Just to Keep Up...

I've not kept up with these posts, so here's a bunch of disorganized notes.  I've split them up into a couple different posts for ease of viewing.  I'll try to build something a little more structured for you all later this week.

So the big topic of conversation recently is our home-stay.  Our families picked us up about a week ago and we're busy debriefing and comparing experiences.  I have a host mother, Yezza, a sister, Fatiha, and two brothers, Youssef and Abdeljabel.  All of my siblings are older and don't seem to want to have a lot to do with me, but they are all very kind.  There is also another girl, more my age, named A'sha, but I'm fully sure who she is to the family.  The family and I are, for the most part, linguistically incompatible.  I think my application materials implied that I have far better Arabic than I actually do and Yezza keeps saying "It's Fus'ha, it's Fus'ha!" in an exacerbated voice.  "I'm speaking Fus'ha for you.  they said you knew Fus'ha."  But we point a lot, and repeat words over and over again and generally laugh awkwardly to fill up the time.  And, just as our academic directors said we would, we watch television all the time.  Every home, no matter how poor, has a T.V. and it's on all day, especially during Futur, the fast-breaking meal.

Our home-stay period corresponds to the beginning of our regular schedule of classes here at the CCCL.  I have Moroccan Arabic, Dareja, in the mornings and then a series of seminars with the migration academic director Said and various guest speakers.  Of course, betweent he lectures we are served a gigantic lunch which we eat until well beyond fullness and then we desperately need a digestive nap right about the time classes start up again.  The migration theme is my favorite part of the program so far.  The material, which we've only just begun to address with anything other than the broadest of terms, is fascinating.   And Said has arranged a wonderfully interdisciplinary series of distinguished guest speakers: artists and philosophers, politicians and academics.

I think perhaps I would not be alone in admitting, however, that part of my academic fervor is a distraction from dealing with the awkwardness and emotionality of the home-stay.  I'm enjoying the program and the people, I adore studying at the CCCL (which is beautiful by the by), I've made a few good friends in the group and I like walking the streets just watching, but all the same, I want to come home.  I've known a lot of people who are addicted to going and living and being abroad, but I don't get it at all and after only two weeks I have a far greater admiration and sympathy for people forced to stay abroad.

Pat asked me not to tell her anything grand in my blogs and -mails home, just the little moments that really key into a different world and mode of thinking.  The truth is, there's so much information coming in all the time that I spend all of my energy concentrating on getting through those moments one at a time without much recognition of them.  My brain fills up about midday, if I'm lucky, and then I can't process much of anything else.  By 4pm, though we've only walked the streets a bit and sat listening or talking, we are all exhausted.  I would not be at all surprised if our host families talked to each other and decided that American college students were all lazy.

Oddly, one of the hardest things for me to accept so far is all of the cats in the streets.  Some people feed them, but mostly they scrounge around in the garbage and get kicked around on the streets.  I've seen two dead cats and several starving kittens already and the doctor of the program told us definitely to avoid touching the stray animals so we can't really do much of anything.  Not that we could anyway - we've nowhere to bring them and there are simply too many animals in need.   But all the same, it's not easy to pass by them.