Morocco, Part 2

Hola seguidores! I have 7 now, i feel so popular. I am taking another precious hour of siesta to surge ahead with the moroccan posts. We left off in Asilah, right? There was only one more stop before we left Asilah, and that was the library. It's a huge building with an auditorium, study rooms, offices, and go knows what else. There was a journalist that met us there and wanted to write about our visit, so these pictures are probably floating around in a Moroccan newspaper somewhere. zween! (that's "cool" in arabic, remember that)

The outside

This is what you see when you first walk into the building

The doorway

Upstairs, where the books are

 So after the library, we got back on the van/bus thing and went to Rabat. Rabat is a big city on the coast on Morocco. This is more or less what it looks like:

Remember the blue/white thing? They've got it going on here too.

We stayed there 2 nights with families. There were 2 or 3 people to each house. We got to eat real moroccan food and drink moroccan coffee (which i honestly believe is the best in the world). I stayed with Elsa and Shanie in the apartment of a young couple named Ahmed and Sumia. Ahmed's mother lived there too, but she only spoke arabic so there was a major language barrier there. Ahmed spoke a tiny, little bit of english, which kind of helped. Sumia spoke about as much French as i do so that was mainly how we communicated. That and charades/drawings. I have a notebook full of failed attempts at drawing bulls, women, pools, and other things that i can't even decipher.

This is the door to our building

Me in the hallway, striking a pose that could get me arrested

The living room, with Ahmed's mother

The main hallway of the apartment. The door that i'm standing behind is the door to our room.

The doorway to our room, from the inside

Inside!

This is the bathroom. See that bucket in the far corner? That's the shower. There's a hose nest to it that you can't see. Guess how many times I showered in Morocco? 0.

This is what you see when you first step in the door. That's Ahmed!

Me, Elsa, and Sumia making notes in foreign languages

Me, Elsa, Sumia, and Shanie!

Breakfast on morning 2. We put honey on these toasted tortillas and it was soooo good.

This is the cutest child ever! He lived with Oscar, Alex, and Miguel

All of that was just day 1. We finally got to sleep (on those awesome couches) and we were up bright and early for a visit to a youth center for guys. We met a bunch of 18-22 year-olds and we talked for 2.5 hours about how americans percieve moroccans and how moroccans percieve americans. It was really intense at times, but we made great friends anyway. There's really no difference between moroccan guys and american guys. We went out with them afterward and they showed us the beach, the city, the marketplace, and their favorite cafe. And during all of this we took hundreds of pictures, of which i have selected only the best to show you.

In the youth center

Outside the youth center. The guy in the brown jacket on the left is Simo (aka: Mohammed 1) and next to him is Mohammed 2. To the left of me is Mehdi and to my right is Aboubakr 

The Chicos!

Amigos mejores

Me, Nick, Mehdi, Yassine, and Elsa at the cafe

Sneaky group shot, at the cafe

This time we knew that there was a picture being taken

The mercado (market) in the medina

They're big on fruits and veggies

This street is called "The Shoe Market"

More shoe market

While we were in the medina, a procession passed in celebration of the week of the prophet Mohammed's birthday. They had flags and drums and horns and they were all singing. It was pretty zween: 

 I'm fairly sure that's all the pictures that the site can support at once, so i will leave you here. Spoiler alert: next up are the roman ruins, the eel of fertility, and the most beautiful building i've ever seen.

Hasta luego!

Morocco, Part 1

Buenas! I know that this is wicked late, but i've been having the week del infierno so you'll have to find it in your hearts to forgive me. Despite some strange illness that is resting me to death, I have compiled the pictures from Morocco and i have time this afternoon to post some. Ok, so here's the scenario: There are only 14 people in my program (GRIIS) from Spain, so we decided to take the trip to Morocco together. We found a program called Moroccan Exchange, which is very very very expensive (Thanks padres/aunt Lisa!!), but also very very very good. We met our guide at 7am in a city on the southern tip of Spain called Algeciras (fun fact: it sounds arabic if you say it out loud). We stayed in a hostel the night before because of the whole madrugada thing (madrugada means the earliest of mornings). We got on a ferry and went across to Tangiers, Morocco!

That's the ferry

My first view of Africa!!

This is the Rock of Gibraltar (The Pilar of Hercules, as the Spanish call it)



Our first stop in Tangiers was a women's shelter. On the way there, we walked through a plaza that seemed really familiar. Colleen told us that it was the plaza where the opening scene of Inception was filmed, and then it all made sense. In the movie, they call it Mumbasa but it's actually Tangier. Remember the first scene where he's in a dream and then he wakes up from that into another dream? The other dream is in this plaza:

This picture was taken from the roof of DARNA, which we'll get to soon

DARNA is a women's center in Tangier that includes a restaurant, workshop, store, and school. Since women's rights are still kind of new in Morocco, DARNA helps women who want to take advantage of the new opportunities they have to be financially independent. They can learn to read and write arabic (which is more difficult than speaking it so not everyone can), to speak french, to cook comercially, to sew, to weave, and to manage money. We had lunch in the restaurante that the center runs. Their only sources of funding are the restaurante and the little store. They have a rooftop patio too, which has a great view of the city.

Some of the looms

our lunch! it's couscous

This woman gave us books so that we could learn arabic. The only problem is that they're all in arabic so we can't even understand how to understand it.

the view from the roof

our group!

When we left DARNA, we left Tangier. We took a little private bus to Asilah, but before we got there, we got a surprise. We saw some camels chillin on a beach and we started talking about how we'd love to ride camels. Colleen told the driver to pull over and admitted that the camels had been brought there for us to ride. We were all over it! Btw, i took more pictures of the camels than anything else.

there they are waiting for us

us + camels + morocco + beach

this camel is named ali baba

This one is suzanna

this is my camel, mustafa

me, slightly terrified, behind katie

Laura, very terrified. When camels get up from a "sitting" position, it's like your own personal earthquake. I was the first to get on so i found that out the hard way. The silver lining was that i got to take pictures of everyone else freaking out.

Miguel, and Oscar in the background

me!

bigger me!

Mustafa and Oscar got pretty close...

So after that speed bump, we cruised on to Asilah, a town on the Atlantic coast of Africa. We had a guided tour of the medina (the old part of the city. remember that word) and we went out on a big, stone pier from which we could see the coastline of the city. It was absolutely beautiful!

medina

More medina. All buildings in medinas or islamic cities are white on top (purity, heaven) and blue on the bottom (faith, islam) and it is illegal to repaint them.

we were in asilah on friday, the islamic sabbath, so no one was out :(

fat palm tree

The view from the pier. The area in front of the green door is a very old cemetary

That "door" is actually conrete, which effectively makes this a staircase to nowhere.

Tori, Shanie, and Me on the pier

Me, Elsa, and Alex. Same pier, different side.

the outer edge of the city

Oscar trying to throw Kathy over the edge

beautiful view of the ocean



That's all i have time for right now. Next up on the Morocco post agenda is Rabat, where we stayed 2 days with a family. If you thought i had alot of pictures of camels, just wait til the next instalation.

Hasta el proximo episodio

Muchos besos,

Sarita