By abbymarco
Studying abroad anywhere is certainly a challenging experience; adapting to a new culture, environment, and language is never easy. For me, the most difficult adjustment has been living with my host family, which, despite its many challenges, has also been my favorite experiencing. Coming into my semester abroad, I found myself completely unable to communicate. I had been relying on my few semesters of French in high school to help me get by in Morocco. However, where I live in the old Medina, few people speak French. My host family made up of my mom, dad, and thirty-year old host brother, speak only Darija, which is the Moroccan dialect of Arabic.
Unfortunately, not only did I not speak any Darija upon my arrival in Morocco, I did not know any Modern Standard Arabic, either. Since arriving here, I’ve been taking an intensive Modern Standard Arabic course where I spend two hours a day in class, Monday through Friday. While this has helped my communication skills immensely in my daily life here, communicating at home is still challenging. My host family does not know very much Modern Standard Arabic, and I only know as much Darija as I can pick up in the streets, so a lot gets lost in translation. However, I have come so far with my language abilities since first getting to Rabat, and each day, communicating gets easier and easier.
Despite the major language barrier between me and my host family, living in someone else’s home has its challenges in other ways. For example, I’ve had to adjust to so many new (and sometimes strange) foods. Many times, my host mom will serve me food that I really do not like, but I eat it anyway in order to be polite. She works so hard to cook the family food, and I would never want to hurt her feelings or insult their culture. So, I eat everything I am served, which was a hard adjustment in the beginning. As a college student, I am used to cooking for myself and eating when and what I want. Coming here and being served three meals a day without any say in the matter at first felt like I was being stripped of my independence. Now, I have gotten used to it, but I am certainly looking forward to regaining control over this aspect of my life in a few weeks.
Another challenge of living with a host family here has been adjusting to a new style of living in terms of my housing situation. For starters, the whole family shares a tiny, one-floor house, so privacy is very rare and I can hear everything that happens in the house at all times. Sometimes, I just want to relax and take quiet time for myself, but my living situation makes that nearly impossible. Something else that was very difficult at first was the showering situation. My family’s “shower” consists of a hose that is right next to the toilet. When I was to shower, I just take the hose off of its hook and hold it throughout my entire shower. There is no curtain or bathtub, which means the water spills all out into the room and I must mop it up afterwards. Now that I have been here for a few months, these small challenges are just part of my normal life and I hardly even think about them, but at first I was taken aback by these lifestyle changes. I realize how lucky I am to be so immersed in a new culture, and I am thankful to be learning so much from my Moroccan family. However, I do think I will enjoy gaining back some of my independence and privacy when I return home in a few weeks!!