After class I met with my language partner for the first time. She is my age and a niece of one of the professors at the language center. I want to be open-minded and culturally flexible, but honestly she came off as bossy, impatient, and harsh. She took me to a suuq and pointed at a bunch of spices, telling me the name of each one and making me repeat it. Then we turned to leave and she asked, "If you were shopping by yourself could you ask for each spice by name now?" I laughed and said no, it would take a little more practice. She stopped and looked at me like I was stupid, and then we spent the next ten minutes memorizing the spices until I got them all right. I have no reason to buy spices, and even in English I couldn't tell you a spice's name just by looking at it. The rest of the hour was much like this. Every time I spoke Arabic and accidentally inserted an Egyptian or Fusha word she made a TIME OUT gesture with her hands and said, "No! We are speaking darija (Moroccan Arabic)." Oh well. Maybe this is what I need right now, but I'm not looking forward to next time.
And now, as promised, here are details about Tanja, in serial form (because it's kinda long).
Part One: The Beach
Six of us met up at the train station in Meknes. We were all waiting there with our first-class tickets in hand (only first class has A/C) when the loudspeaker announced "The train to Meknes will be delayed by approximately one hour." We were disappointed, but decided this was a perfect opportunity to get lunch before going on a four hour train ride. We returned to the train 40 minutes later. It had already passed.
This meant we had to change our tickets, which was a HUGE fight that is not worth going into details about. The lesson, however, was: Wait at the station even if your train is delayed. Otherwise, the train ride was nice, and we had a very successful conversation with a man who was sitting with us in our car.
We arrived in Tanja and took a grand taxi (who we later learned way overcharged us) to the hostel and checked in. PRO TIP: Almost all hotels in Morocco require that you show a copy of your passport (I'm not sure why). The hostel is right on the beach, so we put our things in the room and walked down to the sand. Tanja is a very touristy city, and everyone speaks Spanish to tourists (because most of the tourists are from Spain).
The beach is lined with nightclubs and bars, and we were swarmed by street kids selling flowers, tissues, and gum. For some reason all street kids in every city in Morocco sell these three items. Once we got to the beach, we looked over the water which was glimmering under the lights of Tanja at night. We stopped at a bar for a while before going back to the beach, where I sat in the sand and talked with a friend while a couple others went running and wading in the waves.
At 4 am we returned to the hostel, exhausted. I decided to take a shower but this turned out to be somewhat difficult, because the bathroom was a just a corner of the room with a curtain. The shower head and drain was right next to the toilet and sink, and so I had to tell my roommates to wear shoes if they wanted to use the bathroom. This didn't turn out to be a problem, however, as we all slept until noon the next day, with our sleep only occasionally interrupted by the azaan. I enjoy the azaan when it's broadcast from minarets around the city, and it doesn't interrupt my sleep, but it was far less enjoyable at the hostel in Tanja, where a man was just screaming outside our open window.
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