Keyf Keyf

So after a long day of introductions, walking around, doing a little touring, and zoning out, a bunch of people decided to go to the Medina at night. A medina, according my pretty meh guidebook is "a densely packed urban conglomeration enclosed within defesnive walls set with lookout towers." All in all a pretty interesting place, especially at 10:00 pm, when it was packed to the brim with people who had definitely not been out when I was there around 5 due to Ramadan.  Anyway, imagine the area of the medina that I was in as Machane Yehuda in Jerusalem...on crack. We walked around the medina for an hour or so, just taking it all in.  It really is fascinating how cheap everything is there, with most pieces of "Adidas" or "Nike" or "Prada" clothes or sweatsuits costing less than $12.  Oh, and there was food everywhere. Fresh dates and prickly pears and delicious orange juice everywhere you looked. This wasn't really a camera trip, but don't worry, the next one will be.

Anyway, one of the most important things to happen today happened after we got back to the hotel.  We asked for our roomkeys (apparently in other countries you often leave your key at the reception or concierge) and while we got them, we also got an hour and a half Arabic language seminar. We communicated with the security guard Zouahir and the bellhop Abdil in an odd mix of Standard Arabic (which moroccans call Arabic, so from here on, its just Arabic),  Darija, French, Spanish, and a dash of English for good measure. I considered telling them that I spoke Hebrew when they asked me what other languages I spoke, since almost everyone on the program knows/is learning at least one other language aside from Arabic (damn overachievers), but I decided to wait on that front. Anyway, we tons about the differences in pronunciation between Darija and Arabic, and a bunch of different words for the same thing. In fact, keyf keyf means "same same" according to Zouahir, which was incredibly useful to figure out differences in Darija and Arabic. However, its important to know that keyf by itself means marijuana...Oh the joys of a new language!