Things that won't fit anywhere else

TRAFFIC here, as compared to American traffic, is what the abstract movement is to the classical. Moroccan cab drivers are artists. The road is their palette. They make lanes where there are none, they experiment with spatial relationships.... there are no rules. If the passenger is squeamish, it's only because he or she isn't creative enough. And that whole pedestrian right of way thing is just quaint. One cab ride almost hit (literally and figuratively) every stereotype for awful car accidents: oh no, another car! Oh no, not the old man doddering across the street! The woman and her small cherubic child! The bus! The cement truck!

 ... no, really, we almost hit a. cement. truck.

NOOR is this Turkish soap opera dubbed in very clear, easy to understand Syrian Arabic that has me hooked. I love this world where someone gets kidnapped every week, the grandmother has more Botox than Cher, and everyone looks great even after a helicopter takes off two yards away from them, they are shot in the leg, or they cry for hours. The theme song is, incidentally, very catchy.

THE JUICE here is amazing. There's a place near ALIF where you can get a huge glass of any kind of juice, as thick as a milkshake, for about $1.75. I will miss this.

OUR NEIGHBORS must have at least forty deaf people in the house. My room has a window on a small courtyard-esque space between buildings, and the people down a level and across the space play their TV for hours at a time at such outrageous levels that, if I were playing it on my computer here in my lap, I'd turn it down. I can deal with this unless they're watching horror movies. That was a fun night. They also have a (much quieter) alarm that goes off at 8:30 every morning. It's a peppy tune.

MOROCCANS sleep on the floor in the summer because it's cooler. There is no choice but to follow suit.

HAGGLING is easier than it seemed, and after a good session everyone comes away happy. But if you walk away from a deal about 8 Dh pairs of earrings (a little more than a dollar), they don't follow you. Too bad.

SNIPPETS: 

During dinner one night the TV was on in the other room, tuned to a news station. Here is what I heard: "asifohdsaf;dskva;dsaf Arabic I don't know yet andfa;sdfadsfjas  Charlotte, min wilaiyat North Carolina, ahfsdiasfdskalfadsf"...! It was a story about Obama's campaign. Everyone here loves him. Maybe this is why I like Morocco.

I dreamed about eating spaghetti last night and it was glorious.

Amin, my homestay brother, shares his birthday with my actual brother. WHOA.