Wow, I watch a lot of TV Here

First of all, you should know that I really don’t watch that much TV at home or at Brandeis. Funny story actually, freshman year my family basically made me bring a TV to school saying I would want to watch it. I watched it once, then unplugged it and let it sit in my closet for the rest of the year. Needless to say, I did not bring a TV to school last year either. Anyway. Moroccans love their TV. Like in more than a platonic way. Its invited to more meals than most relatives, even the ones that live in the house. Seriously. The TV is on during every meal, and just in general during most of the day. There are numerous different shows on, and my host family seems to watch just about all of them. With the exception of 2 channels, my host family only watches TV in Arabic. The two other channels have English TV shows and movies subtitled in Arabic. Generally my family watches the news (either in Darija or Fus-ha), Mexican, Turkish, or Indian soap opera’s dubbed into Darija, Moroccan soap opera’s or sitcoms, or National Geographic Abu Dhabi (which is in Fus-ha). It’s crazy. Generally speaking TV is the main source of entertainment during meals (especially dinner). Now, some of you might be wondering, but Jeremy, do you understand any of the TV that you’re watching? And the answer to your astute inquiry is…No. But things are getting better. When I first got hear a month ago I couldn’t understand a single thing on TV. As in I couldn’t even comprehend when words were ending. Then after a little while I could hear words ending. Now I can actually hear a couple of distinct words or phrases and understand them, or at least recognize them. While it was incredibly frustrating the first couple of weeks, its now very exciting when I realize I understood what was just said, even if its as simple as “I want” or “lets go”. So while at home I give Robbie an incredibly hard time about watching TV during dinner, I’m not nearly as bitchy about it here. Another quick TV infobyte: While I’ve certainly already watched more TV here in the past month than I have in the past year at home or school, I do talk a lot with my Moroccan host family, they’re lovely and wonderful people, and they have been teaching me a lot, even if it is while watching TV.

A day in the life of Jeremy Fineberg- at least during Ramadan

Hello to all my loyal readers!
This is hopefully the first of a couple of posts today. I have decided to do this in segments so that I can not only speerate my thoughts easier, but so that you all can read smaller posts. Huzzah! Anyway, so the first in this current installment is about a normal day in my life, at least during Ramadan. Basically I wake up every morning sweating like crazy at 7:30. Me and Jonathan eat breakfast at 8:00 and walk to Amideast at 8:15 so we can get there by 8:30. Here is the current list of my classes and how they're going.  Every day I have modern standard arabic for an hour. Basically I miss my professor from Brandeis. In addition to being an all around baller, if a hardass, he was a fantastic educator. While I agree that there is something to be said about learning a language from a native speaker, there is something else to be said about learning a language from a non-native speaker that speaks your language and learned through similar methods that you did. Oh well. Almost more than I miss my old professor, I really miss using my Arabic Textbook. I had the privilege of using the Ahlan wa Sahlan Textbook, which in addition to being newer appears to be substantially superior in every way to the textbook used basically everywhere else in the world. I know this to be true because many of the people on the Program and in some of my classes used the other book for more than a year and were in the same class as me. Basically the book sucks. Anyway, I'll deal with it.

On Mondays and Wednesdays I have Darija, or Moroccan Colloquial Arabic. This language is the day to day language of Moroccans. Technically speaking, its only a colloquial dialect, meaning its not a written language at all. Its very interesting and very different from Modern Standard Arabic. Basically there are no vowels in any words, so everything is kinda mushed together. But it is a very fun language.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays i have Media Arabic. This is gonna be a class that actually kicks my ass. Its very difficult and taught in arabic. While the teacher is kind of intense, he is also incredibly smart and very clever. He is also always willing to help us with a word (or sentences) that we don't understand. He is also remarkably cynical, which i really appreciate. For example, in a short practice article about a conference in sharm el-sheikh, he basically told us the real reason egypt wanted to host the conference was because of all of the money that it would bring to the egyptian economy. Fun stuff. Its been a while since a class actually kicked my ass, and i guess i kinda like the abuse.

Finally I have two humanities type classes. The Islamic world and the West, and Gender, Islam, and Society. They seem pretty interesting, but i haven't really had them enough to pass judgement. besides, I came to Morocco to study arabic, and I am taking around 10 hours of arabic a week, so thats fun.

Even though I rarely have more than 3 hours of class a day, I usually stay at Amideast until 5- which i think is largely because theres nothing to do in Morocco during the day during Ramadan. Then I come home and watch tv with my host family or watch a movie with Marwan and Jonathan. Then theres ftour, which i've explained before. Hooray for force feeding! Seriously i'm getting as much Moroccan soup as I could ever want, and i'm pretty happy about that.  After and during ftour we watch tv, which is not so fun. An entry coming soon will be dedicated to tv in Morocco.  Then hopefully I go out and see more of Rabat! Either I go to the medina or go see touristy things, or just go get coffee.
Last night was the 27th of Ramadan, which is called Lailat al Qadr, which means Night of Destiny. In addition to people going to the mosque all night, children walk around in adorable traditional clothes at night. So a bunch of us went out to the Hassan Tower (pictured below) and saw the children and the tower. It was a pretty cool experience, but I didn't take any pictures of the children since I didn't want to be creepy. Quick facts about the Hassan Tower, it was started in the late 1100s, and was meant to be the tallest minaret for a mosque in the Muslim world, but the Sultan who was building it died before it was finished. Anyway, its really cool and i have pictures. Enjoy!
Get ready for my next post which should be coming out soon and will examine a couple of different aspects of Moroccan Culture!