Sunday January 29, my church gave me a warm and lovely sendoff, with prayers at every service for safety and excitement in Morocco, and then just a few hours later, an errant corkscrew set off a full body and carry-on luggage search at Dulles. I wasn't expecting the excitement would start so soon! ( I think my TSA agent was new, because the others were kind of humoring him: "Now you've contaminated the wand, so you have to...") Then, their worries about me apparently satisfied, I boarded the plane and took off. My next surprise was when we landed in Paris at 7:30 in the morning, local time, and it was still dark. Really dark. I have previously enjoyed the summer solstice in France and watched the sun set at 10:30, but I have never been there in the winter and didn't realize that the latitude would make for long nights. How I would hate teaching a first block class in Paris! (hahaha-- those of you who know me from school know that I really don't like much of anything at 7:30 in the morning!) The next flight was about 3 hours to Rabat. I can't tell you what we flew over, because the clouds were thick below and I couldn't see anything out my window. I fell asleep. But when I woke up, this is what I saw: The Coast of Africa, and Clear Blue Skies!!! Then I saw mountains with snow on them, and then the land flattened out, and we landed at Rabat. Where my phone announced to me: "Welcome to Morocco! No service." Well, at least it still works as a camera, and I can still play Two Dots. So don't text me! Tomorrow I am getting a Moroccan phone, and I'll install WhatsApp on it, so if you have WhatsApp, you can reach me that way. Ahlam and Saïd from MACECE (the Fulbright-sponsoring organization here) met me at the airport ( I was the absolute last person through customs, where there was a good deal of discussion regarding the entry card I filled out--- did they know about the corkscrew incident??) and brought me to a lovely riad in the medina. I will spend my first 10 days here while I look for an appartment and get my two feet firmly on the ground. It's a wonderful traditional place. It's on a winding little path in from the main street, it has many floors and about 20 foot ceilings on each floor, and about four little terraces and rooftops from which you can look out and see: the river that separates Salé from Rabat and is bordered by a wide and sunny promenade; the rooftops of all the rest of the city and the minarets; and framed by palm trees, I can see the Atlantic. I will start doing some walking and photographing tomorrow. The inside of this home has beautiful ceramic tile everywhere, and some very cool architectural "fretting" (though I just made that up, and I'm sure there is a real term for it-- I'll have to research that); thick plastered walls; long sofas that line the walls of many rooms and make inviting places to have tea, or talk, or sleep, or write blog entries. My hostess, Nezed speaks French and her son Hamza, who is a newly minted travel agent, speaks wonderful English. I don't think I am the only foreigner that they are hosting at the moment, but I haven't met anyone else yet-- except Nezed's sister, who only speaks Darija, which is what everybody speaks here. It's the Moroccan version of Arabic. I've learned to say something like "choucroute" , which is Thank You, but in French it's Sauerkraut. Darija lessons are high on the priority list! Nezed and her sister made a delicious lunch. Here is it is: It was a tomato salad, and some meatballs in a delicious savory sauce. Using our hands, we ate it with bread. (though Nezed kindly put out a small spoon for me if I wanted it, since my technique in using bread-as-utensil is quite poor at this point.) But it was a delicious meal followed by sweet tangerines, which are in season right now, long with strawberries, raspberries, and all citrus. Yum!
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Marcie StutzmanTeacher, Researcher, Adventurer, Explorer; Maybe crazy; Possibly too old for this Archives
October 2018
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