Okay, Now I'm Here

Salam wa aleikum!

Well, you never get tired of planes…until you spend over twelve hours actually on the planes and even more time waiting for your connections. Yeah, I was kind of over it once we hit Frankfurt. But I got to watch Jack the Giant Slayer (quite entertaining I thought) and Wreck-It Ralph (Awwww), both of which I hadn’t seen before. Also, to get myself in the Arabic mood, I watched Mulan in Arabic. Unfortunately, it was in Egyptian Arabic and the majority of my time was spent thinking, ‘It’s a good thing I have this movie memorized. Otherwise, I would be having serious problems.’

But yeah, we had our layover in Frankfurt (which mainly consisted of trying not to fall asleep) and then connected through Royal Moroccan Airlines for our relatively quick three-hour trip to Casablanca.

However, we ran into a few problems at the airport. First, when I went to exchange all the money my mom gave me (which might have been a little excessive (just a bit)), they only gave me 200 dirham bills. That would be the equivalent of me walking into a Wendy’s, ordering a 99 cent burger, and then handing them $100. Yes, it’s possible. No, they don’t want to do that. So I had to tell them that I needed smaller bills. A LOT of smaller bills. The biggest issue was that one of the girls’ bags did not make it to the airport. So she had to go through the process of declaring (I made sure she did it, Mom!) and she’ll have to go pick it up in Fez when they find it. She thought that the lady said that they knew where it was, but as people who study languages know, sometimes things can get messed up in translation. Inshallah, she’ll get her stuff back soon.

                                                          The struggle.

We finally left the airport, riding a lovely bus, and then ended up arriving at the AALIM center at 3:30ish. In the morningish. We had to lug our luggage up this rather irritating hill, drop it off at the AALIM center, and then quickly grab things for an overnight (morning?) stay at a nearby hotel. To be fair, the hotel was actually really pretty and had a great view. However, the fact that I’ve had less than seven hours of sleep in the last 48 hours puts a little damper on things. But we met our host mother (who is awesome and keeps accidently speaking to us in French) and she took us to our summer home. Which is gorgeous.

                                                             Yeah.

                                                           Be jealous. 

                                                            Because this. 

                                                       Is where I'm living. 

                                                      For the entire. 

                                                         Summer!

  

Apparently I have an insane amount of host family luck (look at the Ciao Italia! blog to see why). So yeah, we’ve just chilled the rest of the day, (my roommate is Elizabeth, from the University of Texas. And is an Italian major. Seriously, what are the odds) which is nice considering the amount of travel stress we’ve been under. Our host mom and her niece cooked us lunch (which was delicious, in case you were wondering (chicken with some cinnamon like seasoning, tons of fruit, and tons of bread)).

Then we got a taxi and headed to AALIM center, mainly so that we could make sure that we know the way when we need to walk there. It’s thirty minutes, door to door, so it’s really not that bad at all. There also is a rather large park on the way, so that’ll probably become a good place to hang out as we get more situated. We then came home, chilled, ended up with two other girls coming over who are in the program and whose host sister is the niece of our host mother. Small world, right? So we had dinner (this soup-ish thing that was pretty good and some stuff that tasted like bologna, but wasn’t) and then hung out for some more. Overall, it was an unproductive, but much needed, break.

Tomorrow we have orientation with the AALIM center, so I’ll be taking lots of pictures to show y’all. Get excited! Until then!

Interesting Stories of the Day:

• So we played Monopoly with our 8-year old host brother. The game was in French, so that was cool. But more importantly, I dominated. Like hard.

                                                      It was awesome.

• Also, when we were walking through the park, there was this Moroccan guy strumming on his guitar, surrounded by all these other young folks. He was playing this slow song, but it was pretty soothing and nice sounding. And right when we were about to get out of range, I realized what he was singing. One Time by Justin Beiber. Take that as you will.

Ma’a salama!