Bienvenue A Casablanca

After nearly missing our connection in Paris (boo for you Charles De Gaulle) we had an uneventful flight to Casablanca.  As we walked down the exit ramp we were greeted by a nice moroccan man holding a hand written sign baring our names.  He whisked through all manner of check points and customs lines and before we knew it we were traveling down the road toward downtown Casablanca.

I have to say, Casa is a lot greener than I thought it would be.  I know it's the Spring and that Summer will mean a drier, browner landscape, but I couldn't believe the greenery as we drove into town.  Max mentioned several times that it reminded him of his mission in Brazil a bit with the shrubs and mud and palm trees...as well as the crazy traffic and litter I imagine :)

Our apartment is lovely.  It's in a very upscale urban center surrounded by clothing stores we won't be able to afford for some time.  But a girl can always try stuff on.  There are beaucoup de scrumptious restaurants around and we have already sampled a few.  On our second day I met Max and some of his colleagues for lunch at Le Four A Bois for pizza and pasta.  The food was delicious, but, as you can imagine, did not help our jet lag any that afternoon.  I heard Max say only half joking that he would just stand up for the rest of the day.  Jet lag has kicked our butts.

We have an awesome sponsor from the consulate and she showed us around the neighborhood on our first night, pointing out cafe's, gyms, grocery stores with hard to find products and the best produce stand on Max's way home from work.  She even braved the terrible Casa traffic for us on Saturday to show us around different areas of the city - more on that later.

We have two doorman, a night man and a day man.  They are both very nice and one in particular has proved a determined language partner for Max already.  Morroccan Arabic is quite different than Standard Arabic or the Shami dialect he's been speaking for the past few years but Max has been good to get practice in wherever he can.  It's been helpful for me to get some French in too.  French!  I have been surprised at the amount of French they speak here in Casablanca.  I guess I thought there would be more Arabic and in private conversations that might be the case, but almost all official information and public discourse is in French from what I can tell.  It's coming back to me slowly...

A few funny moments:

The only bag to get lost had Max's work shoes in it and he had work the next morning.  I assured him that his Vans looked fine with his black suit.

We ordered a pizza the first night we were here...only our apartment does not have a number.  We are the only apartment on a little side street-ish thing and Max did a whale of a job describing our apartment, the neighborhood, the apartment kitty corner and any other distinguishing landmarks before the pizza guy figured out where we lived.  It was funnier for me than it was for Max, but ultimately successful.