Introduction and About Me

The purpose of this blog is to be a barbaric yawp of sorts for me to get all my thoughts in one place, and probably will serve the purpose of entertaining myself a few years down the road. I also know a few family members and close friends will find it interesting and, since I never seem to have decent enough wifi for a phone call back to the States, this will serve as a sign to them that I am still alive and well. As such, I don't plan to have much of a filter, or much concern for grammar and style on this blog. I'm just going to be me. If you find it boring, feel free to stop reading. I won't be offended.

Alright now the disclaimer is out of the way. The preface to this blog is simple: I am on a semester abroad in Meknes, Morocco in order to become completely immersed in the language and culture of my arabic minor. The goal is to become as close to fluent as possible in modern standard arabic (MSA) in 4 months studying abroad. I will also be studying the Moroccan dialect in order to be able to get by in conversations on the streets, in stores, etc with the locals. I live with a moroccan family, and they don't speak english. My teachers don't speak english either. Essentially, the only english I will be hearing for the next 4 months is that from my group of 4 fellow American students. I want to use this blog to keep track of my progess in Arabic and my adventures on the weekends. Each weekend we travel to another Moroccan city so I don't want to forget where I've been.

I have now been in this country for 16 days and I think I have been frusterated by the language barrier since day 1. While I have been studying MSA for 7 semesters now, my conversations are still limited to very simple topics. My moroccan host family not only speaks no english, they also don't speak MSA, the language I have been studying all these years. That's right, a semester abroad to Morocco isn't about learning just one language, but rather two. Moroccan dialect is but a caricature of mordern standard arabic. It is a mix of classic arabic, french (due to the french occupation of northern Africa), and Burbur.

The first 5 weeks of this program is purely language immersion. I have been taking 2 classes, one in MSA and one in dialect and I have class for 5.5 hours a day. Sometime at the end of September I will start university classes at Moulay Ismail University. I will have 6 university classes and 5 of these will be entirely in MSA, one in english.

I will get more into my activities in later posts. For now, I need to do my homework because it is getting late.
ليلة سعيدة!