A Photo Update

So clearly I have not been a very good blogger this year. I had big plans, phrases like "twice a month!" and "lots of photos, I promise!!" were thrown around carelessly. But c'est la vie. 

Anyway, to make up for it, or try to, I've made a post with pictures galore!! Enjoy!

The note and basket of goodies I received upon arrival in Morocco

A wonderful jazz concert in old Roman ruins in Rabat

Minaret peeping out

Beautiful lanterns

The two "T"'s of Fes: Tradition and Tourism

Tagine and bread! The two main food groups.

Celebrating a birthday in style! 

A beautiful sunset view from the rooftop of my old host family

Celebrating Christmas with a tree and many breakfast goodies. (including pancakes!)

Hassan II Mosque in Casablanca

 

Stormy Volubilis 

Hello up there!

A parade near Rabat

The leather tanneries of Fes

A portion of the Fes medina from afar

Natural light is used a lot here

Monkeys galore in Marrakech

Glowing Jemaa El fna 

Goats in trees! 

It's all in the details

Surfers in Imsouwan

Gnawa music

Still have another 3 more months though!! So keep following me on my Moroccan journey!

A Lengthy List of Morocco

1. School started, classes are in french and 2 hours long so that's rough. Granted I only have a total of
fourteen hours of school every week and school starts at 10 o'clock on 3 of those 5 days.

2. the yogurt here is awesome and not the carrefour type stuff, the hanut real deal from the cow type stuff.

3. Carrefour is a large popular grocery store chain here.

4. That reminds me of Marjane an even larger grocery store/everything store here.

5. Scaling it back down: hanuts, small neighborhood convenience stores/stands you will see absolutely everywhere.

6. Back to the yogurt, it is fresh and locally made and you eat it out of a glass cup in said hanut.

7. Everyone thinks Moroccans have super cool metal designed tea cups, maybe other places in Morocco they do but in Rabat you'll only ever find simple glass (probably bought at Marjane).

8. My lovely group of 8 Americans along with our fearless leader Sarah went to Fes, Azrou, Moulay Yacoub and Oum Rabia (spelling debatable for most if not all).

9. Fes: Medina was awesome awesome. Bought a Fes(z?) from Fes(z?) which I have shown to anyone who will skype me. Also bought camel leather bag which I am in love with. Ate falafel!! I love Cafe Clock.

10. Azrou: Small town centered around a huge rock with a metal crown on top of it, never really got the full story there. Got locked out of my room and had to sit in the lobby of the hotel for roughly an hour and a half while my lock was changed. Saw monkeys in a cedar forest nearby.

11. Moulay Yacoub: Small town on a big hill, has a legendary salt spring hammam and amazing views.

12. Hammams are public bathing houses, sounds weird but is the best thing ever. You know you've made a friend when they'll scrub the dead skin off your back for you.

13. Oum Rabia: Or, Mother River, the beginning of all rivers in Morocco I believe, could be incorrect. Sat by the river and ate tagine, yum!

14. All in all, it was a great trip. Fresh air and big hills provided a new and welcome side to Morocco that I look forward to returning to.

15. Speaking of fresh air I spent last weekend at the farm of my host mothers aunt which was amazing! There were four little puppies who were the cutest and...

16. I rode a donkey!!!!! For about 10 feet, either way it was terrifying and awesome. No saddle or anything either. Just Kate on donkey. His name was Mignon.

17. I am learning Darija, or Moroccan Arabic which is so so cool! I can count from 1 (wahad) to 100 (miya) as well as introduce myself in the most basic of ways.

18. That brings me to french, my comprehension is definitely improving but I still struggle with figuring out what I want to say and how to say it in a socially acceptable amount of time. Or any amount of time.

19. The medina is really amazing, the first time you go in it seems huge and crowded and intensely disorienting but I now go almost every week and I am proud to say I can bargain in darija and have not yet been lost!

20. I have unearthed my Cambridge/Boston pride. Red Sox here we go!!

21. I have flashes of homesickness but none enough to make me wish I was at home instead of here.

22. Yogurt again, sometimes they put like strawberry syrup in it and other times caramel and it tastes liked creme brulee.

23. We never type anything for school, it's always handwritten.

24. Today in 3340 BC was the earliest recorded eclipse.

25. I have yet too see a camel.

26. Socks are key here, I have about 5 reliable, nicely patterned socks that I rotate between. My personal favorites are a pair with daisies on them that I bought in Temera (Tamera?).

27. Tamera is a town about 40 minutes outside of Rabat where there is an english class me and two of my friends have been assisting with.

28. I take the bus there which is reliably late. When we get on friendly people tell us "Attention!!!" and point at our pockets.

29. There is so much bread I don't even know what to do with myself.

30. Actually, not entirely true. I joined a gym. I took a cleverly disguised belly dancing class titled "Oriental Dance" the other day. Safe to say, I cannot belly dance.

31. You know that Moroccan Argan Oil that's all the rage right now? Bet you didn't know that the nuts (yes still in their shells) are eaten by goats that climb the trees and then pooped out, peeled, peeled agin and then ground up.

32. To sum up this entirely weird blog post, Morocco is awesome and I am loving it.

B'slama!

I'm Here!

On Saturday, August 31st I flew away from Boston for the next 9 months. 3 plane rides, much German Chocolate, and one serious case of jet lag later I arrived in Rabat.
It is Saturday the 7th and the past week has been simultaneously the longest and the shortest of my life.

