11-26 Happy Bibi Day! (slightly belated, but that should be no surprise)

Cooking bizzef continues. And somehow, it continues to succeed.

Cooking bizzef continues. And somehow, it continues to succeed. Erin’s Sheep stew turned out deliciously, and we managed to cook an entire thanksgiving dinner without an oven or a fridge. I am still baffled as to how that

worked. But we cooked a turkey leg and stuffing in a pot, as well as all sorts of other Thanksgiving-y

dishes: green bean and carrot/pumpkin casseroles, cream cheese pumpkin pie (on a plastic tray), mashed potatoes, gravy, and cider. The only things missing were sweet potatoes and cranberry sauce—it seems that cranberries don’t exist here (along with canned pumpkin, but we bought a slab of fresh pumpkin at the souk)—but I made applesauce, and it did the trick. We had a total of 12 people who had at one point or another said they were coming, but Megan ended up being the only one to actually make the trek out to Sale, so we had way too much food and sent her back to Rabat with a bunch. Aside from misgivings about the origins of the holiday, for me, Thanksgiving has always been about spending time with family, so I felt their absence. But Erin and Megan are almost family at this point, so I was glad to celebrate with them.

Today, I went into Rabat for Couscous Friday to eat couscous bizzef with Erin’s host family. In case I wasn’t full enough already… It was fun hanging out with them. It seemed to be a day of kitchen gardening. The 14 year old brother, Ahmed, had a bee caught in a jar and he created a whole little ecosystem with flowers, mint and dirt. I learned that worm in Darija is douda. His friend, Hamsa, was carrying around an onion in a cup of water, claiming he was going to grow it into a plant and get two

Also, I got Megan’s pictures, so I’ll post some that I’ve missed.

Ouizane: the little girl in this picture gave me a tour of the garden, named all the fruit for me, and found out all the big bananas. Check out the flying olives in the next pic. that's how they sorted out the sticks and leaves!

Souk--it's in a field, so it gets a bit muddy when it rains, but I love it. Everyone is surprised that I speak Darija, and confused when I try to buy vegetables in singular quantities. Sometimes I end up with half a kilo instead.

Food bizzeff: (and this isn't even all of it...) Sacrificial sheep stew, grilled cheese, burritos, rice crispy treats, spanish x-mas candies from Hannah

My fruit buying adventures also continued. We saw this at the supermarket and wondered what it was. It's called a kiwano, or African horned cucumber. It wasn't as exciting to eat as it was to look at. the inside is kind of the texture of a tomato, and tastes a bit like banana, but it is pretty bland.

In other news, after getting NO work done at all during the week of the Eid (the whole country pretty much just shuts down. We couldn’t even find bread in New Sale the weekend after, and a bread deficit in Morocco is something I thought I would never encounter.) I finally got moving on my ISP. Two of my professors who teach in English Departments at Moroccan Universities in Rabat and Kenitra let me come in to their classes to find students to interview.

On Tues, I found that the Rabat campus that I was supposed to be goining to, was almost not in Rabat—I was told that the petit taxis wouldn’t go there. So I had some bus fun, and ended up in several other departments’ campuses before finally finding the right school. I set up an interview schedule for the next day, which worked shwiya (I shouldn’t have been surprised—schedules are not a very Moroccan concept) but I came out with four interviews. While I was waiting for one of my no shows, another student started talking to me. I tried to interview him (in French), but I don’t think he really understood my project (or maybe my French), because he just talked about children and I couldn’t get a word in edgewise. On Thursday, I went to Kenitra (another town about half an hour away) to meet some students of another prof. I had mentioned that I needed about four more interviews, but when I showed up, I found eight students ready to be interviewed. The day before, the interviews had run half an hour plus, so I was worried about making everyone wait, but they were really excited about it and sat around while I talked to them one at a time. Luckily, these ran faster, and I somehow pounded out ten interviews (two more showed up) in two hours. I’m glad I had a recorder. Now, I just have a lot of reading, transcribing and writing. Luckily I will very shortly be separated from my kitchen, so maybe I’ll actually get work done.