It is now the Friday of my first week at Connect Institute. It is located in Agadir, a tourist city most known for the beach. I got here Monday after a 24 hour travel day in total. It’s been a very welcoming time in Morocco, the organization I am with is essentially a platform to support the youth in Morocco and help them with expression of the arts. The participants range form 18-25 and all have knowledge of French, Arabic, English, and the Arabic dialect spoken here called Darija. They’re all very talented. Connect Institute has 7 different institutes in six different cities and this week they’re highlighting a week of performances called “Agadir Cultures” where each day is a focus of art; music, theater, cinema, dance, and paintings. Yesterday was the day of music and today is the day of theater. I will attach a picture of one of the music groups that have performed recently. They performed traditional Moroccan music and everyone started dancing. It really was a great experience, there is never any judgment and everyone seemed so genuine.
All the participants from various centers are traveling this week to come to Agadir Culture so people can perform on the pieces they have been working on for months. Because everyone’s focus is on these events for the week I am currently working on a marketing project for the house next to Connect Institute that is newly-renovated to gear towards traveling artists who need a space to create. I will be attaching a picture of the front, something that really surprised me from Morocco is the architecture, the houses are enormous and extremely beautiful. The website for the house is TigMaia.com and there’s booking through Booking.com, Airbnb, on the website, and we’ll be extending offers to other people we see are in the midst of traveling. I’m working closely with a woman named Khadija who has expertise in the tourism industry and the whole experience has been completely eye-opening.
I’m currently taking four classes in total with two general PAD classes and then the internship course along with continuing Global Scholars. It’s not that hard to keep up with all the courses because I try to plan accordingly, however my days begin at 8:30am and for work they end at 6:00pm but because of Agadir Cultures, the days have ended around 12am.. It is a handful but I’m trying to soak up every minute that I can, all worth it.
HSF House Blogs 