Wrestling!

I’m watching wrestling in German at the hotel we’re staying at here in Essouaria. There are a bunch of French channels but they’re all showing suuuuper dramatic movies and the English channel has continuous coverage of M-J’s heart attack. I’m not sure it warrants continuous coverage…  anyway so German WWE it is.

We left Rabat today at around 7:30 AM and got here to Essouaria at like 4. That is like three hours longer than the trip should have taken and I’m not sure why. Lets just say it was a long time to be in the tour bus/van/thing. I listened to some great music on my iPod and slept a fair amount so it was not bad. Traveling by road really isn’t good for one’s appearance though. I mean when you get off a plane you still look alright usually. In a car, bus or van its a different story.

The Gnawa festival is shaping up to be A-W-E-S-O-M-E. We watched one concert tonight and I’m looking forward to a day full of Gnawa tomorrow!!!

A Big Day, Food, and Books

Not only did I take (and hopefully pass) my Arabic midterm this morning, write the final 2.5 pages of my paper during my lunch break, and give my presentation in class… but I took the bus home from school all by myself and completed a game of minesweeper on expert level without putting any flags on any mines.

You can be impressed, its okay, go ahead.

After school I finally got to meet up with my friend Riley from Loma who’s also studying in Rabat this summer (quelle coincidence!) and we had dinner near my school Brynn and Pete came too. Thing is, I’m getting really tired of the cafe fare in my school’s area. I’m trying to remember what I used to eat. Burritos. I miss burritos! Also Chinese. And Maccaroni and cheese. I gotta stop thinking about this! When I land in San Diego one month from today I fully expect my first stop to be at Santana’s. Parents, put it on the itenerary. Santanas, then 10-hour nap.

Its hard to believe I only have one month left abroad. I mean I kind of just got here–but Sunday will mark me being here for three weeks. I’ve been blogging really consistently too so I’m kind of proud of that.

Hmm. Just one more bit of miscellaneous information to put here since this post is kind of just a handful of thoughts flying hither and thither… not being able to understand what’s on TV is very good encouragement for one to read. That said, I’ve already read four books. First was Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer, very excellent. Second was Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt (which was apparently a 1997 movie with John Cusack, Kevin Spacey, and–Jude Law? Thanks google, now I’ve got to see this!), this book had hilarious characters and was pretty much non-fiction. Awesome right? Third was Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon (lent to me by Angela, she bought it in Ireland). Last weekend I read Harvesting the Heart by Jodi Picoult because it was English and because it was free on the bookself in the study abroad office. It was… pretty lame. Not a fan, not at all. This weekend I’ll be working on Kurt Vonnegut’s Bluebeard, borrowed from Pete. Should be read fairly quickly, and that shall make five.

Midterms, boo! Festival, yay!!

So, this whole STUDY abroad thing has finally caught up to me. So far the trip has felt like an extended vacation with a few weekly seminars thrown in here and there, but tomorrow I have an Arabic midterm AND I have to give a presentation in my CORE class. Both on the same day–I know right?

The reason they’re both on the same day like that is because we’re skipping class on Thursday to head to Essaouira for a famous musical festival (www.festival-gnaoua.net) that will take place all weekend. Until I started googling it I wasn’t too psyched about going… sometimes I get in these moods where I’m more of a homebody and just lounge in bed all weekend which is kind of what I wanted to do…  but after yesterday’s lecture on Gnawa music and a little bit of Youtubing… I am SO TOTALLY PSYCHED to go to this festival! Not to mention we’re staying in a hotel and I love staying in hotels :)

Awwww man they sure get down around the 3 minute mark!! Anyway that’s enough procrastinating I think, feel free to watch the awesome video and be jealous of me. Back to paper writing.

Also, I’m coming home one month from tomorrow. Pretty depressing but kind of a relief :)