Knowing that it's the halfway point, it kind of gives me a weird feeling. This is the point I should feel like I want to go home, and I should be missing everything. I was a bit homesick and adjusting a few weeks ago, but it never came to a point where I felt like I needed something from home because of an intense culture shock. It's just hard for me to say that I'm getting an intense culture shock here on this campus.
These past two weeks have been a bit hectic. Midterm week two weeks ago was really overwhelming for me and I became a crazy lady. School is a huge priority for me and when midterms and finals come around, nothing gets in my way or wastes my time because I know that any of that time could be contributed towards studying. I know, I'm intense. So during that week I mostly shut people out for the majority of the week so that I wouldn't get all crazy on them. It also drove my insane that the library closes at midnight even during midterms week. What is that? So I stayed up multiple nights in the computer labs which are open 24/7 but they are really loud and distracting. But at least it was a place to work. I worked my ass off that week and ended up pulling all A's and B+'s of the midterms I've gotten back so far. So I'm pretty happy it was well worth the work. The weekend rolled around and even though I had one paper left to write and a presentation due the next Thursday, I decided to give myself and break and take a spontaneous trip to Casablanca with my two main girls and a friend with whom we stayed at her house.
We left Friday afternoon and caught a petit taxi (small taxis that fit 3 people and go within the local town) to the grand taxi station. From here we took a grand taxi (big taxis that fit up to 6 people and for the whole cab is a set price and can be anywhere from $3-6 from one main city to another which are generally an hour away. It's an awesome deal.) to the Meknes train station from where we caught our train to Casablanca. When we arrived in Casa we took a petit taxi to our friends house. She had already left campus earlier that morning so we met her at her house.
Driving through the city was really hectic. Moroccan driving in general is pretty hectic but I don't mind too much because sometimes it happens in my own city and I'm pretty used to it in Italy. However, it was worse in Casa. Casablanca is Morocco's biggest city, and it certainly showed that driving through town from the train station to my friends house. The city was busy and full of people and cars. I mean all cities are like that, but Casa made me think it was like a Moroccan version of New York a bit. The neighborhoods varied though, some were really small and run down, other full of huge buildings and you could find anything you could need, and others were very traditional with Moroccan architecture. We finally made it to her house and we got some rest and when we woke up, Couscous was served! I love couscous so much. The university restaurant serves it every Friday, and that is the only thing they make that is edible and Friday is the only day I eat there. I get so excited on for Fridays for Couscous, except often times I don't get to eat it because we start traveling on Fridays for weekend trips.
Couscous in general is amazing. My school makes terrible food and their couscous is still edible. But my friends homemade couscous was to die for. Couscous is only made ans served on Fridays because it is the food of the prophet, and Fridays are the holy day. So if you come to Morocco and think that's all you're gonna eat, know that you are probably only going to be able to find it on a Friday.
After dinner we got ready to go out. My friend had some important matters to get to that night, so she left us with a group of her friends who took us to this amazing Brazilian restaurant for "aperitif" which is similar to happy hour, but isn't quite the same. I know what it is in Italian, but I don't think such a thing exists in the States. Or maybe I just don't know because I'm not yet 21. Anyways, for aperitif you just go and order a drink and pay for just your drinks, and you get unlimited food throughout the night. This place had live entertainment, lots of music, singers and dancers. At one point some of the dancers pulled us up onto the stage and made us dance with them. I was terrified because I just had being on the spotlight, so I went up for a bit but then left after a couple songs. It was still cool that they did that and made the night awesome.
After we had eaten plates and plates full of some of the most amazing meat I've ever had, and after drinking drink after drink, the restaurant closed shortly after midnight. Then our friends took us to a bar right on the beach and got us more drinks there. I ended up disappearing outside onto the deck of the bar and just started at the ocean and it's high tide. I couldn't believe that I was on the Atlantic Ocean. How neat is that? After awhile a pair of Italian men came along and they were from the same region my home in Italy is! We began speaking in Italian and it made me so happy. Except I felt the Italian words in my mind flow slower than usual because at this point in my experience here, even though my French is far from fluent, I am still thinking in French much more than I usually would at home. It was a strange sensation to know that the words in my head were French and I actually had to think to speak Italian. It was exhausting but still amazing and it made it easier that they were from my region and we have the same ways of speaking.
