Day 66: Memorial Day Dinner

Today is Memorial Day, a day when we pause to remember all the men and women who have ever died serving and protecting the United States. Most people just see it as the start of summer vacation, a day off from school, or national barbecue day, but they are wrong because summer vacation hasn't started, there was school in Morocco today, and there is no National Barbecue Day, there's only National Barbecue Month (May), National Hamburger Day (Dec 24), National Roast Suckling Pig Day (Dec. 18), and National Pigs-in-a-blanket Day (April 24). In my research, I also found out my birthday falls during National Peanut Month, National Frozen Foods Month, and National Noodle Month and that my birthday is National Crown Roast of Pig Day. You are welcome to do more research on Food Holidays and figure out my birthday at the following link: Food Holidays.

I had an incredible Memorial Day though. I walked with Ariel to ALIF in the morning to use the wi-fi to finish up my papers. When we got there at 10, the school was packed! ALIF's summer classes start today so there are over 100 new students. I guess I should have realized this when I met Benton, but never really put two and two together. There is a big group from VMI, a group from University of Georgia, a group from University of Iowa, and more that I didn't even meet. Despite the influx of pseudo-hipsters who didn't know what they are getting themselves into, Tash, Ariel, Joe, and I worked at school all morning. I finished my paper for Lalla Mary Jean just before noon and turned it in. To celebrate, Joe and I got McChickens.

After lunch, I got to work on revising my paper on gender and sports. I hate doing bibliographies and footnotes so that alone took me 2 hours. I got my paper up to 10 full pages, with footnotes, and emailed it in at 5:30, thus finishing my Spring term!!!! After I clicked send, I quoted the character Azel from Leaving Tangier, and yelled, like I cited in my paper, "I'm free! I'm free!...I don't have to sleep with a man to make a decent living!" The effect was not the same for me as I hadn't been feigning homosexuality for the past year and a half to get a visa to Spain, but the sentiment was still there.

Afterwards, I went back to the medina and packed up all my stuff. The room is much emptier now, but Benton's stuff keeps it from being devoid of character. At 6:45, I went with Elle and Marissa to Cafe Scorpion to hang out. Alice, Christie, and Ron met up with us there, and we also saw my brother, Lotfi, and Tash/Meredith's brother, Ayoub. At 8, we had our end of program dinner at Le Maison Bleue, a swanky restaurant in Batha that had $60 meals (yes, I mean dollar$). At dinner, we had a lot of fun one last time as a group with Lalla and Si Ron. They seemed to bring out endless bottles of wine and the biggest plates of couscous and tagines. Everything was delicious and we could not have had a better time. Afterwards, we went back to Cafe Scorpion to hang out for a while before heading home at 11:15. Tash leaves at 6 am tomorrow, so it's the last time we'll see her until we get back to school. I stayed up talking to Benton about religion until 1 and then we went to bed.

Day 41: Graph Paper

I'm getting lazier. Frequent readers have noticed that the content of my posts recently has been changing. My blog is evolving like a Kadabra you trade to a friend with a link cable in order to get an Alakazam. In return, he trades you his Graveller so it evolves into a Golem. Then you trade back because Alakazam provides that 6th man advantage for your Pokemon line-up akin to Shooting Guard Mike Miller or Power Forward Udonis Haslem on the 2011 - 2012 Miami Heat. Yes, it is the NBA Playoffs and yes, I did just reference one of the greatest hassles in Pokemon Red & Blue. Despite the time difference, I've been keeping up with the almost ritualistic routs of the Knicks by the Heat over the past week and have been trash-talking Maddie even though we are thousands of miles apart.

So back to the blog, frequent readers will notice that I have done less journalling recently and more discussions of life here in Morocco. Statisticians would say these two concepts exhibit an "inverse relationship," which is a fancy way of telling your friends that you're dating someone who travels everywhere by handstand. This graph should represent the content shift.

Nice use of Excel by the author

This is very similar to trends seen in the graph of number of Harvard students present vs. number of world problems solved and in the graph of daily consumption of candy corn vs. number of friends.

To get the journalling part of this post over with, I did the usual today. After class in the afternoon, we visited an NGO that employs women in the afternoon which was decently underwhelming because it's hard to see a woman's life change by learning how to knit or cook when you visit for a half hour and spend 15 of those minutes drinking tea and eating cookies. Afterwards, I chilled at Cafe Scorpion with Christie, Ron, Alice, Joe, Marissa, and Elle. Came home and had chicken for dinner and some delicious honeydew melon for dessert. Watched the new Modern Family and How I Met Your Mother from this week and then fell asleep before 10 while watching "This Is Spinal Tap." Quick summary: the original mock-umentary movie from 1984. It follows a fictional hair metal group Spinal Tap and is widely regarded as one of the funniest movies of all time. Here is the best scene in the movie where they explain the concept of "turning it up to 11." 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ll7rWiY5obI

I think I ended up striking a 60-40 commentary to journalism balance with this post.

And yes, I did make those graphs myself. Here's a bonus graph

I am at 4 Pokemon mentioned, so my blog is currently on the rise
and possesses a couple thousand units of Cool

Day 39: Labor Day

May Day is Labor Day in Morocco. All classes at ALIF were cancelled for the day, but Prof. Sadiqi still made us meet at 3 for her class. In the morning, I slept in until 10 and did some reading. Before lunch, I decided to take a 15 minute nap, but it turned into an hour and 15 minute nap. Whoops. We had a big plate of cous cous and it was nice to have everyone home for lunch because of no school/work.

