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.