Soyez le bienvenue

First, my apologies if there are a lot of mistakes in this post. I'm trying to be careful with my typing, but I'm using a Moroccan keyboard whose Roman character input is in the French-AZERTY style. Of course, this is made more difficult by the fact that most of the keys are so well used that I can't read the letters, so I'm trying to use AZERTY from memory, and that's just a touch difficult.

But at least I'm here in Marrakech, just meters from the central square, Djemma al-fenah listening to the afternoon prayers. I was looking at flights several months ago (which is how I ended up in France) and thought to myself: 'at the end of term, I'm going to want to escape from London's cold grey skies to some place vaguely warm and sunny.' And so, Morocco!

The funny thing is though, that it's actually warmer in London at the moment. That's not to say that it wasn't damn cold last night when I left (I spent forever waiting for a bus in 35 degree Farenheit weather...grrr), it's just not that much warmer here, and to top it off, it's raining en plus! It's supposed to clear up (and warm up!) by Tuesday, but it still makes me sad, especially since I don't have indoor heating.

But despite all this, I'm really enjoying myself already. I've been taking Arabic classes at the LSE this term, and upon arrival here in al-Maghreb (Morocco) have had a sense of instant gratification. Now, all we've spent the first six weeks doing is learning the Arabic alphabet, but it's so refreshing to study a language with an alphabet again! I'm just going around Marrakech like a little child sounding out letter by letter the words. But it works, and I could read 'Marrakech Menera Airport' in Arabic when I arrived. It's so different than in Chinese where even if I can understand what the word means, I might not be able to pronounce it unless I've memorized how to do so. Now my problem is that I can read some words, but I have absolutely no clue what they actually mean. Details, right? I also don't know how to say anything in Arabic yet, with the exception of "Peace be upon you," so that's a little less than helpful when trying to get around. Next time, next time!

And in a truly bizarre, small world moment, I was walking down the street here, when all of a sudden I heard: "Jeff! Is that you?" Travelling by myself, I was a little taken aback. And then I recognized her--it was a fellow Whittie named Molly who is just returning to the US from Senegal after her two-year Peace Corps stint there. Apparently with Air Maroc you can stay over in Casablanca for up to a month when flying between Dakar and JFK, so she thought she'd take advantage of that fact to explore a new country. She's even already started to catch me up on all the gossip about the other Whitties and people I know from my study abroad program in Nantes, France who were doing Peace Corps in Western, Sub-Saharan Africa. After just having met another friend, Mags, who was passing through London last Wednesday, I can't help but think that us Whitties are everywhere!

Now to see if I can't find a hammam (bath house) to go warm up and get a massage in...