Fes on a Sunday during Ramadan is as dead as the cats in the garbage piles. Fan and I spent most of the day doing homework at McDonalds. What wee didn’t realize was that since children typically don’t fast, and McDonalds is one of the only restaurants open during Ramadan, every parent in the city must have taken their child to McDonalds today. It was crawling with children. They were like cats. Or chandeliers. They were everywhere.

Iftar had some sort of Pierogi-type dish, which was delicious, but other than that, it was nothing new.

My host mom’s favorite tv show is a program about three families living next-door to each other. I don’t know what it’s actually called because the title card is really fast, but I call it Moroccern Family. Tonight on Moroccern Family, there was a B-plot about a white, American traveler who visits one of the families, and the running joke was that everyone tries to talk to her in French (most white people in Morocco are tourists from France), but she doesn’t speak French, she speaks Arabic. I have never understood what it feels like to be a minority and get excited about a relatable representation in the media until today. This is my Black Panther. This is my every day.

Also, on candid camera, a guy pretended to be paralyzed, asked people for help crossing the street in his wheelchair, and then got out and helped push when it got stuck on the curb. These shows are wild.

And now, the age-old study abroad dilemma: to shave or not to shave. On one hand, I have nine weeks to try to grow a cool beard, and no one I know is here to make fun of me if it looks stupid or doesn’t work out. On the other hand, one of the girls in my group is rather attractive. In life, there are no easy answers.

 

I think I’ve figured out why so many western Christians are afraid of Islam: it makes them feel inadequate. You go to church every week? Miriam gets up at sunrise to pray every day, and then prays four more times as the day passes. You gave up chocolate for Lent? Ahmed gave up eating, drinking, smoking, and sex for Ramadan. You know your favorite Bible verse by heart? Private universities here require students to memorize the entire Koran to be considered for admission. Christians need to step their game up; the Muslims are praying circles around you.

I beat the traveler’s diarrhea, which means I can now eat anything I want without fear of uncontrolled shitting. The world is my oyster stew. This probably has something to do with the fact that I slept 12 or 13 hours last night, after having taken a 4-hour nap yesterday afternoon, which felt great. I am becoming part cat. Soon, I too will live on the streets of Fez.

There were no classes today, but there also wasn’t anything to do in the city because everything is still closed for Ramadan, so Fan and I went to the Alif Riad to get out of the apartment for a bit. We got some homework done and hung out for a while, then returned home to nap again.

Our host mom did our laundry today, which was very nice of her. The preparatory materials said that Moroccans typically only do laundry every two-to-three weeks, so I brought enough clothes to last for three weeks if necessary. Fan didn’t read the preparatory materials, so he brought four white shirts. Luckily, our family owns a washing machine; Fan and I bought detergent on Friday to cover the cost.

Iftar had fried chicken tonight, which was seasoned to taste just like the soup we eat every night. There was also some weird vegetable that looked like a pickle-sized eggplant and tasted sour eggs with hot sauce. I was not a fan. Also, the hidden camera show that plays during dinner had a “prank” where they trapped a woman inside a zoo exhibit with two tigers. The show was in Darija, so I couldn’t understand what was being said, but I’m pretty sure there was nothing stopping those tigers from eating the woman except the camera crew.

Tonight, it rained for the first time since I’ve arrived, and the sound was unlike anything I’ve heard. As best I can tell, it was a fairly mild thunderstorm, but the Medina is made up of three-story-tall, stone, flat-faced, conjoined buildings with only five-to-ten-foot wide streets. A single lightning strike can echo for thirty seconds. It took me a second to realize that we weren’t in the middle of some sort of Sharknado, but after I realized what was happening, it was actually pretty soothing.

So the traveler’s diarrhea hit today. I was expecting it to come at some point, but it still sucks. I blame the apricots; I ate a lot of them last night, and they were the only thing for dinner that I hadn’t already eaten. Plus, the diarrhea kind of smelled like apricots, which is probably not something you wanted to know, but which is definitely something I needed to share.

Class was pretty uneventful otherwise, and I came home immediately afterwards and slept until Iftar, so I don’t have too much to write about today. Iftar had some anchovies that we were supposed to eat whole: head, tail, and everything, and that was weird, but if you didn’t think about what you were eating, they tasted alright.

Also, my taxi driver almost got into a fight with another taxi driver today (it was definitely my driver’s fault), so I suppose here would be a good place to discuss driving in Morocco. In short, it’s terrifying. If there are speed limits, they are clearly just a suggestion, as are stop signs, and I have yet to see anyone use a turn signal. Furthermore, only about half the taxis have seatbelts. The conflict today started because my taxi driver drove in-between lanes to get past two slower-moving cars.

On a high note, I bootlegged the new A$AP Rocky and Pusha-T albums, which means I am officially a Barbary Coast Pirate. Come at me Thomas Jefferson.

According to my host mom, today was “very cold”. She wore a bathrobe over her clothes all day for extra warmth. According to the weather app, today was 66 degrees Fahrenheit. To each their own I guess.

