First post & First Day in Morocco

I'm going to fast-forward through the trip here. We went from Columbus, to Detroit, then boarded an 8 hour flight to Paris, and lastly flew from Paris to Casablanca. Landing in Casablanca was pretty much like landing in any American airport, except we got off the plane in the middle of the tarmac and took a bus to the terminal. In short, the trip to Morocco was pretty uneventful. 

So now we've reached Morocco. We met up with two of the Moroccans running our program at the airport and take a two hour bus ride from Casablanca to the capital, Rabat, where we will be studying. Once in Rabat we arrived at...

...this place. The IES center where we will be studying at.

After stopping at IES we met our host parents and went to our home-stays. 

Behold, my bedroom for the next month. That's actually only half the room. My roommate's behind is behind where I am taking the picture.

The rest of the house is pretty simple:

This is the main room and atrium. My bedroom is behind the closed doors, my host parents live in the room with the red curtains.

Kitchen. Didn't really need a caption for this one, the picture pretty much speaks for itself.

And this is the dining room where meals are eaten and TV is watched.

After we got settled in to our new home, we headed out for a tour of the medina, or marketplace, in which our house is located. The medina is a massive market where pretty much everything is sold. It can get quite busy. And crowded. 

The part of the medina we walked through here is kind of like an open supermarket with food and what not. There is a much more exciting part with pots, clothing jewelry, etc. The first two shots are earlier in the evening when we were first going out, the second two are later when it started to get dark and we were coming back.