I've only had a 'schedule' for 3 days in Fes but I'll say some things about my daily life. First, things I don't do:
1) Go running. This is because I would get terribly, terribly lost, and also because Fes is not a city you run in. I'll describe Fes in the next post a bit more probably, but basically it is 100% impossible to run inside Fes and I don't know how to get out. I also don't know how to ask my host mother how to get out. I think this might be something that I'll try to do tomorrow.
2) Drink water. This is because I keep on not buying bottled water for no good reason. The tap water is unsafe in Fes, safe in Rabat. I would say I drink about a third to a fifth of the water I drank in Chicago. That will probably change soon. The main problem is I keep on not being thirsty until night time, at which point I get really thirsty (like now!) but don't want to go outside to find water.
3) Check enough of my email or of the news.
4) Communicate effectively with my host family.
Now's as good a time as any to describe my host family: There is a mother, who I guess is ~60 years old, whose name is Houriyya. She speaks no English or French, and seems to not understand me when I speak in correct formal Arabic, and definitely she never speaks to me in formal Arabic but instead in Darija, which is impossibly to understand. There is also an elder son, Toufiq, who works on a motorcycle all day (?) and speaks some French. But he always comes back very late, so I rarely talk to him. She has another son whom we have never met -- I think he's in the army -- and I know nothing about the husband. There are no pictures of the husband in the house. Touchy subject? Not gonna ask.
Now, for things I do. I'll start with meals.
Breakfast is always generally bread and jam. But 'bread' can also consist of pancake-like objects and other sort of pastries. It's a very French breakfast I think.
Lunch and dinner are both delicious and both always have a meat. This was a big surprise to me -- I thought not being vegetarian in Morocco wouldn't be a big deal, because they don't eat meat much, but I was wrong. We've had chicken, fish, and beef so far, and meat with every meal. It's also all really, really good. No couscous yet (this is odd). Lots of bread with every meal - the type of bread changes, but it's all good. Stews are really common and really good, and are called tajiin.
Our family eats with utensils, but it's unclear to me whether or not most Moroccan families do. Certainly using bread as a utensil is sort of accepted. We eat finger food a decent amount (i.e. today we had a really delicious pita sandwich thing, although it wasn't pita it was some other kind of delicious bread which I have no idea how to make but it was really good, and we also have had chicken and fish which were both bony enough that they had to be eaten with hands), so it's hard to tell. Other people in the program have said that they eat with their hands. I suspect it varies with wealth, and I think our family is well-off enough. It's hard to tell. The apartment is very nice.
Anyway, what happens when we eat is Dexter and I sort of awkwardly stand around and try to help, but she doesn't seem to understand that that's what we're doing some of the time. We hopefully manage to help place the dishes on the table. She almost always makes multiple side dishes which look complicated, like some delicious eggplant-tomato-lemon-thingy, some salad, another salad, the main meal, and two bowls of olives. Then we start eating. Dexter and I will point to an object, say 'shnou hada' (what is this) to try and learn some Arabic. Then she'll say a long sentence that we completely fail to understand. We give her a blank look and then she shortens her sentence to just telling us what it is. Then she points to everything else and quickly tells us what all of those things are too, so by the end of it I've forgotten everything because it's all just a string of consonants.
Example of some Darija (Moroccan) Arabic:
In Standard Arabic, "eggplant" is baadhnajaan (the "dh" sound means the "th" in "that" -- as opposed to the "th" in "math"). When I put 2 a's in a row, it's because the vowel is long which means you literally hold the vowel for twice as long.
In Darija, it's "bdnza". Literally the exact same, minus all vowels, and some letters are changed around ("dh" becomes "d", which is a common transformation from formal to colloquial, and "j" becomes "z" which is also common).
But hopefully that example helps you understand how I can be pretty reasonable at Standard Arabic but completely overwhelmed by Darija. If they said everything nice and slowly maybe I would have a chance. But it's too much too fast. Hopefully I'll get better.
We have class from 10-12 with Cornell Fleischer and Moroccan Arabic from 3-5 with someone who clearly thinks we're a lot dumber than we are, because the class moves incredibly slowly. After the first class we walk home (~5min walk, learned the way relatively quickly, which I was proud of) and eat lunch and do some reading, and after the second class we either come home, or hang around IES (the center) to get some work done, or go explore the city, which we did yesterday and today.
I'll probably try and write a post about Fes (with pictures hopefully?!) tomorrow or something.
