I finally figured out what that guy said to me three weeks ago.

I was paying for my meal at bus stop on the way to Rabat.  The waiters were very nice and chatty, and I was flattered when they asked if I was Syrian (we were speaking Arabic.)  As I said good-bye, one of the waiters said what I thought was "Welcome to Islam".  Not sure what to do or say, I just smiled piously and hurried onto the waiting bus.  I immediately told my roommate and travel buddy Mary that I think I had been extended a welcome to Islam.  As the bus continued, I become more puzzled by the man's comment, and wished I had asked him to repeat what he had said or clarified somehow.  By the time we arrived in Rabat, I was pretty convinced I had misunderstood the man, but still had no idea what he actually meant.

This afternoon I went out to do a little shopping.  As usual, I greeted the store keepers with a friendly "Assalamu 3laykum", to which they invariably reply, "wa 3lykum assalam."  On the way home, I repeated this call and answer to myself, practicing the sounds and enjoying the difficulty of pronouncing them.  I began thinking of other phrases that contained the word "salam" (peace).  There are many, but one in particular popped into my head.  "Tariq Assalam".  Suddenly, the pieces of the puzzle fit together.  Then man hadn't welcomed me to Islam.  He had said, "Tariq Assalam.  Marhababik", which means (drum roll please!) "Bon Voyage. Welcome (to Morocco)." 

For 18 or so years of my life, Sundays involved getting up early and going to religious education classes for children.  Even after I started high school and was too old to be a student, I continued assisting in or teaching the classes, since my Mom ran the program.  It's been 7 or 8 years since I taught one of those Sunday morning classes, but the memory, or the habit, seems to be embedded in my subconscious.   We just started the winter term at the ALC,  and my new schedule has me teaching just one class on Saturday mornings.  It's a Junior's class, so my students are about 12 or 13 years old.  It feels like old times!   From the moment I woke up this morning, I couldn't shake the feeling that today was a Sunday.  At first I couldn't figure out why, but I really think my new schedule is stirring up old childhood memories of Sunday mornings gone by.  I wonder if  Morocco has  powdered jelly doughnuts I can enjoy after class?

What's Christmas like in Morocco?  For one thing, it's only two days long.    

Fortunately, I had about three weeks off between the fall and winter sessions, and since this nicely coincided with Christmas and New Years, I decided to head to Rabat to visit a friend and former classmate.  After classes ended, I stuck around for a few days, took care of some business and said my good-byes.  I have to admit, I was kind of nervous for a couple reasons.  For one thing, I hadn’t left Tetouan for any reason in about a month and a half.  It felt so comfortable, I knew more or less what I was doing, where I was going, and what to expect.  I was afraid leaving my little nest would be too much of an unpleasant shock.  I was also excited, though.  I think there was a big part of me that was feeling suffocated and needed to get out! 

And get out I did.  For about 10 USD I caught a bus from Tetouan to Rabat.  The trip took almost 5 hours exactly, with two stopovers in various locals.  I had been looking forward to that trip for so long!  Ever since I was a little girl crossing the Mason-Dixon line in the backseat of my grandparents Mercedes , I have loved the process of traveling.  It’s almost therapeutic.  My mind stops racing and thoughts float through my head as the scenery slips by.  Staring out the window, the vibrations of the car and the constant drone of highway driving would calm me, often to sleep, but many times just to a point of pleasant sedation.  Even the best book or the latest video game was not enough to lure me from this state.  Now I wouldn’t say that I was particularly stressed in Tetouan.  Life was good, but I had been sick for over a month and felt worn down.  Being in a new place, speaking a new language and teaching from a new textbook can also wear a person down pretty quickly.  So the thought of sitting in a bus for five whole hours and watching the scenery slip by was really enticing! 

The trip was really everything I wanted.  I brought about a half ton of books that I of course never touched!  It was a cold day, but the sun was shining brightly and warmed my face as I looked out the window.  I sighed deeply.  All was well with the world.  Only a single, tiny worry crossed through my mind.  I was going to Rabat to visit my dear friend Melodee.  We had studied Arabic together in Jordan two summers ago and got along well.  But it had been two years.  What if we didn’t get along?  What if she secretly hated short, Spanish-speaking, vegetarian Pennsylvanians?  What if she didn’t want to do anything I wanted to do?  What if she wanted to watch American football and drink fresh buttermilk all day?  I hate buttermilk!  I was afraid that even if things were just a little bit bad, it would make being away from my family at Christmas positively unbearable.  Ok, I told myself, you’ve got to make the most of this.  So you don’t want to drink buttermilk at Christmas.  What do you want to do, Alaina?  I already knew the answer.  I had decided after watching Love Actually that I wanted to spend my Christmas doing two things: cooking delicious meals and watching movies late into the night.  I have found knowing what you want really does make you feel better.  And after a fabulous, relaxing and inspiring week and a half with Melodee, I am now convinced that knowing what you want is often synonymous with getting it. 

