Every Wednesday evening, the little church community at AUI gets together at the chaplain's house for pizza and salad (the latter of which is rare in M'co!), fellowship, and a bit of bible study. It's always a lovely mid-week gathering.
For the past two weeks, we've discussed something I found very interesting, the three Abrahamic tradition holidays - Ashura (Islamic), Yom Kippur (Jewish) and Day of Atonement (Christian). It was really interesting to discuss the similiarities and differences between the stories and traditions, and also just to discuss the differences between our own traditions in the various Catholic/Protestant/Orthodox backgrounds.
But what I found most interesting, was the common thread that in all three religions its important for believers to take a day to try to atone, or to take a peace from my "Making Things Right" class last semester...become at one with God.
And it was also cool, because after thinking about the profoundness of the tradition of Yom Kippur and the importance of the biblical sacrifices to atone on behalf of the Jewish people, it really reminded me of the controversial nature of the Christian claim that Jesus' death atoned for our sins and made it possible to receive God's forgiveness once and for all. Also made some parts of Hebrews seem pretty cool!
So, that was my cool interesting bit for the day. This week's been pretty good. Resettling into the academic scheme of things and surprising myself by getting excited about some of the information again...i thought last semester had beat up my inner academic to the point of needing a long hiatus, but we'll see. I'm trying to take it easy and just let the learning happen without getting stressed or overly into it. That's the plan at least!
Signing off for now...
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
Monday, February 05, 2007
Superbowl Mania
Yay for the Colts!
So, we ended up getting access to a big screen tv on campus that had the superbowl and so I got to bandwagon a bit and see the big win (with Bears fans no less!). Although, the commentary was in French, there were no commercials except a couple French ones for cars or Microsoft Vista, and by the end it was just me and the losing Bears fans, but hey! good time.
Anyway, hope ya'll are all celebrating in Indy!
So, we ended up getting access to a big screen tv on campus that had the superbowl and so I got to bandwagon a bit and see the big win (with Bears fans no less!). Although, the commentary was in French, there were no commercials except a couple French ones for cars or Microsoft Vista, and by the end it was just me and the losing Bears fans, but hey! good time.
Anyway, hope ya'll are all celebrating in Indy!
Saturday, February 03, 2007
Fez!
This weekend, I got my first real taste of exploring a Moroccan city and loved it! A bunch of us international students headed north to Fez, about an hour's taxi ride and stayed the night and then explored the medina, or old city of Fez on Saturday!
Friday, when we got there it was a bit dismal. Most of the shops in the new part of the city where our hotel was were closed and it was rainy, so not exactly super exciting. But we did have tea in this little resturant in "Central Park" of Fez where there were ducks and such. Kind of fun. The rest of the evening we walked around a little, found a little artesian's shop with a lot of cool pottery and sweet furniture, and celebrated on of the guy's birthdays after checking into our hotel. The hotel, by the way is noteworthy, simply because of how cheap it was! We got triple rooms for 446 dirhams each, which is about $55 divided by three people - crazy cheap! And even then a couple of the girls who were hear last semester attempted to barter it down! The rooms were nice and we had a fun hanging out Friday night.
There were many low ceilings, and going into this corridor it was completely black! Very fun. But it struck me that it didn't seem to be as busy as I thought it would be initially. After awhile though the streets opened up into long hallways of bazaar-like shops, in other words the souks as they call them. Hallways filled with food and produce, or long, flowing, ornately-decorated dresses and fabrics, whole stalls filled with threads of every color imaginable, and then those crammed with shampoos, soaps and other household items familiar because of their brand names but unfamiliar without the seeming precision of Western supermarket-style spacing and layout.
So, it was a good time. And I have my Moroccan carpet already! After, the carpet shop we went to a nice resturant where would some delicious couscous (again famous dish here in M'co). By that time we were all getting pretty tired, and so we got back in a taxi and headed back to Ifrane.
