Today has been a wonderful experience, and I know that this is going to be a great week in Morocco. I woke up after not nearly enough sleep (but a wonderful sleep it was) and then took a long-awaited shower. The family was all gathered around the kitchen table for breakfast, and we enjoyed some delicious pastries for breakfast. To my surprise, we also were served coffee, but that wasn't the surprising part. The surprising part was the taste: it was just like Indian coffee! OK, it's not exactly the same, but with milk as the base it was very close, and sure was so good to taste it again!

We left our family then for the day and headed out to the meeting place to go to AMIDEAST for class for the day. I don't think any of us really knew what to expect. We took a petit taxi to "Macdonald Agdal" which was the Agdal McDonald's, and then walked around the corner to the school. We were first introduced to our teammates, and that was a lot of fun. We went around the room explaining "2 truths, and 1 lie" and then everyone else had to guess which was the lie. We got to know our peers even better while working on an innovation exercise in which we had to come up with the WORST design possible for a spoon. This helped us to really see what the important factors and design considerations were for a spoon, and had we needed to go further in designing a new spoon, we would have had a great foundation.

We didn't spend a TON of time in class beyond this, though, as it was time to start work on Mondialago. Mondialago is an Engineering Design competition that desires to see engineering projects that help to save the world, and that also involve a cross-cultural collaboration component. We would really fit this mold well, so our design was going to be for a more efficient solid fuel stove. This led to our first "Field Challenge" of the week: explore Rabat for examples of solid fuel stoves. Rabat is a pretty big city, probably the size of a Harrisburg, PA, so that meant we had a lot of potential ground for exploring.

Not only did this afternoon afford us the opportunity to look at stoves, but also to really let us know each other. My new teammates were Lamyae, Mountassir, and Nabil, and together we had beaucoup fun over the course of the day. We enjoyed a nice lunch at a small restaurant, and then asked the staff at the restaurant to show us their stoves. We got some pictures and observations, and then left to see the sights of Rabat while stopping along the way to look at more stoves. Places we stopped included the parliament building, Mountassir (the Winner)'s high school, and many markets.

Nearly all of the people we encountered were very friendly and were more than willing to accommodate our request to look at and take pictures of their stoves. One man went as far as to call his stove his wife, he loved it so much! The sights and smells of Rabat during the day were something I really enjoyed as we walked around. For a developing country, Rabat is very well developed, and is relatively clean and pleasant. It is a joy to walk around!

At the conclusion of the field challenge, we had a little bit of difficulty finding our homestay in the Medina, but made it back eventually and never made that mistake again! We had a wonderful dinner with our family and then fell asleep quite easily after a long and productive day.