School In Our Jammies

First of all, punkins, understand that we have been on an unintentional coffee fast in these parts.  Since our room lacks a coffeemaker, we lack coffee.  Coffee exists at breakfast, but it lacks taste.  Coffee shops exist, but are not open these weeks.  You see? 

As Mohammed teaches us about Moroccan culture along with language, yesterday he explained coffee shop culture, along with what drinks are available in the coffee shops and how to order coffee.  If the shops were open.  But they aren’t.

According to Mohammed, coffee shops are a man thing.  “The women, they visit in their homes,” he says.  “Men visit in the coffee shops.”  Also, a man will choose his coffee shop and stick to it – no moving from Starbucks to Cutters, or Starbucks in PO to Starbucks in Gig.  (There are no Starbucks here, BTW.  Just so ya know.)  Once a man chooses his coffee shop, he always gets coffee at that same place; even if he moves across town he takes a taxi or drives back to his coffee shop.  And, he drinks the same drink every time, because that is “his” drink, and the waiter knows this.  The man comes in, sits at the very same table he always chooses, the waiter sees him and brings his hot mint tea or his strong, black coffee, because that is his drink.  No waking up on Tuesday and thinking, “I’m gonna try an iced coffee with milk”.  No.  Same-same.

Plus, at his table will be his friends who also drink their same drinks at this same coffee shop and sit at the same table all the time (a convenient way to visit, eh?).  Since it is considered rude to pay only for your own drink, the man and his friends will take turns picking up the tab – one today, another tomorrow, etc.  Only one pays, and he pays for all at the table. 

What can the man order at his coffee shop?  Well, I’m sure there is more, but according to our “in the coffee shop” lesson, these are on the menu:

1.        Coffee

2.       Coffee with milk

3.       Half coffee and half milk

4.       Coffee with a ‘break’ of milk (just a teeny spoonful)

5.       Tea with mint

6.       Juice

Of course, within these menu items there are further choices.  Coffee strong?  Coffee weak?  Tea hot?  Tea lukewarm?  Tea with mint?  Tea with lots of sugar?  Tea with less sugar? 

So, in the land of coffee shops and coffee choices, we two lack coffee.

Tomorrow, we shall discuss time, of which we have no lack.

We walked into the dining room this morning and Jim said, “Groundhog day.”  You know the movie, right?  Bill Murray, Punxsutawney Phil:  same day over and over and over and over?  Our days have a “Groundhog Day” quality:

7:15 a.m.  Breakfast in the hotel dining room. The only variations are the type of eggs (scrambled or hard boiled) and the company (French, Spanish, Italian, Asian; or this morning, the first English-speaking tour group, from Great Britain we think).  Otherwise, the same assortment of breads/pastries, olives, tomatoes, cucumbers, juice, and coffee.  It’s not thrilling, but it is filling and since we tend to eat the same bowl of bran flakes for weeks on end at home anyway, is okay.

7:45 a.m. Finished with breakfast, we take a few minutes to go outside on the big deck and admire the view of the old city in the distance.

We also check to see who is getting a carwash.

8:30 a.m.  Back in our room to brush our teeth and look over our homework one last time, we open the door to the maid who wants our dirty towels.

8:45 a.m. We pack up, take the elevator downstairs, wave (saHleemu!) to the porter, exit the cool building into the heat of the day, greet the guys “guarding” the entryway (sbaH lkeer!), cross the street and walk around the corner to school, where we greet that guy “guarding” the entry.

9:00 a.m.  Either Mohamed or Fatima begins our first two-hour class.  They switch, so today was Fatima first; tomorrow will be Mohamed first. We started Unit 3 today (whoa) and are learning how to order in a coffee shop.  More about this tomorrow.