After my first night in Rabat, all my worries about the coming week and a half melted away.   We spent the night splurging and spoiling ourselves!  We happened upon this really posh bakery where I bought fancy chocolates and Melodee bought (I kid you not!) Foie Gras and specialty coffee!  Then we stuffed ourselves at a fancy Keiten Sushi restaurant, followed by a giant ice cream sunday and an ice cream Christmas cake (buche du noele) which we got to go.  That night, we snuggled up to the space heater and watched movies until we couldn’t keep our eyes open.   The next morning, while I was eating breakfast, Melodee asked me if I had any Christmas favorites I wanted her to download.  I took a calculated risk in admitting I wanted the Dolly Parton Christmas album.  “Great!” said Melodee, “Growing up, all we listened to in my house was Dolly Parton, Kenny Rodgers…”  I laughed.  “Actually,” I admitted, “The Christmas album is a duet with Kenny Rodgers…”  Within a few minutes the album was downloaded and I was unapologetically singing along to the lyrics.  And then to top it all, we sat down and planned our Christmas Eve and Christmas Day feasts. 


* Moroccan Christmas: http://tv.yahoo.com/the-office/show/moroccan-christmas/episode/192342/recap

These are the pictures that I took on one Tuesday in November.  I wanted to document a day in my life here in Tetouan, but I didn't make it past 3 p.m., so I guess it's really just a morning in my life.  At any rate, it gives you a good idea of the non-job aspect of my life here.  My hope is that you will have a better idea what I am doing here in Morocco, what my surroundings and my routine look like.  Enjoy!

My laundry blowing in the morning breeze and the mountain that greets me every morning.  I always take a minute and look out the window when I wake up.  I can't help it.  The view never ceases to take my breath away!

After breakfast, Mary and I head out to our mosaic tiling class.  It's on the other side of town and through the old medina, so it can be a real adventure.

We usually pass through the main circle in town.  The flags are up to celebrate Independence Day, which was to be celebrated the week I took the picture (in November).  The building with the blue sign straight ahead is where I have my Arabic lessons, too!  On the other side you can see the post office and the Spanish consulate.  The cafe with the green canopy is one of Mary's favorites, and next to that you have the old yellow church (not picture).

A little bit further and you come to the entry into the old medina.  Go straight and you come to a lot of jewelery shops, go to the right and you will find nuts, live birds, delicious smoothies (including za3za3, which Mary and I call the Tetouani cocktail!), go to the left and find yourself in the King's palace (that is, if you could get past the guards!).  Mary and I went straight to make it to Bab Al Okla, the nearest exit to our school.

Inside the medina, we walk by little shops, produce and nut vendors, book stalls, fish mongers, hungry cats, butchers and bakers.  Mary stops to buy some delicious flat bread.  The baker was super creepy.  I took his picture, but he's too creepy and I don't want him on my blog!

Welcome to Dar Sana3, paradise in Morocco.  This is the building where mosaics is held, but the school is quite large, and has young apprentices studying all kinds of traditional Moroccan crafts, such as carpentry, metal (copper) work, embroidery and textiles, pottery, painting and more.  The interior courtyard, as you can see, is beautiful!  It's a beautiful garden with lovely mosaic work, a fountain, citrus trees and a vine-covered trestle.   

Me with my teacher, Ali, one of the nicest people I've met in Morocco.  We are in the tiling studio at Dar Sana3, where Ali teaches us new designs which we recreate using a protractor, ruler, pencil, pen and colored pencils.  It's interesting; the ruler is used mostly for drawing straight lines.  Most measuring is done with the protractor.  I have just about filled up my first notebook with designs!

After  class, Mary and I stop at our favorite bakery for a quick bite to eat.  I have a coffee and a small tuna sandwich.  Mary has a chicken pastry with her coffee.  The workers here are so nice and we know each other by name.  They always talk to us in Arabic about our day and and ask about our friends who also shop at the bakery. 

I can't talk long though, because I have to meet my teacher for my derija lesson.  We meet twice a week and I think I am making a lot of improvement.  My teacher is really smart, very patient, and he speaks Spanish which is a bonus.  Actually he is in Spain right now, so I have been meeting with another teacher at the school the past few weeks.
After class, I head home, grab some lunch and relax a little.  Then I do some lesson planning before going to work!

