1. The universal language isn't English, nor is it any of the other major languages of the world; it's the language we understand in the words not said. Despite the fact that most of the Moroccan students I befriended spoke English with pretty high fluency, we conversed in a combination of French, English and basic Arabic (standard and Moroccan). Conversation with them was easy; we seamlessly blended the three languages, switching from one language to the next at the drop of a dime. Unfortunately, conversation didn’t come quite as easy at home, where only my host brother spoke a language other than the Moroccan dialect. For several weeks, I anticipated family meals with knots in my stomach, dreading the discomfort of feeling like an outsider looking in and preparing myself for the inevitable exhaustion that would follow the hour I’d spend trying to keep up with the conversation that whizzed past my head. I soon came to realize, however, that my worries were misguided. I could participate in the conversation if I connected with the family in a way that didn’t rely so much on words. I consider myself pretty good at reading people, but I was too caught up in the need to understand every word of the conversation — for that to matter. As soon as I accepted that this wasn’t a realistic expectation for myself, I began to pick up on when to laugh, who to comfort or, if I was feeling particularly confident, what to say. On my last day in Rabat, I didn’t have the words in my vocabulary to express my gratitude to the family who took me in for two months. I understood Naima when she said that their home would always be mine, but beyond that, words were only going to get us so far. I could see in her face and I could feel in her embrace that we didn’t need words at all to convey what we wanted to say. The most important part of our conversation, it turned out, was the conversation that took place in the silence that fell between us.
2. Differences between us are merely a way to uncover similarities.  We desire human connection because it gives us a sense of purpose, a reason to get out of bed in the morning. More often than not, however, we connect with people who are similar to us (in looks, in beliefs, in culture, etc.), for the sole reason that its an easier conversation to start than the alternative. But when we let this happen, we confine ourselves to one way of thinking; we close our minds to anything we perceive as different and thus reducing opportunities for personal growth. In Morocco, the people I met and the friends I made proved to me that regardless of how different we appear on the surface, we’re all more similar that we realize. Our differences, I learned, could be used as the starting point of a conversation that would inevitably lead to discovering something we shared in common. Sometimes, it was trivial things like a mutual dislike for guacamole; other times, it was discovering that our religious upbringings, although different in faith, were pretty similar. At the core of it all, we share at least one thing in common: we’re human — striving to connect with, to understand, and to be accepted by others. In Morocco, it became all the more apparent that the effort I make to connect and the kind of friend I am to others is far more important to me than any line on my resume. 
3. When there's more than one way to accomplish something, who’s to say there’s a right way? This could, of course, be applied to most aspects of daily life in Morocco for an American. From how I showered to how I ate, I had a lot to learn in the first few weeks I spent with my host family in the medina. This also happened to be one of the major lessons I learned as a student journalist reporting in a foreign country. The story I set out to accomplish for my independent study project wasn’t free of a few curve balls, but the challenges I faced in what felt like the final moments of the semester gave me practice in thinking on my feet and planning for the unexpected. Several panicked emails to my Academic Director later, I realized that although my situation hadn’t been ideal, I had inadvertently been handed an amazing opportunity that I wouldn’t have had if everything had gone according to plan. 
4. Asking for help speaks more to a person's courage or strength than it reflects on a weakness. A few months into the semester, a friend asked me to define strength. In the moment, I came up with a half-formulated response that I thought answered her question. I revisited my definition a few weeks later, realizing that there was more to the word than I initially thought. I modified it so as to include the following: Strength is asking for help. Its having the courage to expose a weakness, or to admit that you don't have all the answers you need. The latter is twice as hard when you believe that everyone around you already has the answers. I believed all of this to be true and still found it incredibly difficult to put into practice, especially when turning to chocolate was a cheap, tasty and, quite frankly, easier option as someone who prefers to keep most things to myself and opens up to very few. Learning to ask for help turned out to be one of the hardest adjustments I made, but also one of the most worthwhile. Whether it was asking my host brother to translate a message to my host mother, sending a panic-stricken email to my Academic Director to inform her that my story might fall flat, or confessing to a friend that I was struggling with something personal, I was constantly reminded that it’s okay — and sometimes necessary — to reach out for help. I don’t think I would have been as successful in Morocco as I was without the constant support of friends, family and staff in Rabat and in the U.S., and for that I’m grateful.

