From Stansted to the Sahara in two months

من ستنستد الى الصحراء في شهرين

The time had finally come to pack up everything we owned, or at least the stuff that covered our knees and shoulders, and jet off to Africa for two whole months. Having spent a few days of luxury lounging around in a hotel, trying to forget the fact that we were going to spend the next two months living in Morocco, our first day at Qalam wa Lawh was finally here. The welcome was minimal to say the least as we delved straight into a two hour long exam paper followed by a terrifying oral exam and then proceeded to spend many more hours sitting around waiting for our levels to be announced (given that we hadn’t spoken a word of Arabic since our university exam, we weren’t expecting too much).

After finding out our levels we embarked upon a short trip around the city of Rabat, our home for the next few months, visiting the Kasbah, the old medina and the beach, whilst simultaneously scouting out potential friends (something that needs to be done tactically- see top tips). Our trip was followed dinner, which during Ramadan was none other than the traditional Moroccan Iftour consisting of Harira (an unpleasant brown soup), a boiled egg, a dog food-like substance, a strange pastry type thing, and of course last but certainly not least, some dried dates. Having forced down all that we could of the delicious cuisine we then retired to our rooms and began unpacking (which proved far more difficult than anticipated).

Let’s just say the statement ‘two months here is going to kill me’ was appropriate far sooner than expected… Whilst climbing up onto my desk in an attempt to use all of the wardrobe space possible in our tiny little box room, I somehow managed to fall out of the wardrobe and landed in my case, with my shoes on, which consequently resulted in a case full of dirty sandy clothes and a very sore knee. And on that note, we went to bed.

The next day we began our lessons and other than the fact that they were very difficult, intense and soul destroying, there is not much more to say about the lessons for the whole of our time in Morocco. Having said that, a word of advice to anyone planning on studying at Qalam, DO NOT DO THE INTENSIVE COURSE! In reality, six hours of lessons everyday does not sound like too much, however given that we only have six hours per week at university, it soon started to kill us more and more as each day passed. Also, although the teaching was brilliant, the extra two hours that you pay for are certainly not worth the money as at least half of that time was spent discussing what we had already studied in the morning session. TOP TIPS:

- DO NOT ALLOW THE INITIAL CULTURE AND WORK LOAD SHOCK TO SCARE YOU. Yes, it is absolutely terrifying being chucked into the deep end doing six hours of intensive Arabic with people who have been studying at that institute for the past five months, but don’t let that scare you. We settled into the program quite quickly but if I could go back and give one piece of advice to ‘past me’ it would be to stop worrying and just get involved as soon as possible. The quicker you get settled into the swing of things, the sooner you begin to learn.

- DO NOT BE DISHEARTENED BY LOCALS LAUGHING AT YOUR ARABIC (unless you pull a Rudi and accidentally ask the way to the artificial diarrhoea instead of the beach). The vast majority of local people are impressed and made happy by the fact that we are attempting to learn and practice their language, but there are some people who will just laugh or mock your attempts. The best piece of advice is to simply ignore them and keep on practising, after all there are plenty of other lovely people who are more than willing to speak with you in Arabic, you’ve just got to find them. - CHOOSE YOUR FRIENDS WISELY. We were lucky enough to make some amazing friends, many of whom we plan to see again in the future HOWEVER choose them wisely. Many of our friends were only at Qalam for a month, meaning that after that month of seeing each other 24/7, travelling together, eating together every evening and literally doing everything together, it was time to say goodbye to our friends and begin the whole friendship process all over again with a new bunch of people. Obviously you can never have enough friends and it’s great to meet new people, but the second month would have been a whole lot easier if our friends had stayed a month longer. (I guess what I’m trying to say is, try and find people who are going to be there for the same time as you, just to make life that little bit easier). - GET ACCOMMODATION WITH GOOD KITCHEN FACILITIES IF YOU ARE THERE DURING RAMADAN. Although waiting until 19:45 to eat doesn’t sound like too much of a challenge, for some reason you will most certainly become a ravenous beast during your time abroad and the prospect of waiting that long for the restaurants and cafes to open is nothing short of torture. -MAKE A DIARY. I admit that writing an update on my life every single day was a challenge, especially the days in which the most exciting piece of information was what I had for lunch, but I am so thankful for it now. -MAKE SURE YOU HAVE ENOUGH PAGES IN YOUR DIARY FOR THE TIME YOU ARE AWAY. Although the cute pictures and train tickets that I stuck into my diary made it a lot more interesting, having to stick extra paper into the back of my book as I had ran out of space after two months of writing as neat and tidy as possible was admittedly pretty heart breaking.

Anyway that’s all of the boring stuff out of the way, I will soon provide an update about something much bigger, better and far more interesting… OUR WEEKEND TRAVEL.

#Morocco #TopTips #Rabat