It’s late and I want feeding. Halima isn’t home. I’m confused and tired and I need to be up early tomorrow for class. And I’ve been watching Hell’s Kitchen USA and it’s awesome except for when Ainsley Harriott tries to sell me a hotel more than once per ad-break. Because cooking programs are awesome and chefs are awesome. Premier Inn may even be awesome, but at 10:40 at night when I haven’t had dinner yet, it’s just not. And it’s ruining how awesome Hell’s Kitchen is being.

Lots of awesome there. Possibly too much. But I’m tired so deal.

EDIT: It’s now half 11 and they’re still not back. Should have made myself something earlier. But it’s cool because it’s not like I have to be awake in 7 hours. Oh wait. Damn.

Today, my brain is not happy with me. And I know why. I’ve been thinking too much.

See, that sounds stupid to most people, but if you know me, you know that my brain is a high-powered fact-factory working at every hour of the day on useless information and complete nonsense. Occasionally a thought comes along, and it is the spanner in the factory of my mind. Normally it’s a thought like this –

*Sally: I suddenly and inexplicably think I am a terrible girlfriend.
5minutes time
*Sally: I now feel the pressing need to forget everything else in favour of placating my boyfriend, even though he doesn’t yet know I’m a bad girlfriend, and probably I will completely over-do it.

I then proceed to completely overdo it, apologising and feeling guilty for something the boyfriend doesn’t even really understand. It’s like I can feel my head-factory whizzing and spinning and then screeching to a halt.

The problem is, that  my Arabic then comes out like this

فبفعات ىفععخنب يييلنخ ررررررررررررررررؤؤؤؤؤؤؤ

for those of you that don’t read Arabic, that means this

Vpfat Yfachenb Eyelennk Rrrrrrrrrwwwwww

so, you can see my problem. Incidentally, I should add that although I am thoroughly unreasonable, the boyfriend is always lovely about it. I guess that’s why he’s still my boyfriend, rather than being all ‘run for the hills’ whenever he sees me. I have a good thing going on, and mustn’t forget it.

The point is, my Arabic is suffering, because my brain is broken. Fail.

The heat here is doing terrible things to me.

Firstly, it’s mad difficult to concentrate, and all of Arabic just fuses into one big mess in my head
Secondly, it makes me a really awful girlfriend. I’m a pretty useless one anyway, but the added heat does nothing for me
Thirdly, there totally was a third thing, but the heat made me forget.

Oh well, I did some classes today, and they were acceptable and I now have a ton of homework, which is also acceptable, and I managed to get taxis which were acceptable. An acceptable day was had, basically.

Halima comes back tonight, so less maid duties for me hopefully. And maybe I can get my camera developed and buy some stamps (that I’ve been meaning to buy since I got here, but I’ve not got round to it because my head thinks it now lives in the middle of the sun) – Today was marginally dramatic when a classmate went all funny on us, kinda collapsed. She went to the doctor to have some tests but we don’t know how she is yet. Sure she’ll be fine though, she’s a fighter.

That’s my day. Voila.

Can’t see my laptop screen today. Never a good sign. This may make no sense at all depending on how good my touch typing actually is. Not to mention my spelling, which as you will know is atrocious any day. Normally I am saved by Chrome’s ability to catch me out with the squiggly red line of wrong-ness, but perhaps that won’t work out today.

There is something very unsettling about being in a car with a taxi driver who says nothing and has a pair of
H U G E
nail clippers on his keyring.


That is one of the nice things about blogging I have decided. Especially on a blog which has no followers and no-one particularly reads. I can pretty much say whatever I like and get away with it. 

Oh by the way, did I tell you I found out what Aziz does for a job? No? Then I’ll tell you now. He’s a medcin sapeur pompier. Yes, I just totally guessed the spelling of that, don’t judge me. It means he’s a doctor fireman, which I’m pretty sure is a job most 5 year old boys expect to have when they grow up. But it’s real. It involves him chilling and watching TV until something major happens, and then screaming down the highway at silly-miles-an-hour to save them all. Pretty cool really.

