Hotel Annakhil Rabat

... and I actually understood 85% of it. I was able to respond and ask questions. It was truly amazing. A small victory on my ongoing battle with the large army of Arabic.

I am getting much better at speaking, Zineb understands me and I can explain most of the things I want to say in Arabic. Poor Zineb has to listen to me fumble through Arabic. She is very supportive. I need to ask her if I sound horrible accent-wise. I realize that I have an American accent but ...

Highlight of the day, me acting like a heroine. Low point of the day, the fact that I had to be a heroine. It’s actually less heroic than it sounds and it has to do with pomegranates. We’ll get back to that later.

High point, I shaved my legs. Low point, being blind, in an upright shower, with a new razor. I look like I victim of some heinous crime.

I neglected to mention in previous posts that the bathroom at Qalam wa Lawh is, for lack of ...

... and revel in the glory.

So on to lanes. Let’s say that you are heading north on a one lane road. That empty little section on your right is street parking and there are a few cars utilizing this space, but your thought is along the lines of, “Jeez, why are most of the cars parked on the sidewalk.” This makes you a foreigner to your marrow and you may never recover. Please do not vocalize this question to either a Moroccan or a ...

... if you were a poor white hick, living in squalor, killing squirrels in the back forty, you were always at least better than black people.” See, we all need that security. I might have exaggerated the speech a little, but you all seem smart. Well, I am going to explain how making fun of the class idiot comes back to haunt (both me and Mr. Sedaris), but first, I am going to show how racism bites you. Here I go, YOUR BLACK NEIGHBOR WENT TO HARVARD ...

... by then popped a wheelie. The woman said in English that the man was crazy (he had a passenger). I said “hooa majnoon.” “He is crazy.”

They laughed harder. I understood enough darija to get the gist, “She doesn’t know where she lives but she knows ‘majnoon.’” Honest-to-goodness, no joke. Like ‘crazy’ and the landmarks near where I’ve been staying a few nights are inexplicably connected.
Rabat, Morocco landerh

School started a week ago today. Amina and I go to school together, and we take the bus, which has a tendency to get a little crowded at times. And let's just say, people in Morocco don't shower as much as we do, so the scents can be a little.....different. We took our placement test Monday morning, and after being up all day Saturday and Sunday and completely overwhelmed on Sunday, the test was a bit ...

... we got into the wrong car. We bought 1st class tickets which guarantee seats, but got in the 2nd class section by accident. 2nd class seating is first come, first serve, so seats aren't guaranteed and no one wanted to risk standing for a 3.5 hour train ride (there isn't much difference in price, so it is worth it). Anyway, the train took off as we were trying to find our seats. It was hot and crowded, about 16 of us were ...

... you "Office Space" fans, it reminded me of that scene in the beginning of the movie, when the guy is commuting to work, stuck in traffic, and is passed up by an old man with a walker. :-) The children's hospital was a lot more difficult than we thought it would be. Two of us are working there. When we arrived, we were somewhat overwhelmed by the general scene. The hospital campus is very big and sprawling, and there are people everywhere, milling ...

We did not visit Rabat (the imperial capitol of Morocco) since our next stop was Meknes we went toward Rabat to intersect with the major highway heading east. The countryside was beautiful and many wild flowers grow along the highway leading into the vast farmlands of northern Morocco.

Second time's a charm. The train drops me off right in the center of Rabat and from there I easily find a nice inexpensive hotel, no WiFi or anything fancy like that, but back then it was a novelty and I was hardly addicted to it. What I DO have are about a 100 CD’s I picked up from the WOMEX conference, which are extremely heavy, so I set about listening to them and downloading anything I like ...