winding down, jumping up

so, we officially have one week left in tangier.

i have thoroughly enjoyed this summer, and cannot believe it's almost over. i guess i can never believe that summers ever end, but this one is especially hard to see ending.

despite the fact that i put myself through yet ANOTHER summer of CLASSES, and despite the fact that it was incredibly difficult to leave kalamazoo, this summer turned out to be indescribably wonderful. indescribable. don't ask me to describe it.

so, we're finishing up the last full week of classes, cranking out a term paper in arabic, getting ready for our final exam, doing last-minute souvenir shopping, and trying to squeeze in time at all our favorite places... and we have to take these frickin oral proficiency interview/exams again.

dang.

we took the exams on sunday. and despite the fact that i left the interview feeling like an arabic-blundering idiot, i found out that i jumped four levels in my speaking ability. i can now officially claim advanced-low proficiency. whatever the hell that means. regardless of my cynicism though, i am really happy with those results. i still think my initial scoring (novice-high???) was not correct. but i'll take the final result, no questions asked.



money well-spent, state department.

my future home

this past weekend (this post is surprisingly up-to-date), we visited a city close to tangier called assilah. i intend to live there for some period of time at some point in my life. and so far, that is the only foreign city i've been able to say that about. it was a great little city along the atlantic coast - kind of like chefchaun, but cooler. we happened to visit this city on this particular weekend because it happened to be the opening of this month-long international arts festival that is held in assilah. we didn't get to see any of the actual opening ceremonies, because it is by invitation only, but i may be returning this weekend to check it out.

due to this month-long art festival, there are a great number of artists that live in assilah, who make art for the festival... duh. perhaps someday, when i get the urge to be an artist for real, i will more to assilah. also due to this festival and the fact that there are so many artists living in the city to produce art for this festival, there were great murals all over the place. it was great. i took pictures. and it was a bonus that the old part of the city (the 'medina') was located right along the coast. a lot of times, the medina is more centrally located, but this one was right on the coast. and it was just wonderful.

al hoceima

al hoceima is a city on the northeast coast of morocco, along the beautiful mediterranean ocean. a few weekends ago (this post is late), four of my friends and i rented a car and drove out to al hoceima for the weekend, while the rest of the CLS program headed down to the sahara to ride some camels and roll around in sand. i actually might have loved going down to the sahara, but it was about that point in the program where i really needed to get away from those whom i frequently (daily) feel the urge to punch in the face.

and i don't think i could have made a better decision. al hoceima was one of the best cities i've visited so far. and, i saw the king. as much as i liked chefchauen for its blue buildings and shameless catering to tourism, i like hoceima because it wasn't quite like that. and because the king was there.

so, we took this trip on a weekend we happened to be given friday off classes, about mid-way through the program. we got the rental car around 4 in the afternoon that thursday, and started our long drive out to hoceima. the drive was beautiful and slightly treacherous. unfortunately, i wasn't feeling confident enough in my manual-driving abilities to take the wheel on any part of this trip, despite all the practice i got driving karl's car up the hills of kalamazoo this year. anyway, we arrived in hoceima around midnight (maybe a little later), only to be greeted by tons of moroccan flags and banners lining the streets, as well as news that there were 'no' rooms available in all of al hoceima because the king was in town. which, of course, turned out not to be true... we found a room. it just wasn't the most ideal room in the city. so, after we found out that the king was in town, and finally found a room, we fell asleep.

the next morning, i was supposed to be everyone's alarm clock, but decided to be generous and let us all sleep an extra hour or so. (hey, i was tired too.) so, by the time we all got up and moving it was about 10:30-11:00. and we moseyed over to a cafe across the street for some coffee and croissants. then we jumped in the car and headed toward the beach. as we were driving through town, toward the port, we noticed a strange crowd standing behind barricades, lining the street we were driving down... and it dawned on us that the king would be passing by soon. so, we hurried to find a parking space, got yelled at by some guards, and made it out to the street in time to see the king drive by in his rover after friday prayers. it was cool. he waved.

then we spent the day at the beach.

the next day, we intended to do some hiking. but had some unfortunate complications that involved two poorly-labeled national parks on either side of al hoceima, with neighboring cities that had almost identical names, and and unclear guide book... it was very, very confusing. and we ended up doing a little off-roading in a car completely unsuited for it. ever heard of a picanto? don't take them off road.

eventually we found somewhere to climb around for a while. and afterward, we spent a few hours playing frisbee on the beach. then, we ate dinner, drank some wine on a beach, and went to sleep.

and we were fortunate enough on the drive home to find great frickin radio stations and see lots of keef fields....

juj, hada, alhumdu lillah, wakha wakha, fawzy doob

darija.

that's what they call the colloquial language here in morocco. and let me tell you, it is one of the weirdest deviations of arabic i have ever heard. i'll blame that on the french influence. french, i will maintain, is one of the stupidest languages ever. and unfortunately that stupidity leaked into moroccan arabic. not that i'm any spokesperson, but on behalf of the french language, i apologize, moroccan arabic. you deserved more spanish influence.

so, by far the most entertaining quirk in darija is the word 'wakha'. (that 'kh' thing represents that weird phlegmy-hacking thing required in speaking arabic.) anyway, 'wakha' basically means ok. but, when moroccans really get going, and start throwing wakhas around left and right, it kind of sounds like "waqa waqa waqa"... and if you remember anything about the jim henson's muppets... fozy bear says 'waqa waqa waqa' also.

