We arrived in Morocco at about 11:00 this morning (Morocco time which is only 4 hours different from home). This was the first time that Semester at Sea had gone directly from one port to another with no days in between. Because of this changed they decided to offer three more field trips one of which I signed up for. So today at 2:00pm a group of us went first to a local private school. At this particular school they teach most things in English but they also switch between Arabic and French so the kids can speak all three languages and frequently switch between them all. We were only there for a few minutes but it gave us a little insight into how they learn (apparently there school system is like the French but I don’t entirely understand all that that entails).
After leaving the school we went to the SOS Children’s Village. This one was the third one out of five started in Morocco. Instead of living in one big orphanage building the orphans are divided up into “familys” with no more than 8 kids per family. Each family has a “mother” whose job is to be these kids mother. She is not allowed to be married nor have any kids that are not grown already and must undergo different evaluations. The mother is given one day off a week to do what she pleases while the other mothers who the kids call Aunts watch them. They have about 98 kids there right now, the youngest being 4. At the age of 18 the kids either go on to college or get a job and are, as far as I could tell, considered able to take care of themselves.
We got to play and talk with the kids. Some people played soccer with them others basketball and one girl even played tennis with a boy. I started talking to three girls one of whom spoke fairly good English. I would ask them questions they would ask me questions and at one point they even started trying to teach me Arabic, which of course I have now completely forgotten, but it was fun. When it was time to go no one wanted to leave.
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