OMG WHAT THE HECK I’M IN AFRICA NEW CONTINENT UNLOCKED THIS IS SO COOL HOW HAVE I LIVED TWENTY YEARS AND NEVER BEEN HERE.

Hey loyal readers! Sup from Morocco!!! I’m here until Sunday and am ready to soak in every last drop (literally and figuratively- it was raining pretty hard today). Today we flew in (can’t seem to escape windy, bumpy flights) met our Morocco Exchange program leaders who are all super nice, rode camels on the beach, got a tour of a small Medina (city/town), exchanged Euros for Moroccan Durham, tried some traditional breads with cheese, took a 3 hour bus ride into Robat, the capital of Morocco, and met the host families we will be staying with for the next two nights! Our host family is a mom and dad with two daughters who I would guess are 18 and 22, maybe? I could be very wrong. They are all so nice and welcoming and have told us innumerable times to make ourselves at home :). We learned about Moroccan culture throughout the day from our program guides, but there is nothing more real than actually staying in someone’s home. It’s things like being instructed on how to use a squatty potty and told that you won’t use silverware at dinner that really got to me. Then there’s the language aspect: I don’t know a single word of Arabic, and it’s not like Catalan where you can kind of piece it together if the words look similar to Spanish. It’s crazy how impactful it was to look at street signs and store names and just be so completely lost. At dinner, our host mom and host sister mainly spoke to one another in Arabic, which left me feeling unsure if I should interrupt to ask a silly question in English or just smile and laugh along. I can’t even put into words how cool and different it all was and how hard I was resistigg geeking out about every tiny little thing, trying to remind myself that this is just another version of mundane, everyday life. Before I zonk out for the night (I’ll attach a picture of our room), I have to say just how good the food our host mom made was. If I only had one word to describe it I would say: flavorful. She made homemade bread (actually everything was completely homemade) with a veggie/eggplant dip, and these roasted curried potatoes with chicken; those chicken and potatoes were some of the most flavorful I’ve ever tasted.