The past week has been a tumultuous one—emotions have gone from high to low to high again while I orient myself in an alien city with a foreign language and a range of new peers. However, the adjustment has been easier than I had anticipated for IES has made a valiant effort to keep their students busy while they acclimate to the culture. The group has been ushered on walking tours of various neighborhoods of the city, we’ve been fed copious amounts of food, and we even all learned how to tango.

After fasting and increased charity, the holy month is over! Since Islam is based on the lunar calendar, my host family was excitedly waiting to discover which day Eid would fall on. On Thursday, it was announced that Moroccans would observe Eid on Saturday. I was excited to be a part of another cultural experience, but I was definitely curious to see what Eid would be like.

Even as our finals exams loomed, we couldn’t resist the opportunity to continue to explore Morocco. The weekend before finals, the program took all of us on a trip to Chefchaouen and Tangier in the north of Morocco. We left from Rabat early Wednesday morning and arrived in Chefchaouen in the early afternoon. Chefchaouen is also known as “Bleuville,” because the town is entirely blue! It was founded in the early 15^th century as Muslims and Jews alike fled Spain.

Before I came to Morocco, many people expressed their concerns to me that living in Morocco as a women would be “challenging” and at times, “a bit scary.” I obsessed over what would be appropriate to wear. My Google searches offered little comfort: the information ranged from “you can wear shorts and tank tops!” to “try not to show your wrists and ankles.” The term “dress modestly” was ambiguous to me. After all, what’s modest in the States might not be appropriate on the streets of Rabat.

After getting a taste of the desert and Casablanca, we decided to check out Fes and Meknes the weekend after our midterms. On Friday, we arrived in Meknes in the early afternoon. We enjoyed a horse-drawn carriage ride around Meknes, which was a very cool way to see the city. Both of our carriages looked like something out of a fairytale. It was also pretty funny to ride them on the busy streets. Meknes has a lot of these horse-drawn carriages, so the cars just tolerate being behind them and going slow in roundabouts and such.

After a crazy two weeks consisting only of studying for an exam and writing a final paper, I was finally set free this week. After clicking submit and sending the paper to the interwebs in search of my professor, I felt a wave of relief rush over me. The thing that had been weighing on my mind was finally gone! But alas, this relief was short-lived, for it suddenly dawned on me that I had less than two weeks before I returned home and left my new home Berlin behind.