Sama nopp dafa metti

          My ear hurts. And I can hardly hear anything out of it. Actually it sounds like I’m underwater. This started last Thursday, and first I thought I had just gotten some water in it while showering or something, but it didn’t go away and started to REALLY hurt on Saturday. So, Monday morning, I went to the campus medical center, where after standing awkwardly in the entrance for a minute, I was pointed in the right direction. I had to show my student ID card, which they used to create a paper file for me, then pay 50 CFA (10cents) for the ticket for a consultation with the doctor, then wait.

          There were about 20 students sitting on benches around the courtyard, waiting for the one doctor (there are SO many people working at this place, but only one doctor to see students??) to call us in one by one. About halfway through my two hour wait, a girl sitting on the next bench, who had looked perfectly fine up till then, just went completely stiff, started sliding off the bench, and breathing super fast and loud. The guy next to her went to get the doctor, but nobody seemed the slightest bit worried. In fact, I don’t think anybody said a word from the time her attack started, through the doctor coming out and, along with the other guy, picking the girl up and carrying her away down the hall. It was weird, I’m pretty sure in the U.S. there would be a lot more commotion. I guess there is more than one doctor in the building, because the one who carried her away came back a few minutes later and continued his consultations.

          When I finally got in to see him, I explained that my ear really hurt, and that I couldn’t hear anything, and after taking my weight (not sure why that was necessary for an earache…?) and hunting through his box of medical odds and ends to find that tool they use to look in ears (what’s that called, Nurse Emily?), he did so. And told me that I don’t clean my ears often enough. And told me again and again. What was I supposed to say to that other than “okay, I will”? He finally said that he thought we should try cleaning my ear out, and that I needed to use the eardrops he was prescribing for 3 days, then come back to get it cleaned out, so fine. I agreed. He wrote me the prescription and sent me down the hall to the pharmacy.

          But, the pharmacist said they didn’t have those eardrops available, but would have them that afternoon around 3pm and I should come back. So, I went back at 4pm (gotta give them the extra time), and they still didn’t have it. So, I took a taxi into town, walked into the first pharmacy I passed, handed the guy my prescription, and he promptly picked up exactly what I needed from the counter right in front of him, I payed him 1,800CFA (About $4), and was on my way! Unfortunately these eardrops did nothing for the pain, they just softened the earwax or something, so I spent Monday-Thursday in serious ear pain.

          This morning, I went back to the medical center, and luckily didn’t have to wait quite as long to see the doctor, who looked in my ear again, asked if it still hurt, called another guy into the room, and had him walk me down the hall to yet another guy (I don’t know if they were doctors or nurses or what). The first guy explained to the second guy what was going on (in Wolof) while I sat awkwardly, then the second guy left the room, and came back with the exact same electric hot water heater that Erik uses to make himself coffee. He washed it out with bleach, filled it up with water and plugged it in to heat. When it was warm, he had me hold a metal dish under my ear while he squirted the water into my ear with a turkey baster-like thing, which he had just rinsed off with water before using it.

          It HURT. That water was a tad too warm for my comfort and it made my ear hurt even more. Afterwards he dried off my ear, wrote my info down, and sent me on my merry way, and I didn’t have a chance to ask the first (I think real) doctor what to do if it still hurt. But it still hurts. And I still can’t hear very well. I might have to go back AGAIN tomorrow, ugh. Also, the cleanliness of this medical center makes me really, really hope I never have an actual serious illness that I need treated, because I would not trust needles or anything here.

          Not being able to hear properly is even more annoying here than it would be anywhere else. Because here, when I ask someone to repeat something they’ve said to me in French or Wolof, they think it’s because I don’t understand, and when they repeat it and it was really simple, I look and feel like an idiot. Kindof makes me just want to go into hiding until I can hear again. Also the pain in my ear is a lot less if I’m lying down, which just makes me want to be even lazier than usuall…unfortunately I have one last paper to write for a class and then I’ll be comletely done with schoolwork for the year, except for my research paper. I wonder if I could type my paper while lying down?

