At the end of poli sci on Wednesday, professor Ahmadi showed us the questions that we would need to write about for the final. We had between then and 10:30 the next day to submit the assignment, though it wasn't until around 6:00 that night that he got around to putting it up on Moodle. When I asked if he wanted it to be submitted by e-mail or on Moodle, he said Moodle. Just Moodle.
After ftour, we all met up at Marina Bay to “study.”It was probably our least productive study session yet. Natasha had the idea of blatantly ripping off our ideas with a couple of quoations, but that backfired since none of us had any better idea of what to say than she did.
We did talk a little bit about the prompts. Nothing specific enough to be even slightly useful, but abstractly. “Which prompt are you doing?” “What do you think of Tariq Ramadan?” That sort of thing. I wrote down the question as my place-holder introduction and looked at the article he'd referenced to help us answer it. Then my brain went “no. Too much French. Too hard. Too late at night. Make it stop” so I listened to it and went back to much less intellectual conversations.
After spending an hour or two at Marina Bay, we went over to the next restaurant. It was called Blueberry, though the clip-arty image they had right next to it was pretty clearly a blackberry. Nathan had been there with a friend, and he said they had a great dessert we needed to try. So we abandoned our internet and our friendly waiters and went over to Blueberry.
“Abandoned our friendly waiters” is in fact a slight exaggeration. We're pretty sure that one of the waiters from Marina Bay followed us to Bluebery. Either that or he works at both Blueberry and Marina Bay. Or he works at Marina Bay, but likes coming to Blueberry for his break. Or maybe he had an identical twin who worked at Blueberry, though he himself worked at Marina Bay. In any event, we're pretty sure we recognized one of the waiters.
The dessert that Nathan was talking about was called a “Molten Mama.” Take a brownie, admittedly a slightly dry one. (For some reason brownies don't seem to be common in Rabat, and the couple of times I have found one it's been pretty dry). Slather it in warm nutella. Now top it with a scoop of ice cream and a drizzle of strawberry glaze. So rich, but soooo good. I'm kind of glad we didn't find it until the last week. The sheer abundance of Moroccan food has already made some of my clothing tighter than it was when I left the United States. I really didn't need Molten Mamas contributing to that.
Eventually, we called the “study session” quits and went back to our respective houses. We weren't entirely sure if we needed to go into school the next day, but were inclined towards no, since we hadn't needed to be physically present for the midterm. I'd had the intention of writing the paper that night and sleeping in, but after my mind revolted in trying to read French I decided that wasn't a good idea. So the next morning I got up and went to the center, as normal.
I waited until Ahmadi showed up in the classroom to check on us (I'm not sure what he was checking. Natasha didn't come to school and Megan wasn't in the classroom. I guess if we had any questions but didn't want to have to move?) and then fled to the library. Unsurprisingly, there was no one there.
I started to sit down in the chairs I'd written my midterm in, but they were too comfortable. I needed a change of pace. I sat down at the table and tried working there for a bit. Still not enough of a change. I needed something interesting to trick my mind into believing I was doing something exciting and needed creativity. What about on the table?
I tested to see how stable the table felt (pretty stable) then climbed on top of it. Yep, it could definitely support my weight. I spent a little bit of time finding good French Poli Sci Final writing music out of the 738 songs that had transferred (I'd tried to copy it directly from my regular music library, which was several times larger, but those were the only ones that I got. It's enough variety that I'm not bored, but it has several times meant I needed to look up Youtube videos of songs I own just because I wanted to hear them.) and got to work. Occasionally I started singing along with my music. It's not like there was anyone there to mind that what I was doing looked more like avoiding a poli sci paper than working on it. It got done, so it all worked out.
When I was drawing close to my conclusion, the reality of me leaving hit me. I remembered the first time I entered the IES library alone, and how I'd been nervous and enthused. There were all these books, and I was the only one in the room. I felt like I was doing something I shouldn't just by entering the room. 7 weeks later I was unquestionably doing something I shouldn't (I got off the table and muted my music every time I thought I heard the door opening) and the books were no different then the books in my home or school library- I've stared at them so many times that it's rare that one can surprise me, and I've read enough of them that when I'm deciding what to read next, I can almost reduce it to process of elimination.
In 7 weeks, I've become thoroughly familiar with the IES building. I feel like I belong there as much as I belong in any school I've been to. Not for the first time, I wondered what another two months would have done. If I'd been hear for a full semester, there's a very real chance I would have read all of the fiction the library had. But it's hard enough to wrap my head around the idea that I'm not going back to that building ever. I'm frightened of what the end of a full semester abroad will be like.
I went downstairs so I could get an internet connection and upload my paper to Moodle. Then Professor Ahmadi came by and told me I should e-mail it to him. I stifled a sigh and did, then went outside to read another chapter of my book, then back into the classroom.
Our lit final was a printed out sheet of paper, but otherwise it was the same. We should answer them and e-mail our answers to our professor. We could work on it wherever, we just needed to be done by 6 PM. I went back to the library to work on it.
Once I'd turned in the paper and the course evaluations Nisrine gave me, I went back to the library to finish my book. It was one of the books from the center library and, since I'd never be returning here ever, I needed to finish before I left the building. One last book. That ending hit harder than the conclusion of the book I was reading.