1) Go running. This is because I would get terribly, terribly lost, and also because Fes is not a city you run in. I'll describe Fes in the next post a bit more probably, but basically it is 100% impossible to run inside Fes and I don't know how to get out. I also don't know how to ask my host mother how to get out. I think this might be something that I'll try to do tomorrow.
2) Drink water. This is because I keep on not buying bottled water for no good reason. The tap water is unsafe in Fes, safe in Rabat. I would say I drink about a third to a fifth of the water I drank in Chicago. That will probably change soon. The main problem is I keep on not being thirsty until night time, at which point I get really thirsty (like now!) but don't want to go outside to find water.
3) Check enough of my email or of the news.
4) Communicate effectively with my host family.
Now's as good a time as any to describe my host family: There is a mother, who I guess is ~60 years old, whose name is Houriyya. She speaks no English or French, and seems to not understand me when I speak in correct formal Arabic, and definitely she never speaks to me in formal Arabic but instead in Darija, which is impossibly to understand. There is also an elder son, Toufiq, who works on a motorcycle all day (?) and speaks some French. But he always comes back very late, so I rarely talk to him. She has another son whom we have never met -- I think he's in the army -- and I know nothing about the husband. There are no pictures of the husband in the house. Touchy subject? Not gonna ask.
Now, for things I do. I'll start with meals.
Breakfast is always generally bread and jam. But 'bread' can also consist of pancake-like objects and other sort of pastries. It's a very French breakfast I think.
Lunch and dinner are both delicious and both always have a meat. This was a big surprise to me -- I thought not being vegetarian in Morocco wouldn't be a big deal, because they don't eat meat much, but I was wrong. We've had chicken, fish, and beef so far, and meat with every meal. It's also all really, really good. No couscous yet (this is odd). Lots of bread with every meal - the type of bread changes, but it's all good. Stews are really common and really good, and are called tajiin.
Our family eats with utensils, but it's unclear to me whether or not most Moroccan families do. Certainly using bread as a utensil is sort of accepted. We eat finger food a decent amount (i.e. today we had a really delicious pita sandwich thing, although it wasn't pita it was some other kind of delicious bread which I have no idea how to make but it was really good, and we also have had chicken and fish which were both bony enough that they had to be eaten with hands), so it's hard to tell. Other people in the program have said that they eat with their hands. I suspect it varies with wealth, and I think our family is well-off enough. It's hard to tell. The apartment is very nice.
Anyway, what happens when we eat is Dexter and I sort of awkwardly stand around and try to help, but she doesn't seem to understand that that's what we're doing some of the time. We hopefully manage to help place the dishes on the table. She almost always makes multiple side dishes which look complicated, like some delicious eggplant-tomato-lemon-thingy, some salad, another salad, the main meal, and two bowls of olives. Then we start eating. Dexter and I will point to an object, say 'shnou hada' (what is this) to try and learn some Arabic. Then she'll say a long sentence that we completely fail to understand. We give her a blank look and then she shortens her sentence to just telling us what it is. Then she points to everything else and quickly tells us what all of those things are too, so by the end of it I've forgotten everything because it's all just a string of consonants.
Example of some Darija (Moroccan) Arabic:
In Standard Arabic, "eggplant" is baadhnajaan (the "dh" sound means the "th" in "that" -- as opposed to the "th" in "math"). When I put 2 a's in a row, it's because the vowel is long which means you literally hold the vowel for twice as long.
In Darija, it's "bdnza". Literally the exact same, minus all vowels, and some letters are changed around ("dh" becomes "d", which is a common transformation from formal to colloquial, and "j" becomes "z" which is also common).
But hopefully that example helps you understand how I can be pretty reasonable at Standard Arabic but completely overwhelmed by Darija. If they said everything nice and slowly maybe I would have a chance. But it's too much too fast. Hopefully I'll get better.
We have class from 10-12 with Cornell Fleischer and Moroccan Arabic from 3-5 with someone who clearly thinks we're a lot dumber than we are, because the class moves incredibly slowly. After the first class we walk home (~5min walk, learned the way relatively quickly, which I was proud of) and eat lunch and do some reading, and after the second class we either come home, or hang around IES (the center) to get some work done, or go explore the city, which we did yesterday and today.
I'll probably try and write a post about Fes (with pictures hopefully?!) tomorrow or something.
God I KNOW about the water. I was a brat and did not buy as much as I should have. I was dehydrated the whole time, but you get used to it.
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