I was going to take the 45-minute walk to class today, but when the alarm rang at seven, it wasn’t going to happen. Thank god for taxis.

Today was the first official day of class, and I think it went well enough. By this point, I know everyone in my class except for two students who just arrived from Virginia. Class is four hours straight, with a (lifesaving) 20-minute break in the middle, where you can head to the courtyard and get coffee or a snack. Turkish coffee is probably my favorite part of Morocco so far, and a cup at ALIF costs 50 cents. Life is good.

We have two teachers who switch off between the periods, and the first one looks exactly like my grandpa, but with brown skin. It’s a little eerie. The second one doesn’t look like any of my relatives. That was to be expected.

After class I tried to buy notecards at the mall, but after a half hour of searching French Walmart, I couldn’t find any, so I went home and took a nap.

Iftar was tasty once again, today there were apricots. For the most part, Moroccan food is all very savory, and while it’s very good, there’s no sweet/sour foods aside from the occasional peach or apricot. I’m having cravings. I would do bad things for some Starbursts or a grapefruit right now.

Class tomorrow starts an hour earlier, which I’m really not looking forward to, but on the other hand, the new Pusha-T album and the new A$AP Rocky album both drop tomorrow, so the sooner class is over, the sooner I can listen to them I guess.

More Darija classes today. I learned just enough to fully realize how difficult it will be to be conversational. The Moroccan dialect is often considered the hardest Arabic dialect to learn because of the sheer number of external languages that influence it (French, Tamazigh [Berber], etc.).

We had a three hour break between classes, so Fan, Jake, and I went to the mall to pick up some things we had forgotten to pack. We went to French Walmart and I got a towel, which is good, because air-drying after showering wasn’t really working out. I also bought snacks. Being here during Ramadan is a great cultural experience, but not for your stomach; all the good restaurants are closed until night. Today we had a very exotic and culturally-enlightening lunch at al-Burger King. Also, the mall here has a chandelier store, which actually clears up quite a bit. Over the past week, one of the running jokes among the American students is that anytime you walk into a room, regardless of where, there is at least one chandelier. There’s also probably a cat.

After lunch, a professor fron the university came in to speak to us about linguistics, and the history of the Arabic language. Depending on how you count, the are 3-4 different forms of Arabic each with their own distinct use (Classical for religious text, Modern Standard for transregional commhnication, Colloquial for everyday life, and Educated Spoken as a newly emerging alternative). If linguistics interest you, the talk was fascinating. If not, plenty of students were struggling to stay awake.

After linguistics, we went to Mcdonalds for the Wifi/ice cream. There was a mom cat with three kittens chilling in the outside seating area, and they were the healthiest looking cats I’d seen all week, which is proof that McDonalds is good for cats.

Another big Iftar (fast-breaking meal) at home, this time there were peaches. And radishes. The peaches were good.

After Iftar, we headed down to the ALIF Riad. A riad is a house with a large, open-air courtyard. The ALIF program owns a riad in the medina that is just for ALIF students. It’s pretty cool. I wrote this there. Now we’re at the present.

When I first got the assignment for our family, the paper said they had a 13-year-old boy, something I was conflicted about. On one hand, a kid that age could be really helpful with translating and teaching cultural customs; on the other hand, 13-year-old boys are awful, no matter what country they’re from. Regardless, upon arrival, there where no 13-year-olds to be seen. I didn’t want to ask, because maybe he died in a tragic accident, but today, we met up with the other student living in the same apartment complex, and their family has a 13-year-old boy that wasn’t listed, so I’ve determined that someone just messed up the spreadsheet. I’m pretty much Sherlock Holmes.

Today we visited Volubolis (or something like that, spelling is hard), an ancient Roman city. Morocco is only 5 miles from Spain, so the region has a long history of Western interaction. Volubolis was fascinating; having never left the Americas before, my best guess is that the ruins were 1600 years older than any other building I had been in. I also read that during the period where the city was still inhabited, some Egyptian gods were added into the Roman canon, and in the following decades, both Christian and Muslim dynasties took control of the city. That’s about all I can tell you though, because all the gift shop books were in Arabic or French.

A brief note, while transferring photos from my phone to the computer to the blog isn’t hard, it is kind of a pain in the ass, so I’ll probably just do a weekly or bi-weekly photo dump. I will also steal photos form the Facebook pages of other students and pretend they are my own.

Once again dinner was wonderful, but huge. The warm milk was kind of gross though. I hate to be an elitist, but the dairy here doesn’t really compare to that of Wisconsin. Much like the milk my roommate left in the fridge for a month, I am spoiled.

 

Long day. We got our crash course in Darija, the colloquial language spoken here. Turns out it’s hard. Surprise.

We got our Moroccan cell phones; they’re pretty cool. There’s no keyboard, you text with the number keys. It’s a drug dealer phone. Only $12.