I swear this stuff only happens to me…

          The bathroom on the second floor of my building, where I live, has two stalls. Both of them started the year with working door handles and locks. Neither of them currently has a working door handle, they just have dead bolts, which work fine to lock the doors. Yesterday morning, I went into one of the stalls, and as I was closing the door, a gust of wind came up and slammed it shut super hard. I didn’t think anything of it, just slid the deadbolt in and went about my business. After I slid the deadbolt out, however, I realized that I couldn’t push the door open as usual, no matter how hard I tried. It turns out that although there’s no handle, the latch part of the door is still there, and got wedged into the door frame when the door slammed shut. There being no handle, I couldn’t get it out.

          This is when I started to mildly (okay sortof a lot) freak out. How was I going to get out of this bathroom stall with no way to open the door from the inside? First, I waited for a few minutes, hoping somebody would walk by who I could ask for help. Unfortunately, it’s the middle of final exam week here, so everyone is pretty much off taking exams or holed up in their rooms studying. After a few minutes of waiting, I decided I really did not want to be standing in a small somewhat smelly toilet stall anymore, and also didn’t have the slightest idea how I would explain my predicament to someone who did walk by, so, I pulled out my Girl Scout Problem Solving Skills.

          What these skills ended up involving was me stowing my roll of toilet paper on top of the door frame so it wouldn’t be left behind (it would be a tragedy to lose a role of toilet paper here), and standing on the end of a pipe sticking out of the wall to survey my options. I decided that I could climb over the wall separating the two toilet stalls by way of that pipe and a slight ledge in the tile wall, but I had to take my sandals off (and stow them with the toilet paper) and hike up my pagne (sarong/wrap skirt) for easier movement.

          Once I did all that I climbed back onto the pipe, leveraged myself into sitting on top of the separating wall, trying not to think about the fact that I was sitting in (literally) an inch of dust, swung my legs over, grabbed onto another pipe for balance, and jumped down, hoping all the while that I wouldn’t end up landing/falling into the toilet in that stall. And I made it! Pulled down my skirt, retreived my sandals and toilet paper, attempted (and failed) to open the door from the outside, and decided to leave it alone. I was so covered in dust that I immediately had to take a shower to wash it all off. I was just glad neither of my roommates were around to wonder why it took me 20 minutes to come back from the bathroom…

          In other, less ridiculous news, I’ve actually been busy with schoolwork! I know, it’s hard to believe, but I’ve spent these last 2 weeks writing, writing, writing! Most of my seminars have a final paper to write, some tougher than others (2 page summary of the course vs. 8 page research paper), but all a lot more work than I’ve done in the past year! I also had to hand in the first section draft of my big research paper to the advisor in Wisconsin, so had to spend a lot of time on that. My literature seminar also had an oral exam, which was quite possibly the worst experience of my life. We didn’t learn much in the class to begin with, and I don’t think well on my feet in English, let alone in French, and the professor asked some questions that I’m 99% sure had nothing to do with what we talked about in class - I certainly can’t explain the different concepts of God in Islam and Christianity without studying it! But, by next week, after two final papers, I will be completely done with “classes” for this year, though I still have to finish my research project!

          In the meantime, I’m getting really excited that my sister Emily will be here to visit me in just 2 weeks! Senegal won’t know what hit it when it sees the George sisters here together!

Teatime!

          I’m almost done with updates about my trip, I promise! I know I’ve talked about tea in Senegal (attaaya) before, but I’m bringing it up again, to compare with Moroccan tea. In both cases, they use the same ingredients - Chinese gunpowder tea leaves, sugar, and mint. In both cases, it’s drunk from small shot-glass sized glasses, traditionally in three rounds.    

