Lovely Jubbly

Week One's passed and I finally feel used to being here. School is definitely getting more difficult, but my teachers are absolutely amazing. My weekday schedule is: wake up at 7:00, get dressed, eat breakfast and have mint or vervain tea with the family 8:00- walk 10 minutes through the Medina and catch a Petit Taxi at the Bat'ha Fountain. It's about a 5-10 minute cab ride to Centre American (ALIF), so we get there around 9:20 and have coffee with Elisabeth and Kait. 10:00-12:00 Arabic 1 with Bouchra After that we either go home for lunch, which takes a while because taxis are hard to get at that time of day, or we stay in the Ville Nouvelle and eat at a cafe near campus. 4:00-6:00- Arabic 2 with Mustafa 6:00-9:00- we either go to the Riad ALIF, which is this gorgeous riad in the Medina for ALIF students, or we go to a cafe and chill and do homework. The family eats dinner at 10, and then we shower, hang out, and go to bed. This weekend we met up with Kait and Elisabeth and went shopping for a bit through the medina. I got a pair of earrings, well 2 actually because this one guy gave me a pair for free, and this really interesting ring/bracelet thing. I paid "too much" for the one pair of earrings because I didn't try and barter, mainly because this adorable little 9 year old sold me them, but they were still only $1.50, and the ring/bracelet cost less than $1. This place is ridiculously cheap. Everything is going well. I haven't gotten sick from the water and staying hydrated hasn't been a problem. The only thing that's getting really annoying is being a girl here. Everyone is friendly, but I'm getting sick of being stared at, and it bothers me that we always have to be alert. On the short walk from where we get cabs to our house, we get cat-called like crazy, and it's usually harmless but it's still annoying. we try to just keep laughing at it, especially the ones that don't make sense like "you is spice girls, yet?" or "i like your arm" or "very nice, lovely jubbly". most of the guys just do it because it's part of their culture and they're not even thinking about it, but some are lingerers and will follow us down a street. the problem is that if we glare at them or say go away in arabic, they don't care what we said, only that it was in arabic, and then they get even more provoked. on the plus side, the streets are usually crowded enough that if we ever needed to, we could go to an older person and point at the stalkers and they'd get embarrassed and yelled at. it's even worse at night, but we call our homestay father and he meets us at the gate to the Medina and walks with us, and usually we only get stares instead of "oh my gawd, you is so beautiful, yes".