first adjustments and a reflection on growth

well, this is different.
i opened my web-browser and everything's in arabic. earlier today i got a new sim card for my phone, and now it is all in french. i don't know how to change either of them back, so i suppose the learning has begun!
so i have arrived, safe, sound, in one piece, with all my luggage.
things i have adjusted well to so far: the time difference (6 hours later than home), the altitude (5000 feet above sea level), the new faces (i think i have all the names of the other international students down), and the food (had a fantastic lunch during my excursion into downtown ifrane earlier today).
things still on my list of adjustments: language (the french here is much more difficult to understand and i'm completely lost in arabic), my room (i havne't quite figured out how to turn the heater on, so last night i slept in three layers of clothes, two blankets, and my sleeping bag), the culture (infinitely more complex than french and arabic put together!).
but, all in all, i must say i've had a really lovely day. i just have to shake myself every once in a while and remind myself that i'm actually doing this - that i'll be here for the next four months. that by the end of the semester that guy at the lunch counter in town will probably know my name and we might actually have a conversation without the facilitation of hatim or any of the other moroccan students. more than anything, with the well-coordinated orientation throwing me flashbacks of freshman year, i have to keep reminding myself that this is my experience for the taking, that god has placed me here for a purpose, and that i'm actually an adult in the middle of all of this, not some seventeen-year-old kid wandering on the bc campus full of dreamy fantasies of college, my own abilities, and life in general. now - a few years older - those fantasies haven't necessarily gone away, i still love to get mentally lost among the labarynthine choices and options and opportunities that lay in front of me. but i feel much...deeper - much more grounded, and while my head, to some extent, may find its way into the clouds from time to time, my feet are more than on the ground, they are oak tree-like, rooted, deeply and thickly. firmly attached and balanced by a foundation of faith, family, and friends.
i know that i will need that foundation, that rooting, as i stretch tall and grow wide in morocco; hopefully bearing fruit and blessing those here. i'm very much on the 'honeymoon' high of this relationship with morocco, its people, culture, and language, and i know there will be times of hardship and discontent, but i also look forward to that time of harmony which is in store with faithful persistence.

oh, and if you're reading this, then i guess you know i figured out which arabic button means 'post' :)