first email to home

well the first week has passed relatively quickly. i wont say flew by, but it came and went with ease and i am settleing into my new life here in the old medina of rabat. i live on the bottom floor of an old house with my father, mother, two sister and brother. my moraccan father is a journalist that seems to be well liked and respected in the community. my mother is a private practice doctor that deals with bones mainly. My brother mohammad works the night shift as a security guard for a bank and is very quiet. i feel like other than my american friends i will have the closest relationship with my father. this saturday we spent the day watching soccer; witnessing ghana crush morocco 2-0 in a friendly and france sadly tie italy in a very high press euro 2008 qualifier match. I found it only fitting that erica's team beat mine. of course the moraccan team worked the best and hardest throughout the match but could just not finish and the two times ghana, who played with such a sloppy lazy african style, shot on goal they were flawless, effortless strikes that found the back of the net. typical. Erica 1 Aidan 0.





the first week of the program which thankfully is much more of a program than the senegal one ever could hope to be was spent trying to get through the long drawn out orientation seminars with spurts of adventure like finding a 40 foot cliff on the coast and going cliff jumping with local kids and waking up early in the morning to surf with Alex a fellow student. so i have been cliff jumping twice already. surfing twice and my cut up feet to show for it. did catch a wave though! its coming back slowley. its not the north shore of maui but its surfing in north africa right? cant complain.





i am happy to be starting week two even though at some points i go through spells wishing the semester was almost over and i will be skiing at tamarck or watching a movie in my cave or having a big french meal with close friends/family in Dax soon, but that time will come faster than i think and the time spent up till then will make it sweeter when it finally arrives, so for now i am trying to focus on smelling the spices of the old medina as i stroll along the tight enclosed streets, at the lazy pace of the islamic life, of rabat