A while back I learned the Moroccan Arabic word for diarrhea, is-haal, and it has proven to be useful to me quite a few times.  It's a great word.  It comes from the Arabic word for "easy", presumably because when you have diarrhea, you don't have to work hard to do your business. 

Speaking of poop (and how often can one lead in with such a sentence!?), a few teachers at the ALC told me that roasted garlic, when taken as a suppository, is a great cure for is-haal.  I think I will stick with Imodium.  Or with the is-haal. 


Tomorrow I am heading to Rabat to spend the holidays with an old CLS friend that I met in Jordan.  I plan on cooking and baking and watching Christmas movies, although I am bringing my bathing suit too, just in case.  Don't be fooled: it's not traditional beach weather here.  But I hear people still surf with a wet suit, and I'm not opposed to giving it a try. 

I also have some big news: my little brother graduated from college!  It suddenly struck me today that now all 4 siblings are college grads.  Growing up, that seemed normal, inevitable.  But I realized that that's not true for a lot of people.  I'm glad I grew up with people who expected a lot out of me, who set high standards and then helped me reach them.  I'm also lucky to have such amazing and talented siblings.   Congratulations, Adam!  You did it!

Today I went for a hike with some friends.  We went up the mountain outside my window, the one that gives me great sunsets that infuse every corner of my house with specks of gold and ruby and amethyst.  The mountain that is often the first to greet me when I wake up in the morning.  The mountain that welcomes me when I come home from walks in the city, waiting in the lap of this Mediterranean valley like an overprotective parent.  Today, I climbed up this mountain and I sat on her shoulder and looked back at my home, or my house, or whatever it is that I have after living here for nearly three months.  I had to remind myself where I was, where I am.  I am in Morocco.  That tree over there is Moroccan.  Those goats are Moroccan.  I could accept where I was, but I suddenly couldn't remember how I got here.  Why am I here?  What events brought me to this place, this town, this mountain?  What am I doing here?  I ate a tangerine.  I ate another.  Life is good here.  I have made a lot of baby steps.  But now I think I am ready for more.  I'm ready to climb.

I just realized that one of the hardest things about being in Morocco is the language ideologies.  It’s not like the US and Japan don’t have their fair share.  It’s just that in Morocco, there are a lot of languages about which to have an ideology.  My genuine love for all languages and my background in sociolinguistics make me extremely sensitive to these issues when they come up in conversation.  I can’t help it.  My reaction is both emotional and logical, coming with equal intensity from how I feel as from what I have read.  (Maybe because of that I don’t think people will ever really get it.)  It really drives me insane sometimes.  How can a well-educated, multilingual person tell me that “the Moroccan way of speaking” is so easy you just need to be around Moroccans to learn to speak it, and then tell me that the language has no rules?  Can you imagine trying to learn a language that had no rules???  Yeah, good luck learning that one.  It would be impossible.  What would you do?  Memorize endless amounts of dialogue and then recite them from memory when the occasion arose?  All languages have rules, people, even languages that lack the prestige or power to be called a language.  And that brings me to another big thing: one nation = one language = one big 19th century European nation-building propaganda.  The Spanish don’t own Spanish, the French don’t own French, and Americans aren’t rationed English as the only language they are allowed to speak with any authority.  Also, authority: native speakers aren’t the only ones who have it.  They don’t own the language either.  If you don’t have any idea what I’m talking about, then ask me.  Ask a librarian.  Think about it while you are standing on your head.  Because at the moment I feel like I am shouting the gospel truth in hell’s busiest intersection.  No one’s getting it, and no one’s really listening.  Repent! Repent! 

By the way, it is true that “the Moroccan way of speaking” is so easy that you just need to be around Moroccans to speak it.  Unfortunately, as in all the world’s languages, that offer only applies to learners between the ages of 1 and 13.  I guess we adults will just have to start memorizing…

