Saturday, September 19, 2009

My Host Family

At a cybercafe, using a French keyboard, so forgive me if my spellings off, but the keys are all screwy and im not used to their positions on the board.

Been living at my first host family for a few days. I have 5 brothers and a Mom. My oldest brothers in the army and speaks a little English, the next is almost fluent... and Im pretty sure were BFFs by now, the next is cool but only speaks very little English, and then theres the twins. The twins try to help me with the Darija, but they try to explain one word by using a whole mess of others, none of which do I understand. They also talk REALLY, and I cant stress that enough, REALLY fast when trying to explain a word to me.

My mom may be the nicest person ever, though. She also gets really attached really fast. My first night, she told me Im her child. She also said shed miss me when I go back to America. That caught me off guard, I had been there maybe an hour.

Ive got my own room, which is one of two bedrooms. Theres a living room, kitchen, and one other room. We have a running water, electricity, a fridge, and a squat toilet. The kitchen has a drain in the corner by the fridge, so we hang up a curtain in the doorway and boil-up some water when I want to take a bucket bath.

Language classes are going well. Its me and 3 other PCVs in this town learning Darija. Weve all become close, theyre awesome.

In other news, its nearing the end of RamaDan, and Ive been fasting every day. Honestly, its not that hard, its kinda like every days Taanit Ester though. RamaDan ends in a day or so, and my soldier brother came back to celebrate the end-of-RamaDan holiday with the family.

What else has happened? Ive busted out the ukulele, turns out my BFF brother really like Heaven by Brian Adams, and I just so happen to know how to play that. My other brother plqyed me some Moroccan rap on his MP3, so I introduced him to some Jurassic 5 and Black Eyed Peas via the uke. He asked me to write down their names so he can download the songs. BFF brother and I were talking the other day about everything and anything. Got a little confusing when he confused Rome with Romania. He the ntaught me the Darija names for a few other countries, including Germany. Germanys name sounds nothing like the English equivalent, but the people are called Jermans, which he explained was due to Hitlers Aryan race agenda. Then I brought up how far Hitler went to make hi s country Aryan and what he did to the Jews. My brother asked me if Im Jewish, I paused for a moment then told him I am.

A few notes about that:
1) He asked me to write his name for him in Hebrew
2) He told me that they teach Hebrew at his college and he has Muslim friends who take it
3) Were still BFFs, seriously, were tight
4) We spent the next...well, it was a while talking about Jeish history, he asked me where my people come from, which for definitely is a complicated question

Salaam Auleikum, thats Arabic for Peace Out Yall
-Me

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