Tuesday, November 13, 2012

An essential update :)


So, I have tried to update my blog several times in the past week. And every time I start to type a new entry, something changed.
Thing number one: finding an apartment. We moved out of our host families today. (Of which, I had mixed feelings) Some friends and I have been looking for an apartment. First off it’s really hard to find an apartment because there’s no centralized listing center. Finally, we found a place. We got a good price, in a pretty good neighborhood, our landlord was really nice and showing us around to gyms in the area and all sorts of stuff. We even had the keys.
Friday rolls around and we were actually going to start moving stuff in early. Leah (who is fabulous enough to handle the phone calls since she speaks French) gets a call from our landlord saying he needs the apartment for his son and friends, so we can’t live there anymore.
This is when I stop and asked, “Is this real life?!”
So, we now have two and a half days to find a place to live.
We start asking everyone we know, to find us leads. After some less than wonderful online leads, we get two. One in the same neighborhood as the first apartment, and one is at the beach.
We go to see the one in L’Ocean and we end up getting followed my an incredibly creepy sixteen year old boy for like ten or fifteen minutes. Now, we’re used to being followed at this point, but usually it’s only for a block or two and they break off. This kid started following us in the Medina and then followed us well outside the Medina. He also had crazy eyes. Okay, so we stop next to a little store where there are a few people thinking Oh, he’ll realize we know he’s following us and he’ll leave us alone. (This usually works) Well, it didn’t. Crazy-eye boy stops and starts waiting for us to start moving again. This is now a mushkil (This means problem in Arabic). We are now concerned because A) we have a crazy kid following us, and B) we’re walking towards where we could potentially live…so we don’t want crazy kid knowing where we live. So our solution is asking one of the men in the store to make the kid go away. We explained that he had been following us for a while and that we were uncomfortable. This lovely man understood and said “Wait here. Stay with me.” Put us in his delivery van, and he and the store owner yelled at the kid and made him leave. We were then driven to the potential apartment and told that if we need anything to call him.       
                We also had a run in with a strange cabdriver who took the longest route possible to get us back from showing us an apartment. He started singing and reading signs out loud and reciting the Qur’an. It was just an interesting week.
                Well, we finally found a place to live. Through a friend of a friend of a friend of a guy who teaches some of our friends surfing. (Literally, this is the only way to find a place to live here.) The apartment is in the Kasbah and it’s a traditional house. It’s cozy and has a lot of character. We’re all really happy with it.

So, ISP has officially started. I’m out of my homestay, which is good and bad. I did enjoy my host family so I’ll miss them. But I’m also really glad to have some freedom back. Mostly the freedom to cook what I want/control the portions and amount of bread they serve. 
I have a month left in Morocco. I just want to reflect how my mind is blown that I only have a month left here. I can remember getting off the plane and being like, Oh my God, I’m in Morocco. This can’t be real life. It was already sad to see my friends moving to different parts of the country to do their projects, so I can’t imagine how sad it’ll be when it’s time to head home. I have also grown attached to Morocco in a lot of ways. Although I have come to several conclusions, (I’m still figuring them out, so I’m sure there will be a post to come about them) I really do enjoy it here.
Time has gone by so quickly here and I’m so glad to have met the people that I have.

Pictures will come of the house. I just wanted to give a quick update now that things have hopefully settled down. J

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