Hello Everyone! Welcome back to another edition of John in Meknes! This week's adventures included getting used to new classes and eating sheep intestines. I'll leave it up to you to decide which was more exciting.
I had been hearing from many people that the Fall semester really kicks things up a notch, for obvious reasons. Our language abilities at this point are pretty advanced so sitting us down and having us memorize vocab lists from a textbook doesn't really cut it anymore. Therefore in addition to having the usual Formal Arabic class we also had a choice between Women in Arab Society and Arabic Literature content courses, both taught in Arabic. I chose Literature as I mentioned in previous posts and my literature teacher also happens to be my Egyptian Arabic teacher from the summer and my Formal Arabic teacher for the fall (and my Egyptian Arabic teacher for the Fall). Here's to hoping that Essam doesn't get tired of my puns and goofiness and want to end me come December. In all honesty, Essam's a wonderful person and a great teacher like all the teachers at the center and I anticipate a great semester ahead for us both. Our usual Formal Arabic class will also focus more on reading and listening to authentic Arabic texts, as we did in the summer, but with more of a focus on higher level analysis and discussion of these works and use of more complicated grammatical structures and phrases to push our speaking and writing to the professional level. Our Moroccan and Egyptian Arabic classes will focus more on specific social issues as opposed to learning vocab and phrases relevant to certain tasks or social situations. For our first Moroccan Arabic class we watched a video interviewing young Moroccans about how they have dealt with the job search post graduation (very easy to relate to) and discussed those issues in comparison with our experiences with the job search process in the US. I still have not started my community service or my direct enrollment class but I will be beginning my community service this week (direct enrollment won't start until the University classes begin).
In addition to acclimating to a new schedule, I was also able to experience Eid al-Adha for the first time in an Muslim country. For those who do not know, Eid al-Adha (or Eid al-Kibir) is the Muslim holiday based on the story of Ibrahim (Abraham) who was willing to sacrifice his son, Ismael, to Allah (God) as a demonstration of his faith. In the end, Allah allowed the sacrifice of a sheep instead of Ismael so each year Muslims around the world sacrifice a sheep, goat, cow, or camel. It is also tradition in many Muslim countries to give a part of the meat to the poor, a part to your neighbors and extended family, and keep the last part for yourself. After witnessing the sacrifice in the morning (not as bad as I thought it would be), we spent most of the day cleaning the roof where we sacrificed the sheep and prepared various parts and organs for cooking. For lunch we ate bulfaaf (liver wrapped in sheep fat), the heart, the lungs, and some chicken all barbecued on kebabs. It was all delicious but my personal favorite was the heart. For dinner we ate a stew with the stomach and intestines and other insides and I just could not get over the texture or the smell. When the butcher that helped with the slaughter was cleaning the sheep, he and my host father had to empty the stomach and intestines of all the poop and I could not rid my mind of that image or smell as I ate the stew. Yesterday, I ate the shoulder and leg and some other fantastic parts of the sheep and I would highly recommend those to any fans of tasty meaty treats out there. The brain is also pretty flavorful even if the texture is a little slimy. As always keep the questions coming and I'll be back next week!
All for now,
Johnny M.
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