          In Senegal, the first cup (lëwel) is very strong, not super sugary (by Senegalese standards, which means very sugary by anyone else’s standards), and has no mint. The second cup (ñaarel) is a little bit lighter, sugarier, and minty. The third cup (ñetel) is very light and super sugary. For all three cups, the tea is poured back and forth between two cups (xiim) in order to make a mousse/froth on top. This does nothing for the taste, it’s purely for presentation. Senegalese attaaya is traditionally served in the mid-afternoon right after lunch, particularly if there are guests over, but for students at the university, it can be made at any time of the afternoon, evening, or night, but never the morning. Regardless of when it’s made, attaaya is always a social activity to sit around and talk while making tea, which can take hours and hours. There are usually only two attaaya glasses in circulation (really good way to pass those germs around!), meaning you have to drink your share very quickly and hand it back to the attaaya maker so he/she can pour a cup for somebody else. I’ve never heard of anybody making attaaya by themselves.    

          In Morocco, the tea is a lot less strong, all three cups are very sugary, and very, very minty. The mousse is not usually a mousse-y there, and the cups of tea are sipped slowly, since everyone usually has their own cup. Moroccan tea can be a communal activity, as it was for us with our host Hassan in Marrakech, but it can also be a solitary activity. Morocco has a thriving café culture for men (and me), and you can order yourself a pot of Moroccan mint tea at probably every single café, and just sit there drinking it by yourself.    

          Of course, I had much less exposure to tea culture in Morocco than I’ve had in Senegal, so this comparison is maybe a little bit biased. I loved the tea itself in Morocco (so deliciously minty!), but I much prefer the communal social aspect of tea culture in Senegal. I love that inviting someone over for tea (or being invited over) is really an invitation to come chat/hang out for 3-5 hours!    

          I fully intend to bring attaaya back to the U.S., so prepare yourselves, family and friends, to sit and chat with me for a few hours while I made beautifully moussed attaaya for you! Maangiy xiim bu baax! (“I make mousse with attaaya really well!” - it doesn’t translate particularly well)

BREAKING NEWS!!!

          Well okay, it’s two weeks old, but I’ve been busy writing posts about my trip, and going to class! That’s right, I said going to CLASS! I’ve been predicting since about January that classes would start up again in the middle of April after the Easter break, and I was right! Classes at UGB officially started on Monday, April 10th. Students are back on campus, and things are going back to normal! Although, after five months of strike, this actually seems much less normal than the empty campus and sitting around with nothing to do all day. Unfortunately, despite the fact that students here are all back in classes, we, the Americans, are not participating in regular university classes.

          Our program has decided that since we won’t have enough time to finish the whole year here taking regular classes (we haven’t been telling them that since February, or anything…), we will follow the “strike plan,” which means we take individual seminars based on classes here with professors instead of regular classes. It seems just a little bit (okay, very) silly to me that we’re implementing this “strike plan” AFTER the strike is over, but whatever. Now, I’m definitely happy that this means I’ll definitely be getting credit for the year, at least at Wisconsin (then I have to deal with transferring those to Pacific), but these seminars are literally exactly what I was trying to avoid by choosing a direct enrollment study abroad program. Allow me to explain how the academic year is now working for us:

          Each seminar is based on a regular UGB class, and taught by its regular professor. This is good.

          Each seminar is attended only by all/some of us Americans (Erik, Neal, Ryan, and me). This is not good.

          Each seminar is conducted in French. This is good.

          Each seminar is conducted in French that is slightly dumbed down because the professors don’t believe that we understand normal classroom French (we do). This is bad.

          Each seminar lasts for a total of ten (10) classroom hours, generally broken up into two or three hour chunks. We will get credit for the equivalent of a 45hour class at Wisconsin. This is good/bad/stupid.

          Each seminar is in fact a highly condensed version of the regular class, in order to be conducted in 10 hours, added to the dumbed down French, and the fact that it’s just us few Americans, and we don’t learn much. This is bad.

          Each seminar, along with the ten hours of class time, includes one (1) assignment or exam, which is our entire grade. One of my assignments is a simple 2-page synthesis of what we talked about in class. This is bad/stupid.