A couple hours passed by there and we decided to head home, since Saturday would really be our only full day in Casa to do whatever we wanted to do, and there were a lot of things we wanted to do.
Saturday morning we woke up, and one of my friends didn't feel well so she stayed the morning in bed. The rest of us went to get haircuts. I've been needing one for awhile, but everyone tells me not to get it cut in Ifrane, so the idea of it sort of terrified me so I waited until we were in Casa.
After our haircuts we went back to the house to get my friend, hoping she was better. She seemed okay so we brought her and went out to lunch along the beach. At lunch I just ate everything, because in cities they are more than likely to have good food, and food at school is disgusting. I was beyond excited to eat ravioli and it was amazing, I ate everything. When we all finished lunch, we headed straight to the Hassan II mosque. Being in my Islamic Art and Architecture class this semester, I was beyond ecstatic to see this mosque. I knew all the terms and functions of it. This Hassan II Mosque is the Largest mosque in all of Africa, and it's minaret (the tower) is the 7th tallest in the world. It was a gorgeous sight to see. If you ever go to Casablanca, this is a must see.
Next we went to the Morocco Mall, which is Africa's largest mall. I personally despise shopping and malls but we had to see it, and I really needed a scarf. If you needed anything, this was the place to get it. This mall seemed to be a pretty big mall, but I hadn't seen all of it. I saw a giant fish tank in the middle of it which was really cool.
But after I quickly bought my scarf I left to try get wine before the shop closed. Two of us left and two stayed shopping at the mall. We ended up not making it in time because the shops that sell alcohol close at 8. So we turned around, picked up the other two girls, and went out for dinner and got ourselves some wine there. It was a successful day in Casa, so here we were enjoying a last supper and celebrating with some wine and beer. The weekends are two short, I wished that we could have stayed longer. But it was a successful weekend and night. In the morning we woke up and all made breakfast together. Following breakfast we left my friends house, and headed toward the station to catch a tram, then our train. Leaving her neighborhood, her neighborhood guard came out and helped us with out bags all the way to the tram station. It was the sweetest thing and he was adorable. I hadn't realized that these were real jobs before, but it made us sad to think of how lonely these jobs are.
We caught our tram, then our train, and made it safely back to campus in Ifrane by night. The weekend break was over and I immediately went back into student mode stressing about my paper due that next Monday afternoon.
I ended up heading straight to the library and worked there for a few hours until it closed. The rest of my classmates who were also stressing about the paper headed to the lab but I couldn't work there for a paper. I ended up heading back to my dorm building and working there until 4 am and tried to sleep but didn't really. I got a few hours of sleep and worked again at 7am until 10am when I finished my paper. I felt so proud and successful. It didn't even feel like a crappy paper, I was just so happy I got it done but it also felt like a good paper. I submitted it on time, and I still haven't gotten it back, but we shall see! This paper was my last of five midterms. It almost could have felt like a moment of liberation, except for I happened to have a presentation due that Thursday. This presentation wasn't a midterm, but for two of my classes it is just a part of the class to give a presentation. Mine happened to be scheduled during midterms period which made it more stressful.
This presentation was for my International history class, a class I couldn't know less about, and that I couldn't care less about. When I first got here on campus they gave me like ten minutes to pick classes for my schedule without me being able to consult my advisers back in the States. I got four other decent classes, but this as my fifth was the only history class on the list that I could pick from. Even though it's modern history, I picked it hoping that it could possibly fit into my major (Archaeology) and that I could get credit, but I probably wouldn't. I just hoped there was the slightest chance. This university has 3 days of an Add/Drop period and I heard back from my home institution too late, so I got stuck with this class. I also, am one of the few International Students here who is actually taking letter grades. Most Exchange students couldn't care less about their academics because their taking pass/fail. Which in my opinion is completely incorrect because even though you are abroad and want to try new thing and travel, that's just traveling you might as well take the semester off and just travel. To me this is completely wrong because you are on exchange, you are given the opportunity to have a home base and immerse yourself. You should make local Moroccan friends and be a real student. Yes, your studies should not be so intense that they become more important and stressful than the experience as a whole, but if you're not being a student, what the hell are you doing with you life here? Work hard, and Play hard. Make local friends, even if that means you travel less, understanding the people and culture and its ways is so much more important than traveling and seeing a famous structure. You can see a picture of that on Google. You are here to learn, meet people, and establish relationships. I'm sorry, I went off on a little tangent there, people frustrate me.
