Hello Everyone,
A group of my friends and I took an adventure this weekend! First of all, the biggest news is that I actually have a couple real friends now, not just close acquaintances :-D
Anyway, we figured out the train and took it up to the coastal town of Tanger (You can see Spain from the beach - it's only 18 miles away!).
We got in just in time for iftar. The poor guy at the hotel was like "WHyyyy! :-p" because we interrupted his iftar to check into the hotel. We went to a nice quiet restaurant. I got a lamb tajine with prunes, apple slices, pineapple, and cashews. Pretty tastyy. And the meal came with a complimentary small bow of soup and tea and cookies for dessert. We went back the next night around 10:30. The guy refilled our tea and gave us more cookies 3 times so we left him a 15 dirham tip. My meal was 25 but the guy was nice and we didn't tip the first night. They were probably keeping the place open for us :-)
We took a day trip to Chefchouen (shef-sho-wen). It's a blue city. Pictures already on google plus.
We took the train back from Tanger today. Lots of homework to do. We've just started the third al-kitab book. The first reading asks us to read between the lines. What does the author actually think? What in the text indicates this nuance to you? Very difficult.. but this is what getting to a level 3 is all about so I'm all in. ... except for this break to listen to music, write this email, and slowly upload pictures to google... :-p
In other news, Ramadan began this past Thursday. It was the hottest day of our time here so far. I thought I might give fasting a try, but it's not the hunger that's the problem here, it's the dehydration. I'm going through so much water and it's been a struggle not to have it out during class. I had been drinking 1.5 liters just during our 4 hour class but it's insensitive to drink water in front of our teacher and some of my classmates who are dealing with the same heat.
Apparently students have complained in the past that iftar is usually just breakfast foods and the same food every day, but Our host mom said she likes to mix it up. The first night we had soup, eggs, and homemade pitas stuffed with veggies and ground beef. And homemade Ramadan cookies. I don't know what they had friday and saturday, but tonight was a different soup with some fried eggplant, homemade chicken nuggets, and barag stuffed with fish and deep fried. So more like a samosa I suppose.. but definitely filo dough. Figs tonight, too. And apricots most nights. And dates are a must, especially during Ramadan :-)
Ok, back to work..
Love,
Holly
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