week 1 - strangers

have you ever had the urge to get to know 44 new people all-too-well in less than a week? yeah, i've never had the urge either. but life has a funny way of happening.

so this critical language scholarship program began with a three-day orientation in the capital city of our great nation, Washington DC. aside from the customary eighth grade trip to the capital, i've never really been to DC. it's pretty cool.

however... having my "strategically" "planned" after-college "life" jump started by having to learn 44 new names, faces, life stories, and future plans is not cool. but life has a funny way of happening.

the three-day orientation was pretty useless, especially because i was in no state of mind to focus on/assess dozens of future school/career opportunities. (so f-u state department, i could have enjoyed the last weekend of undergrad life and not have had to pack every shred of my existence up in one day. but thank you oh wonderful, glorious state department for this unparalleled opportunity to spend the summer in morocco studying arabic - i owe you some measurable amount of my life in service.)

anyway. after being informed of the many opportunities for our futures, the 45 chosen for the tangier CLS program departed for morocco. we landed on june 14 in the casablanca international airport. pretty cool, huh?

casablanca was nice, but not as glamorous as that one movie might portray. we didn't spend long in "casa" (as called by the locals), our first day, we saw the mosque of hassan the second then had some free time. the al-hassan II mosque is the "only" mosque in morocco open to non-muslims. (this is an unfortunate law left over from french colonialism... damn french, standing in the way of my festering obsession with mosques. hopefully someday the law will be debunked.) after that we all slept, which was much-needed. and the next morning we were whisked off to marakesh. marakesh was much more 'moroccan' so to speak. the city was much more interesting, more 'exotic,' and the hotel we stayed in was... may i say... fucking sweet. we spent about 2.5 days in marakesh. the first day we had some free time, and the group split into smaller fragments, but we all mostly ended up in the same place - the souq, or the market. i went with a small regiment to find power adapters for out electronic devices. then we waded through a freak thunderstorm to a small cafe and eventually found our way to the market. but by that time, it was getting close to dinner, so we headed back to the hotel. the next day, we had some tours of ancient tombs and palaces and things like that... not very interesting... (sarcasm, of course - i love visiting really old things).

the next day we traveled a very very long time in a bus to fes, where we stayed in an old home in the medina (old city) that had been converted to a hotel. i would love my future house to be even half as beautiful as that hotel was. anyway, we spent a few days in fes and did much of the same kind of site-seeing, mostly old stuff that a lot of people in the group weren't actually that interested in. i was. i just wished i wasn't walking around with 40-some other people all the time. but i thoroughly enjoyed our stay in fes also.

after our stay in fes, we finally headed to tangier, where we will be for the rest of the summer (aside from a few trips to some near-by cities).

tangier is awesome. (i'll have a bigger post on this city later.)



ironically, it rained at least once in every city we stopped in.

FYI

if you're familiar with me (family, friends), you probably know a few things. a while ago, i sent out a facebook message informing the general public that i was presented with the opportunities to study in morocco for the summer, and also to teach english in china next year. well, i have officially accepted both offers, and am in fact in morocco as i type.

why am i in morocco? primarily to study arabic, but also to have a little bit of fun, courtesy of the state department's pocket change. that's right, i am a participant in the department of state-funded critical language scholarship. this is a scholarship that sends undergrad and grad students around the world for the summer to study languages of particular interest to said department. i am in morocco, to study modern standard arabic. in case you've missed out a little on the last four years of my life, i've taken a particular fancy to studying languages. the pursuit of arabic has been somewhat troublesome because kalamazoo college does not have an arabic department. thus i have spent 3 out of 4 of my college-year summers studying arabic (this summer being the third).

by the way, i graduated. to my knowledge at least - i have not received any high-importance emails informing me that i must return next fall. however, i did miss commencement, so i do not physically posses my diploma at this moment in time.

i did not commence because this program started june 11, the day kalamazoo's finals finished. by june 14 (graduation day), i was already in a new country. the program will last 10 weeks. i will be home august 14 (or 15, i can't remember), and will promptly depart for china around the 20th.

it'll be a whirlwind, but i intend to keep updates consistently. more consistently than the egypt posts, i [almost] promise.



funny to think that i should still be measuring my life in ten-week increments. i thought i was leaving the quarter system behind...


salaam.

watch out blog world, i'm back.

salaamu alaykum.


this is my new blog. please follow along and feel free to comment as i travel and study in morocco this summer.

-alyson