Friday, when we got there it was a bit dismal. Most of the shops in the new part of the city where our hotel was were closed and it was rainy, so not exactly super exciting. But we did have tea in this little resturant in "Central Park" of Fez where there were ducks and such. Kind of fun. The rest of the evening we walked around a little, found a little artesian's shop with a lot of cool pottery and sweet furniture, and celebrated on of the guy's birthdays after checking into our hotel. The hotel, by the way is noteworthy, simply because of how cheap it was! We got triple rooms for 446 dirhams each, which is about $55 divided by three people - crazy cheap! And even then a couple of the girls who were hear last semester attempted to barter it down! The rooms were nice and we had a fun hanging out Friday night. Saturday, we got up and got breakfast (freshly squeezed amazing orange juice and harsha, which is this amazing breakfast food hear that looks sort of like a solid english muffin, but tastes more like cornbread) and then were taken to the medina (city in Arabic), which in Fez refers to the old city to the guide that our hotel recommended. Fez is infamous for being a labyrinth of tight, merging walkways with many many shopkeepers very willing to hassle and push you into their shops, so every guidebook ever made always recommends visitors to get guides. We totally lucked out, our guide Abdel Aziz, was awesome and was definitely worth the 250 dirhams ($30) for the day. He not only took us all around the city and to some great shops (where of course he gets kickbacks for our purchases, but that didn't stop him from advising us on prices and refusing to let shopkeepers to take advantage of us), but entertained us and got us a great ride back to Ifrane at the end of the day!
So, the tour began by winding around through the streets of Fez, to the right is a Moroccan house we visited. The city itself reminded me a lot of the old city of Jerusalem, except bigger. But everything seems to be built in and around itself...there are hundreds of mosques within the city, so you turn a corner and there appears to be this mosque creeping out amidst the houses that are multiple stories that have continually been built up upon themselves over the centuries. There are few street signs, and there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to where they are placed; those who live there know how to get around, and for those visitors who go by themselves, well God be with them. :-)
There were many low ceilings, and going into this corridor it was completely black! Very fun. But it struck me that it didn't seem to be as busy as I thought it would be initially. After awhile though the streets opened up into long hallways of bazaar-like shops, in other words the souks as they call them. Hallways filled with food and produce, or long, flowing, ornately-decorated dresses and fabrics, whole stalls filled with threads of every color imaginable, and then those crammed with shampoos, soaps and other household items familiar because of their brand names but unfamiliar without the seeming precision of Western supermarket-style spacing and layout.As if our eyes didn't have enough to see, we were soon taken to a tannery (which I was excited to see as again its one of those things you only see with the guide as its impossible to find within the city if you're on your own!) where we got to see a bit of the production-process of making leather products...and then of course were taken to a shop where we could buy as many of the products as we wanted! Below is the picture of the outdoor tannery...its a bit like stepping back into time, but also highly precise. The colorful bins sort of in the center right are made of all natural colors, and the piles of stuff lying all around are the wool or skins of sheep and camel laying out to dry before going through the next part of the process.
The tannery shop itself was also a fun experience. We went in and there were floors of jackets, purses, bags, belts, purses, whips, shoes, hats, you name it! But if you showed the smallest interest, bam! you had a sales person beside you demonstrating the wonderousness of the piece. It was like Best Buy...Moroccan style. Except, in Fez, you don't know the price of the item and you don't get the price until you've decided on what you want. And even then you have to tell how much you're willing to offer...I had decided on some smaller items and abandoned the other things I had my eye on and left the room. After having the complimentary Moroccan tea of course. Downstairs the head salesman came after me again...I said no and gave a low price, he said no it was too low. So I paid for my small items...and he came back again, gave the price for two just slightly higher than my price and held out his hand and suddenly I had made a second purchase. Good times. I was bartering without even knowing it. Always good to question yourself when shopping...even if you aren't trying to barter! (PS: I got my items for a better price than one of the other girls who claims to be excellent after being here a semester. Yeah, I was proud of myself.)
