Time flies

My how time flies. I can't believe I'm almost halfway through my second week in Fez! And I have been enjoying every minute. I have been praying that my homesickness would stop and that I would truly enjoy my time here. It was today I was sitting at home to avoid the heat, just reading a book, when suddenly it hit me, I have fallen in love with Morocco. I love the people, minus the catcalls, the food, so divine, the language, and even the heat some days. What an answer to prayer!

I have started the brunt of my language learning this week and am happy to report that much of the grammatical aspects are things I have already learned. The only thing I am struggling with is vocabulary. The book the school here uses is a different one than what I use at the U so all the vocab is different. I can't imagine being a level up and having to learn all new grammatical structures plus vocabulary. I am happy to be strongly reinforcing what I already know :)

This weekend was an awesomely hot and eventful weekend. Temperatures for the last few days have been over 100, in the shade. My roommate and I decided to head to a pool run by a hotel in Fez on Saturday and spent the entire day working on our tans. On Sunday we took a trip with the school to some ancient Roman ruins in Volubilis which are so cool, not much compared to Pompeii and Ephesus but still very impressive. It was fun when the tour guide was comparing the ruins to Ephesus and Pompeii and the basilica to Istanbul's Aya Sofia, to think "I was just there!" After the ruins we went to Moulay Driss which is a town that has a spectacular view. We then ended up at Meknes for lunch and to see the city. We went to a grain storage building that was used to hold enough grain for the entire city for up to 10 years. It was built with walls about 10ft thick to keep the place cool, it was like walking into a/c! We also saw an old underground prison, it was a bit haunting to think that people used to spend most of their lives in it, some for petty crimes. It was an overwhelming day!

My roommate and I were able to buy several pool passes for a discounted rate and plan on spending many days at the pool since we have a 6 hour break between classes every day. Enough time to get my tan on! And with the weather being so hot there really isn't much else one can do.

This weekend most of the school is taking a trip to the Sahara desert! I get to see the sun set and rise in the middle of the Sahara! So sweet! We stay in a resort like hotel on Friday then camp in the desert on Saturday. An awesome thing about going to the University of Minnesota is that both the day trip to the Roman ruins and the trip to the Sahara are covered in the program fees. And I've been finding out that I paid the least out of all the universities to come here. What a deal!

Thank you all for reading and praying for me! I've been gone over a month and I have about a month left. Over half my trip is done and it went by crazy fast, I'm hoping time slows down a bit for this next month!.