Erich Dehart is in the middle of his 3rd year in the Naval Academy, having just experienced a French language rotation to Morocco.

By Erich Dehart

May 28, 2008

The flight and everything associated with traveling over here went fine and after one jetlagged day, I have adjusted fine. The apartment that I share with five other guys is really nice. The apartment takes up the entire floor, including two landings and it is in a great location with lots of cool places around us.

Everything is so cheap here. I go out to eat all the time and it hardly puts a strain on the $55 a day or so that the Navy provides for us. The food here is not quite as filling and it has taken some time for my stomach to get used to functioning with a little less. Sometimes I order two entrees in order to counteract the smaller portions that restaurants often serve.

I went running yesterday with one of the guys and everybody on the street looked at us like we were crazy. The guys who seem to be perpetually sipping espressos outside cafés did the international ask-for-a-cigarette hand gesture and laughed. The Moroccans seem like quite relaxed people. Almost everybody that I meet is easygoing and nice.

The program is really exciting and I am sure that it will vastly improve my French. I am taking: a conversation class in which we study Moroccan media and then discuss it, a Moroccan culture class, and a grammar class. We go to class for four days a week and then on the weekends we travel to different places. This weekend, we are traveling to Fez and Volubilis - the Roman ruins that were featured in the movie Patton.