, conversations with college students

Every week, our school organizes excursions for each class and each group. This week, we got to go to the Rabat Zoo, as well as an orphanage in Sale (the city next to Rabat). At first, I thought I wasn't going to get to go on the trips with my NSLI group, due to my new afternoon class schedule. But as luck would have it, my class was scheduled to go to the zoo as well! It was really hot outside but I'm glad I got to go. Not quite as nice as the Smithsonian in DC, but it was very clean and well organized and the animals all looked like they had enough space and everything. 

Right next to a peacock

Turtles eating basically the same salad humans eat

A giant tortoise (in the shadows)

Giraffes :)

First time I saw a rhino

You can barely see it but that's a cheetah, and we saw a zoo keeper go in and groom him and feed him and it was one of the most adorable things ever

Me outside of the giant lion at the gate

On Thursday, we were scheduled to go to an orphanage but we had absolutely no idea what we would be doing there. When we walked in, we were greeted by 30 or so kids of all ages eating big platters of food, with Moroccan pop music being blasted from the stereo. We stood around awkwardly for a little until a lady said we could help her carry out dessert. The kids got plates full of chocolate eclairs and fruit!!! What?!?! They were probably of the best fed orphans in the world. We think the king has some special connection to that orphanage. Either that, or the king just really likes to take care of Moroccan kids. After passing out the eclairs (which all the kids insisted we eat) and trying to make small talk in Fusha/Darija/French (which consisted of a few words followed by lots of smiling and hand gestures and more awkward silence), we were led into a bigger room with even louder music. And we had a a dance party. 

Little kids are the best because they will go so hard when they dance and show you up like nobody's business. I danced with a girl who was a way better dancer than me in every way. It was so fun. There was one kid who was messing with all of the boys and daring them to do weird dance moves and poking them in the stomach and then jumping to the middle of the circle and showing off his own funky moves. He was by far the MVP of the afternoon. It reminded me of working at Imagination Stage/Art Ability, and how even if you can't communicate the same way with someone verbally,  it doesn't matter because you both can get down and have a dance party and enjoy yourselves. 

This week, Nabeela told us that we had to have a long conversation in Arabic with someone who wasn't our host family. Which, not gonna lie, was a daunting task. However, my friend Rebecca from my B3 class invited me over to her host family's house for dinner one night, and I got to talk with them! Her house was one of the most beautiful I had seen:

That's Rebecca in her sitting room/study space. She and her roommate got a whole floor to themselves! Her host family was so kind. Her mom was pretty typical, cooking a lot, always telling us to eat, making sure we felt welcome. She also had two host siblings in their twenties who spoke really great Fusha and English. I had been curious about how the university system in Morocco worked, so I talked to them about it! In Arabic! Turns out that university is free in Morocco, and almost everyone is expected to go to university. It's a bit more like European schools, where each university is specialized for a certain field. There's no application for university, but in order to go, you have to pass the Baccaulaureate exam for high school. They call it the "Bac" and it's extremely long and difficult. It consists of everything you studied in high school. And it's possible to retake the Bac, but only up to three times. And each time you retake it, you forget more and more of what you learned in high school. Also, elective courses aren't really a thing here. It's so different from the U.S. Some of the other NSLI students and I were discussing the merits of the different systems, all coming down to the central question of whether it is better to specialize early in a subject, or to be well rounded and know a little about a lot of different things. I personally am an advocate of the well-rounded route, and that's essentially the philosophy behind liberal arts colleges and education in the U.S. And hey, it seems to work pretty well for us! It just seems so impossible to know what you want to do by the time you're in high school and only study that for the rest of your life. But then again, that system produces really skilled and dedicated professionals. Plus, it's free...

After dinner, Rebecca and I studied a bit for our midterm (that was really our final because we both are leaving before the real final) which, after taking it Friday, I think went well! I was more confident in my spelling, I understood almost the entire reading, and I knew the vocabulary and grammar. I'm definitely making improvements. I've gotten so much faster at reading and much better at spelling, which are the two things I was struggling with the most in the beginning. I can also conjugate a bunch of verbs, which I couldn't do in the beginning. But sadly, I had to say goodbye to Rebecca on Friday, her last day. I'm very glad I had a wise, motivated, 30-something PhD student as a friend throughout this trip. It definitely put my experience in perspective. So far, one of my favorite things about traveling is meeting so many interesting people. Hopefully at college and throughout my life, I will continue to meet many more.