Greetings from Morocco

So I’m on my third day now in Morocco. Its hard to figure out what to describe to you. There is so much to describe. Lets start with my hotel room. My hotel room, which I share with two other people from my trip, looks out on the Medina, the old, pre-colonial, neighborhood of the town. The Medina is surrounded by a giant, fortress-like, sand-orange wall. There are arched doorways in the wall that lead you into a market, or, suq. There, street vendors line the already small street on either side. They sell all kinds of things: shoes, DVDs, fruit, bread, fish, instruments, clothes, everything… You will constantly run into the smell of cooking tajines and Moroccan spice. Music rising out of the Medina can be heard through my bedroom doors until the early hours of the morning.
The place where I will be taking classes, starting Monday, is inside the Medina. It is called the CCCL. You walk down narrow alley ways with white-washed buildings on your right and left, take a couple turns and you are there. The building the CCCL is in is phenomenal. There are so many intricate mosaic designs on the floors, walls, lining stairwells, basically everywhere. The roof of the building gives you a panoramic view of the city, which is huge. Its basically buildings in some shade of white, seemingly stacked on top of each other as far as the eye can see. Its really beautiful.
We arrived in Rabat in the middle of the month of Ramadan. During Ramadan Muslims fast from almost everything (drinking, eating, and smoking) during the daylight hours. Things are relatively calm during the day, as people are in a more restful state. You wont find anyone eating or drinking on the streets during the day, so when we eat or drink, I do so inside somewhere. But when the sun sets and the call to prayer is sounded, everyone eats. Restauarants set food out on tables, and people will come and sit by the food for 20 minutes or so before the fast is broken. Then when the call to prayer goes out, they all start eating what is infront of them. So during the night hours here, the city is alive with people until the wee hours of the morning. They then wake up around 4:30 am and have a big meal before the sun rises. To give you an idea of how much food is eaten, one of my academic directors said that in the month of Ramadan, Moroccans consume 1/3 of the amount of food they eat for the whole year. 1/3 in one month!
Being in Morocco is very different than anything I have experienced before. Adjusting will definitely take some time, and may be hard at times, but will be well worth it.

Masalaama