Carole and I waiting at 4am in the train station to Bo
I tried to upload more pictures, but the connection is really slow right now, so just one picture!
I met my host brother today! His name is Hassan, he’s 30, and he’s on a swim team. In the house there are 8 people total. I haven’t seen the house yet, so I don’t know space wise how it will be. There’s two kids, a three year old and an eight year old. I will know more about the other members tomorrow when I move in. Hassan spoke perfect English so we got to do the whole introduction in English, which helped to reduce my anxiety! It will be nice to have an English link to the rest of the family, to make vital communication easier, but I will avoid speaking English with him as much as possible so I can really learn Darija! I think it will really help that our language class is Darija (Moroccan Arabic) rather than modern standard Arabic, so I can always be practicing my Darija. Tomorrow is a really full day of the last bits of orientation week, but its the last day of orientation! Hooray! Tomorrow night we move in with our families! We move in about an hour before breaking the fast, so we will get to have our first meal with them tomorrow night!
Speaking of breaking the fast, we had a big delicious meal last night breaking the fast with the program staff. It was an amazing meal. The first thing you eat is a date, so we had tons of dates on the table, which I am so addicted to! There are also these things called Shebekkiah, which is basically fried little pretzel like things of dough DRENCHED in honey and sprinkled with sesame seeds. SO good! Then we had harira, which is the traditional Moroccan soup. REALLY good, go to Pave Bakery, sometimes they have it, though it’s quite different. On the table there are two kinds of bread, thin pan bread, and big normal delicious bread. Hard boiled eggs, dipped in cumin and salt. The main course is bastilla! It’s going to sound crazy-curried chicken, onions, garlic, scrambled eggs, and…a huge layer of cinnamon sugar and walnuts all in a pastry dough covered in powdered sugar. SO good!!!! Now I’m on a skype call with mom and dad and can’t multitask! more later!