doob = bear (in arabic)



so. that is amusing to no end.

harvard hear me cry

so this professor from harvard came to visit our program last week. he was sent by the state department (i think) to evaluate the teaching/learning and to hear our comments/complaints on/about the program, and he unfortunately gave all 45 of us the opportunity to express our opinions in one sitting. i have never heard so much complaining from a group of college-age and above people in my life. sitting in the room listening to everyone complain like spoiled twelve-year-olds made my want to jump out of my skin.

but mr. harvard was right when he told all the complainers that they need to take some god-damned responsibility for their own god-damned education.




i'd like to learn how to say god-damned in arabic.

fourth of what?

i can't believe it's july already. well, happy belated independence day. (i can say independence day in arabic... impressed?)

this weekend, we took a group trip to the neighboring cities of tetuan and chechaun. for some reason unbeknownst to me, we only stopped in tetuan for 20 minutes. guess it's not a very interesting city? i guess i might have known the reason, except that i have this horrible/wonderful habit of completely ptfo-ing (mom: ptfo = pass the f*** out) as soon as i sit down in any moving vehicle. so, since were were on a bus, i was slept while our program director explained the history of the places we were visiting. too bad. guess i'll have to read my guide book to understand where we went.

so tetuan was pretty uneventful. i ate a croissant.

but chefchaun. man that place was cool. first of all, tetuan is about an hour southeast of tangier (by tour bus), and chefchaun is approximately another hour away from tetuan. and it's further inland, so we were in more mountainous terrain. chefchaun is this really cool little city that is located between two mountains, which is where it gets its name - from the berber word for 'horns' because the mountains look like two horns. or, so i've been told... or maybe, so i've misunderstood. we were given a small presentation (pre-sleeping through the bus presentation) that was a little more detailed about chefchaun, and from that presentation i came to understand that that is the origin of the name 'chefchaun'. but, the presentation was in arabic, so i may be completely off the mark on that one.

anyway, the town is really cool. because it's in a valley though, the medina was kind of annoying to walk around because every other turn you ended up walking up a hill. laysa mushkela. i especially liked (and i think chefchaun is famous for this) that the bottom half of all the buildings was painted blue (subject-verb agreement in that sentence... someone help?). so, it made you feel like you were walking around in anarctica or something, and that all the buildings were really igloos and that it wasn't a hundred and frick seven degrees. it wasn't really that hot, but it was hot. probably needless to say, but i took a lot of pictures. it was amusing that i ended up walking around with two other people from the program who also happen to take a lot of pictures. chefchaun is a pretty tourist-y town though, so we weren't really worried about sticking out as tourists.

our program only scheduled a day-trip to chefchaun, but we of course had the option of staying over if we wanted to. of course i wanted to, and of course i did. so we got to the city on a saturday, hung around the town and did a little site-seeing. then on sunday, i climbed one of the mountains!

yeah, i thought i wasn't gonna get to do any of that mountain-climbing stuff this summer, even though mountain-man karl is out in colorado again. so i was happy to be on a trail again. although, i have to admit it was nothing like mt. yale... what a bitch. anyway. it was fun. and i took a lot of pictures of that too. so i'll put those up somewhere, sometime... perhaps.

the hike took us about 8 hours, but that was because we had to walk up part of the valley, and then walk through the valley for a while more until we actually started walking up the mountain. then we followed a road for a long time, and then we had to blaze our own trail up the the summit. but we made it to the summit.

so yeah. that was my fourth of july weekend. hope you all enjoyed the independence!

class: remedial arabic

so, after a series of tests and interviews and surprise reading comprehension tests in DC and OPI (oral proficiency) interviews in fes, we were finally placed in appropriate levels for our summer of arabic learning. i didn't place as high as i thought/hoped i would, but that's ok. we must all keep in mind that i have not taken an arabic class since last summer, and didn't practice that much while in school. (hey, writing a SIP takes up a lot of time.)

anyway, the first two weeks of class have passed without much tumult. well, that's not quite true. there were a number of people who freaked out and complained about the work load, the class time, not getting to interact with "real" arabic speakers, blah-blah-blah ---

this is the time i have to remind myself that i have now spent 3 out of 4 of my college summers in intensive arabic classes... i guess i have an unfair advantage.

--- and then things settled down a little this past week (the second week).

i guess most of these past two weeks have been a combination of getting used to living in a new city (finding places to eat, run, shop, drink coffee, etc.) and getting used to being in "arabic mode." we have class starting at 9am, and it lasts until 1pm. we also have optional twice-per week quranic arabic, poetry, and moroccan arabic classes. (i attend all the optional classes. of course.) we've also signed a language pledge to "only" speak arabic while we're here. it's not actually a serious language pledge though. we did actually sign a piece of paper, with the word 'pledge' in its title; however, that paper said that we agreed to speak arabic exclusively in common areas between the hours of 8am and 4pm. what kind of bullshit is that? actually, i think it would be ok if people actually stuck to it. but i'm finding a lot of people here don't seem as serious about studying arabic as i thought they would be. hm... i won't use this as a place to complain about things. however i will say that, in all honesty, i thought this program would be a lot more intense than it has been so far.

is that just me?

ok. i'll work with what i've been given.