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 :)

Sick! Oh, and Music

I’m only kind of sick but its still irritating. I had a stomachache all morning and now I have a splitting headache. The original plan was to take a nap as soon as I got home from school, but I have an Arabic midterm that I need to study for (the test is Wednesday) and a 5 page paper also due Weds that I was unaware of. LAME… but such is school. I am thinking back fondly upon the days when summer break was really just for relaxing. I’m talking about the days before summer school and for that matter, summer jobs. Can I be 16 again?

Anyway, time to study Arabic. There is so much I don’t know, but the amount of words I’m given each night are really way too many to learn in such a short time.

Anyway today, for part of our class, we visited a recording studio and the producer there gave us small lecture about Moroccan music–traditional stuff and modern stuff. We watched a video by my prof’s niece Nabyla (who, according to the lecturer is one of the only distinctly Moroccan artists to achieve mainstream popularity here–most popular Moroccan artists are hip-hop). Moroccan music has influenced musicians such as Jimi Hendrix and yes, Led Zeppelin!

Here’s a video that my computer won’t play for me (javascript is having issues and I am none too pleased about it) but this is one song in particular he was talking about today influenced by Moroccan music.