I have been in Morocco for one week! It has definitely been an interesting one. I started staying with my host family this past weekend (we stayed in a hotel for the first week). It is probably the most interesting house I have ever been in. When you walk in, there is a kitchen and a living room and then you keep walking and all of the sudden you are outside. The roof just ends. My room, the bathroom, and my host parents' room are all separate from the rest of the house.

I have a huge host family!

My host mom's name is Amina, my father's name is Mohammed, I have two sisters: Rachida and Siham, 3 brothers: Simohammed, Foued, and Yassine, and an uncle who's name is Boubker. Simohammed is married (his wife's name is Lubna) and they have a 5 month old daughter named Malak. They live in their own house, but everyone else lives together! People are always coming and going, it's crazy! They are all very nice though.

 Rachida, Siham, Yassine, Amina, and Mohammed speak French, so I have been speaking French all the time. Actually, almost everyone in Rabat speaks French, I have never been so glad I studied it in high school! Rachida, Siham, and Simohammed are in their 30's, Foued is in his late 20's and Boubker is only 4 or 5 years older than me. He and Mohammed are brothers, but they have different mothers, hence the huge age difference between them. Yassine is 16 and speaks a little bit of English as well, but we speak French most of the time.

In Morocco, there are both turkish and western toilets and I was so relieved when I found out that my house has a western toilet. But then I found out that it is not really a western toilet, because it does not actually flush on its own. It has pipes and every thing, but you have to pour water down it yourself. So basically, it's a turkish toilet that you can sit on. My house does have hot water though, (and not all of them do), so that is a very very good thing.

 Lubna and Amina took me to a wedding this weekend! Both the bride and groom are family cousins, but I am not sure exactly how... It was a really cool experience. It took place in a house and we wore caftans, which is the traditional clothing worn to a wedding. There was a lot of music, dancing, and, of course, a ton of food. The actual ceremony took place somewhere else, but we saw the bride and groom exchange rings and the bride changed caftans halfway through, which is apparently a traditional part of a wedding.

We also start our classes this week this week. I had Arabic class yesterday, and it is just me and one other student in my class so that's awesome. We have Arabic for 3 hours every day week, then next week is switches to 2 hours Monday to Thursday. Our teacher is really funny and he seems cool, so I think I'll enjoy that class. The Arabic we are learning is Fus'ha or classical Arabic, and in Morocco they speak a dialect called Darija, and the two are not similar at all. I am not so sure how I am going to learn Darija, I hear it all the time at my house though, so maybe it will sink in through osmosis or something...

Happy Inauguration Day everyone!

I'm in Rabat!!

 We landed on Monday at around 2 PM, after traveling for almost an entire day. The airport in Rabat is super tiny, only one gate, and you walk straight off the airplane onto the ground. We had to pass through customs, which took about half an hour, and after that we boarded a bus that took us to our hotel. The weather could not have been more beautiful. It was (and has been every day since) about 70 degrees and sunny. There are palm trees and orange trees everywhere and it's absolutely gorgeous! We spend a lot of time complaining about how cold we are though, because the buildings in Rabat don't have heat. It is not so bad during the day, but when the sun goes down it gets a bit chilly. Oddly enough, it is warmer outside than inside. Most of the buildings are made of stone and are therefore damp and cold inside.

We are taking classes at the Center for Cross-Cultural Learning (the CCCL) which is located in the medina (old city) of Rabat and it is beautiful. The building was built in the 19th century (although the CCCL didn't move here until around 2000) and is centered around a courtyard. The rooms are all tiled with beautiful patterns, which make you kind of dizzy if you stare at them for too long, but are a lot prettier than the boring paint which adorns the wall of BU. The courtyard now has a roof, but it used to be open to the sky (and most of the buildings in the medina still have their courtyards open to they sky), so the building had to be built to accommodate rain. This means that there are steps everywhere, leading in and out of every room, in the idea that rain would only fall on the center of the building and would not get into the rooms. This is a good idea, but I am positive that I am going to trip and break something while I'm here...

We have been having orientation all week and staying in a hotel this week, but our home stays will begin this Friday. I can't wait!

 We have to go to a reception with our teachers and CCCL staff now, but I will write later about what we have been doing during orientation. Hope everyone is doing well!

I'm leaving tomorrow!

Hey everyone!
I'm leaving tomorrow (well, actually today, as it's 1 AM) for Rabat, Morocco where I will be spending the next four months as a part of a study abroad program. I will be taking classes, living with a host family, traveling around, and hopefully having an all around sweet time.
Check back every so often for stories of my adventures and pictures! Hope you enjoy my blog!