          Each seminar started last week (week of April 17th). I’ve already finished the class time for one seminar. As of this coming Wednesday, when I hand in two papers and take an oral exam, I will be finished with three of my seminars. I will finish with all of them within the next two weeks. This is bad/stupid.

          Basically, they’ve managed to shove an entire year of academic work into less than a month, and almost no work. Here are a couple examples of how rigorous this curriculum is:

          All four of us are taking a Senegalese literature class together. On the first day, the professor explained what we were going to talk about in the course, which was mostly the history of Senegalese literature. I asked whether we were going to read a book in the literature class. The guys agreed that they would like to read a book. The professor seemed surprised that we wanted that, but finally agreed and assigned us one book to read. We also asked if we could write a short paper about the book, in addition to the oral exam he wanted to give us, so we would have something to show our universities if they asked (this was mostly me, I’m afraid of Pacific denying me credit). He initially agreed, but then said no, because we wouldn’t be able to write well enough in French, and would therefore fail. Apparently in this French/Senegalese education system, it doesn’t matter if your ideas are good, only if you write in perfectly grammatically correct French.

          I’m taking two classes with one professor, Madame Sall. I’m the only one taking these classes, so it’s just me and her, one on one. On Thursday, we were scheduled to have class from 9am-12pm. I showed up at her office at 9:10am, and she wasn’t there, so I waited outside. At 9:25am, she called me to say she was on her way and would be there really soon. She showed up at 10am. We went into her office, and I sat and waited while she spent 15 minutes figuring out what she was going to talk about, and finding her papers. We talked from 10:15-11:20, splitting that time between the two different classes I’m taking (Family Sociology, and Women of Africa). I left her office at 11:25. A three hour class got cut down into a one hour class. I’m not sure if she’s counting that as three of our hours or not. On Monday, I’m going to go to her office and watch a movie pertaining to one of these classes while she’s teaching another class. Again, I don’t know if that’s counting towards our hours or not.

          The classes are (mostly) all interesting, but like I said, this is exactly what I wanted to avoid. I wanted to go to classes with Senegalese students, struggle through the French, and actually learn from other peoples’ ideas, not be talked at by professors who don’t really want to be giving us classes, but who are getting paid for it, and therefore do the bare minimum amount of work necessary. I also hope hope hope hope hope that none of my professors at Pacific ask to see any of the work I did in classes here when I’m trying to get things transferred, because if they do, there’s no way any of these will be accepted. It has been nice to have things to do though, I’ve been so busy these last couple of weeks! Don’t worry though, when I finish these seminars in a week or two, it’ll be back to sitting, napping, and tea making!

Una Cerveza, por favor!

          Bienvenido a Madrid! The flight from Tangiers to Madrid was only 1 1/2 hours - ridiculously short! Like I said in the Tangiers post, I still can’t wrap my mind around how close Morocco is to Europe. Luckily for me, the Spanish customs official didn’t ask me anything in Spanish, he just looked through my passport, stamped an entry stamp, and that was it! I managed to get through Spain with this highly extensive Spanish vocabulary: “Hola!” “Donde estan el baño?” “Por favor” “Gracias” “No hablo español.” And boy, if I thought I was overwhelmed by the big city-ness of Marrakech, it was nothing on Madrid! The airport, all shiny, with automatic things, the Metro, which you never really have to wait for because it comes so frequently, the huge, tall, old buildings - so Western!    

          We took the metro first thing to our hostel, stopping along the way to eat lunch - I had a vegetable sandwich, which included more vegetables than I think I had eaten in the past month! We stayed at Cat’s Hostel, and luckily everyone who worked there spoke English - Heather and I initially tried to check in with my 5 words of Spanish, and her Spanish interspersed with French words, until the lady just started speaking to us in English. We were staying in a 14-bed mixed gender dorm in the “attic of the building, aka the third floor. That first night, a Thursday, there were only a few other people in the room with us. Heather and I started talking to the girl sleeping above Heather (bunk beds!), an Austrian girl named Neela (I have no idea how to spell it, but that’s how it sounded), who studied in Valencia, Spain, and was visiting Madrid all by herself. Later, when Heather, Ryan and I decided to go on a pub crawl put on by the hostel, she came along with us!