So then, back into the heart of the medina. More sights, famous mosques, souks...and then to the carpet shop. After we had all taken pacts not to buy anything!
...so we got this lovely opening talk from the carpet salesman explaining all the different types of carpets and the standard price system (ha, there is no such thing!) and brought out these beautiful carpets with natural colors, handmade of course from women from all over the country. And then out came the Moroccan tea again (we had some great tea that day!)
So, I asked to see some of the carpets from the Middle Atlas region (mountainous region where Al Akhawayn is located) just so I would know what they looked like, of course. And so the main carpet salesman and one of his helpers, started pulling out the carpets and he told me a couple ballpark prices and I told him they were too high, and one of the other girls who had already bought a couple carpets helped me hold to them. Again I left the room after deciding I wasn't going to buy one but would look some place cheaper, again they followed me. Then, I was looking with the other girls at a couple of different carpets and he came up to me and held out his hand...and suddenly I owned a red carpet for 800 dirhams ($100). Granted, after I had decided, a couple of the other girls bought them too...so he made some money that day!
So, it was a good time. And I have my Moroccan carpet already! After, the carpet shop we went to a nice resturant where would some delicious couscous (again famous dish here in M'co). By that time we were all getting pretty tired, and so we got back in a taxi and headed back to Ifrane.
Oh, as a last little picture...everywhere we went in Fez we saw a picture of the King of Morocco. Random casual shots, shots of him and his son, formal shots. It was so funny! So I thought it was especially appropriate that his portrait was displayed so prominently in the carpet shop! So funny!
Thursday, February 01, 2007
2nd Week Academic Slump
I don't want to say that it happens every semester and that all classes are susceptible to this...but it really they are.
The second week slump.
The excitement of the first week is gone, and real class begins. Or if that excitement was never there in the first place then students and faculty alike break into mutual resigned pessimism. Either way, the second week slump makes everyone its victim.
This week's classes were exactly that. Mostly because it was a week of continued introductory material in the form of lectures without a lot of depth and certainly not a great deal of enjoyment. And the little depth that was there was sort of shocking to me because most of my professors here have spent a great deal of time talking about political philosophy that lays the groundwork for the subject at hand. I've been feeling academically inept with my professors throwing around names like Marx, Weber, Althusser, Gramsci, Hegel, Rosseau, and theories and ideas like dialectics, dependency theory, modes of production, etc with a simultanous look like you should have a good idea of what all of these are...bad news bears. I feel a real need for a political philosophy class right now, or better yet last semester. Luckily, I have a better handle on the international relations theories and international law and such...all then at that point hearing about the differences between states and nations gets exhausting after 4 classes covering the same point. Oy.
So anyway, the past three lass periods in my four lecture style classes have all been like that to some degree, and I can't tell whether there is just more of an emphasis on the background philosophies here because i'm abraod, or because three of them are grad courses. Althought, my history professor has spent the past three periods talking about the basis of historiographies in the Middle East...that's 4.5 hours of my life wasted in what could have been a reasonable interesting 30 minutes. But if anything, he did at least assure that I will never consider studying historiography in my future. Check that off the possible career list.
As I was sitting in class i did re-realize that no matter whcih field you go into you end up learning a whole new lingo. For those in development/economics, the WB is not Warner Bros but the World Bank. SAP isn't the stuff syrup is made of, its a structural adjustment program. You've got the UN, the UNDP, the ICJ, the MDG's, WTO, WHO, etc. Terms like GDP, GNP, the HDI are always thrown around and then you've got region specific terms like MENA. Oh good times. Yay for an IR vocabulary.