It's just hard for me to compare this exchange to mine in Italy where it was a full immersion. With the lack of opportunity to improve my language by lack of immersion because this campus is so Western and everyone speaks English, I am trying my hardest to make new friends and understand so much about this culture, and learn the language. I'm putting all of my efforts to get something out of this and I see other Exchange students only hanging out with each other, only speaking English, never interacting with Moroccan students, and always traveling. It frustrates me to see that, they don't know what their missing. I know what I'm missing and I'm trying to so hard to get it.
Anyways, my presentation for International History was not difficult. But presentations in general stress me out because I know I am not a good public speaker. It was not hard material, I just end up getting anxiety throughout the entire week because I'm so nervous to public speak. Thursday came ad my presentation went. I stuttered a lot but I think the material that I presented was more important despite how poorly I spoke. Oh well, it went.
Finally, I had a break. So a couple friends and I went out to the club in town on Thursday night, which is always a chill time. Nothing too much to say about that except that whenever I go out on Thursday nights my mind gets messed up and I go on thinking that Friday is Saturday, and Saturday is Sunday etc. We decided to stay here this weekend because one of our close friends was throwing a big party, and we didn't want the stress of planning to go somewhere last minute. Friday after classes our friends took us to a spot where there is an absolutely amazing view. It was this little spot about ten minutes away from Ifrane. We thought we were on our way to go see the Monkeys in Azrou, but they took us here instead. I guess we'll have to do the monkeys another time.
Friday night we went out to our friends house first, played with their puppy, then went to our other friends house party. The house was enormous and gorgeous. For the most part I had a good time, I also spent the majority of my night next to the chip table because lets face it their chips here are bomb.
Saturday we got up and I got my two friends to come to Volubilis. FINALLY. It's been like 3 weekends that we stayed in the area, not traveling and all and we've never made it. We usually end up sleeping in or just goofing off. It was getting really annoying people finding out that I'm an archaeology major and that I've never been to Volubilis yet, especially since it's so close. We left at around 1pm and first took the petit taxi to the grand taxi station, then the grand taxi to Meknes. We ate lunch in Meknes and decided to be super American and eat Mcdonald's and Pizza Hut just because we missed this kind of food. I know, we're gross. But unless you've studied abroad before, you'll begin to crave things like Mcdonald's even if you don't ever eat it normally when you're home. So anyways, that happened.. Then we took another 20 min grand taxi ride to Volubilis...
The site was actually a lot bigger than we expected it to be and it was a good trek up and down around this hilly site. This is a Roman site that whenever my professor in my Islamic Art and Architecture class starts talking about mosaics, he talks about this place. He was so right, I've seen a lot of archaeological sites and even worked on a Roman site this last summer, this place has some of the most amazing mosaics I've ever seen. The archaeologist in my cried a little bit they were beyond stunning. Even if you're not interested in history or anything related to archaeology, you still need to see it because it is amazing art.
The site was so big I don't think we actually got to see all of it, but we saw the main parts. Our cab driving was waiting for us so we had to leave after about two hours. We headed back to Meknes, then caught a grand taxi back to campus in Ifrane. That was our Saturday, yesterday. If you have not yet gone to Volubilis, you need to go because these mosaics are the most beautiful I've ever seen. I just want to go back and look at the closer but too bad we can't touch them or get closer.
Saturday night we really didn't do too much. It was a holiday here so there was no alcohol served anywhere. I still don't really understand this holiday, but I'm going to ask. Anyways, those were my past two weeks, and I'm so grateful midterms are over. And I'm happy we finally went to see Volubilis, I want to go back already.
Today is Sunday, I'm not doing too much except I'm going to start prepping my presentation for next week for my Politics class, and I'm going to go to the library to find French books that I can practice reading. Wish me luck!

















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