to begin with...

So people, this is so you don’t have to email me constantly about my whereabouts in the beautiful Maghreb (Morocco). I will try and post as often as possible, with pictures because I know you are clamoring for them, but internet access, and my willingness to sit around in internet cafes will be limited. That said, welcome to my blog!

I have just finished my first weekend with my host family, who is adorable, by the way. My father is Al-Hajj Mohamed and my mother is Hajja Fatima, the “Hajj” means they’ve done the pilgrimage to Mecca. My sister is Soukaina, she’s a bit younger than me, and my brother is Amine, who is a few years older than me.

Their home is the ground floor of an old building in the Medina (old city) of Rabat. It has a roofed central courtyard and rooms around that: 4 salons, a kitchen, and the toilet. A salon doesn’t have an American equivalent; it’s more like a living room that doubles as a bedroom. There are sofas up against the walls with pillows and a table in the center of the room, with wheels usually. During the day, the family uses it as a living room, and at night the pillows come off and blankets come out. One room is the dedicated living room, with a TV, and that’s where we eat all our meals (yes, with the TV on). At night Soukaina sleeps there. Amine has his own room, but both he and Soukaina use it as a living room; it has the computer. I get my own room, which is nice. It’s the formal sitting room and is usually closed (?). It’s an enormous room and I don’t use all of it.

We have a Turkish toilet. Yes, it is a hole in the floor. Before you cringe in disgust, know this: it’s very hygienic and easy to use. If you can aim. But think about it, how many times have you had to scrub the toilet and really hated it? This is way less to scrub. It’s been better since a roll of toilet paper magically appeared a few days ago. You flush the toilet by pouring sometimes violently depending on the amount of ahem, material.

The shower at home is just a nozzle, added recently I think, in the wall above head level. Moroccans here don’t shower every day, or every other day: they go to the hammam once a week. Soukaina says she goes twice a week in the summer. The hammam is the bathhouse. And I LOVE it. I told Hajja I wanted to build one in the US. The hammam Soukaina and I went to on Saturday is a few blocks from the house in a nondescript building near the main road through the medina. We brought a few buckets, plastic stools, and toiletries. We paid 10 dirhams (8 dirhams = $1) to get in, and 1 dirham to rent a few more buckets. Once inside the hammam proper, you fill up the buckets and stake out your space within the room. Oh yeah, and you’re naked (undies only) with probably a dozen other women. What followed was a confusing and variable series of soaping, scrubbing, shampooing, and rinsing. The best part is the scrubbing. Imagine this: rubber sandpaper. It’s a mitt-type thing, and you just scrub the top layer of your skin until it comes off. Brilliant. To make a long story short, we were in there for about 90 minutes, and I emerged cleaner than I have ever felt. But I was tired for the rest of the day. My family nodded knowingly, saying “Ah, hammam.” The heat takes a lot out of you.

I hung around the house after the hammam and then went out later with Soukaina and Amine and their friends, who we dropped off at a taxi, then strolled about for an hour. I practiced my few words of Arabic. Oh, I forgot to mention, we speak French at home. Well, we speak French when we need to communicate, and then they speak Arabic the rest of the time. Darija is the name of the Arabic dialect spoken here.

We got back around 10pm and then had dinner. Nights are late here, and dinner is past my usual bedtime. “Tea” falls at my dinnertime. Meals involve a lot of bread and the family telling me to “Guli, guli!” which means “Eat, eat!”.

More on classes later, because today has been our first real day of classes.

Pictures later too. Be patient.