I had a weekend of fairly high highs and very low lows. Friday as we were leaving AMIDEAST some of the English teachers (American and British) invited us to come with them to the local bar - which is to say, the bar down the street frequented only by foreigners and the most frenchified of the frenchified elite. It was sort of a bizarre experience because it felt like being in the states for an hour or so.
Saturday was terrible because I woke up deathly ill at about 5 o'clock in the morning. I had been expecting something like this because they told us that at least some of us would get sick due to water differences and such. I guess I went first. I am extremely lucky in my room mate, Sarah, who took AMAZING care of me. My host sister, Rehab, went with us to the clinic AMIDEAST types are supposed to use, which involved the worst taxi ride of my life. The doctor diagnosed an intestinal infection and they made me lie in the hospital room with an IV in my arm for what felt like an eternity. After a while, they sent me home with a list of about six different prescriptions. Don't worry, I'm pretty sure this is all just overkill because after about twenty-four hours of lying as still as possible and not eating, I woke up the next day relatively refreshed.
Sunday afternoon our host sister borrowed her father's car, an ancient BMW, to drive us first to AMIDEAST (to show us another route we could walk, and so we could use the internet), then to the mausoleum where Mohammed V and Hassan II are interred, and then all around the city FOR HOURS to visit her boyfriends, and yes, that is a plural boyfriendS. She has two boyfriends in Rabat, one of whom is a 32-year-old police officer and the other of whom is a 28-year-old...guy with slicked back hair and wearing a track suit. Somewhere in the picture is a 45-year-old Saudi man who's supposed to come to visit this Spring. Rehab also got lost like 15 times and kept turning around and backing up and essentially driving as though her goal were to incite car sickness in her unfortunate passengers. Anyway, we didn't get back to the apartment until 4 pm, by which time the couscous Rachida had made for lunch was fairly luke warm. Sunday night was much better. Sarah and I met some of our classmates at the train station downtown and walked to a movie theater, where we saw Pegasus, which is an excellent Moroccan film that I think I'd read about it before. Miracle of miracles, there were English subtitles!
The most eventful part of Monday was our trip to the hammam, or public bath, with Rehab, who we are beginning to understand is slightly insane. Since Moroccans don't shower much, they all go to the hammam a few times a week where you can get all the hot water you want for 10 dh (a little more than a dollar). They usually wash themselves with a special kind of black soap and then scrub themselves all over with a sort of exfoliating mitt which gets rid of the dead skin. Or at least, that's what I think you're supposed to do because Rehab didn't really explain what we were supposed to do. It was also pretty shocking to American sensibilities in that everyone just strips down to their panties and starts pouring water over themselves. Anyway, it was nice to be clean. I also discovered that this girl I know from Grinnell had the same host family that I do because as we were getting dressed Rehab's friend pulled on a Grinnell t-shirt.
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