In the Beginning

Today is my last night in the USA before I head off to great adventures in Rabat! My apartment is empty, my bags are packed, and this blog is up and running, but I don't think that I will really believe that I am going until I am on the plane tomorrow evening.

So far, I feel a little unprepared, given that the sum total of my pre-departure research has been conducted through the Frommers guidebook and wikipedia. Even so, I have learned valuable information, such as the fact that eating with one's left hand is a huge social no-no, the summer weather in Morocco's coastal areas is actually nicer than DC's, and Rabat is home to a discotheque called Platinum.

Well, I am going regardless, and at 6 PM tomorrow I will be boarding a flight to Heathrow International Airport. From there I will fly to Paris, from Paris on to Rabat, and I will have reached my final destination and new home for the next nine months by 1:30 PM, Saturday August 22nd, which also happens to be the first day of Ramadan. Talk about jumping right into things!

During my stay in Rabat, I will be living with a Moroccan host family and attending classes with the other American students in my program. We will all have three elective classes and two language classes, Modern Standard, or classical, Arabic, and Moroccan colloquial, which is what my host family and the average person on the street will use. I don't know anything about my host family yet, but should hopefully get more info during my week of cultural training that I am to receive upon arriving in the country.

I keep telling myself that this will be a great experience, and know on an intellectual level that it will be, but it is a bit hard to leave my friends, family, and routines for a place so completely different. My mother, bless her, tells me that my first reaction to change is to immediately think of the worst possible scenario, which is true, so I am sure that by the time I next post I will be singing the praises of Morocco and her people from the top of my lungs, but I just need to work through my final hour angst first.

That being said, thank you for reading, I promise to be more cheerful next time, and please visit again!

Also, as a brief side-note, the name for this blog comes from my maternal grandfather, who when he heard that I was applying to spend the year in Rabat said that I, like Webster's Dictionary was Morocco bound. The words are from the song, The Road to Morocco, originally performed by Bing Crosby.