And life goes on.....

Since the visit to Fez, life has been pretty mellow. Last weekend, a bunch of friends and I went to Casablanca for the day. It's only an hour train ride from Rabat, so it's pretty easy to make a day trip. We passed by the famous Rick's Cafefrom the movie Casablanca on our way to the Hassan II Mosque, Morocco's largest and one of the only two in the country open to the public. Our experience at the mosque was interesting, to say the least. The inside of the H2 Mosque can fit about 25,000 people, and 80,o000 including the outside courtyards. It's the third largest in the world after the mosques in Mecca and Medina, and has the world's highest minaret. It was built in the late 1980's/early 90's to commemorate Hassan II, the previous king of Morocco, and apparently cost over $750 million to construct. It was maybe the most beautiful piece of architecture I have ever seen. There is literally no piece of that Mosque left uncarved or untiled, and the detail is astounding. It also has a 1100-ton roof made of wood and metal that slides open with a remote control. I kind of don't believe it. I'm working on uploading pictures so that you can see what I'm talking about, because I can't even really describe it.

However, the story of the H2 Mosque has another angle. Our tour guide told us it was built over a rarely-used municipal swimming pool, but some guide books say that it was built over a slum and the residents were forcably evacuated without any compensation. Also, tours are given in basically every language EXCEPT Arabic, which goes to show the attitude towards Casa's less educated population. A five minute walk from the mosque brought us to slums worse than anything I've seen in Rabat, with crumbling building walls and empty lots filled with rubble and trash. It was eerie to see a decadent blue minaret rising above the decrepit concrete shanty towns filled with little boys playing soccer in the streets.

Besides the mosque there's not much to see in Casa unless you're going there for the night life, so we ended up coming back a bit early. This weekend a bunch of us are going to Chefchaouan (don't trust me on that spelling, pronounced "SHEF-sha-wan"), a small northern town that's supposed to be all blue-colored and really relaxing and gorgeous. Also, tomorrow we're having Arabic class presentations, and my class is singing "A Whole New World" in Arabic. I'm excited. I recently switched into the more advanced Arabic class, which is better for me in terms of learning, but hard because I went from not really having to do any work to being 4 chapters behind in grammar and vocab. I don't always understand what's going on, but I've been in the class for 4 days so hopefully it'll get easier. Either way, I'm in an Arabic speaking country, so I might as well challenge myself when I have the chance.

I've also been debating topics for my ISP. I've narrowed it down to three:
1. Belly dancing.
In attending my belly dancing class, I've noticed that the people in the skimpiest outfits are the older, heavier women who end up wearing hijabs and loose-fitting djellabas when they go outside. But in class they just wear their tassled-bras and let loose. Also, my host sister tells me that it's "cute" when the front of your stomach shakes a little bit in belly dancing. From an American perspective, the thought of a dancer having anything but rock hard abs is strange. My sister also said that you have to look in the mirror and "think that you're beautiful" in order to dance really well. So, I'm thinking about studying belly dancing and women's body image and perceptions of beauty through this dance.

2. A map of the medina.
I may have mentioned this before, but there is no existing detailed map of the Rabat medina. There are so many intricate streets and alleys that technically have names, but no one has ever taken the time to chart them all down. As much for my own benefit as for anyone else's, I want to go through the medina and make the most detailed map I possibly can, charting the intricate alleyways, small streets (called zinqat), bigger streets (called Sharias) and nooks. I want to denote locations of big stores, schools, hammams, and important sites. This sounds almost impossible, but it's a fun idea.

3. Perceptions of poverty in Morocco.
This is the most academic of my three topics. I'm interested in the characteristics that Morocco attributes to its poor. America has this "American dream" idea going on, which causes people to thing that no matter how poor you are, if you work hard enough and if you're talented enough you can make it. Poverty is also closely tied to ethnicity in America. I want to know how Morocco stereotypes its poor, and how it tries to remedy the poverty issue. Are poor people considered lazy? unfortunate? unskilled? My host dad told me this would be an especially difficult topic because Moroccan officials won't admit that there's rampant poverty in this country, which in itself says something about Moroccans' attitudes about the whole thing.

Whew! My fingers are tired, and now that I've filled in my (potential) readers with the thoughts swirling around in my mind, I'm going to go get ready for belly dancing.

B'salaama!
Julia