Oh man,

Strap yourself in for this.

Where do I begin in trying to catch you up on the past couple of days?

Okay, so there’s this music festival in Rabat called Mawazine. The entire city practically goes. There does happen to be a boycott happening for Mawazine because of the rising cost of living in Morocco, but apparently the concert is still really busy this year.

I heard that The Weeknd was playing yesterday, and so I bought a ticket to go see them. However, I must have eaten something bad because right when I got to the concert grounds, I felt really sick and started throwing up.

And there were no trash cans around so I had to pick a tree and try not to be too embarassed. My friends from Addictest were really amazing though. They helped me out, put me in a cab, and sent me home.

I’m safe and whole again, just a little worse for wear.

I’ve found the adolescence I always wanted in my adulthood. Growing up, the idea of going wherever I want, whenever I want, with my friends has finally come true. In my adulthood I’ve found a community thicker than the thieves who stole my childhood, who bullied it out from under me. This trip to Morocco has been a continuation of the most valuable gifts that Northwestern has given me: love, acceptance, community, and a bright future. It’s like breathing fresh air after nearly drowning.

And speaking of water, learning a new language is like learning to swim in the ocean. You dip your toes in at first, nouns and articles easy to understand lap over you in the mélange of everything else, but these words you understand. Next, you wade in, knee deep. Things are a mess the first time you actually get in up to your neck. Salt gets in your nose, the water tastes of brine and liquefies your insides so that later, when you go to the bathroom, it can remind you again how incompetent you were. The water overcame you. Language, when you just start out, is a mother of an uncomfortable experience. But next time you get in the water, you set your brow, and you try to flow with the current and pray that the waves of information don’t overwhelm you.

Learning a new language is also like brushing your teeth with your non-dominant hand. It’s an extra layer of humiliation because you know you would be dexterous if you could only change one factor in the situation. If you could just change your hand, you could get the back corners of your teeth, the sides, the parts that you know are hard to reach and need a little more proficiency. But it takes time, and thankfully, time is what I’ve got. I just have to trust that I will progress at a snail’s pace, and then one day I’ll look back and see I’ll have climbed a mountain or something. But in the meantime, it’s an uphill climb at a snail’s pace.

And I live my days on striated levels of understanding. The US, for all of its diversity, is linguistically homogeneous. I don’t mean that we don’t have more than one language spoken there, but when I say that English is dominant, it is King of the land. It is so strong that even Spanish, for all of its profusion, cannot erase the sheer dominance of English in the US. But here, in Morocco, language is like a river with lots of different dyes poured into it. Arabic is most dominant here, and after that, French, Berber, and English. However, the multilingual nature of the country means that when a Moroccan speaks, they might start in one language, and end in another. Trying to keep all these languages separate is like trying to stop all the dyes from mixing with water, and mixing with each other.

Thinking back, I don’t know that I fully realized the complexity of what my situation would be in Morocco. I look like someone who comes from the region geographically in some sense. I am learning and speaking the language of the colonizer, however. Add to this the realization that now, English is a private language for me. It’s hard not to lean on it. Today, I took a taxi via a technically illegal but ubiquitous Uber app called Careem, and the driver didn’t speak French. I ended up at the main station for leaving Rabat entirely to go to another Moroccan city. I had to take another taxi to the tramway. It was a funny experience, but it does make me go like

Because honestly I have to laugh at myself coming to Morocco to learn French. In some ways it’s honestly bizarre or brilliant and it’s become both and neither at the same time. It was the best option, and I’m proud of it. It’s just weird to experience, no matter how much I rationalize it.

That’s all for tonight. I have more to say, but I also have class tomorrow and I’m tired.

Good night!

Second day of classes!

I am in Rabat, still alive, still healthy, and I even walked my host family’s dog alone today to go buy sunscreen.

That was also a new experience. I’ve never walked a dog by myself before.

So, here’s the part where I unpack my preconceptions. As a woman, I definitely thought that I was going to have trouble here in Morocco. I thought that I would get catcalled all the time (not that it doesn’t happen in the US anyway) that I would have to wear a scarf all the time, couldn’t travel unaccompanied, that all the men I spoke with would be sexist jerks, etc, etc, etc.. Now, granted, it’s only…day four or five, and the female tourists I’ve met have definitely been more skittish than the Moroccan women I’ve met, but I have not encountered any of my preconceptions as true.

But also bear in mind that everyone thinks I’m Moroccan when they first meet me, and my experience is subjective and not true for everyone who has visited Morocco, nor for everyone who will visit it.

That being said, it’s been nice to encounter the best of my hopes and not the worst of my fears.

So, after my classes this morning and lunch at the Addictest center, Jes and I did another walking tour of the Marina and we went back to L’Oudaya with our guide, a student associated with Addictest.

He kept telling us how much he loved the fresh air of the Marina, but the wind smelled like brine and old fish to me. The best part was going back to L’Oudaya. We stayed there for hours drinking mint tea and our guide was able to teach me some good grammar.

I’m going to try to start taking note of things throughout the day so I have more detailed posts for y’all.

Oh! I almost forgot. It’s impossible to unlock my phone, apparently. Myriam’s mother said it was impossible without being in the US. BUT they got me a cheap Moroccan phone. Not a smart phone, but hey, better than nothing.

I hate my phone company.

Yesterday we had a small snafu when starting the day’s programming. A Lankey rep was supposed to come pick me up but they had a personal emergency so I ended up taking the tram with my host sister to the Addictest center. Once we got there, it was beach time!

Miryiam’s mother drove us in the Addictest car to a beach called Skirat. It was near Casablanca. The weather today was kinda cloudy, so maybe it wasn’t stereotypically perfect beach weather, but it was gorgeous all the same.

