Adapting my mind and my body to this new way of life...

Moroccan bacteria caught me at the end of last week and put me into bed for several days. I guess my body just decided to protest against this change of environment. Well, it better get used to it as I won't be going home in quite a while! Seeing matters in a positive way, as I always tend to do, I had an opportunity to see a glimpse of Moroccan health care system during my quick visit at a local hospital. After seeing that, I came to a conclusion that I'd rather stay healthy for the rest of my stay here! :D

So, this little incident has slow me down this past week, but here I am again, full of energy to continue my journey! Would I ever let a harmless disease to come my way and stop me from living this experience? Absolutely not!

In my mind, I'm starting to feel more Moroccan each day. I start to adapt the ways of doing things. Among those is crossing a road without every time being scared of getting hit by cars that drive with no traffic rules. Also, learning that people are not standing calmly in a line and waiting for their turn in the bakery for example. Early bird catches the worm, as they say. Despite my progress, going outside the house, reminds me that I really am not a Moroccan and that I really am from somewhere else. I'm trying my best to learn not to pay attention to those constant looks and acts of trying to start a conversation coming from the opposite sex. In Finland, I'm used to looking at people when walking in the street, but here it's something to be avoided. Or even worse, smiling at a strange is almost a promise of marriage. So, my lesson number one would be learning not to be friendly towards men that I don't know. Hopefully, I won't come back to Finland as a cold, rude b****! :D

This week I started my classes at the school of translation. Don't ask me what a psychology student is doing in a school translation. Apparently, there has been some lack of information between the university of Joensuu and the university of Abdelmalek Essaadi, as here they had understood that I'm a student of translation. But it's no big deal for me. The school is pretty small and people know each other, so it's easy to make friends. With the help of the school director, who has seen a lot of trouble for me, I have managed to choose suitable language classes for me. Tomorrow is my first arabic class, woow! As I still have a lot of freetime, this professor suggested to me that I would do some kind of psychological research on the topic that would be interesting for me. This is not a bad idea and it made me think that I could actually gather some information for my thesis here. It would be very valuable in the terms of cultural comparison.

Weather at the moment is something that we would experience in Finland in June. It's 17-20 c and most of the days are sunny. For Moroccans this is winter and people wear jackets that we would wear in Finland if it was colder than 0 c. They are amused by me sweating in my spring jacket. However, evenings and nights are pretty cold, because the sea is right next to us and cold breeze is blowing from there. One of my dreams has always been living at seaside. Now that I look through the window, it's all in front of my eyes. I can go jogging on the beach and feel the fresh air shivering my senses. Sometimes I'm still asking myself whether I'm dreaming. But I realize that I am not. I'm really here, living my dream from the bottom of my heart and soul.

As I'm writing this, I hear the prayer coming from the mosque from where it comes five times a day. It gives me a sense of calmness even though I may not understand its meaning from the aspect of these people. It also reminds me that maybe there is something greater in this life yet to be discovered by all of us. Whatever it is, we cannot know. The only thing we can do is to believe in something that feels good to us in our soul, not trying to convince others that it's the only right way of believing. May we all find peace in our own way.

See you next time, inchallah!