11:00 a.m. After a 10 minute break, the other teacher begins our second two-hour class.  He or she will pretty much go over the same subject, except with a twist.  Mohammed is extremely good with grammar and word meanings; but also culture.  He takes time to explain Moroccan cultural stuff, such as how men visit with men in coffee shops and women visit with women in their houses.  Fatima tries very hard to limit her English speaking in class — unless we don’t get something and then she’ll tell us.  She makes us dialogue with each other.  “Kim, ask Jim for his telephone number”. Kim:  “Jim, what’s your telephone number?”  Jim:  “la, la, la!”  (No, no, no!)

1:00 p.m. Done with class for the day, we pack up and stroll out of the cool classrooms, past the college kids who mostly ignore us, into the heat again, to find lunch.  Lunch is always in the same place — down the hill, across the street (we jaywalk because there is no alternative), and either into McD’s parking lot, or a bit farther on to the mall.

2:00 p.m. We are finished eating, grab anything we need for dinner at Carrefour, and do the walk in reverse.  Our room has been made-up, and the AC is on.  Ahhhh.  Relief.

2:30 – 6:00 Nap.  Study.  Check email, messages.  Study more.  Watch CNN.  We’ve added a new element to our evening to break up the study time and get some fresh air:  walking through the garden.

7:30 p.m.  Work on the blog post, study some more, discuss our homework.  “What is ‘marHababek’?”  “I have absolutely no clue.”

9:00 p.m.  Bedtime.  Nighty night from Fes.

No wifi in our rooms tonight, but here it is in the lobby.  This has happened now and again, and we guess that when big tour groups roll in, the wifi gets turned on upstairs but when there are very few guests, no wifi.  Andek wifi?  La mashi wifi.

But, in the lobby I can upload photos better, so a brief photo tour.  Backing up a few days  —

The tannery in Fes medina:

Moulay Idriss.  Our van drivers pulled over at a lookout so we could all take pictures of this town.  Then we drove straight through it without stopping, which was just fine.

Jim and I make a beeline for McDonalds, Burger King, or Pizza Hut after class each day.  It’s a short, hot walk for a bit of lunch and ice cream.

And, finally, me in my Moroccan garb, waiting for our medina tour to begin:

1.        Today we learned how to ask for stuff.  I want, I need, give me, pass me, excuse me.  These phrases are extremely useful for shopping, eating in restaurants, and riding in taxis.  However, in Carrefour, where we generally stock up on water, crackers, pistachio yogurt, bananas, cheese, etc., we mostly wander the aisles until something looks like what we think we want.  “is this cheese?”  “No, can’t be cheese.  Doesn’t say ‘frumaj’.”  “Right.  Let’s keep looking.”

2.       We’ve forgotten to bring our grocery bags with us twice.  Today Jim carried six big bottles of water over his shoulder from Carrefour to home; we agreed to buy water from the Hanoot down the block from now on.

3.       Bread is very, very special here. 

4.       So is sugar.

5.       Ramadan ends in about 6 days.  Among other things, this means that restaurants (other than McDonalds, Burger King, Pizza Hut and Dominos) will be open earlier.  I am so excited for this.

6.       I cannot imagine surviving from sunup to sunset without food or water.

7.       Mohammed says men gain 15 kg during the month of fasting.

8.       Ladies, imagine cooking a feast every single evening for one month.

9.       Studying language makes me giddy.  Fatima or Mohammed will explain irregular conjugations or the feminine/masculine pairing in words which belong together (coffee-milk/pen-paper/wife-husband/desk-chair) and I think, “whoa.  This is brilliant” 

10.   Until we get home and are studying, and then it all looks messy.  Like, we just discussed how the word for ‘egg’ – ‘lbeid’ sounds a lot like the word for ‘white’ – ‘biyed’.  Oh, well.  We keep trying.

Children, your father and I took a field trip today and he didn’t make any mistakes. Also, we survived yet another day of intense heat by drinking lots and lots of water and wearing our hats. Here’s Dad at Volubulis:

Dave M, we took lots of pictures of Roman ruins for you today, knowing you like them so. Here’s just one; we’ll show you the rest when we get home:

Anyone who has read White Gold, we toured Meknes, and walked through Moulay Ismail’s palace, horse stables, and prison. Our guide was guarded in his depiction of the warrior king and his unification of the country. The book tells a quite different story.

