Today began the start of class sessions at the Center for Cross Cultural Learning in Rabat. Besides extra tips on safety, we had two core focuses for today, the Arabic language and the language of bargaining.
When it comes to me, I unfortunately found myself to not be very good at either. After covering basic greetings in Arabic, it became difficult to remember exactly which word meant what, while the pronunciations weren’t to challenging for me. I was able to learn how to introduce ourselves, say where I’m from, and ask others details about themselves quite well. However, when class began to dive deeper into food and questions associated with food, gendered words were introduced which caused me to begin to slip up and fall behind what was being taught. With practice, I’m positive that it’ll become easier, as I have been able to learn moderate Spanish in high school, while being able to utilize my learnings in Spain and Costa Rica in recent years.
I can confidently say that out of the two languages I tried to learn today, bargaining was the one I was the worst in. As a person, I don’t feel incredibly comfortable in trying to “fight” with another individual for a price with a good, as I feel there’s really only two outcomes that result from an interaction. Either I get scammed, paying an incredibly high price for a good, or I get lucky and am able to purchase an item at nearly the same price it cost to construct, leaving barely any profit margin for the shopkeeper. Thankfully, for today we were given a minor amount of dirham to work with in order to practice our bargaining skills. Heading to the street markets, all of the guys had a set plan to all purchases fez’s for the group. Using the power that we carried as a group, we were able to bargain a little bit easier through a bundle deal, being able to purchase a total of 8 fez’s for only 240 dirhams, translating to roughly $3.29 per fez for those at home.
