Welcome to Orientation week. Today we began our orientation at ALIF, the Arabic Language Institute of Fez. We were supposed to meet Youssf, the man in charge of housing and the school's computer lab at 10 in the hotel lobby to walk over to ALIF, however, he didn't show up until 10:45. It ended up being a useful respite because Alice was sick from our dinner last night so we spent the time hanging out with her while Lla MJ was contacting doctors for her. As of posting, she's still not feeling well, so we hope she gets better.
Youssef rolled up on a motorbike which was the first indication that he would be a really cool guy. He is about 6'4", around 28 years old, plays on the city's basketball team, and told us that his real title is "to be our best friend." He walked us to ALIF which it turns out we had been walking by every day because it's just a block from the hotel. The courtyard is gorgeous and the classrooms are nice too. They have a bigger library than I would have expected with a collection of over 1000 American DVD's. I'm going to check some out to watch at night after I begin living in my home stay.
At ALIF, we met with Si Abdellatiff (don't forget Si is like Mr. and Lla is like Mrs.) for an hour to discuss safety, this week, and our time at ALIF. Afterwards, we had chicken tagine for lunch in the courtyard at ALIF. The dessert we had, orange slices and strawberry slices sprinkled with cinnamon, was especially delicious.
After lunch, we set up our junky little Nokia phones we are going to be using while we are here. Phone plans are interesting because it costs 1 dh per text and 3 dh per minute to call (about 12 cents and 37 cents respectively). Instead of buying minutes, you add money to your phone whenever you start to run low.
With our phones all set up, we headed out with Youssef for a walking tour of the part of Ville Nouvelle surrounding ALIF. We went to a huge convenience store, Fez central park, some ATM's, and just generally got comfortable walking around on the streets. He took us back to ALIF by 4 because we had a lecture scheduled with a professor from the University of Fez about Moroccan politics since 1956 when Morocco became an independent state. I won't try to sum up the two hour session about 30 years of history on here because it would not do Moroccan history justice. The first hour was information and the second hour was discussion/question-and-answer.
Today we also met some other students studying at Alif while we were in the courtyard. There's a group of 7 here from the University of Minnesota that are here from January to the end of May. In the girls' professional opinions, there was one cute guy in their group, but I'm under the impression that he's gay. Updates to follow after we stalk them from a distance some more.
Done for the day, we walked to see the gorgeous hotel pool and then went back to the main boulevard, Hassan the second avenue, to go to dinner. We ate roasted chicken at a restaurant called Chicken Mac that Youssef suggested to us. Ron had a hamburger that was better than expected. One of the strangest parts of meals here is that the ketchup is much sweeter than American ketchup so I haven't been using it on my fries or chicken.
We then went to get ice cream after dinner and went back to the hotel to mess around on the computers and rest up before our walking tour of the medina tomorrow.
Lastly, I put up some more pictures from today on the Facebook album.
Youssef rolled up on a motorbike which was the first indication that he would be a really cool guy. He is about 6'4", around 28 years old, plays on the city's basketball team, and told us that his real title is "to be our best friend." He walked us to ALIF which it turns out we had been walking by every day because it's just a block from the hotel. The courtyard is gorgeous and the classrooms are nice too. They have a bigger library than I would have expected with a collection of over 1000 American DVD's. I'm going to check some out to watch at night after I begin living in my home stay.
At ALIF, we met with Si Abdellatiff (don't forget Si is like Mr. and Lla is like Mrs.) for an hour to discuss safety, this week, and our time at ALIF. Afterwards, we had chicken tagine for lunch in the courtyard at ALIF. The dessert we had, orange slices and strawberry slices sprinkled with cinnamon, was especially delicious.
After lunch, we set up our junky little Nokia phones we are going to be using while we are here. Phone plans are interesting because it costs 1 dh per text and 3 dh per minute to call (about 12 cents and 37 cents respectively). Instead of buying minutes, you add money to your phone whenever you start to run low.
With our phones all set up, we headed out with Youssef for a walking tour of the part of Ville Nouvelle surrounding ALIF. We went to a huge convenience store, Fez central park, some ATM's, and just generally got comfortable walking around on the streets. He took us back to ALIF by 4 because we had a lecture scheduled with a professor from the University of Fez about Moroccan politics since 1956 when Morocco became an independent state. I won't try to sum up the two hour session about 30 years of history on here because it would not do Moroccan history justice. The first hour was information and the second hour was discussion/question-and-answer.
Today we also met some other students studying at Alif while we were in the courtyard. There's a group of 7 here from the University of Minnesota that are here from January to the end of May. In the girls' professional opinions, there was one cute guy in their group, but I'm under the impression that he's gay. Updates to follow after we stalk them from a distance some more.
Done for the day, we walked to see the gorgeous hotel pool and then went back to the main boulevard, Hassan the second avenue, to go to dinner. We ate roasted chicken at a restaurant called Chicken Mac that Youssef suggested to us. Ron had a hamburger that was better than expected. One of the strangest parts of meals here is that the ketchup is much sweeter than American ketchup so I haven't been using it on my fries or chicken.
We then went to get ice cream after dinner and went back to the hotel to mess around on the computers and rest up before our walking tour of the medina tomorrow.
Lastly, I put up some more pictures from today on the Facebook album.
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