This afternoon, we finally met our host families, and our mom seems really nice. From what I can gather, she’s had so many exchange students to her house that she no longer remembers the number. She’s pretty much a professional host mom. I can’t get a read on the Dad. The apartment is small, but beautiful. There’s three main rooms, and on every wall a couch. I think there’s around 15 couches in here; yet it somehow doesn’t look tacky. Our bedroom is about the same size my dorm was, and it’s full of various trinkets left behind from other students. The last student to stay here was also from Wisconsin. Represent yall.

Meals are weird here because it’s Ramadan. They feed us at the ALIF, but once we arrived at our home, dinner wasn’t until 7:30 (a technical note here, I don’t think it was actually dinner. It was at dinnertime, but it’s the second meal the family had eaten today [first was before sunrise], so that would make it lunch. Except that this is the first meal after the fast, which literally makes it breakfast. I digress). Aside from dates and bread, I couldn’t name anything I ate tonight, but it was incredible. There were probably 10 different dishes on the table, and every time you stopped eating for a second, someone would hand you more food. I haven’t seen any fat people here, but I don’t understand it. The best thing I ate was like a chimichanga, but instead of meat/cheese, it was full of cinnamon and rice. Which probably sounds gross, but it’s not.

I taught Fan how to play Cribbage, at some point I’ll probably have to teach the family too.

This family likes to leave the TV on and Moroccan TV is weird. It’s mostly 5-10 minute shorts and like six different candid camera shows. They really like candid camera here, but they take it way more seriously. Sometimes you see people crying. One show involved staging a bear attack, blood and everything. I’m now moderately worried that at any moment, I might actually be on TV. It’s like the Truman Show out here.

I think that’s all.

Turns out jet lag is a real thing. I slept 13 hours last night and it was still a struggle to stay awake today. We took our first visit to the American Language Institute of Fez (ALIF), which is where I’ll be taking classes. ALIF has programs with a number of American universities whose student come here to learn Arabic, but it also functions as an English school for Moroccan students and facilitates interactions between the two groups. Also, they have a very nice library.

After ALIF, we toured the Medina (the city of Fes has three parts. The Ville Nouveau is the newest, built by the French in the 1900’s, where ALIF is located; the Medina al-Jadid [the new city], built in the 1200’s; and the Medina, the original city, built around 800 c.e., where I’ll be living). The Medina is unlike anywhere I’ve ever been. Picture an area with a population density higher than Manhattan, except instead of streets, the entire city is made up of unmarked, nameless alleyways. I get lost in Milwaukee all the time; Milwaukee is a playground compared to Fes. I literally think the best way to navigate through the city might be with a compass. This will be interesting. On a side note, most of the first stories of buildings have storefronts or market stalls, and if you’re looking for some cheap designer knockoffs, this is your city. I saw a ten-year-old riding a mule in a Luis Vuitton X Supreme tracksuit today. Also, there are cats everywhere. They’re like squirrels here.

Everyone here speaks Darija, which is a blend of Arabic, French, and Berber. This means that when I attempt to communicate in Modern Standard Arabic (which is what I have been taught), very few people can understand me. I’m now teaching myself French numbers so I can negotiate prices better. Cab drivers raise fares on people who look foreign, and today we overpaid for the cab because I didn’t know how to propose a lower price (it still only cost $2).

At night, my roommate, Fan, and I went searching for food; all we could find was a Pizza Hut. We then go lost on the way back. Fan is from China by way of Iowa University, and he’s pretty quiet because his English isn’t great, but I hope to get to know him better over the next nine weeks.

I haven’t been able to read the news in a couple days now, I hope the US hasn’t started a war or anything.

This being the third post, I suppose a proper introduction is probably due. I am Adam Fendos. Hopefully that was clear already. I’ll also assume that if you’re here, you know who I am. I’m currently in the Minneapolis airport (as of writing, though I can’t connect to the “free” wifi network here [which, to be honest, is probably the fault of my laptop, not the airport], so barring some great breakthrough, this won’t go live until I’ve left), on three-hour layover to Paris, after which I have a four-hour layover to Rabat (the capital of Morocco) and then a two-hour taxi ride to Fez (also in Morocco). Everything going as planned (and when does it ever?) this will only take 28 hours. I’ll be living in Fez for the next nine weeks to study Arabic and learn about the history and culture of Morocco. While there, I will attempt to keep a daily blog (as best my internet connectivity permits). This way, I can tell people that they should read my blog, which seems like something I would do. I always strive to become a greater stereotype of myself. Also my grandparents wanted me to.

I got an extra backpack search in the Milwaukee airport, at which point I realized that a bookbag full of socialist literature and Arabic textbooks is probably a pretty big red flag for airport security. Hopefully this doesn’t become a problem at customs.

Quick Update: Arrived in Fes. Hotel has wifi. Concierge referred to our group as “Super Americans”. Saw some cats. Four more hours until restaurants open (Ramadan). Time to go exploring. More updates later.

I was told once that if a book begins with a map, you know it will be good. I have also come to realize that most Americans don’t know where Morocco is. Thus, I have attached a map below. If you squint, you can make out the city of Fez (it’s spelled Fes on this map), which is where I’ll be living.