So I'm going to attempt to make this coherent, no promises.
On Saturday we went to Volubilis. It was an ancient Roman city in Morocco. The layout and function of the city was really fascinating, and standard of these ruins. The location of the city was great. The pictures don't do it justice, it was just gorgeous, with a small stream running through, and overall very logical.
This is Moulay Idriss. A small city founded by one of the founders of modern Morocco. Again, here.
We just drove through, but I mean, look at these pictures and remember that I'm pretty bad at this.
I don't want to say it, but I think I might actually be happier studying Arabic here. It seems smaller, less tourist geared, and just gorgeous and also full of history. All these things are true of Fes too, but as Fes is bigger, there are naturally more creature comforts. I really enjoyed our tour guide too, which helped.
Gate to the old city, as opposed to Fez, cars drive here.
This is a basin built to water the first King's garden and his 12,000 horses... and the people too if there were any left, in times of drought. The background are the granaries and stables for the houses.
View from inside the granaries, we were told the King was able to store food for 20 years in here because of the cold/darkness. It was both in there.
The stables.
Between the palace and the city walls, now reportedly used as a lane to stroll and sneak some PDA? From the tour guide.
I really do love the place, the country, Fez, its all incredible and I'm lucky to be here. But, I do have to say, its a pretty ehhh place to learn Arabic and U Minn's program leaves a hell of a lot to be desired. For one, there doesn't seem to be any U Minn staff here... ALIF is a language institute in Fez, that was set up out of the existence of this American organization that has been teaching english here for years. They decided teaching Arabic to foreigners would be cool too. The standard arabic instruction is really impressive thus far (its been one class) but my Professor also teaches classical arabic at Al-Qarawiyyin, which is really impressive, and he's pretty intimating and very good. I have no reason to believe, after having met a few other Prof's that the other classes won't be as good.
But, there is no uniformity of this program what so ever. We are mixed in with the general ALIF students in everything, and I've yet to see what I could not have gotten if I had simply signed up with ALIF on my own and cut out the U Minn middleman and saved a few grand. Theres no attempt at a language pledge, and all of the staff exclusively speak English to us, and the assistant director of ALIF apparently doesn't really speak Arabic (?) I also have a shit ton of class every day, and so far it seems like it'll be productive, but I feel like there has to be a better way of working in enhancing speaking and overall fluency skills, which there doesn't seem to be any emphasis on. We're very much left to our own devices, which is fine, but compared to Alex and what we had there in terms of everything set up to enhance our Arabic abilities, its a bit disappointing. Especially considering Morocco's lingual situation, which I really, really can't complain about because I was well warned. But its really getting old swearing to people that I really don't speak any French but if they slow down and try some of the Arabic they see on TV (Egyptian) I can probably converse with them. I am surprised though at people's knowledge of Fusha/other dialect words, I am understood when I try, and I try often. The amount of words they throw back at me for the same thing, none of which I understand, is unnerving though, especially considering I already knew 2-3 words for the same thing.
Host family is great. The amount of screaming children and how busy the parents are with them is definitely unnerving though. I don't want to just hang out and sit in the living room because I feel like I throw off the dynamics and they have kids to raise and support after all. The kids are great though. The father is this tall, strong, thin guy who just quickly and quietly just does whatever needs to happen behind the scenese and automatically. He does his share of housework/baby care, walks the daughters around, and regularly leaves the house to do whatever his occupation involves. He makes breakfast too, the first few times he brought it to me on a tray in my room and after that time, if the rest of the house is up too, I just bring it back out and we eat together. The mom is loud, very affectionate, and takes care of a lot too. It's way easier for me to understand and converse with him than with her, which is the first time thats happened (that I can understand a man better).
The kids get to be a lot sometimes, especially when other people are over too with they're kids, and everyone is yelling a lot haha. I also feel like I'm in the way in these moments and I basically just try to escape. But I definitely try to talk to the adults and kids whenever things are calm and I get a chance and that's really a lot of fun. The girls are really funny, make every attempt to teach me, talk about school, different places in the world. The family as a whole really... don't seem to be curious about anything I have to say, which is funny and makes it hard to make conversation, thats generally true of the parents too, if I try to tell a story about egypt or life in the US or the news, or anything, and I know I'm understood because the responses make sense, they're just not interested. But at the same time I tie that to there being a billion kids and stuff to do, and thats totally totally fine, it just adds to me feeling out of place and in the way.
I did have a great bonding experience at the hammam, or a Turkish/Roman bathhouse last night with the host father. May or may not have involved some serious scrubbing of each other and learning about the whole system. Three rooms, hot medium and cold, buckets from each at different times. In the hot room its like a sauna, and you're in there for an hour scrubbing and soaping. It's communal run basically and everyone helps. Very much you scrub my back I'll scrub yours. Literally. It was great though and I felt very clean, if not dead from the heat, afterwards. They were shocked that I wanted to douse myself with cold water, but I had to after that. I did get one guy to support my method though.
I know I have more to write, but I'll leave it there for now, I might just change this post or add more when I post more pictures.
Au revoir,