  I think my brain has its own sick sense of humor, especially when it comes to learning languages.  Once, while trying to describe the rules of the game Freeze Tag to my dear Saudi friend, I accidentally replaced the word for “touch” with “lick” in Arabic.  I remember my friend’s expression as I described the neighborhood children running around trying to lick each other until the street lights came on.  Then there was the time that I accidentally said “sex” in Arabic instead of “body”.  The strange thing is I don’t think I had ever learned the word for sex before.  But my brain managed to put it together and have a good, long laugh at my expense, along with the rest of the people at Arabic club that day.  To be honest, I’m still not sure which is which.  I just try to avoid the topic.  My good friend Iyad would always tell me, “Alaina, whenever you make a mistake, it never comes out as nonsense.  You always manage to say another word with a completely different meaning!”  I have always chalked it up to Arabic’s enormous vocabulary.  It seemed to me that pretty much any sound combination possible had been assigned a meaning, an incredible feat considering the language has 7 distinct letters that to an English speaker all sound like t or d.  Lately, however, I have come to realize my brain has a much keener sense of humor than I do.  My theory is that it comes from that innate language ability that humans are born with.  During those rare moments when I let my guard down and I stop thinking about where the adjective goes and what tense the verb is in, great, creative, funny things come out.  The ice breaks and the person I’m talking to warms up a bit too.  It's like we are both being entertained by some third party.  And then I realize I am having so much fun, and it’s all coming, almost effortlessly, from somewhere inside me.  Somedays, it's good to be intermediate. 

Unless their head has been lobbed off.  Today is Eid Al Adha, or Eid Kabir, the Big Holiday, and I just got back from watching our neighbors sacrifice their lamb.  I first met this lamb a few weeks ago, when it's bleets came wafting into my living room.  The sheep had been living in the interior balcony of my building.  It was an open, loft-style apartment which it shared with another sheep.  I stopped by one day, just to see how the new tenants were adjusting to their life in the big city.  Both seemed to be happy, but to miss the open spaces and flock they had left behind. 

This morning, however, when I went down to their small loft apartment, I found the sheep lying in a pool of his own blood, with his head severed from his body.  It was neither murder nor suicide; it was sacrifice.  I am told he will make many tasty meals during the next couple months. 

BsSaha!

There are many reasons to celebrate the independence of a formally colonized country.  Tonight I am celebrating the part where I don't have to work tomorrow.  November really is a month of holidays in Morocco.  We celebrated the Green March two weeks ago, and next week is the two-day long Eid al Adha... great news if you like long weekends, bad news if you're a sheep.   I had plans to go to the movies with some friends tonight.  Really, I had planed to go to the MOVIE, singular, because there is only ever one movie showing at the main movie theater in town.  So, I had arrangements to meet a few friends for the late showing, after my night class let out.  At 9:45, I arrived at the movie theater only to find that there would be no 10 pm showing, because there were no people to watch it.  So we decided to try the other theater in town, just a short, walkable distance away, which was showing a Bollywood film.  I had never been to this other theater, but it has a reputation in town as being a place for lovers.  However, in my two previous experiences at the "good" theater, I would say most of the people there were much more interested in their companion than the movie, so I don't really understand why only one gets a scarlet letter.  In any case, we decided to check out the Bollywood movie (subtitled in Arabic... ) but alas, it too was closed.  So, what else is there to do at 10:00 on a Tuesday night in Tetouan?  Go home, do some yoga andpop open a bottle of wine in your pjs, and eat some Canadian chocolate that your roommate got in the mail today.  In the end, it's just as well.  I really shouldn't be spending a whole three dollars on a movie ticket right now anyway.

Despite my movie capers, today was a great day!  I had a great Arabic lesson in the morning, worked on some tile designs this afternoon, chatted with a friend over coffee and sweets, then headed home and had a great conversation with Koichi on Skype.  My class this evening went really well and I think everyone really enjoyed themselves, I met a coworker for a pizza and had a great, meaningful conversation, and then walked around town with some friends before finally coming home, where I had wine and chocolate waiting for me.  And best of all, tomorrow is a holiday, and I am going to Spain!  Let me say it again.  I am hopping a cab and traveling one hour to Spain tomorrow.  I can't even remember how many times in my life I have wished I could say that sentence.  Tomorrow, I am going to Spain. Me voy a España.  كنمشى ن اسبانيا  I wrote about it, wished for it, literally dreamed about it, and tomorrow, I'm gonna do it.  Wow.  Right now it seems like all dreams need is a little patience.  But, I think there is something more than patience.  So right now, I would like to give a pat on the back to myself last year, two years ago, three years ago, for making good decisions that allowed me to make my dreams come true, while at the same time making me think with hindsight that it had been easy.  And, I would like to thank the many people who helped me get here, like my loving family, my sister's cooking, my boyfriend, the cab driver tomorrow, the academy.  Come to think of it, there's lots to celebrate tomorrow.  Moroccan independence, no work, the realization of dreams, supportive friends and family, taco bake... so whatever day it is that you read this blog, declare this moment a personal holiday, and celebrate it any little way you can.