前途: A Year in Morocco

Here’s what I did today:

I woke up to my alarm, turned it off and lazed about for 20 minutes before  actually getting out of bed. Normal.

I made pancakes and sat down to watch some anime. Normal.

I went to the hanoot to buy a 5 liter jug of water and some Halls. Mostly normal.

I went to university, and found out that the English Department students are on strike. No classes, again.

NORMAL.

To compound the lulzy-ness of this development, upon my return to my apartment, the concierge asked me why I came back from work so quickly. Ha.

No idea when this one will be resolved; it apparently stems from a problem between the students and one of the teachers. Without divulging the sordid yet uncorroborated details, it sounds like it’s pretty legit.

Let’s talk about problem-solving.

The other night, after learning from a friend that hanoots sell Halls, I went out to buy some at 8:30 p.m. I wore a scarf over my head, just to avoid any potential “oh hey a foreign woman, by herself, at night” stares and catcalls, because pretty much everyone out at that time is male.

There was a dude talking to my concierge. I greeted them, in Arabic. The dude I didn’t know greeted me, in English. Weird, but whatever.

As I triumphantly returned from down the street, Halls in hand, he stopped me to talk. In English. Apparently he lives in my building, and his English was pretty good. His reason for talking to me was that one of the lady neighbors was complaining about his music being too loud. She told him that all the neighbors around him could hear it and were annoyed also.

He wanted to know if it was true, if I could hear his music. I professed not to know anything about it, although I have heard loud music a couple times (nowhere near the decibel levels produced by our pseudo-frat-boy neighbors in U-district apartments). What I really wanted to say was, why don’t you stop questioning the validity of her story, and focus on the source of the whole issue: just acknowledge that the poor woman is annoyed by the volume of your music, and keep it down.

For the rest of the day I plan to sit in the sun and read. Maybe I’ll even go out for dinner.