Friday, September 4, 2009

This Post is Not Interesting.

I am really not a fan of the school's internet. And by really not, I mean I want to kill it. It's way too slow. I can't use Skype or Magic Jack to call anyone, which is fantastic. The call goes through, but the video lags and freezes, if there's video at all, and the audio constantly breaks up and makes people sound like the teacher from Charlie Brown. Unfortunately there's nothing that can be done about it, because this is just how the network is. Everyone is having trouble, and when I asked my roommate about it, she called a friend who said he never uses Skype here because the connection is so bad. Right now I'm thinking that maybe, if I'm lucky, I'll be able to try it this weekend since a lot of people are gone. Selwa, my roommate, said that a lot of people normally go home on weekends, moreso right now because it's Ramadan.

Anyway, backing up.

My luggage finally appeared last Friday! I had been expecting it, but didn't want to say anything in my last post and jinx it. I'd called the airport Thursday morning to check on my bags, and was told they were supposed to land in Fes that night and to call back Friday morning to make sure they were there. I had to argue with the woman in French, which was fun of course. People from the school's Office of International Programs were making a trip to the Fes airport that night to pick up a student around midnight and to pick up bags belonging to at least 8 people. They were all on the same flight from Casablanca to Fes and apparently someone decided the plane was too heavy so they took bags off at random. I gave them my claim ticket and whatever and they said I'd get a phone call when my stuff was dropped off at the dorm. I was awake for a while and there was no phone call. Every time I heard a car or a suitcase outside I'd get up and check, and I saw nothing. When I woke up in the morning I went downstairs and didn't see any luggage, so I wanted to kill something. There was also no one at the desk. When I came down 45 minutes later to leave for breakfast I discovered it was hiding on the other side of the desk. Huzzah. Turns out they never called anyone about it; a girl whose bags were in that group said she was walking back to the dorm around 12:30 and they were just unloading the suitcases at that point, and they must have just kept them chilling there all night. Needless to say, I was super happy to have clean clothes and shampoo and all that fun stuff.

Weekend consisted of more orientating. Most of it was actually a waste of time because things didn't go as planned, weren't ready on time, etc. Sunday I went to the marché (market) in town with Laura because we needed ID photos for our residency cards. I got a Moroccan SIM card there, but it's not working in my phone. I haven't had the chance to go back and switch it out or something, because things have crazy hours because of Ramadan. They close mid-afternoon and open back up some time after F'tor, the huge meal for breaking the fast. I'm going to try to go up tomorrow. If I can't get it to work I may just buy a pre-paid Moroccan phone because they're pretty cheap. We'll see how it goes.

First week of classes went pretty well. There were a few hiccups along the way. For one, my 8am Arabic class was changed to 9am, then changed back to 8am but no one told us. So all but one person missed the first class, because she didn't know it was changed in the first place.

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