أنا لا أعرف ماذا أكتب هنا: Mid-Program Thoughts

Here is another blog post that I wrote for my school:

.السلام عليكم! انا اسمي فيونا. انا ادرس في حامعة بنتلي ولكن الان انا ادرس اللغة العربية في جامعة الاخوين

(Hello! My name is Fiona. I study at Bentley University but now I am studying the Arabic language at Al Akhawayn University.)

I have survived a whole semester’s worth of Arabic! It took some getting used to being here, but after a week or two I was in the swing of things. I live in a double room on campus with a Moroccan roommate. The university is situated in a small town in the mountains called Ifran. The weather here is warm but there is usually a nice breeze. We take it for granted while we’re here, but when we travel to other cities we look forward to returning to school for the cooler weather!

These past four weeks have been particularly unique because of the holy month of Ramadan. Ramadan has had a significant impact on the international students because, off-campus, there is little food available during the day and the restaurants on campus have limited hours. Although this was frustrating at times, being here during this time has helped me learn more about Islam and the culture of an Islamic country. For example, we often ate the breaking of the fast meal with our program and would wait to eat until the Maghrib prayer, professors and other speakers would talk to us about Islamic practices and particularly the ones observed during Ramadan, and we would think twice about eating and drinking in public. It will be very different in the coming weeks since Ramadan is over, so I look forward to experiencing a different side of Morocco!

My remaining time here will also be different because my Arabic class has shrunk from five people to two. Hopefully, we will learn more at a faster pace but the individual attention is also very intense and exhausting. Monday through Friday, I have class from 8 a.m. until 12:30 p.m. or 1 p.m. We have a much needed thirty-minute coffee break in the morning and some days we have clubs/experiential learning and lectures. After class, we eat lunch and then do homework/recover from class. The most exciting part of our week might be a walk (or taxi drive) into town to the market or to the sushi restaurant for dinner. J

On the weekends, we either have scheduled trips as part of the program or we travel ourselves. So far, I have visited Fes three times, Merzouga (the Sahara desert), and Azrou, which is a small town nearby. We have days off for Eid al-Fitr (the celebration of the end of Ramadan) and I will travel to Rabat, the capital, with friends and then to Marrakech, a big touristy city that has a Starbucks, with the program. The program is very good at immersing us in the culture.

Moroccans are very hospitable, and some girls that we just met brought us to a celebration in the market and helped us put on traditional dresses and get our makeup and henna done. It was the equivalent to preparations for getting married and was a lot of fun!

I can’t believe my time here is winding down. A lot will happen between now and when I fly home. I look forward to our trips and seeing the progress I have made in Arabic – despite struggling through hours of homework and drowning in pages of vocab words!

Fun fact: Most shops and restaurants display a picture of their King, Mohammed VI, prominently.