Morocco, Week 1

 This post's updates: Arrival recap, general observations, and the ground floor

Arrival Recap

We have moved to Rabat, Morocco! Chris left San Diego on June 21st along with about 1000 pounds of our stuff. The girls and I stayed in our house until July 22nd. On that day, over 10,000 pounds of our stuff was packed up and split between two trucks - 1 headed to storage in SD and the other to the east coast to be shipped to Africa. The cat moved in with my mom for the next 9 days and the girls and I moved into a hotel in Old Town. July 31st we headed to NYC where we met Chris. We then went to CT for a few days to visit family and then to VT to visit the other side of the family, see Bindal and Chad get married, and then back to CT. We all left JFK together the night of August 9th and arrive in Casablanca the morning of the 10th. And this is where our story picks up...

We arrived in Africa safe and sound with all of our luggage and our cat! The driver from the Embassy came to pick us up in a van (thank goodness) and drive us from Casablanca to Rabat, about an hour and a half north. Chris and Nacho have been in our house in Rabat for about 3 weeks before we arrived so he was able to unpack our quick shipment and get the house settled a bit before all of the chaos arrived. 

The girls were excited to see their rooms - they each have their own big room now with a big kid bed for Amelia (while Abigail is suffering from withdrawals from her queen). Their rooms each have a playroom/bonus room, their own bathrooms, and patios. Abigail might have the largest patio in the place! 

The house in general in crazy big - bigger than anything the girls and I have lived in! I cannot tell you yet if it is a typical/Moroccan style house as we haven't been to any other houses. Our first week has been spent getting to know our new house, doing some fun government required training and document completing, shopping for some necessities (always more snacks), and doing what we can to settle in.

General Observations

The light switches and faucets are backwards from what I am use to. The bathrooms in each of the bedrooms have 2 toilets and I assumed one was a bidet but with a faucet and not a hose I am not so sure. Pedestrians are not given right of way by cars and there are limited sidewalks - many of those that are around our neighborhood are tiled and not super smooth (aka riddled with holes). Crossing the street to the shopping area across from us is like frogger but slightly scarier when also pulling along 2 small people that may or may not listen to all directions provided. Driving and drivers are crazy. I am not sure I am looking forward to that although leaving the house during the day while Chris is at work would be nice.

We have to soak our fruits and veggies in vinegar before eating and buy bottled water. They don't readily recycle here (especially in homes) and there is quite a bit of trash around in parking lots, vacant lots next to houses, and the streets. Where China had their trash chickens, here they have trash egrets (which is stranger for sure). All of the houses I have seen (in our neighborhood and others) all have large fences and hedges around the front of the house with a vehicle gate and a pedestrian gate for access to the house. 

Ground Floor

When you come into the house through the huge front door, there is a large entry way leading to an open space. This large area has a bathroom (sink and toilet in separate mini-rooms), a formal dining area, a sitting area, and... another area to sit in (??) you run out of names after so many areas. There is a fireplace between the two sitting areas and chandeliers all over - all of them different too! Off of the raised sitting area there is a door to go out onto the patio/sun room. There is another smaller room in this area where we have the TV so we have aptly named it the TV Room. Then there's another bathroom (2 rooms) and the kitchen (photos to come after I clean). In this corner is another door that goes outside to the driveway/carport that cannot actually be locked from the outside so it doesn't get used much. The stairs to go up and down are in this corner as well with an open stairwell - we have discover the acoustics here are very nice for yelling things like "Mooooommmmmyyyyyy!" over and over again. 

To tide you over, here are some pics of the house and our neighborhood. 

If you have questions or things you'd like to see, let me know!

**UPDATED: I forgot some fo the basics! (For those who don't know Google) Morocco is a country in the north west corner of Africa - technically it is the Kingdom of Morocco. Rabat is one of four imperial cities and the king lives not too far from us. Abigail asked if we get to. meet him and if you're wondering that too, the answer is most likely not. 

People here speak a Moroccan dialect of Arabic called Darija and they have a language called Standard Moroccan Tamazight that looks cool - ⵜⴰⴳⵍⴷⵉⵜ ⵏ ⵍⵎⵖⵔⵉⴱ . Morocco was controlled by the French for a period of time hence the influence of their language and culture (yay crepes and croissants!) Thankfully we can take advantage of the French and we are leaning heavily on Chris's 400 hours of French instruction in 2020 to help us. We have been doing some French learning on our own (Muzzy and Duolingo) but both girls will learn French in school. Abigail will also receive some instruction in Arabic. I am hoping to get into some courses through the embassy or through some other means so I can handle myself better at the grocery store and places like that though my Google Translate app has been great. Speaking of grocery stores, here is a fun fact: many of the shopping carts have the holes in the front where a kid would sit and put their legs through but I have yet to see a cart that actually has the seat for the kids. What do they think those holes are for???

We are in a coastal area and now our western coast is the Atlantic. Our house is about 15 minutes from the sea/beach. It is quite different than the sandy shores of Pacific Beach so we will have to investigate some. We are located at about the same latitude as Los Angles so the weather is fairly similar with the addition of more rain. In the week we've been here I can say it feels warmer and muggier to me. Most nights this last week it didn't cool down below 70!