Letter from Tangier

Hello there !

Here are a few things we would like you to know about us...

First let’s tell you about where we live : we’re in Tangier, in the North-East of Morocco. It is a touristic destination, because of its location, and because of its past. It is very close to Europe, on most days, we can actually see Spain from the coast... We’re where the Atlantic Ocean meets with the Mediterranean sea...We’re also close to the English-speaking zone of Gibraltar. And Tangier has centuries of history, dating back to the Phoenicians, the Romans, and, more recently, the time when it was an international zone. They say that the old classic movie  “Casablanca” was meant to describe our place.

Now about us...we’re a group of 29 students (among whom there are 19 girls), and we spend a lot of time at school. We have different nationalities, Moroccan, Tunisian, Belgian and Spanish, but we study in a French school. Our school, Groupe Scolaire le Détroit,  is rather new, and still small (there is mainly only one class per grade), whereas there’s another French school downtown that just celebrated their 100^th anniversary, and that’s larger...We go to school 5 days a week, but have Wednesday afternoons off. And we sit for about 9 hours a day, from 8 to 1 pm, and then from 2 pm to 6 pm, apart from the two 20-minutes breaks. We study an average of 13 subjects, including 4 languages (French, Arabic, English and Spanish)... and we have a lot of homework everyday...

We have known one another for years (we’ve been together since 5^th grade), although this year, there are 4 new students in the class. We get along fine, we’re a close-knit group...Most of us are quite active and funny, however, with so much time spent at school, we don’t meet as much as we would want to outside of school...Luckily, we have lots of holidays, and most of the French bank holidays, combined with Moroccan bank holidays...This year we don’t have any final exam, whereas next year we’ll sit an exam in French literature, and in two years’ time, an exam in all the other subjects...

We’re looking forward to hearing from you...

All the best from all of us... Cheers !

All the students from Seconde 1

PS: we wrote this letter before finding out about yours, so we're bound to write back soon !

PPS: and here are a few pictures of what you can see from Tangier and from its outskirts!