Rockin the Casbah

Molly and I officially moved into our new place in Oudaya, aka The Casbah, yesterday. As Molly says, our apartment is the coolest site in Rabat. We are right next to the beach (I went down this morning for a little sun), the open courtyard is awesome, the rooms are spacious, and it is definitely unlike anything we could find in the states. We really love it and are certain we made the right choice. However, we do miss Nazha and the family, and Billy, Balia, and the hedgehogs. Nazha was even crying when we left. We hope to see them often and have couscous with them sometime soon.

School is going great. These Moroccans are so damn good at languages. It is really an ideal place to teach. I asked my students on the first day to write down why they are learning English; here are some of their responses:

• "I'm learning English because I love this language and want to speak it fluently and communicate with people too." - Mustapha
• "I'm learning English because I love it and I'll use it for sure in the future for my professional career." -Omar
• "I'm learning English because I want to speak many languages, and to have many opportunities in my future career." - Siham
• "Interesting language. I love this language." - Zakia

How many American students would say they love any foreign language?? These people are so motivated, and already speak several languages, so they pick up new ones very easily.

One of my favorite places in Rabat (besides our apartment) is an art gallery called Villa des Arts. I stopped by there after my first day of class while they were having an open gallery night. Even though I was tired, I was glad I did, because the place is spectacular at night - lots of little blue lights and illuminated fountains and twinkly music. Though it is not near as vast, it reminds me of the Getty in L.A., because the architecture is so cool - all white and very open. I saw some modern paintings by Moroccan artists that I actually liked a lot. If only I could remember their names.

Another favorite spot is the Cafe Weimar, inside the German cultural center. I also went there after my first day of teaching and treated myself to some delicious draught beer, the first I had found since coming here. And it was not even expensive - about $3. Molly and I have been back there a few times because the food is also quite good. We ate out a number of times last week because we had run out of butane for our stove and didn't want to buy another bottle before we moved. So we tried to live on raw foods at home, but ended up splurging for restaurant meals a lot (and by "splurge" I mean spend about $8 - 12). We found a wonderful place for tajines and couscous, and even wine (another first). I bought my first bottle of wine for our home yesterday which seemed like a rare treat. We started with cocktails on the roof, and then enjoyed a simple pasta dinner in our courtyard under the stars. We need to start learning how to cook some more interesting things, in the absence of Trader Joe's. Hopefully the lady downstairs, Khadija, will give us some tips. She seems very nice and speaks only Arabic, so we understand about 5% so far, but it will be good for us. We start lessons this week at the center.