Monday: We arrived at the AMIDEAST Center and were given a tour. From there we walked to lunch which was delish! We then returned to AMIDEAST and had some orientation type things. At 5:00 our host families came to pick us up. My host family is couple with a two month old baby. I am living with another American named Emma who is fabulous! Their apartment is so pretty and has a gorgeous view over Rabat!

Tuesday: We had lunch with a Moroccan girl who studied abroad in the U.S. last year through YES and a boy hoping to apply for next year. They were so nice and it was fun to meet some kids our own age. We also went to Chellah, this is a place in Rabat where there are old Roman ruins. It was very pretty and there wasn't a cloud in the sky. Emma and I walked home from AMIDEAST using our little folding map which was very exciting!

Wednesday: We had more orientation meetings and AMIDEAST in the morning and hung out in Agdal, the neighborhood the center is in. In the evening we took taxis to the Rabat beach and walked along the break wall. The beach was crazy crowded and there was a lot of trash on the ground but the view of the medina, the coast, and Salle across the river was fabulous!

Thursday: Emma and I bought bread on the walk to AMIDEAST because we were running late, yum! Yet another orientation with the wonderful Sarah (our in country coordinator). Went to a cafe in the afternoon, I ordered a cafe au lait (how french). We went to a supermarket/farmers market type place and bought local honey which supposedly helps you adjust the the bacteria in the air which will prevent you from getting sick from the water and food. Dinner was great as per usual and we met two of our host mother's sisters who are very nice.

Friday: More Orientation stuff in the morning but in the afternoon we split in to three teams (I was with Charis and Astrid) and competed in the Rabat City Challenge which was basically a scavenger hunt all over Rabat. We went in to the medina for the first time which was so cool! There is everything from nice leather bags to fake RayBan Sunglasses to cow face sandwiches (I wish I was joking). My team won but it was a battle until the end! Afterwards we all went out for coffee and laughed like crazy people because we were all so tired.

The reason it has taken me so long to post this is that I do not have internet at my host families house. I can get internet at the AMIDEAST Center and soon I will have a device that provides internet wherever I am! Until then I will update as frequently as possible! Feel free to email me anytime.

An Intro Of Sorts

Hello!
My name is Kate McDonnell, I am 16 years old and from Cambridge, Massachusetts. On April 12 I received an email accepting me as a finalist to the YES Abroad Program in Morocco next year! I discovered the YES program in a mildly confusing way; originally I wanted to volunteer abroad over the summer however my tutor told me about the amazing summer she had spent in the Netherlands when she was young through AFS and since I have been taking French since 7th grade I thought a summer in France living with a host family sounded appealing. Unfortunately (or fortunately as it led me to YES) that particular program no longer exists. However, by perusing the AFS website I found the year long France program. This sparked my interest and I immediately took to stalking anything I could find (I'm a class A blog-stalker at this point, need links to french blogs? I got mad links) relating to exchange and AFS. It was in this manner I stumbled upon YES, a scholarship program that sends kids from the U.S. to countries with significant muslim populations. It is an expansion of a program started soon after 9/11 that did the opposite, brought kids from these countries to the U.S. The role of YES-ers is, as YES puts it so quotably, "promoting mutual understanding by forming lasting relationships with their host families and communities"
At first this program looked elite, intimidating and ultimately unattainable. However I decided to apply as a kind of "why not" (I actually submitted my application only a few hours before the deadline, eek!) and was pleasantly surprised when it resulted in semi-finalist status and free trip to Maryland to learn more about the program as a whole as well as the specific countries, meet the other kids and participate in a myriad of interview/evaluation type activities. The best part of this was definitely the fabulous people, what struck me the most was the friendliness everyone exhibited. During meals you could sit at a random table with people you had never seen before and strike up a perfectly civil and interesting conversation. Most of these revolved around what states we were from, what our top county choices were and "omg is that an ice cream machine??" (I'm looking at you Lindsay). Another part to this weekend was the dreaded individual interview..... to all you future YES-ers: I promise it's not as bad as you are probably building it up to be! I was interviewed by two women who were as nice and unintimidating (not sure that's a word...) as could be, they really made the interview enjoyable and it was clear the goal was just to get to know the semi-finalist. When I came home I could not stop yammering on about the experience, the weekend made me much more excited and interested in the program and it became my first choice as opposed to France through AFS (not a scholarship but still cool)
I was notified of my acceptance on a Friday in the middle of crew practice. All day the YES kids had been suspicious that Friday would be the day we would get our emails as that was the day last year that the kids were informed. Naturally, I was freaking out. I can't even count how many times I refreshed my email account hoping to see a new message from YES! I was totally unable to focus throughout the entire school day and with each passing hour my stress increased. After school had ended I walked to crew practice (still desperately refreshing my mail of course). I had to leave my phone on the side of the room but when we went to go get water I grabbed my phone and suddenly I began to get emails notifying me of people posting on the facebook page (seriously technology, slow down) I logged on to facebook to see people had begun to get their acceptance emails, one person even posted a picture of his message! I switched back to my email and opened a new message, it contained what I though was the picture of someone else's acceptance and as I read it jealously I realized it said Kate at the top! I quickly understood that in fact it was not a picture of someone else's acceptance but my very own! I'll admit, I shed a tear or two just out of pure shock and jubilation before I called my parents (mildy freaked) and told my friends. For the rest of that day I just felt on top of the world.
So next year I'm going to be living in Rabat, Morocco which is roughly 3,470 miles from where I'm sitting at my computer in Cambridge right now. Pretty crazy if you ask me.