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.
My henna
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