          After a brief siesta (oh look! Another Spanish word I know!), we headed out to explore, and ended up in a super intensely crowded shopping district. Heather and I were on the look-out for inexpensive looking stores where we could buy something appropriate for the Spanish club we were going to later, since none of our Senegal/Moroccan appropriate outfits would work. We happened upon an H&M (familiar stores - shopping - WOAH), left Ryan outside, and headed in! After much deliberation (we kept ending up with almost the same outfit, and didn’t want to be twins!), we ended up buying things for cheap - I got a cute skirt for just 5euros! By the time we left the store, it was almost 10pm, which we hadn’t realized because of the time change and the fact that it gets dark SO late in Spain! Despite the fact that Spain is directly above Morocco, Spain is 2 hours ahead, so it doesn’t start getting dark until around 9:30pm. It was weird, but definitely perfect for the Madrid lifestyle of eating dinner super late, and then sitting in a bar or café!

          We took (HOT!!!) showers, get dressed for going out, and headed down to the basement bar of our hostel. The 15euro price for the pub crawl included two free drinks (beer or sangria) at the hostel bar, a free shot at the next bar (don’t worry, I definitely did not drink all of this that night), and entry to Kapital, the seven-story club we were headed to. Considering that just getting into the club should have cost 20euros, it was a really good deal! It did feel really weird to be walking around Madrid with this huge group of foreigners, being led from place to place, but it was fun! Everyone we had talked to, including Heather’s boyfriend, who studied in Madrid last semester, said we couldn’t leave without going to this club, Kapital, and it was absolutely worth it! It literally took up an entire building, and each floor had a different theme - a huge main dance floor with general pop/dance music, a latin music floor, a mojito bar floor, a hookah floor, etc., etc. The first thing we did when we got there was run up and down the stairs checking out each floor, and then we ended up spending most of our time on the main dance floor. It was so much fun - Ryan and Neela got too tired around 4am, and headed back to the hostel, but Heather and I stayed till almost 5am dancin, dancin, dancin!    

          The next morning, we got ourselves up just before 10 so we could eat the free breakfast offered by the hostel - tasty croissants and orange juice! - before starting the day. Ryan headed out on his own, because a friend of his studying in London was supposed to be arriving in Madrid that day, and he wanted to see her. So, Heather and I headed out solo, and after a lot of wandering, and a little getting lost, we ended up at the Palacio Real, a huge old palace, that we were planning to go into, until we saw the ticket line winding down the street farther than we could see. So we satisfied ourselves with a couple of pictures, and moved on. We later came across a café we had seen before that had a huge line, but that afternoon there was nobody there! So, we went in and sampled the most rich, thick, decadent, and delicious hot chocolate I’ve ever had. Heather and I shared one mug of it, and literally just ate it with spoons because it was almost as thick as pudding. It was the absolute perfect way to warm up form the cold and rain outside!   

          Back at the hostel, we found Ryan, because unfortunately his friend had gotten the flu and cancelled her trip! He had waited for her for almost two hours before finding an internet café where he could check his e-mail and found out why she wasn’t there. Such a bummer for him! We all took a little siesta, then headed out down the street to watch a Good Friday parade/procession, which was really cool! There were a lot of people dressed in purple robes with tall conical hats, then a statue (would effigy be an appropriate word here? I’m not sure) of Jesus on the cross, being carried by about 20 men hidden under a platform, then a group of older women all dressed in black with lace covering their heads, and another statue(effigy) of the Virgin Mary, this one carried by a group of women. It was really interesting to see, despite the fact that it was freezing cold! And then of course what did we do after this religious event? We went to a bar!    

          Tapas are a really big deal in Spain, Madrid particularly. They’re basically just small finger foods which are served when you order a drink. We had decided that we would spend one night doing some tapas-bar hopping, and this was the night! We started at a place called Monteditos, where we got pints of beer for 1euro, and little sandwich tapas to share - pretty good! From there, we spent a long time wandering around trying to choose the next place, but boy was it difficult! Heather and I wanted a really cheap place, and Ryan wanted a certain ambiance, and it took forever to pick a place. We finally did, and got glasses of sangria, with cured ham on toast tapas - tasty again! After that, we were tired of walking, so just went to another place a few doors down, where you could get a bucket of 5 beers and a big tapas to share for 5euros. Here, we got patatas braves as our tapa - fried potatoes topped with a fried egg, and hot sauce - yumm yumm yumm!! That was about all I could handle as far as bar hopping went, so we headed back to the hostel. Now, on this whole trip, I relied a lot on Ryan’s amazing sense of direction, particularly in cities. I think all that bar hopping might have gotten to him too though, because we ended up getting just a bit lost in Madrid at 1am, and spent about half an hour wandering around trying to find out way back. We made it eventually, and it was hilarious while we were lost - it was the one time Ryan’s directions led me wrong though!    

          Saturday, we paid a visit to the Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, a huge art museum that we could get into for free as students, and which, among many, many other beautiful pieces of art, is home to Pablo Picasso’s famous Guernica. I had no idea this painting was as big as it is! There was a lot of security around it, and a huge crowd, but it was really, really cool to see it in real life! We had thought about going on a picnic in the afternoon, so spent some time wandering around really cool food markets, but decided eventually that it was too cold for that. We siesta’d again in the afternoon (I love that the siesta culture is prevalent at least all the way from Senegal to Spain!), and then headed out to find some Spanish paella for dinner - along with a pitcher of sangria, or course! I discovered that I’m not a huge fan of paella, or at least not the one we had, it was too fishy, but that I could eat a whole plateful of spicy potatoes and chorizo sausage - yumm! We were all pretty tired that night, and ended up hanging out in the bar of our hostel, playing cards again.    

          Heather had to fly back to Morocco on Sunday (Easter!) so she could start classes again on Monday, but we spent the morning before she left walking around a beautiful park (Parque del Buen Retiro), posing in front of the statue of El Angel Caido (the fallen angel - Lucifer), which is a really odd thing to have a statue to. We also rented a rowboat and boated around a little lake in the park. Not to boast or anything, but I was definitely the best rower of the three of us - I guided us back to the dock perfectly, despite Heather’s and Ryan’s attempts to steer me towards hitting other boats! Heather headed out around lunch time, and Ryan and I walked around for awhile, and came across something I had heard about but completely forgotten - Europe’s largest flea market! It was truly, truly huge, and you could buy absolutely anything you could possibly want. We walked down one street of it, and it was probably at least a mile, with all the side streets full as well. We even saw a group of Senegalese singing and dancing down the middle of the street - I was so happy to see that, I wanted to talk to them in Wolof!     We had ham sandwiches for lunch (I willingly ate ham on Easter, Mom - imagine that!), went to a bit of a Catholic Easter mass (Ryan said he knew pretty much what was going on even though he doesn’t speak any Spanish) took another siesta, tried to see the Easter procession in the Plaza Mayor, but missed all but the tail end of it, then set out to find a nice but cheap restaurant where we could have a real sit-down meal. We were headed for a good looking place, when a guy came up and said to come inside, they’re giving out free beer or sangria and tapas! So, we got free sangria (it was like juice), and a tapas, then sat down to their fixed-price menu dinner. I got asparagus for my first course, which was so overcooked and smushy that I could squish the water out of it, and then grilled chicken and fries for my main dish - nothing special, but not bad! Ryan got baby eels in garlic sauce for his starter (they looked like worms, but the sauce was delicious!), and something we thought was beef on the menu, but are pretty sure was actually pork, for his main meal. For desert we got rum cake and flan, neither of which I particularly liked. Overall, I think it’s safer to stick with tapas in Madrid!    

          Ryan and I were headed back to Morocco on Monday afternoon, but we spent the morning at the Caixa Forum, which at the time had a really cool exhibit about the Russian Ballet - doesn’t sound very interesting, but I was mostly interesting in the actual costumes they had on display - so beautiful! Since we were leaving that afternoon, we were carrying my big travel backpack with us. At the Caixa Forum, we had to leave bags in lockers, but our bag was too big. So, Ryan walked up to the security guard, pointed at the bag, and just said “grande.” Amazingly, she understood exactly what was wrong by that one word of Spanish, and put our bag in the coat closet for us. Apparently you can get by with absolutely no Spanish! After the museum, we grabbed a couple sandwiches to bring with us, and headed to the airport - adios, Spain!     

          Madrid was absolutely fantastic, so much fun despite the cold and rain. Heather and I both agreed though, that we’re really glad we didn’t study abroad in Europe. Of course there are huge cultural differences, but overall, on this short trip, it was really similar to the United States. Just look at my pictures of the Good Friday parade - there’s a Domino’s Pizza in the back of a lot of them! Hard as it is sometimes, I’m much, much happier to be studying in Senegal, where the culture is so completely different form the U.S.     

p.s. Pencil me into your July calendar for a night out for sangria, Emily - I’m buying!

Rock the Kasbah

          Tangiers was pretty much a whirlwind visit, but I loved the city, and wished we could have had more time there! Like I said in my post about living arrangements, our two Tangiers couchsurfing hosts, Bilal and Ahmed, picked us up from the train station in the late afternoon in Ahmed’s brand new BMW, and drove us around to two lighthouses, the Cave of Hercules, driving all along the coast, before heading to the new city (Ville Nouvelle) part of Tangiers for dinner. Ahmed went to watch the big soccer game with friends, and Bilal and the three of us ate dinner together - I don’t remember now why we didn’t just all go watch soccer. After dinner we met back up with Ahmed at his apartment building, also in the new city. We got our bag out of his car, which was parked in an underground parking structure (weird after Senegal), and took an elevator (also weird) up to his beautiful, 2 bedroom/2bathroom apartment, where we were all gonna stay. Heather and I were given the extra bedroom, which had two twin beds in it, and Ryan and Bilal claimed the huge couches running all around the walls of the living room. Ahmed had a ridiculously large collection of DVD’s, mostly American movies, and after looking through them all, somehow we decided to watch Wedding Crashers - such a quality American film - on his flat screen TV. Ahmed was feeling mischievous, and had a really high powered laser pointer (I have no idea why…), so he opened up his window, and showed us how far the laser beam could go - it was impressive! He tried to shine it into windows of nearby apartments with their curtains open to make people come see what it was, but nobody took the bait. He was like a little kid though, playing around this this laser pointer, it was hilarious!

          The next morning, I took a real shower, which was unfortunately only warm for about 30 seconds, but still, a real shower is nice! Bilal and the three of us went out to breakfast at a little café, where we got big mugs of freshly pressed juice - I got the mixed fruits juice, and it tasted just like a smoothie - so good! Ahmed and Bilal offered to take us to their hometown of Chefchouan, which is renowned for it’s beautiful architecture and colorfully painted buildings, but we were feeling worn out from traveling, and didn’t want to drive the hour to get there, so elected to stay and explore the city of Tangiers itself. Chefchouan is definitely on my list of places to visit next time I find myself in Morocco though! We spent the morning at Café Hafa, a well known café situated on a cliff overlooking the Strait of Gibralatar. It was absolutely gorgeous, and I was extremely content to sit there looking out over the water, sipping delicious Moroccan mint tea, and getting Arabic lessons from Bilal. I really can’t imagine a more beautiful spot to sit (and I’m now an expert on sitting), though I wouldn’t have minded if it was a little bit warmer!    