We ate sandwiches, bought some snacks, and relaxed for a couple hours. There was one snack I bought though, that really drew my attention. It was a bag of mixed, assorted nuts. It was packaged in Spain, but all my alarm bells went off.

Racist mixed nuts package.

Closeup. You can kinda see in the corner that it’s manufactured and made in Spain.

You know, it’s one thing to know that anti-Blackness is global, to study it in class and watch it manifest as Colorism, but it’s definitely another thing to experience it. When I saw this and took a photo of it, it ended up sparking a conversation with two of the high schoolers who were at the beach with us. They’d never noticed that part of the wrapping before. They feel that Morocco is a country that’s really welcoming and accepting because tourism is such a huge part of the country’s economy, which is why one of them was quick to point out that this snack was manufactured in Spain. I hope that their perception of things are true.

I guess that at the very least I’m happy that this iconography is no longer found in America this blatantly. We definitely have our issues, but this sort of thing would immediately go viral back in the States.

We stayed on the beach for another hour or so after eating, and I got some nice shots of some volleyball players.

It was kinda cloudy yesterday.

I have more photos of the beach, but I forgot to ask permission from the other people there if I could put their photos here, so I’m gonna leave the photos in my private folders until then.

I fell asleep on the ride home. The beach is one of my favorite places, and I always know I’m going to sleep really well after visiting one. There’s something about it that just makes me go right to sleep as if I was a child again. We ended up back at the Addictest center eventually (which I’m just now realizing I should probably take a picture of, since I’ll be mentioning it often). I met up with Aïda there (my host sister) and we went to meet up with her mom, who coincidentally works at the Royal Palace as a secretary for an official there. I got to walk around the royal grounds.

Somehow this is my life. As with any photo, click to enlarge.

We hung out, Aïda, her mother, and I, at a series of compounds built for workers at the palace. Aïda has family who live there, but it was interesting for me. Almost none of the family we visited spoke French or English. I sat there, eating a bunch of snacks, listening to the conversation flow around me. They were really kind, but my miscommunications definitely became small jokes for the conversation going on around me. The family we visited had a housekeeper, and at one point someone said something in Arabic to her along the lines of, “Show her your English.” She knew how to say, “My name is [her name].” It was  sweet to witness.

There was one family member I met there who spoke French. He was an older gentleman, maybe in his mid-fifties. At first, when he offered his hand and I shook it, I froze up because I didn’t know if he was bilingual or not, I was trying to remember the Arabic word for hello, and my brain goes really slow sometimes when I have to switch between languages.

It became a joke. Aïda’s mother asked me in French if he was handsome, and not wanting to be rude but also trying to sidestep more jokes about marriage, I said, “Bien sûr!” which means “Of course!” and the room burst into friendly laughter.

After that, we stayed for a little while longer, but when we finally made it back home, I crashed on my bed and went straight to sleep. (The effects of the beach on my system).  I’m awake now, at 7am, because of the roosters in the neighborhood.

I have my French placement exam today and my first classes. Wish me luck!

The good thing about Lankey, my language program, is that it’s really flexible and gives us a ton of independence. Another Lankey student arrived today. She’s 28, badass, and I’m really looking forward to going to the beach with her tomorrow. Her name is Jes. She is also blogging on this trip, so as soon as I can get a link from her, I’ll be putting it here. She’s from Micronesia, but has been living in the US for the past 9 years. She’ll be here for 3 weeks, studying French. Lankey runs an 8 week program and a 3 week program.

I journaled earlier today that I was bored because I felt like I suddenly had so much time. Northwestern makes you get used to being pressed for time, and then when you have it again, you don’t know what to do with it. Whether or not I actually have a lot of time in the coming weeks, we’ll see, but thus far it’s been a nice acclimation. I think that if this was a Northwestern led trip, I would already have a packed day, whereas I think Miryiam is building time into my schedule for me to catch up on sleep and get on a regular schedule again. (It’s truly a blessing).

My host bedroom. Click to enlarge.

They sent a driver for me around 6pm in an Addictest car (remember, the sister org to Lankey? It mentors high school students to help them get into top colleges around the world).

I have to say, after living alone at college for two years now, it’s both nice and weird to be back in a real home. I got so used to temporary living arrangements (read: dormitories) that it’s strange to be in a nuclear family arrangement. I feel weird having someone else clear away dirty dishes, even if they have a dishwasher. I think I have to get used to cohabitating with other people again. When you’re in a dormitory, you can pretend that you’re alone, but here things like mirrors and bathrooms are shared.

So, they had someone pick me up around 6pm, and we drove to pick up Miryiam from her apartment (which is gorgeous) and then we drove to the Addictest center for a short orientation.

That’s when I met Jes. She landed today. We got orientation packets, and a short presentation from one of the Addictest students about Moroccan history, architecture, music, and food. Apparently, it was the first out of a few different ones we’ll get while we’re here. Then, a couple of the students walked us back to Miryiam’s apartment, and we had dinner together with other Addictest staff, interns, and Miryiam’s mother and brother. Lankey is sort of the family business.

Terrace in Miryiam’s apartment. Click any photo to enlarge.

We stayed at Miryiam’s apartment eating dinner until about 10:30 and then Miryiam’s mother drove me home. There’s a popular music festival happening here called Mawazine. It felt like everyone in Rabat was out and walking to the festival. (The Weekend is playing. I’m gonna try to go. Wish me luck!) I wish I had gotten pictures. Hopefully there will be some coming soon!

And then, to my surprise, my host family had adopted a puppy while I was out today!

His name is Kimbol! He’s the sweetest puppy.

My host brother with his new puppy!

The puppy is so cute!