learning Arabic, homestay, etc.

Monday: September 20th

I have decided to blog via microsoft office, and then when I get to the Cyber cafe, I can just copy and paste my entries. So these entries begin today.

Today, Monday, was my first day of Arabic classes. Arabic is a very challenging language. Mostly because it lacks a whole lot of vowels. There are five of us students in our teacher's "stagette" as we call it. We are all having trouble with pronunciation and memorizing the words and I think it's because in romance languages the vowels provide some sort of cadence. And without the vowels it's just a group of harsh sounds that you have to remember. Well, little by little, I guess. I would say I currently have a vocabulary of about 30 words consistently. That includes knowing numbers 1 - 10. Yesterday was when I arrived at my host family in a province outside of Fes (can't say exactly where). Yesterday was just a lot of empty, meaningless words and pantomime. Today was also a lot of meaningless words and pantomime BUT also some real language happening too! This is VERY exciting. It's amazing what you are able to convey with just a few words. I am in no way functional in the language and my host family is incredibly gracious, but little by little. After all, it has only been one day.

So now that I have moved in with a host family we can talk about some of the "cultural stretches" I have been partaking in. First let me start out by saying that I have been in Morocco 6 days and am not sick! Yay!

Cultural Adjustments
So the biggest adjustment is, of course, using a Turkish Toilet (TT). The TT is a squat toilet. It is also made of porcelain. You might call it a kneeler instead of a throne though. You can google image search it but basically, it's two raised parts for your feet and then everything else is on a downward slope with the hole. So, on your left side, about a foot and a half off the ground is always a faucet. Below the faucet is a bucket. So while you are doing your business you turn the faucet on to a trickle. when you are finished, we westerns use toilet paper, but a true Moroccan uses the water from the bucket to clean themselves. Then, if that's the method you choose, you pat yourself dry. And then "flush" the toilet with the water from the bucket. The water pushes everything down. There is no mechanics involved. All of this is done with flip flops. Flip flops that are not worn anywhere else in the house.

Today I had the pleasure of taking my first bucket bath. it actually was pleasant. I hadn't bathed in three days and this worked just fine. The bucket "bath" is done over the toilet. You are still wearing your toilet shoes only this time you may balance a stool over the toilet and sit while you bathe. So, before you shower you heat up hot water in a kettle. Then you mix that water with water from the toilet tap. You are not using the same bucket as the toilet bucket. This is a bigger, cleaner, shower bucket. Then you sit on your stool, with your flip flops on, over the toilet, and kind of take a sponge bath. It wasn't difficult at all. I even washed my hair. For that there is a cup or something so you can scoop water to pour over your head. Conditioner is kind of a pain in the butt for this reason, because it'd hard to rinse out when you don't have any kind of stream of water running on it. So in Morocco, at least in the poorer parts where I am, people may shower twice a week. It is expensive to have the butane to heat up the water so people take baths about twice a week at home and once a week they go to a place called Hammam, which is a bath house that women go to for a real scrub down. It costs a few Moroccan dirhams to get in, but then people stay for hours and use all these tools to exfoliate every inch of their body. You can even pay to have other people scrub you down. The hammams are, of course, seperated men/women. I haven't been yet, but apparently it's nice. Especially in the winter when it's cold.

More on the differences next time I'm at the cyber cafe. I have a running list of things to talk about.