We ARE the Class!

I confused some in my last post by mentioning that “Jim is the oldest student in our class” and “I am the youngest student in our class”. I could have also said that all our classmates speak English, and that we love them – because we two ARE the class. Just us in front of one man teacher whom I’ll call Mohamed, and one lady teacher, Fatima. So, really, we have private Moroccan Arabic lessons for four hours every week day. Not sure why, since the literature suggested classes would be about 8 people, but up to 12 in the summer, but we get lots of attention. Lots and lots. Oh, my – I have to answer every other question.

Eewa, we conjugated nouns today, and also talked about occupations and nationalities. If you are a female from Spain, you say “ana Sbaleeyooneeya” (I am Spanish) and if your husband is also “min Sbanya” you say “huma Sbaleeooneen”. And that definitely sounds as complicated as it looks, and it’s no help if you’re fixated on spelling as we are. Since we can’t write in Arabic script, Mohamed and Fatima use phonetic spelling on the white boards, and since phonetic spellings lack a standard, each teacher spells a particular word differently. In fact, the same teacher will spell a word differently during the same lesson. This drives me a bit crazy, but I’m letting it go.

In other news, it’s hot. Temps today hit 105, and the forecast is for the same the rest of the week. We stepped outside the hotel to find food this evening and Jim said, “Searing. It’s ‘searing’ out here.” “Scorching” is another good word and so is “intense”. Nonetheless, we have signed up for two ALIF field trips this weekend: tomorrow we’re joining a professionally guided tour of the medina, and Sunday we’re headed to Volubulis and Meknes. We shall wear hats. We shall also drink plenty of water. (Another field trip, a weekend getaway to the desert including a two-hour camel ride where we could sleep in a tent and wake early to climb a dune and witness the most beautiful sunrise in all of Africa, sounds grand. Alas, I think we’ll save that one for a trip in the dead of winter.)

Well, Jim is sound asleep and I think I’ll try to get there too. Today was hard; I haven’t slept much in the past two nights due to jetlag, and he’s had a bit of gastro issues. Not terrible, thankfully, but lack of sleep and tummy troubles adds to the “what in the world are we doing here?” cloud. Neither of us was looking forward to class today, but alas it was more enjoyable than we had expected. Still, three hours into an intense four-hour meeting our brains begin to hurt.