Clean clothes without holes

This weekend marks the end of my first normal, work week in Rabat. In terms of adjustment and jet lag, I feel pretty normal, and have gotten into a routine fairly quickly. While I have only partially mastered the bus system (I can get home from school, but can’t manage to find where to catch the bus to school because of the confusion of the tramway invading the center of Sharia Omam al-Muttahida (United Nations Avenue)) there remain other adventures—good ones mostly. The maid came again and spared me the banal task of doing my own laundry. She also prepared some zaalouk, chicken with preserved lemon and olives and another dish with red bell peppers. On Friday I dared to lunch at a little restaurant around the corner from my house and ordered the Friday couscous. The meal from the maid and the Friday couscous are my only sources of vegetables, as I have been too lazy and indifferent to buy any myself to prepare, and the lures of merguez sandwiches and cumin-y cheeseburgers with fries which constitute my usual dinner are hard to resist. The only time I found merguez in North America was in Montreal during the American Thanksgiving of 2005. I became fond of the delightful Moroccan sausage when I lived in Issy-les-Moulineaux in late 2004 when I first had it at a little grillade nearby.

In non-food related news, I am fond of my Arabic class at Qalam wa Lawh. The other students are extremely good, which both shames me and motivates me to giddy-up. One of my classmates is Maltese, which reminds of the fact that an Arabic teacher I know authored a Maltese dictionary, in addition to having an MBA. My weekdays begin with Arabic class from 8.30 to 1. I then eat lunch at home before I bus to ADFM to work from 3 to 6 usually. I walk home, taking in the city, and spend the evening relaxing from interacting all day in foreign languages. Mornings are all in Arabic and afternoons are in hybrid French and Moroccan. By the time I get home from ADFM, my head is pretty much done in, and I am not sure if I am ambitious or clever enough to keep it up AND get to dissertating. On that note, it’s funding application time once again, and writing proposals does lend itself to dissertation work. So I will give myself the month of October to negotiate how I spend my time, which will necessarily include dissertation work IF I am serious about a year of research in Egypt after this delightful Boren year ends.

I have also been accepted to present at a conference in Bristol in January, which will hopefully include visits to friends I’ve been missing for a while. I must now get more serious about finishing my essay for tomorrow and reviewing grammar and vocabulary.