Adjusting and establishing a routine

Genevieve Grant
Jul 3, 2016
2 min read

It's been a wild few days, adjusting to the routine of going to school and studying one subject from 8 am to noon, and adjusting to my life with my host family.

Being here makes me so excited for University, for a lot of reasons. First of all, we're surrounded by a lot of college students. Some of them are incredibly interesting, kind, and fun to talk to while others are of the more pretentious and self righteous variety.

Secondly, studying only one subject is amazing. While I know I'll most likely end up at some sort of liberal arts program, I know that I will be able to more heavily tailor my schedule and courses to my interests once in University, and studying purely Arabic here has made me even more excited for that type of focus. I'm progressing so much faster than I would have otherwise.

The tent in the backyard of the school we attend, where we have break time and afternoon tea. Me and the others have had everything from late night talks to long afternoon naps to Moroccan drum jam sessions here.

One thing that I've been noticing and really enjoying about our school Qalam wa Lawh is the makeup of the student body. The school is comprised primarily of university students from the U.S., U.K., and Italy, as well as adults from all over, and even a group of young Turkish students. We try our best to communicate in Arabic but at this point we're fairly limited in our ability. It's been great getting the college perspective on Arabic studies and courses, as many of the students are Arabic minors or even majors. I get the sense that our way of going about it, by starting with immersion and then going for college level in-class work will help a lot.

Masjid Assouna, the main Mosque in Rabat. Hard to get to by cab when all you have is a map and the cab driver doesn't read maps, but easy to walk home from: