Recovery Week

Monday
yay for another boring-ish day! We had breakfast early then got right on the road back to Rabat. It's such a relief to know where I am! I went to the library for a while, then went to bible study with some friends here (it was so nice to have a bible study group!), and came home where I showed my family the things that I got from Fes and my pictures. Chayma showed me her pictures because last summer she went with the program to do the rural homestay and to Fes. It was so cool! We had dinner, hung out for a little bit, then went to our rooms. Now tomorrow and wednesday, they should be the interesting days. Tomorrow we have class, not that extraordinary, along with another class-ish thing in another part of the city. We're scheduled to go to Casablanca for a day trip on Wednesday but I'm going to leave tomorrow in the afternoon with some friends and stay the night in a hotel there. That way we get an early start on Wednesday to go to the places that the program directors and Chayma suggested. It should be pretty cool to go to the organizations because they are expecting us, but even more interesting to explore the city on our own. I'll keep you posted!

Tuesday
So this morning I went to class and I was so shocked by the number of people who were absent! My class alone went from a class of 9 to a class of 4 because everyone was throwing up or felt really stomach sick. I have to say this morning my stomach was not feeling 100% but I kinda just plowed through because I knew if I missed class I'd miss so much practice! So I went and I was so glad I did. We played games and reviewed the alphabet and writing. And I felt much better about an hour into class. The second class was cancelled, which gave us a nice free afternoon. My friends and I decided after class not to go to Casa today because we're so tired and some are feeling sick. So instead I'm going with other friends bright and early tomorrow. The train leaves at 6:45 tomorrow morning so it should be a looonnnggg day. But we really wanted to head out early because we were given 5 different places to visit. Although we really only need to see one out of the 5, I really want to see at least 2, which means we have to go to the Hassan II mosque by 9am so that by 11:30 we can go to Solidarite Feminin, a place for single moms and divorced women to find jobs, etc. There's also a library, a Jewish Museum and an organization to help street children that we can visit and we have appointments with. Hopefully we'll have some time to explore, but if not we can always go back! It's not all that far and the train is wicked cheap.

Wednesday
Casablanca is crazy! I mean parts of it are really cool and parts I wasn't so excited about. This morning Lauren and I barely caught the 6:45 train and made it to Casa before 8. We decided that because we had so much extra time that we'd walk to the mosque, which is so huge that you can pretty much see it from anywhere in the city. When we got to the mosque we still had some time to kill before the tour, so we went to a cute little cafe and got some breakfast. We met up with some more friends who took the later train and found the tour just in time. The mosque was amazing! Apparently it's the 3rd largest mosque in the world only to Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia. The roof, which is incredibly intricate detail carved into cedar wood, slides open in a matter of minutes. The men pray downstairs and the women pray upstairs or outside. After the tour, we went back to the cafe so that everyone else could have breakfast, then we headed to the second place, Solidarite Feminin. We took a cab to where we thought it was, but the cab driver didn't exactly know, so then we asked another guy who pulled in 3 other guys off the street to help us find it. He was so nice! We wondered around a little bit and asked several people but we finally found one location. They directed us to another location just around the corner, but we got confused about the directions and ended up asking 2 women, a guard and another 2 women who actually work there, to help us find it. We walked in a huge circle, but w/e. we found it eventually and we were only 20 minutes late. Not to mention that we gave ourselves an hour to find it. nbd. So we had a quick tour and the woman is going to email me to help me out with my independent study idea. I don't know if I mentioned it, but for my independent study I decided I want to see if I can volunteer at a center for battered women and since there has been a huge increase in female judges, I want to talk to the female judges and get their opinion the issue along with study their cases and see how they are ruling on domestic violence related cases. We'll see how it goes! But luckily the woman at Solidarite Feminin said she would email me some information about organizations I think in Casa but hopefully in Rabat too! After our visit we went for a nice long walk. The Ville Nouvelle is very much like a cross between Boston, NYC and parts of France. It was really fun! I didn't get any pictures because I need to get batteries, but my friends did! I'll try to steal theirs. lol. We stopped in a cafe and had this amazing ice cream, I bought a couple magazines, we tried to get to Rick's but it was closed, then we made our way to the train station. At this point it was already 5:15 and we estimated that we'd been walking for ~3hours. I was soooooo tired! We chatted on the train and I felt like I barely made it home. Unfortunately Chandra doesn't have a key to her house and no one was home, so she came to my house for a while and we talked for a very long time. After she left I had dinner while my host family and I watched My Super Ex-Girlfriend. Last night it was Transformers... I can't believe the movies that are on over here! It varies from Jeepers Creepers, National Treasure and Saw to Step Up, Honey and My Super Ex-Girlfriend! I guess it's not that strange and it varies in the US too but here it's all on one channel and you never know what kind of show will be on.

Thursday
So today we had 5/9 of the people in our class there. The majority of our program is sick, along with Nawal (our director) and my teacher, Fatiha. But Nawal walked into our classroom today and announced a schedule change. Here I was thinking she was going to cancel something when instead we find out we have a movie to watch and a reception for the speakers for our lectures. With 2 people just coming out of the hospital, one in the hospital until next week and another 2 going to clinics just today, we were a little surprised. But it turned out ok. The movie was really interesting... Divorce in Iran. It was a documentary in a court. Then Lauren and I visited our friend Jena who is in the hospital. She is the only one that we know definitely had food poisoning. Fun fact 1: You are supposed to have about 6 bacteria in 100mL of blood. Fun Fact 2: she had 100. Bad news bears. But she looks ok, just really tired and already it seems like her arms are thinner. Then Lauren and I were on time according to Moroccan standards (aka half an hour late) for the reception and got there just before they were actually talking anyway. It was pretty well timed not gonna lie. We have the option now of taking 3 different modules. The first options are Moroccan youth, Women, Society and Change, and multiculturalism. The second are Religion, art and lit and health and the third are Cinema, multilingualism and social issues. So needless to say, I'm signed up for the Women, Society and Change module along with the health and cinema modules. I'm really excited for the cinema one and of course the women module will be great for my ISP and sooooo interesting. After the reception, Chandra and Megan came over then Ahmed decided to help me study for my arabic quiz tomorrow. He would say the letters and I had to write them in first, second and third position. It was pretty hard! For dinner we had what was apparently Egyptian food (?) and this awesome soup my host mom makes. I still can't get past the fact that it's 10:30 right now and I'm so ready to go to sleep. I think I could have gotten sick. I've been really tired the past few days so I think my body is fighting whatever everyone else is getting sick from. Luckily I'm getting plenty of sleep!