I’d say this weekend was pretty solid. Since our Fridays are the start of our weekends, this week we decided to go to school with Zinab for the day! The univerisity she goes to is mainly for English Literature and science majors. Her focus is on lit, with the final goal of becoming a teacher insha'allah. 

The univeristy itself wasn’t too far off from an American college. The general classes were a bit smaller (kind of like high school size), but they do have a few large lecture halls like the ones we’re used to. Not everyone (actually, almost no one) brings a laptop to class for notes; they all mostly take notes via pen and paper… When walking around campus in the morning, there a few student protests going on. They were performing these sort of songs that actually sounded really cool. They weren’t like intense, angry chants, they were songs that I could see people dancing to or something (maybe that’s because I didn’t really know what they were saying).

Zinab’s class for the day is scheduled for 8am, but she told us how the proffessors are rarely on time. They like to have a nice leisurely tea in the morning like anyone else would… This English Lit teacher, Dr. Riad, was very amusing. He had this Moroccan Arabic/British English/Scottish/French accent going that Lilly and I had to sometimes really think about what he was saying. The class was reading Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse and besides a few “comedic” inputs in Arabic, the rest of the class was taught in English. They were mostly trying to get to the bottom of the meaning of the lighthouse: symbolism, themes in society, etc.

After class, we met up with a few of Zinab’s friends and enjoyed some amazing msemen with cheese and casher, a typical Moroccan breakfast, out on the school’s cafeteria patio.

I’m really glad we got the chance to see how the universities work here just because we haven’t seen much to do with public schooling here besides in the Atlas Mountains. It’s crazy to think that college here is completely free; Zinab was telling us how you don’t really need to apply for these schools, you mostly just have to prove to them that your grades in the desired subject back in high school, or bacheloriette, are adequate enough to go on and eventually get a degree in. Next Friday, we want to go to her 10am lecture of Literary Criticism, so hopefully that happens and I’ll have more stories for you!