12-12 Bislama Morocco

Bislama means goodbye, but I’ll be back in nine days—my mom and sister are coming, but for now, I’m in Spain. I didn’t have to say real goodbyes to Morocco or my families, but it was rough saying bye to all my friends. We’ve been through so much together and gotten so close, but I have no idea when I’ll see them again—especially the ones who are going abroad again next semester.

I’ll be travelling up through Spain with my friend Lauren and meeting my family in Madrid. We spent last might in Tangier (one last hurrah fro 12 dollar hotel rooms and Turkish toilets) and took the ferry over this morning. The mountains on the coast were breathtaking. I’m preparing to be shocked by European infrastructure and prices. Though so far, the bus isn’t too different—it’s still arriving two hours late, and I’m hearing plenty of Darija.

During the last week of the program, we all came back to Rabat to present our projects and say goodbye. We stayed in a wonderful hotel—the first day, our toilet didn’t flush and though we were excited about the hot water, we missed the cold—our cold taps just didn’t turn on…

I finally got around to buying henna powder and proceeded to cover anyone available (mostly Erin) in henna. People at home are going to wonder what happened.

Last Monday was apparently the Muslim new year. For the most part, nothing happened—some people got t he day off, and kids set off fire crackers all of=ver the medina all week. Erin’s host brother had three GIANT fire crackers, which he set off on the roof. My ears were ringing for a good 15 mins after. I went with Erin to couscous Friday with her family and we decided to try eating with our hands. There are a lot of foods that can be eaten fairly easily with fingers. Couscous is not one of them. I had to make a scoop with my hand and dump it into my mouth. I think we ended up with more couscous on our laps than in our mouths. After couscous, Ahmed decided to try to make fire crackers by stripping the lighting tuff off matches. Unfortunately (or probably fortunately) he was unsuccessful at lighting them.

Over the course of the semester, my hair has been getting gradually longer and stragglier, and Erin has repeatedly offered to cut it. I finally decided to take her up on it. I think my time in Morocco has skewed my sense of whether it matters how I look. I was brave enough to let her try to layer it. But it will grow…