Waking up

I am obviously a stranger in a strange land. This did not really sink in until yesterday when I went with Asmaa, my Palestinian-American friend and a Harvard College sophomore (who somehow reminds me of an old friend back in Manila) to visit a Moroccan family she met in the airport on her way to Fes. It was a culture shock of sorts to be sure, from the odd-numbered kisses on the cheek as a greeting to the expectation that we should actually stay over night! I thought they looked really offended when we said we were leaving after dinner. By dinner, that meant a humongous meal of roast chicken, cauliflower, bread, rice noodles, and Arabic salad at half past ten in the evening with everybody in the family, all seven of them watching you eat as they keep filling your plate with everything. Of course, I could not really participate much– I can understand a lot (yey!) though there were lots of translations going on from English to formal Arabic to the local dialect but my ability to respond is still somehow limited.  At some point, it reminded me of the Passover seder I attended this year when everybody was just speaking in Hebrew. Well, that one I couldn’t even understand what was being said. But in any case, that was I guess a real Maghrebi experience. The family was very warm and hospitable and made us feel (though they keep saying it as well in Arabic) that their house is our house.

Today, another waking up of sorts occurred during class. I was in the middle of boredom, because a couple of students were struggling with atext which I’ve read at Harvard several times when the teacher suddenly announced there was going to be a quiz. You have to be kidding me, was the first thought in my head. When I tried a last-ditch humorous attempt to postpone it until tomorrow, he just said, why not today. Fine. Back to the darn tests again. I don’t know how I did, but I suppose I couldn’t care less since I’m not really taking it for credit. Anyway, that’s the least of my concerns at the moment since I am still struggling with the last section of my long-overdue chapter but I’m almost there!

Lastly, the first time I felt I am in Africa was when I went to church last Sunday. For reasons that did not surprise me, the lone Catholic church in the city was located in front of the French consulate. Except for the priest who was clearly French, I was the only non-black person, save for three other French persons in attendance. Not a single Arab for obvious reasons. It was pretty cool how they did the mass, lots of clapping and singing – something which I’m not really used to, even back in the Philippines. I couldn’t understand the French sermon (like the Portuguese and Arabic masses I attended back in Israel), but the rest was intelligible enough, thanks to the universal character of the Latin rite.

Anyhow, I just signed up for a school-organized trip to the Sahara desert at around 200 USD for next weekend. Now I can finally get to use my camera!

p.s. it’s been raining for the past two days now. People think this is very odd weather.