After spending the morning learning Arabic, and the afternoon in the souks bargaining, I would prefer to spend my time learning Arabic and practicing it in the markets and at home. Its not that I prefer it over bargaining, but that I find it more useful to perfect while in Morocco. In my mind, if one practices the language in the markets and at home, one can use the language to their advantage while bargaining. The sellers might think you live in Morocco or might not suspect you’re a tourist, and in turn may give you a better price than they would to someone outside the country. Some skills we learned in Arabic class include saying “thank you” (shukran), “I am…” (Smiyti), “Nice to meet you” (Mtcharfin), and numbers 1-20. Some useful bargaining advice we received is to set a price before asking their price, or saying that someone else is selling the same item down the road for less, and asking them to half the price.

My favorite moment using language and bargaining happened in the markets when looking for purses. We came across a street of stores owned by the same man and his family. We began to speak in English as we had all day, asking about prices and if they bags were “Real Leather”. A few of us weren’t making much progress with negotiating a lower price, and were about to walk away. Thats when we began using the few phrases we had learned that morning. We told the owner our names and greeted him. Mariel, Maddy and I all made successful purchases that we were happy with. When leaving, Maddy accidentally said Smiyti Shukran, which made the owner laugh. I think if we all worked hard to learn and memorize phrases, especially ones used in markets and describing money, we would be able to make better purchases in the future.

TTYL!

-Charlotte