Small Talk

Today Monica, who I will be working with, arrived from Canada. She is originally from Mexico but has been studying in Nova Scotia, Canada for a little over four years. So Olga, Monica, and I sat around in the living room telling stories. It's really interesting listening to stories of different cultures because there are things I would just never imagine. Olga has been living here for 6 months now, so she told us about how alcohol is officially illegal in Morocco because it's not allowed in the Islamic religion. She and her friends were once smoking hash and drinking beer in a car and they got pulled over and her Moroccan friends were a lot more worried about the alcohol, and said the hash was nothing to worry about. I didn't realize that the country's laws could be so determined by religion. They ended up bribing the police to not arrest them. However, it's ok for tourists to drink here because they are not forced to follow the rules of Islam, and there are places to buy liquor. She also told us that a few weeks ago she and her friends had a themed party where girls dressed like boys and boys dressed like girls, but none of her Moroccan friends came because they were scared of being arrested. Homosexuality is not at all tolerated here, but I can't believe that cross-dressing, even just for fun, could get someone arrested.

Later in the afternoon, Monica and I went to the café again and got some mint tea, which I am now obsessed with. Monica is from Mexico and was raised Catholic, but her grandmother was Muslim, and a few years ago she started researching Islam and decided it was for her, so she converted. So, she chose to come to Morocco because she wanted to go to a Muslim country and be able to speak Arabic. We walked down to the beach and when we were leaving two Moroccan guys started walking with us and talking to us. They didn't speak english very well, but they tried really hard to talk to us. They showed us the market just down the street and we walked around there for a while, checking out all the interesting things that people sell.

Tonight, Camille came home from a trip to the desert with his friend, Martin. Camille is also from Poland and has been living in Morocco for a year and a half. He showed us pictures from his trip to the desert, and we decided that we would take a trip down there soon because it looks absolutely amazing.