Tomorrow, more language class. We’ve enjoyed getting to know a few of our fellow students on these two field trips. One from Bainbridge island who is a UW student, another from Tacoma; several from New York.

????????????????????????????????????

Jim is working on his pronouns at the moment (ana, heeya, huma, nta, ntee, hna) because we’re comfortably entrenched in our hotel room; and more importantly, he has sufficiently recovered from the two mistakes he made today.  When I asked him a couple of hours ago what he thought the subject of tonight’s blog post would be, he guessed correctly.  “When I was walking back to you guys with Mohammed, I thought, ‘I bet I’m going to make the blog’”. 

Let’s begin at the end of our day and save the best for last, shall we?

After spending three hours walking almost constantly through the medina, we hailed a petite taxi for the second time this afternoon and took naps in our air-conditioned hotel room.  I love opening the door to clean towels, made-up beds, and AC.  Ahhhh.

We had thanked Mohammed for the very educational tour (and I wished to myself that I could “buy the book” because he shared soooo much fascinating information about Fes and I can’t remember it all).  We learned about the over 9,000 streets, that since Fes is a “blind” city its houses are key to its mystery, that Fes had a huge Jewish population hundreds of years ago, and that many houses have two doors built into one – the one with a big knocker signals you’re on a horse and the host should open the large door; the small one with a separate knocker is for people.  Also, he was very adamant that we are in FES not FEZ.  Fez with a z is a red hat with a black tassle, which never originated in Fes.  And here we thought it was just a quirky, random spelling thing.

The final stop on our tour was the tannery.  Jim and I missed out on the sprigs of mint, but the smell was definitely not as pungent as the time we were here before.  One of the salesmen inside asked Jim if he was Chinese.  Not even kidding here…  His associates laughed, “look at him!  Does he look Chinese?”

Prior to the tannery we stopped very briefly at the copper and silver center, and before that the authentic Berber textile house.  This is where Jim made his second mistake.  

“No shopping!” our guide had expressly warned us.  However, said he would make an exception for the authentic, Berber house of weaving.  There are plenty of  “made in China” scarves are sold in Fes, but this one particular shop is run by a family who weaves their goods right there, true to the old ways.  Mohamed told us to take pictures.  The college kids and I were taking plenty, but Jim got in trouble for aiming his phone camera around the room for a video, and the man working a loom did NOT want his picture taken.  So sorry, asidi.  Scarves and bedspreads were gorgeous of course, made from pure agave silk.  Because we were with our special guide we got a special price; the price would go up if we visited by ourselves later. Hmmmm. Many of our college kids purchased scarves for themselves and their mommies back home, but I did not.  Sorry, ladies.

Now for the beginning of our story.  Eighteen of us – sixteen college-age students and two retired teachers on an educational vacation – had met with our official guide at Hotel BatHa (not Batha. Taxi driver gave me the thumbs up when I said it right) for a three-hour tour through the old medina.  Thankfully, it was cooler the deeper in we ventured, and we weren’t as bothered by the camel’s heads, cow guts, and fly-covered cookies as we may have been on our first visit four years ago.

First we walked out the Bab Boujaloud so that we could turn around and take a picture of it from the front side.  Here it is, the “blue gate”:

Next, we headed in.  Guide had cautioned us that mules and carts have the right-of-way, and be ready to move swiftly to the side if we heard yelling, and (here’s the important part), if we got separated from the group, stay put.  Stop wherever you are when you realize you’re lost, and he’ll come find you.  Such good advice, but it doesn’t always guarantee success even if you’re very careful to follow the rules.  In fact, all it takes is for the last person in line – Jim – to get stuck for five seconds behind a mule while the rest of us completely disappear in a crowded sea of bodies.  I kept glancing furtively behind me while still rushing to keep up with the group, hoping to see my hubby’s floppy hat, but when the group made a left turn and no Jim in sight, I hailed the guide.