I had an appointment made for Monday afternoon, the day we got back to Rabat. Badrdine gave me the address of the place he'd made the appointment for and after class, I grabbed a cab to bring me to the office in Agdal. I arrived to a seemingly vacant building with just two minutes to spare. I took the stairs to the first floor and knocked on door 3. I rang the doorbell. Nothing. The hallway I stood in was dark and empty -  save for one man who walked by on his way to an upper level - but it had the name of my dentist on a plaque hanging at the top of the stairs, so I didn't think I had any reason to think I was in the wrong place; the only light in the hall came from the doorbell on the wall adjacent to where I stood. I waited for a few minutes, sure that I'd get an answer from someone at some point. I gave up waiting after ten minutes and called Badrdine - the first of many calls that we exchanged as we tried to figure out where the dentist was. Eventually, after almost 30 minutes had passed, I rang the doorbell of the only door that seemed to be occupied and I had Badrdine speak with the lady who answered it. It was definitely a weird and uncomfortable exchange... I used some broken French, not even knowing if she would understand, to ask her to speak with Badrdine on the other end. She seemed to get the point, and as odd as she found it to be she took the phone from my hands.

Turned out, the dentist had moved his office, and his website apparently hadn't been updated --  Badrdine and I learned that the hard way. The new address was only a short walk from the old location, but since I was already late and in an area I wasn't familiar with, Badrdine had me take another cab. When I arrived, I was met by a short woman with curly brown hair pulled back into a short pony tail. She wore white scrubs and big smile, one that I wasn't expecting given the circumstances. In other words, I certainly wouldn't have gotten that kind of greeting from my own dentist had I showed up 45 minutes late. She greeted me in fast-spoken French, linked arms with me and showed me the way into the office. Badrdine had been on the phone with them right up until the cab pulled up, so I was spared explaining myself. Everyone in the office was exceptionally pleasant, and again, I was surprised. I did have to wait two hours before being seen, but I might not have had to had I been there on time. Besides the obvious difference in language (with the exception of the dentist, who spoke English well), it was comparable to any experience I've had at an American dentist. I'm not entirely sure what they did to my tooth - he was relatively vague about that. But for now, I have what feels like a full tooth in the back of my mouth, and I can live with that for the next five weeks. Plus, I can now say I have dental records in Morocco. A short note on the cab ride home to the medina: realizing I had just emptied my wallet to pay the dentist bills, I had a mere 17 dirham on my person. No plastic accepted. I panicked and had him pull over at just the right time -- 16 dirham. Two dirham shy of embarrassing myself for not the first time that day.

Tuesday was St. Patrick's day and coincidentally the same day as our Arabic final. Two reasons to celebrate. For the last two years in Chicago, St. Patrick's Day meant missing dance outs with O'Shea in Boston; this year, it meant missing that and LUCID at Loyola. Not that I've really stopped dancing since coming here - I lost control of my feet years ago - but I definitely missed being home (in Boston or Chicago) for the holiday. Despite being in a country that, well, has no reason to celebrate St. Patrick's day, a group of us found and met at the only Irish pub in the area and made a night of it. I saw quite a bit of green, heard two Irish songs and by the end of the night, I even caught a man and woman feigning the old "Irish jig." It wasn't the holiday I was used to, but for what it's worth, St. Patrick's day in Morocco wasn't so bad. It helps when you're in good company, and I was. 

As of this morning, I have a new housemate, or maybe more appropriately, a new sister to add to the list. Emma has joined the ranks of myself, Issra, Chamae and Najila. She won over the love of Chamae and Issra pretty quickly, even if it wasn't immediately. 

Tomorrow morning we leave for our two day northern excursion: Chefchaouen, Ceuta and M'diq. 

 

I also learned to make tea - and believe me, it took more than boiling a pot of water and tossing in a Tetley tea bag. In fact, there were two stages of boiling water, although that might be unique to my host family. Once the larger of the two pot's sang, I transferred the water into a smaller tea pot, which was where I added the dried tea leaves that came from a box of Sultan Tea. Once those had absorbed the water and took the shape of leaves, I added the fresh mint leaves that we had picked from their stems. Once all that was added, I waited a few minutes before adding four -- yes, four -- large sticks of sugar to the tea pot. I no longer have to wonder what makes their tea so sweet, that much has become pretty self-explanatory. The whole process, from start to finish, probably took about 30 minutes and ended with an obligatory, "you are Moroccan now," from Oussama. And I make a dang good pot of tea. 

So, with buckets full of the necessary supplies, a towel and a change of clothes in hand, I walked with my host mom and two sisters down the street to the closest one. It cost 10 dirham to enter and an extra 50+ dirham for the full treatment ($1 and $5+, respectively). Full treatment, as I've deemed it, entails the benefit of someone else washing you from head to toe. I decided to splurge this one time, because it seemed like a foolproof method: What better way to mask your confusion than behind the commands of someone else? In other words, I figured I didn't need to know what to do, so long as someone told me. We paid, and the attendant tossed us three bags of dark brown dirt-like material. A google search now tells me that it was rhassoul clay, a natural skin and hair care product. 