After class at 3, I went to Cafe Scorpion with Joe, Alice, Christie, and Ron. The Berber tent we normally hang out in was full, so we had to sit at a table like normal people. I had a pretty bad case of the munchies so I ended up ordering fries and a drink. On our walk to the riad, I was still hungry so I got a tube of cheese Pringles from a new grocer I found who sells whole tubes for 25 dh and has 7 flavors (including the chili cheese, sea salt and vinegar, and cheese and onion varieties). Although I hadn't eaten any Pringles on Sunday or Monday, I ate the whole tube last night. Once again, whoops. 

Got some reviewing done in the riad before heading home. I didn't end up reading the whole 5th book; I read half, skimmed the rest, and reread the important articles. 

In other news, I started watching Season 2 of Game of Thrones. Sooooooo gooooooood. It makes watching tv fun again. Also, blitzmail was unexpectedly down all day, so sorry for not responding to my thousands of fan mail letters. Lastly, the most exciting news: I'm a trip leader again this year for Freshman Trips! I'm leading a canoeing trip on section G and a bunch of my friends are also leading trips on Section G. Maddie is leading a hiking trip on Section H too, so good news all around.

Day 26: Untitled

Today I had more toast. Yes, for those of you who have been keeping track, I have had something other than baguette for breakfast every day for more than a week now. What a game-changer.

We had a tricky quiz in Arabic class today, which was made even harder because we didn’t know we were going to have one. I think I did well though by cramming effectively. We had lunch at ALIF today, our weekly lunch with Lla MJ to check in and catch-up.

Class in the afternoon was long. Even though we’ve been doing this 5-hours-a-day schedule for a couple weeks now, I don’t think any of us will ever get used to it. It’s hard to believe I used to do 7+ hour days of class in high school, but I think the 45 minute classes (my attention span) and the variety of subject material covered in a single day made it more feasible. Sitting in one subject for over an hour and a half is just unbearable.

We went to Café Scorpion this afternoon to hang out and plan the upcoming weekend. We decided not to go to Jazzablanca in Casablanca because the price of tickets did not mirror the amount of love we have for the artists we would be seeing. Instead, there are two groups of us going to Chefchaouen, a city in the Rif mountains. It’s one of theplaces to visit while you’re in Morocco because the entire city is painted blue. If you don’t believe me, copy and paste the name into Google Images (trust me, you won’t be able to spell it correctly). It was also closed to all foreigners until the 1920 when the Spanish took it over. Only three foreigners (all of whom disguised themselves) had been within the city walls before that. Marissa, Elle, and I are going on Friday morning, doing an all day hike on Saturday, and coming back on Sunday, while the other group is going on Friday morning and coming back on Saturday.

While in the café, I skyped with Maddie for 20 minutes. While not the longest conversation, it was nice to catch-up with her. They went to a farm in the countryside all weekend where they rode horses and did some other fun gaucho things. She’s excited because she and a group of friends just booked a trip to see the Moreno glaciers and visit El Calafate during their week-long break.

I went home for a diner of meatballs and soup. I read some Scar Tissue and watched the first 45 minutes of the 4^th Pirates of the Carribbean movie before going to bed. Tomorrow we have an interview with the author Leila Abouzeid in the morning and no class in the afternoon so we are all excited to start the weekend early.

Day 15: Cafe Culture

Today I slept in till 10. It was awesome. 

When I woke up, I had my usual breakfast of nutella and day-old baguette with warm milk. However, things were different today because my mom also cooked me two eggs. This was unfortunate because little did she know that eggs are literally the only breakfast food I don't like. 

After breakfast, Lotfi and I went on a Medina adventure. First we went to the hair cutters. I thought about getting what I've been calling the Moroc Hawk, a variant of a mohawk that many Moroccan boys have, but instead just settled on a shortened version of the hair cut I have. The man was a little too scissor-happy, and it ended up a little uneven in the back. After a shower though, it looked good and I'm very happy with it. It only cost 30 dhirams, so like $3.75, which is a great deal when compared to a typical American $20 haircut.

Then we walked to the ATM so I could get some money and then we went jallabah shopping! He took me to a family friend's store and helped me negotiate my way into a 250 dh jallabah, which is a reasonable price for a quality jallabah. Mine is dark brown and looks good with my complexion. It will be useful in a variety of occasions when I am home: star wars parties, harry potter parties, residency in a monastery, as a onesie, as a dress, when I want to secretly be naked, as a bath robe, as a blanket, when I want to look like a creepy man, at the premier of the Hobbit,… the list goes on. We went to a cafe in the Medina afterwards to meet up with Alice, Christie, and Elle. It's called Cafe Clock and it is a really neat space. They have delicious milkshakes, an english menu, and an all-english speaking staff. The owner is clearly an expat and has a great business model cause they make bank. Lotfi invited them all to come over for lunch, so they came and met my family. AFter cows cows, we played cards. Unfortunately, Elle is too good at cards. They left to go to the hamams, the bath houses, so I had some free time to rest in the afternoon. Lotfi was planning on meeting some friends at a cafe at 4 and had invited the girls and I to go with him, so at 4:30, he and I walked over. The cafe was called Cafe Scorpion and it was like a more rugged version of Cafe Clock. We sat in a cushioned tent on a terrace and had a great time talking and being social. I fell on the stairs and hit my head, but otherwise it was a fun afternoon. The three girls joined us after their trip to the hamam and so did Marissa, Ron, and Christie. There was a live band that played Moroccan music that we watched for a bit too. We ended up staying there for almost 4 hours. I left with Elle, Christie, and Marissa cause I wanted to go home for dinner, but Lotfi, some of his friends, and some of my fiends stayed at Cafe Scorpion. 

We had some potato patty things that were stuffed with vegetables and that you covered in tomato sauce. They were good and filling. I hung out with my family and read some Steve Jobs before going to bed.