Sunday, January 6, 2013

December 6 2012 A Beautiful Day

Today, I woke up early and went to Mohammedia. It was a nice pleasant train ride, the birds were chirping, the sun was shining, and the weather was cool but not cold. 

Mohammedia is always much more peaceful than Casa.  In the company grounds, there are birds chirping, palm trees, nice varieties of cactus, and the clouds look so beautiful in the sky.  The lunch in the canteen is pretty good with authentic Moroccan soup and fish-I enjoyed it. 

My encounters were wonderful and pleasant.  In general, my students are all very kind and sweet (99 percent of them).  In Mohammadia, they bring an extra something that just makes the encounter a bit more special.  They are so respectful and interested in improving their English.   If they make mistakes, we laugh and joke about it.  During role-plays, I love to act and make the scenarios funny to make it light and fun.  At the end of my favorite encounter, The student Hamza said, “Goodbye Teacher.”

After my nice day at Mohammedia, I took the company van back to Casa and my friend from class, Yusuf, sat next to me.  I sat and stared into the hot pink sunset with small clouds layered on top of one another piece by piece-the best sunset I have seen in Morocco thus far.

After I went to the Medina, walked around enjoyed some chickpeas for 2DH and a big piece of fresh, hot bread right out of the stone oven. It is amazing how cheap things can be in the medina, but the safety, especially at night, is definitely a question mark with men commenting and looking.  I cover myself up, but sometimes I think my eyes give away that I am Indian and not Arabic.

Women are making the traditional bread, electronics are being sold, juice stands, jewelry, and clothing shops.  The heart breaking people are those that sit on the side of the street selling second hand shoes and odd, little junk items.  It is one thing to be selling sunglasses, purses, or clothing-but the used items scattered amongst the dirt road and the look in their eyes just breaks my heart.

I stop by the store to buy some red chili spice, caraway seeds, and flax seeds.  I tell the man I am from India and he start listing off the famous actors, “Amintha Bacheud” “Kareena Kapoor”, and “Sharuk Khan.”  He then lists off various cities in India and I just sit and smile. They are so proud to show you they know about your country. Morocco and India are great friends historically and culturally they share a lot in common.

I stopped in some other little shops, but one shop caught my eye.  It was a shop full of musical instruments including some nice looking guitars.  I asked the guy for, “Bzoof Zwine guitar.” Translation: Big, beautiful guitar.  Without him reaching for it, I saw it in front of me, it was a nice classic, dark brown guitar that was originally from Spain.  He wanted 1300 DH, but I was trying to bargain with him to pay 800DH. 

Maybe someone is reading and thinking, “I didn’t know you play guitar?” The guitar is not for me rather it would be for Mr. Casa. He loves music and he used to play guitar-I just wanted to give him something to show him that “I believe in him and I believe in his purpose.” I snapped back into reality and told myself to not buy a guitar for someone you do not even talk to, but I still just may do it.

After that it was time for me to meet my friend Louba for our Beethoven concert at Cinema Rialto.  Normally, I would like to get dressed up, but I did not have time to go home and change and it turns out neither did she. We laughed as we dodged the red carpet embarrassed for not being dressed nicer. 

Beethoven concert was lovely.  I did not take my eyes off the orchestra and just kept staring thinking about the beauty of their collaboration and feeling thankful for the experience.  There was  a lady blocking my view and it annoyed me a bit, but I thought to myself, “Beethoven was blind” and he would like you to enjoy the music not the vision.  I tried to close my eyes as I usually like to to do with classical music. I still kept my eyes opened because I enjoy watching the different instruments strike at different times with the melodies. 

Louba’s sister also joined us and she was quite lovely-nice, classy, and fashionable girls.  Both their company was so nice.   She is so sweet and caring towards me-taking my hand and walking with me through the medina. Louba could have cancelled the show because her boyfriend was flying in from Paris to surprise her, but she decided to go with me anyways.  It was really sweet of her to keep her word-this means a lot to me when Moroccans do this-it really, really does.

Thank god for today, thank god for today, thank god for today.

Blessed with a beautiful Day

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