I have class now.

In case you were wondering, I know I spelt spaghetti wrong. An awesome teacher I used to know once told me that she could only say ‘spagatelli’ and not ‘spaghetti’ when I was having trouble pronouncing something or other. Sadly she passed on within a year, but I remember thinking how cool she was to make me feel better like that.

However, we are not here to discuss my schooldays way back when. We are here to discuss the most important issue of today (for me) which is…how do you light a gas stove without burning your hand? The answer is, you don’t. It is physically impossibly to light the stove in the kitchen without burning my hand, and I will be overjoyed when I don’t have to cook any more.

I made spaghetti and meatballs today, and it was pretty excellent. I put that down to the awesome ingredients rather than my cooking skill, because my cooking skill is far from skillful, and the ingredients were just lovely. Aziz seemed to like it, so that was alright.

I added spinning on the end of the title there because I haven’t talked about spinning. I went spinning last Tuesday morning. If you don’t know what spinning is,

It looks like this

…aaand it feels like this

I am not a massively sporty person, but I am also not totally unfit. Or so I thought. I lasted 15 minutes of a 45 minute workout of death on one of those things. That’s not happening again. I think I might still ache a little bit from it, a week on. My pride certainly still aches, knowing I was thoroughly outdone by a group of middle-aged Moroccan women in lycra and head bands.

Thought you’d like to know about that. Ta-ra.

…and unfairly, it’s at 7.30 in the morning. Damn. However, on the basis I have classes quite often starting at 8, I will be able to enjoy Fes to its maximum.

This morning is my first language class. For the next four weeks, we’ll be having 2 hours a day of grammar, and 2 hours a day of Dereeja which is Moroccan Arabic in us-speak. And today, my Dereeja class happens to start at 8. It does on Thursday as well. Monday, Wednesday and Friday I have Dereeja 3 – 5 in the afternoon which would be cool except that this Friday I’ve been invited to a wedding, meaning I have to go to the 8 – 10 class anyway.

We have grammar 10 – 12 each day. No great enjoyment there. We’ll see how it goes.

Here is a petit taxi for you. Love it as if it were your own.

Anyway, so Fes is beautiful when it’s quiet, which happens to at 7.30 in the morning. Also, it is ridiculously easy to get a taxi, which explains why I can blog at silly-o’clock because I got here 20 minutes before class even starts. I can practically lie-in on Thursday.

By the way, in case you were wondering, the being-a-maid thing went ok. My cooking skills are a bit shoddy but it is more through fear of the stove (which is scary. I’ll find pictures) than anything else. And if  you know me then you already know about the fetish I have for neatness and washing up. So being a maid fits me like a little glove.

So hi there. E-mailing wasn’t going well for me. I felt bad bombarding people with e-mails, especially since the reality is that now the novelty has worn off, I am
B O R E D
but don’t tell anyone, ok?

Anyway, for those just joining us, I’m in Fes, Morocco on my year abroad, and despite the fact that it’s meant to be all cool, I’ve prettymuch done all the fun stuff already.

So, in aid of me finding something to do, I shall list what I have done so far.

1) Got here
2) Met the family – who are lovely of course
3) Went to school, in a pretty Moroccan villa
4) Met Si Zaim. He’s our teacher. He’s nuts and he interjects the word ‘So’ into sentences where it doesn’t make sense. Good thing he teaches Arabic really
5) Enjoyed some petit taxi rides. I would recommend these to anyone wanting to put their life in the hands of a man who wants nothing more than to have a really loud conversation in Arabic to the man sitting next to him. The road is always secondary to this. The only thing more important is using his horn inappropriately.

6) Had Tagine. You should try it, I’ll cook you it some time.
7) Became the maid because the maid had to leave, sadly. But I’ll post that story next.
8) Did some tests, two of which were ridiculously hard, and two of which were easy. So there we are.

Here is me by a big stone lion. For your amusement.