“Um, my husband is missing,” I told him.  “I haven’t seen him since the Madrasa.”  A couple of the girls thought that maybe Jim wasn’t the only one missing, but upon taking a head count, yep:  minus one.  For the next 15 minutes, I got to know the two girls as Guide took off back in the direction we had come from.  He returned every few minutes asking if Jim had shown up, and looked more agitated each time  the answer was negative. 

From Jim’s perspective, he finally passed the mule only to realize we were gone.  Thinking he was keeping his eyes on us, he kept going.  But then he came to some turns and didn’t see us.  Immediately obeying orders, he went back to where he figured he had lost us, which was not the place I had figured he lost us.  Another tour guide, who was leading a group of British ladies asked, “Are you lost?”  The ladies looked at him and laughed; “Are you lost?”  Yep.  Thankfully, those tour guides all have cell phones so that one called ours and the lost husband was found. 

So, yet another day in Fes has ended and we’re ready to study for a bit and then sleep.  Temps are still in the 100’s, only with a cloud cover.  We think the difference between a hot day with no cloud cover vs a hot day with a cloud cover is similar to the difference between walking under a broiler vs walking in an oven.  And just now, a thunderstorm!

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.

We have homework this evening, therefore a list:

1.        Started class today.

2.       We have two classes, two hours each, back-to-back.

3.       Four hours is a long time to pay attention.

4.       Our two classes are taught by two different teachers.

5.       Our teachers are terrific.

6.       Jim is the oldest student in each class.

7.       We can ask what your name is and how you are.

8.       We can answer you with “Eyah, smeetee Kim” or “La, mashi Susan.  Ana smeetee Kim.”

9.       We maybe could ask you how your family is, or if your daughter’s last name is Smith, but need to practice that a little bit tonight.

10.   If you met us on the street, we could greet you with SbaH l kheer and almost sound like ana bintee Amy.

11.   I am the youngest student in each class.

12.   Eating dinner after sunset, which is 7:35 but dinner is never ready to be served until after 8 p.m., is difficult on the digestive system.

13.   Therefore, we ate at Mc Donalds tonight.  Don’t judge.

14.   Our hotel continues to be filled anew with tour groups.  Last night, Chinese peoples.

15.   Someday I’ll tell you about the watermelon on the deck incident.

16.   Tonight, French we think. 

17.   All come in huge tour busses.

18.   We bought some more water from the Hanoot down the block.  We like the owner. 

19.   His shelves are sparse, but we’re not starving.

20.   Time to go write a dialogue introducing myself to someone.  Nigh-Night!

In the middle of the night when unable to fall back asleep, or very early in the morning before groggily forcing ourselves out of bed, we both experience a sense of desperation. For me it comes as vain imaginations — fears of getting sick, for example.   Who do we think we are? What in the world are we doing here?

Truly, life looks better out of bed (hmmm…must be an analogy here), although first-time things remain strange: eating dinner after sunset due to Ramadan; cold fried eggs, lots of bready things, and thin slices of cured meat stuff for breakfast; crossing busy streets without dying; brushing our teeth with bottled water.

Today we forced ourselves out of jet-lagged sleep and the hazy fog of anxious imaginings to eat breakfast before it was too late.  I thought that I remembered “too late” being 9 a.m., but wasn’t totally sure so we postponed showers and ventured down at 8. Our fellow hotel residents, whom we’ve seen mostly in the dining room, appear to all be part of a Spanish tour group.  Lots of foreigners are wandering around town, mostly French and Spaniards on vacation.  Our hostess remembered us from dinner, and welcomed us to choose this table or that one.  She has appeared to take pity on our inability to speak French, offering us what was maybe a special allowance last night to order ala carte when the Spaniards all had to eat the same prepared dinner.  Their salad, chicken dish, and dessert looked pretty tasty, but our spaghetti bolognaise was way cheaper and plentiful enough for us. (Plus, the waiter brought us a plate of olives for an appetizer and then the same dessert the tour group got, no charge).

