So for those of you who know me in person, you know I'm studying abroad in Morocco this semester. Hooray! It's been fun and challenging so far.
I'll start with the challenging bit so we can end with the really cool stuff.
Time.
Holy. Toledo. I was not prepared for how differently people view time here. It's been explained to me as polychronic versus monochronic. Polychronic people tend to think of time as very fluid--basically, relationships and so on are more important than "being on time." In fact, there is often little to no concept of "on time" in a heavily polychronic culture. In monochronic cultures, the opposite is true. Time is, as they say, of the essence--time is money. Relationships and such are less important than "being on time."
The US obviously tends to fall more on the monochronic end of the continuum, and Morocco falls more on the polychronic end, at least for things unrelated to being punctual in classes. I tend to be pretty monochronic myself; I like to do things in the most efficient manner possible and get as much done as I can in as short a time as I can.
This difference also extends to how people stand in lines. I have yet to come across a place (off campus) in which people actually queue. It's more like a cluster in which the most vocal person typically gets served first. Therefore, shouting and pushing tend to ensue to some extent. For my painfully "Western" mind, this is honestly a little frightening. I'm used to people standing in tidy lines and being attended to in the order in which they came to the line. It appears to be more efficient that way. Admittedly, I have witnessed several times now where the cluster method appears to serve more people at one time, so I guess it's not really a question of efficiency, but rather of my comfort zone. That's why I came here, though; I want to stretch myself, and what better way to do that than to uproot myself from everything familiar and go to a place where I barely speak the language and am intimidated by queuing at the grocery store?
Okay, now for some fun stuff. How about food?
Yeah, I could talk ad nauseam about the deliciousness of the food here and still not be done. Bonus: it's mostly organic and pretty much completely non-processed, so it's also really good for you! I'll try to learn some recipes for the folks at home. If I can't cook them myself (I'm a notoriously inattentive and therefore poor cook), I'll give them to somebody who can cook and then probably stand behind them and tell them what to do, as if I actually know what's going on.
My favorite food so far is couscous. It's not like people make it in the US, with oogy globs of some kind of wheat-based something. It's kind of like a Sibelius symphony for the taste buds--substantial, yet not too heavy, with beautiful harmonies, soaring melodies, and a deep sense of tradition. We eat it every Friday because, well, that's the tradition. The stuff they serve in the cafeteria is, I'm told, not really Moroccan couscous, but it's good anyway. We--that is, the international students--had a chance to try the "real" stuff a few days ago. That's where the symphony simile comes from.
Well, that's all I've got right now. More will come at some undefined point in the relatively near future. I'm being polychronic now, see?
