Thursday
Hi,
So today we had a henna lesson in the morning where this woman came and showed us a few henna designs and then had us attempt to copy her...she was ridiculously good and her designs were so intricate and beautiful, ours not so much, haha. Then we headed to our homestays for lunch. Unfortunately we all have been sick with morrocan belly but some are feeling better.We are heading to Asilah this wknd together so hopefully some time spent together by the seaside will help us get well and back on track. After lunch we met up and visited an orphange that takes in street children like BT that we visited in Casablanca. It provides the children with food, shelter, education including music and other extracurriculars. This one took in boys only between 7 and 15. It is currently undertaking in some construction and paint work to improve the facilities. Then we headed to Katie and Addies place for a lecture given by a local fessi working towards his masters I believe in English who taked to us about Morocco and its languages, which consists of arabic, morooccan arabic, french, spanish up north in some areas and another one that I forget the name but resides in the countryside and the mountains so is not used or heard much in the cities, but is historically speaking Moroccos mother tongue. So I think everyone is getting over their initial culture shock or atleast starting to feel more comfortable and familiar with moroccan culture and way of life. However, the catcalls and annoying men on the street are definitely starting to really get to all of us but that is one aspect of morocco we might just never get over haha. Everyone has definitely had some sort of struggle or hardtime if not many this week with being sick, adjusting to the culture and life here, or just in dealing with homestays, but as a group we are all being really supportive of each other and working out things best we can. Tomorrow we have arabic class in the morning and then in the afternoon we begin our ISP studies or some kind of activity- I will be bellydancing and am really excited for it- I dont know how to type the exclamation point or the apostrophe on this european keyboard otherwise I would have put an exclamation point back there... anyway we had a candlelight council or group meeting tonight that everyone really enjoyed and thought was really beneficial especially since we all have definitely been having a hard week. We got everything out or shared the feelings, thoughts, emotions... that we have been feeling or holding in and just talked together as a group. The weather has been very hot and sunny these past few days- I dont think any of us would mind a few drops in the thermometer or ten. Yeah so thats pretty much the update for now, but you will hear from Kate tomorrow.
Hope all is well at home
Lindsay