Assorted Adventures

I wasn’t intending to write today, but seeing as I’m home and there is no one pulling me off anywhere (rare occurrence), I thought I’d share a few things I missed from yesterday, as well as my super awesome day today.

Yesterday afternoon, we got out of class early, so after I met with my academic director about my research project (he had some really good ideas—I’m thinking about interviewing people and collecting life stories or analyzing values of individuality, tradition and changes in society through Moroccan soap operas), my friends and I decided to go to a juice café we’d heard about.

The menu consisted of about 30 different kinds of juices listed in French and Arabic, ranging from expected ones like orange to exotic options like mango and papaya, to downright unexpected combinations like avocado-orange. (Plus a few mysteries—still haven’t figured out what croquis means. According to google translate, it means stretch…) I wanted to try almond juice, but was told they didn’t have it, so on a whim, I chose something called kaki. It was delicious, and today, a bit of research proved it to be persimmon.

My food adventure continued later that night, when for desert, my family served what from far away looked like peeled potatoes, but turned out to be the insides of some sort of spiky cactus fruit—also delicious. It tasted sweet, but freshly not-too-sweet, and had some crunchy seeds (kind of like pomogranate).

This afternoon, as I was walking to class, I passed a very pretty kitten and stopped to take a picture. Most of the cats here are feral and run away when anyone gets near them, but as I crouched down to take the picture, the kitten walked over and practically hopped into my purse. We’re not supposed to touch animals, but I decided this one was too young to have rabies. After petting it for a minute, I got up and started to walk away, and the kitten followed me for about a block.

After class, I brought my friends to try to find the kitten again, and as we began to walk up the alleyway where I had found it the first time, some guys told us that it was a dead end. When we told them we were looking for a cat, they knew which one and found it for us, and then joked with us for a while.

Later in the afternoon, we heard that some people were playing soccer at the beach, so my friend Asil and I went to check it out. When we found them, Asil exclaimed, “They’re even playing with real Moroccans!” (someone’s host bro and his friends) At low tide, the flat, hard sand makes a great soccer field, and the beach is full of different games, marked out with lines and shoes stuck in the sand.