Well, besides the annoyances it has been interesting to think about some of the themes that we're talking about. In my Middle East Politics and History of MENA in the 20th Century class, we've started at basically the same time talking about the fall of the Ottoman Empire at the beginning of the 20th Cenutry and the rise of colonialism and the huge impact that had on shaping the states in the Middle East in North Africa. (Crossing over into internationa law too here) It's very interesting to think about how the concept of a central "state" is really a western concept that had virtually no roots before the colonial period in the Middle East. But since the Treaty of Westphalia, the state system has been the "in" fad and has virtually changed how the world was organized. But in the Middle East in North Africa this tradition was formed by the colonizers when they set up territorial states with superifical borders, capitals, and leaders and history in the region hasbeen shaped thus ever since. So there is this huge tension between the state and the people in terms of nationalism, tribes, religion, etc. I think in the west, the idea of a state - governmental organization, bureaucracy, etc - separate from religion and ethnicity seems so basic. But in this part of the world, it's questioned and for really good reasons. Who is to say that the state system is the best way to do things?
It certainly brings up some interesting tensions in international law and in thinking about how middle eastern countries relate with each other and the rest fo the world...
The second week slump.
The excitement of the first week is gone, and real class begins. Or if that excitement was never there in the first place then students and faculty alike break into mutual resigned pessimism. Either way, the second week slump makes everyone its victim.
This week's classes were exactly that. Mostly because it was a week of continued introductory material in the form of lectures without a lot of depth and certainly not a great deal of enjoyment. And the little depth that was there was sort of shocking to me because most of my professors here have spent a great deal of time talking about political philosophy that lays the groundwork for the subject at hand. I've been feeling academically inept with my professors throwing around names like Marx, Weber, Althusser, Gramsci, Hegel, Rosseau, and theories and ideas like dialectics, dependency theory, modes of production, etc with a simultanous look like you should have a good idea of what all of these are...bad news bears. I feel a real need for a political philosophy class right now, or better yet last semester. Luckily, I have a better handle on the international relations theories and international law and such...all then at that point hearing about the differences between states and nations gets exhausting after 4 classes covering the same point. Oy.
So anyway, the past three lass periods in my four lecture style classes have all been like that to some degree, and I can't tell whether there is just more of an emphasis on the background philosophies here because i'm abraod, or because three of them are grad courses. Althought, my history professor has spent the past three periods talking about the basis of historiographies in the Middle East...that's 4.5 hours of my life wasted in what could have been a reasonable interesting 30 minutes. But if anything, he did at least assure that I will never consider studying historiography in my future. Check that off the possible career list.
As I was sitting in class i did re-realize that no matter whcih field you go into you end up learning a whole new lingo. For those in development/economics, the WB is not Warner Bros but the World Bank. SAP isn't the stuff syrup is made of, its a structural adjustment program. You've got the UN, the UNDP, the ICJ, the MDG's, WTO, WHO, etc. Terms like GDP, GNP, the HDI are always thrown around and then you've got region specific terms like MENA. Oh good times. Yay for an IR vocabulary.
Well, besides the annoyances it has been interesting to think about some of the themes that we're talking about. In my Middle East Politics and History of MENA in the 20th Century class, we've started at basically the same time talking about the fall of the Ottoman Empire at the beginning of the 20th Cenutry and the rise of colonialism and the huge impact that had on shaping the states in the Middle East in North Africa. (Crossing over into internationa law too here) It's very interesting to think about how the concept of a central "state" is really a western concept that had virtually no roots before the colonial period in the Middle East. But since the Treaty of Westphalia, the state system has been the "in" fad and has virtually changed how the world was organized. But in the Middle East in North Africa this tradition was formed by the colonizers when they set up territorial states with superifical borders, capitals, and leaders and history in the region hasbeen shaped thus ever since. So there is this huge tension between the state and the people in terms of nationalism, tribes, religion, etc. I think in the west, the idea of a state - governmental organization, bureaucracy, etc - separate from religion and ethnicity seems so basic. But in this part of the world, it's questioned and for really good reasons. Who is to say that the state system is the best way to do things?
It certainly brings up some interesting tensions in international law and in thinking about how middle eastern countries relate with each other and the rest fo the world...
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