Fez, Morocco فاس، المغرب

So I'm in Morocco. 

When I returned from Egypt, Princeton organized a meeting for me and the students coming back from AUC in Cairo to discuss what we wanted to do. In the day leading up to the meeting, I contacted Princeton about my options and they told me what they planned on presenting at the meeting: A) Israel @Hebrew U in Jerusalem B) Turkey C) Sciences Po in France.

I was pretty upset that Princeton was telling me to study Arabic in Israel, Turkey or France, so I didn't see the meeting as going well, on top of that I thought they definitely were going to want me to not go anywhere at all and return to Princeton a week late to start the semester. I was pleasantly surprised and was very wrong. OIP at Princeton instead was pushing us out the door again, and when I had done my research on the U of Minnesota program in Fez they were willing to work with me. Some phonecalls and paperwork later, and I was in. 

Now I'm there. 

Fez is beautiful so far and as I'm writing this I'm struggling with my first opinion. It's been exactly a day since I've landed, so I'm still pretty undecided but so far... 

It's really, very pretty. I haven't even been to the old city yet, so keep that in mind. Fez is split between the Ville Nouvelle and the Old City, which is just called the city, AlMedina, in Arabic. My travel books and people here tell me that in Morocco instead of totally destroying the local cities as they did (?) elsewhere, France for the most part kept the major ones in Morocco and instead built new besides them. Thus Fez has two major parts, and life is split accordingly between them. 

The new city is very clean, much cleaner than Alex or Amman so far. Traffic is also reasonable and shockingly there seems to be some sort of understanding for the respect for human life amongst drivers! Who will amazingly stop for you when you're trying cross in a reasonable area. The overall look is definitely somewhat comparable to Alex, the look of the sidewalks and roads in terms of the way their designed, except for Fez having them in better condition. 

Weird so far in Fez is the language situation. It's different than I thought it would be. Instead of Arabic being the mother tongue with other languages also spoken widely, I almost feel so far as if Arabic is just one of a few languages spoken in the country. People seem to have the ability to choose depending on who they're talking to, if they want to speak Arabic, French, English, Spanish, Berber, etc. Obviously few speak all of those, but just in my first day I've heard all multiple times. I've heard two definite clear Arab locals speaking French to each other, people seem to switch between at least 3 languages easily and maybe communicate in more. Today I was teased in Arabic for not being able to read the menu, which was written only in French. It seems totally weird and straight up annoying to people that I'm a foreigner who can't speak French and can't speak perfect Arabic, they really just don't seem to know what to do with us. At the same time, AlJezeera is on all the TVs here. I think its a good indication that we have a whole two hour lecture scheduled this week on the lingual situation in Morocco. 

That brings me to the program so far. Today was weird because they didn't expect today to happen, about half the program got stuck in MN on the way due to a blizzard, so today was basically a free day. We briefly met one or two people from ALEF, we were taken to a few nearby places to buy cell phone stuff (my number is on my FB) and then told that we were done for the day. We really haven't met the person ultimately responsible for us, haven't met anyone from U of MN, no word about our host families, no word about our classes or anything else. He kind of pointed at an ATM, kind of made a gesture at a bookstore, and pointed at the stairs as a way to show us the building (which is beautiful too), so, in short, things as weird. Not clear how hard the classes will be, it seems like this institute is used by all kinds of people, from the very intense to the very casual, and it doesn't seem like they deal with very advanced students, except on an individual level. One of the professors/directors/random guys (???) seemed ridiculously confused that we would want a private tutor to cover more and push harder, and there were definitely some girls in the classes wearing tanktops, which even when they're foreign, is weird. 

Way more male/female interaction on the streets, a teenage girl jumped in front of me and another guy to yell and welcome us to Morocco, way way more women without hejab, and much smarter dressing seems to be common. On the whole, this place seems very metropolitan but to be fair, I've been here a day and barely saw half the city and my next post could be about how full of crap I am. More then. 

Also, I've taken a bunch of pictures from Spain (12 layover, great day walking around picture taking) and some from here so far and will post them when I remember to take my SD card with me when I go for internet. (No internet in the hotel rooms and I don't believe there will be any in my host family). Spain was really awesome, better than I expected, I actually remember some spanish and was kind of understood, which was great. Maybe if things hit the fan here I'll go do that... 

Also, I always kind of thought Qaddafi was totally out of his damn mind, but now I really, really think so, and in the scariest way possible. The Libyan ambassador to the US is now saying to get rid of Gadafi, ships and planes are defecting to Malta, China is pissed, and Amr Moussa has suspended them from the Arab league, the last two in particular should be clues to say that what he's doing is seriously fucked up. 

At the moment it just seems like the amount of people who need help, whether against their crazed dictator, total chaos, an earthquake, or something else, is staggering. But maybe its really always like this. 

Peace,