After breakfast, we wandered around to get a feel for the neighborhood and find ALIF.  Conveniently, our language course is in a building down the block and across the street, so we checked in and got our schedule for the next three weeks.  Class will be 4 hours each day, with homework every night and weekly tests .  Woo hoo – homework and tests!

Next, we wandered farther down the street to the McDonald’s area and the mall.  The mall, folks, is pretty schnazzy, and it has a coffee shop!  Two cappuccinos and a nice long sit on comfy chairs restored our sense of well-being, as coffee does.  Here also is Carre Four, the Walmart of Europe and other places, where we purchased six big bottles of water to stock in our little fridge, along with some yogurt, canned peas, and toilet paper.  Yep, canned peas.  These were my husband’s idea, as avoiding fresh produce, salads, etc. means we eat things that are neither green nor crunchy, and he is thinking of balancing our diet.

Tomorrow we’ll dive in to what-in-the-world-we-are-doing-here, but for this afternoon we are relaxing in our little cave of a hotel room with nothing to do and nowhere to be.  And also no wifi, which come to think of it, has the same effect on our sense of well-being as coffee does.

[KB1]

Yes, we are.  And, we’re pretty content at the moment relaxing in our plain little room with AC and gold velveteen curtains.  Getting here was not so bad, as Baumgaertel-time got us to the correct terminal three hours prior to departure and we remembered the luggage drop procedure from before.

Our travel day began with a shuttle ride and check-in to Ryanair, a bottle of water to share while we waited, and a chat with a Rome—based tour guide who was reading a book about the history of Greece.  Somehow, we had purchased “priority boarding” seats (for not very many monies because it’s pretty cheap to fly around these parts) meaning we got to go through that special line ahead of the masses and enter the plane through the front door.  Dudes on the tarmac didn’t want us to enter the front door though, so we commiserated with a young woman from Singapore, who commented that life is more orderly where she lives, and entered the rear door along with everyone else.

Out away from the city, Fes airport is small and modern.  Jim bought a chocolate bar to break a 200 dirham bill for the taxi, and then a little bit of fun began.  First, the airport:

One of our travel guide books suggested a taxi ride to Ville Nouvelle would cost approximately 120-150 dirhams, and to make sure the driver had a meter.  Heh.  Ours didn’t, but he did have AC where the meter would have been; also, he didn’t speak English (which is not surprising) but he did speak French (no help there) and understood “Menzeh Zalagh hotel”, so we were off.  As we exited the airport area, I thought (very briefly) that traffic was not so bad and maybe renting a car some day in the distant future would be okay, but right then I spied an accident in the roundabout and thought better of that.  Speaking of roundabouts, imagine what the Burnham drive ones would be like if entering vehicles had the right of way like they do here.

Twenty minutes and 150 dirhams later, we arrived at Menzeh Zalagh only to be told, in English, that we had no reservation.  Instead, said the lady after I showed her the Expedia receipt for our already-paid-lots-of-money-for room, we had a reservation at the “other” Menzeh down the street.  It is the same, said she, only we had to go down there to check in.  “We are same hotel; did you come in a taxi?” Well, yes, but why that matters we did not know.  Off we went, trailing behind this sweet porter guy who seemed sympathetic to our plight, to the “other” Menzeh, whereupon we discovered that here, also, we had no reservation.  Alas, this time the reservation clerk guy read my Expedia receipt very carefully (he did a good job considering he also spoke no English) and called the first place back to tell them we indeed had a room there at that Menzeh, not here at this one.  Back with the porter again, and the story finally ended — happily with us in a room and all is well.  I’m sure we’ll never know what really happened between the hotel and Expedia, but here we are for the next 25 nights.  Old hotel, worn yet clean, twin beds pushed together, little fridge, AC, no chairs, no drawers.

Ventured out a couple of hours ago to buy bottled water at a hanout (han -oot or ha – NOOT) down the block and this for snacking – and will eat dinner at the restaurant downstairs.

Tomorrow we’ll locate ALIF and explore the neighborhood.  Class begins on Thursday.