Nothing, not even four years of changing in a high school locker room, could have prepared me for what I was about to walk into.

I pushed past the door and found myself in what you could compare to a high school locker room, where we would strip down and store our belongings in lockers behind a counter monitored by a staff member.  Directly across from where I stood, two older women (I'd guess them to be in their early 60's) sat stark naked side-by-side, chatting as they dried. I looked at my little sisters (5 and 6 years old) and thought, okay; this is normal. No need to act as if it's not.

From then on, it was a game of monkey see, monkey do. My plan for the next hour involved any cliche that would get me from start to finish. When in Rome, right?

Following my host mom's lead, I peeled off each article of clothing. Having made the decision that I'd keep my sports bra on while I bathed (I'd read that this was an acceptable practice), I stood next to my family in just my under clothes. My sisters prodded and laughed at me, indicating that I had to take off the bra, too. No, I insisted; not this time. Once we were ready, we gathered our buckets and belongings and entered the hammam.

Thirty or so women between the ages of 4 and 70 waded around the hammam, which also took on the appearance of a giant locker room. All but a few of the women wore nothing but their underwear, and some didn't even have that much on. Suddenly, I felt more self conscious in my sports bra than I thought I would without it. Thus, off it came. I stood in a shallow pool of warm water, feeling completely vulnerable and unsure of what to do next while my host mom filled our buckets. Faucets on each wall churned out hot water for buckets, people walked between the two rooms, and the steam from the heat dampened my skin.

My host mom mixed the rhassoul with hot water until it formed a greenish, brown mud-like substance, and began lathering it onto her daughters. She offered me a handful so that I could do the same to myself. I felt like a child playing in the mud, which seemed counter-intuitive, given the circumstances. I rubbed in the clay as thoroughly as I could, often aided by the hand of my mom. She helped me get the spots I couldn't reach or had absentmindedly missed. To make things less awkward (for me, at least), I imagined that I was at the beach and she was lathering on sunscreen, no different than the way my real mom did for me when I was younger. 

Once the clay was sufficiently spread, I was ready for the "bath" to begin. Using the two buckets -- one small, one large -- I began splashing hot water on myself to rinse off. At this point, I was sitting on a stool meant for a child no older than five. Once I finished, a middle-aged woman took over. She grabbed a hand cloth that looked more like an Ove' Glove than something I would wash myself with, and began to scrub. She scrubbed hard. The point was to get the dead skin off, and off it came. Following her instructions, I lay down on my family's shower mat and did as I was told... which generally involved rolling from one side to the another. She scrubbed me from head to toe. Once she decided I'd had enough, she rinced me off and proceeded to my hair. She massaged in my shampoo, rinced and combed it, and braided it down my back. With nod to me and a few words to my mom, I understood her to mean that her work was done. She tossed one last bucket of warm water on me, got up and disappeared into the sea women.

At several points, I had no idea what the lady asked of me. It was one of the first times I felt helplessly stuck behind a language barrier, in which neither French nor Arabic could've saved me. My blank face stare and incorrect movements visibly frustrated her, but I tried my best not to let it get to me. From her point of view, I was an incompetent American at the hammam for a taste of another lifestyle so that I could tell everyone at home what it was like. If this is what she thought, then I can't say she's completely wrong. What she might not have realized, however, is that like everyone else in that room, I really just wanted a relaxing, hot bath. Fortunately, my mom and the woman next to me recognized my desire to understand, and they aided me as best they could. 

Shock and humiliation aside, I got through it. In actuality, it wasn't as strange of an experience as I might have thought. No, I'd never been in a room full of naked women or been cleaned by someone else since I was a child, but I'd also never seen such a community effort for something as simple as taking a bath. Mothers helped daughters, sisters helped sisters, friends helped friends, and strangers helped strangers. Age and relationship didn't matter, and people of all body types found themselves in a place where they could feel safe. I've tried to think of a similar predicament in the United States, but I've yet to find one.

I can't help but question certain sanitary aspects of the hammam (the floor is covered in about an inch of warm water rushing into drains, carrying the soap, rhassoul and dirt of the hammam goers), and yet I left the baths feeling the cleanest I'd felt in ages with skin smoother than I'd ever known. I might never know what that mysterious clay mixture is made up of, but a good part of me is willing to accept ignorance.  Next time, I'll save myself the extra few dirhams and the trouble of the hammam staff, and I'll do the cleaning myself.