9.8
I moved in with my host family yesterday evening. Only my oldest sister, Fatimazhara speaks English, but the 14 year old, Zainab likes to try with me, too. Other than that, no one really talks to me hahaha. Like I said, I’m the 20th student living with them in 4 years so my appearance in their home isn’t off-putting or surprising I guess. I’m nothing new to their household which at first kind of freaked me out because I was in a sense ignored. But from what I heard from everyone else, that’s just kind of how it is for everyone. We ate the break the fast meal all together and it was much more casual than I thought considering the seriousness of the holiday. (Everyone eats with fingers and shares the same water glass…not totally used to that although eating with my fingers—only first three and never with your left hand—has been fun!) Then I went out with my sister and some of her friends who are also hosting students so at least I knew and could talk to someone too. We went out and sat at a café—a very trendy thing to do apparently during Ramadan. Then we walked around a bit. My friend Andrew’s host brother, Saad was there and he was the only one to talk to us English-speaking folk. He studied at a small college in the US last year so knows English and the American culture really well. He was so nice and teaching us words to use. Other than him though, the other 3 local “young Moroccans”—including my sister—who we were with were totally unaware we were there the entire time. Hahaha it really just ended up being a laughable situation although I still don’t quite understand why she invited me if she didn’t want to talk ONE word to me the entire time hahahaha. She’s very very nice but I think that going out to a café at night for young woman is a very new thing to do, and I believe it only happens this often during Ramadan so I think she was mostly excited to get to hang out with her boyfriend and friends… can’t blame her if it was a special occasion I suppose.
My mother hasn’t really tried to communicate with me other than feeding me nonstop. Coolie Coolie! That means eat eat! Never stop eating when you’re sitting at the table because they never believe you if you say you’re full. Pace yourself and tell them you’re done before you actually are so you can continue to eat when they force food in front of you hahahaha. I also wanted to try fasting but my mother just said oh no oh no you don’t need to do that. So I didn’t get woken up for the 3-4 am meal, and she made me breakfast this morning. We have an entire month of the holiday so I’ll try to fast a few days just so see what it’s like… except I do have a slight tendency to faint. And fainting in the middle of the medina would not only be disgusting and embaaaaarassing, I just don’t know what would happen to my limp body laying there in all that foot traffic… hahahahaha I’m going to try my hardest to avoiding a fainting spell this study abroad trip…
Arabic is the hardest language in the world. Although 3 hours of class went by in flash, I’m still too scarred from my first day to even begin to describe the trauma… awful. Also, why did I never take French? Spanish is sooo useless right now… so much for communication!! Who needs that anyway?

also... the internet is awful awful.. ive tried many many times to upload more pictures but its crazily slow so ill do my best!!!!