More Pictures!

I have my placement test at 9am tomorrow morning (which is really 8am, because Moroccan daylight savings is starting), so I'm not going to write a long entry now... but I did want to post a few more pictures of campus and the town of Ifrane.  [What I called the souk in my last post is actually the marché, which is different from the souk in that it is daily, while the souk only happens once a week (a little ways down the road).]  Last night we made another visit to the marché and explored the grocery vendors more.  Many of them had full chicken or cow carcasses hanging around the counter.  But the fruits and vegetables were much more varied and appetizing than the produce at Al-Akhawayn, so I think I'll be returning soon to stock up.  Today was almost entirely taken up with orientation sessions about adjusting to the new culture.  

At the marche

Friends at a cafe in Ifrane (the two on the right are from Princeton)

Me at the center of campus, with the mosque behind me

Another view of the campus mosque, with the library in the background

Arrival

 The last day has been unbelievably long, but I am finally settled into my room at Al-Akhawayn.  Much has happened since I waved goodbye in Washington.  On my flight to New York, I sat next to a Baptist missionary on his way to Ghana who spent the full duration trying to convert me.  At JFK, I met up with a friend from Princeton also headed to Al-Akhawayn, and on that flight I was seated next to a Sufi physicist.  A native Moroccan, he had married a Puerto Rican and immigrated to the United States 2o years ago, but was returning to see his family and Sufi spiritual mentor.  He wanted to discuss Moroccan mint tea, taxi drivers, and the meaning of life for the full extent of our Atlantic crossing.  He told me that, as he has gotten older, he has become less satisfied with physics as a way to find meaning in his life, and has tried to live the poetry of Rumi, giving to drunks and the homeless and detaching himself from a goal-oriented world.  At the Casablanca airport, we encountered layer upon layer of painfully slow but official-looking bureaucracy, the newest tool of which was a thermal imaging camera that was supposed to detect swine flu.  The customs official made a dramatic show of tearing up our entry forms and scattering them about the floor of his cubicle -- a few moments later, a set of maids emerged to sweep them up.  They were followed by a pair of "secret police" officers in dark suits who came to take coffee orders and just chat.  

Eventually, we caught up with some more students headed for our program and boarded a tiny Royal Air Maroc flight bound for Fez -- on an aircraft that appeared to have been in service since Columbus's discovery of America.  The seats were sunken in, the plane gyrated loudly while in flight, making it nearly impossible to hold a conversation, and perched on top of the wings were old-fashioned booster propellers.  This fun last leg of the trip took only about an hour, and when we landed on the tarmac of the tiny Fez airport, there was immediately no doubt that we were in a very, very different country.  

Three of the five Al-Akhawayn students in our arrival group didn’t get their baggage because the airline unfortunately decided it was too heavy for our plane.  While they were waiting, those of us with our suitcases headed with our driver Mohammed into Fez to pick up another student at the train station.  He played for us his favorite Moroccan songs and switched back and forth between Arabic and French.  We happened to be passing through the city just as Friday prayer, or juma, was letting out, so the streets were teeming with (mostly) men leaving the mosque.  I expected Fez to be more cosmopolitan, but the part I saw was made up of low beige buildings, dusty, fairly narrow streets, and groups of young men squatting in the shade of palm trees beside small family shops. 

A bit later, driving to Ifrane, the dry but soaring heat of Fez suddenly became a mountain chill and marble-sized pellets of hail came crashing through the windows of our van.  The university itself is high in the mountains and located on a secluded, self-contained campus.  Since it was founded only fifteen years ago, the buildings are new, clean, and all resemble Spanish villas, with sloping red tile roofs and cream-colored exteriors.  The dorms are single-gender and members of the opposite sex are not even allowed inside the building.  Right now, I am alone in my room (and there is only one other student in the entire dorm!), but I will soon have a Moroccan roommate and the rest of the rooms will fill up with regular Moroccan students here for the summer session.  Our room has its own en suite bathroom and is quite a bit more spacious than my Princeton room last year! 

Below, a typical view of campus.

I ate lunch on campus with some other Princetonians and miscellaneous other students I’ve met from around the country, and then we headed off for an impromptu tour by one of the TAs, Younis.  There is a store, library, student lounge, Olympic-size pool, computer lab, post office, and “restaurant” on campus (I have to say, the cafeteria food is the one low point so far).

Several of us then decided to trek into the town of Ifrane to explore.  We managed to catch a bus from campus and got there in five minutes.  The square where we were dropped off was made up of immaculate lawns with pretty flowers and cute cafes.  Ifrane is a popular destination for Moroccans on holiday – but we didn’t see any other foreigners.  In search of Ethernet cables for our laptops, we made our way past this chic plaza to the souk, which seemed much older and a little seedier, but had much more colorful character.  Nothing had a marked price, and every single shop seemed to have everything from lingerie to tin cans to cell phones – hanging off every wall, ceiling, and window frame.  French, I soon found out, came in handy much more than Modern Standard Arabic.  None of the shopkeepers spoke English, but they switched back and forth between Moroccan Arabic and French from sentence to sentence.  After circumnavigating the souk, which seemed to be the prime hangout spot much more than the neat town center, we went to sit down in a café – only to realize after a while that we three girls were the only women in the place and attracting some bizarre sidelong stares. 

Below, a shop in the souk.

Around dusk, we decided to head back for dinner, just as the muazzin began the call to prayer (which I really love!) and the posses of young men lounging around the souk began to break up. 

So far, everything is wonderful here!

Preparing for the Journey

Hi everyone! This is my first blog and I can't promise that it will always be regular, but it seems the best way to keep in touch with as many people as possible during the 9.5 weeks that I am in Morocco this summer.  (Also, for anyone with Skype, my username is, creatively, chloebordewich.)  Here is the tentative outline for my trip.  I'll be flying out from DC on Thursday afternoon, changing planes in New York and Casablanca, and arriving at the Fez airport around noon on Friday.  I'll be studying at Al-Akhawayn University, located in the town of Ifrane, about an hour from Fez by bus.  The town is about the size of Red Hook (12,000) and is a popular mountain resort destination for vacationing Moroccans.  (AUI's website: http://www.aui.ma.)  For the most part, I will be studying Modern Standard Arabic, which is dramatically different from the colloquial Moroccan Arabic spoken on the streets.  However, we are scheduled for an hour a day of instruction in the Moroccan dialect.  After 8 weeks at the university, I'm planning to travel for ten days throughout Moroccan with some friends from Princeton, and also see a little of southern Spain.  I'm not sure how reliable internet access will be during this last leg of my trip, but I'll try to keep the blog updated as much as possible.  Ma'a salaama!