          The afternoon we spent wandering around the Old Medina of Tangiers, which was beautiful, and much less touristy than either Marrakech’s or Rabat’s Old Medina’s. Ryan, Heather and I wanted to see the Kasbah, which was the old royal quarter, and the highest point of the Medina, with beautiful views. Bilal had only been there once before, years ago, so he was discovering too - helpful to have him there to ask directions in Arabic too! There isn’t actually much of the Kasbah left, just one wall right on the edge of a cliff, but the views were beautiful, and all the residential areas we passed were fun to see - I found a house for sale, and want to buy it!    

          Around 4pm, we needed a pick-me-up, and Ryan wanted to do some café sitting (he loves cafés), so we found one that had a rooftop terrace to sit in, and it was beautiful! I initially didn’t order anything, but I tasted Bilal’s café au lait, and it was delicious, so Heather and I got them too! Yes Mom, I just said that coffee was delicious - I actually drank a fair amount of coffee on this trip! The four of us sat around and played the card game we learned in Marrakech, Rhonda, for a few hours. It’s a really fun game, and you basically have to cheat - I can’t hide my cheating though, I’m too giggly!    

          We insisted on taking Bilal and Ahmed out to dinner to thank them for everything, so we met back up with Ahmed, and went to a restaurant right on the beach, where they had live music and pizza! The pizza was pretty good, and Bilal and Ahmed are funny and cool to talk to, so we had a really good time! We all headed back pretty early though, because the guys had to start their shift at work at 6am, after 3 days off. Ahmed was so incredibly nice, he let us stay in his apartment after he left for work to shower and get ready and all, and just shut the door behind us when we left to head to the airport around 9am.    

          The Tangiers airport was a beautiful, but very small building. We had no problems with our luggage with RyanAir (Alhamdulilah!), and got to hang out waiting for a couple of hours. Interestingly, the security check was separated into two lines - one for men, one for women, because after you walked through the metal detector, they patted everyone down. But, they didn’t care at all about liquids or anything. Very interesting. And then, we said goodbye to Morocco, and were on our way to Madrid!

          Tangiers was a really interesting mix of Moroccan and European influences, being only 14 km away from Spain (I still can’t quite wrap my mind around how close it is, despite the fact that I could see the mountains of Spain myself), with a lot of exchange between the two. The Old Medina felt more real (that’s not quite the right word, but I don’t know what is) to me than the medina’s of Marrakech and Rabat, and the Ville Nouvelle felt fresh and clean, not dingy, and not trying to hard, like Marrakech. I really would love to have spent more time café-hopping around Tangiers, and hope to go back to do just that!

Barenaked Ladies

We didn’t spend much time in Rabat, just a one night stop to re-pack our bags so we could fly to Madrid. Heather lives with a host family while she studies in Rabat this semester, but her family had other guests that night, so we couldn’t stay with her. She worked it out with a Moroccan friend of hers (I can’t for the life of me remember his name…oops) who shared an apartment with three American guys in her program. While in Rabat for an afternoon, Heather and I went to a hammam (a public bathhouse), and boooyyyy was it an experience!

    Heather’s host mom took us to the hammam she goes to in her neighborhood, and unfortunately since we were only in Rabat for one afternoon, and the hammam was open for men in the morning and women in the afternoon, Ryan didn’t get to partake in this particular experience. So at the hammam, we paid about $1 to get in, and we bought scrubby mitten things, and what they call “savon noir” - black soap. That’s exactly what it is too, oily, black soap. Her host mom worked it out so we also each paid a woman who worked at the hammam to help us out.
    So, you walk in, and find yourself in a locker room type area, where you undress either to just your underwear (no bra, just underwear), or, if you’re feeling daring, nothing. Neither Heather or I were feeling quite that daring. We gave our buckets, scrubbers, black soap, normal soap, and shampoo to the women taking care of us, and followed her back through three tiled rooms full of topless or naked Moroccan ladies. Our lady was also topless - and quite large and saggy (yes, you did need that image). We were taken to the farthest room, which was also the hottest - like a sauna! Our lady sat us down, filled the buckets from a constantly running tap of steaming hot water, and then went away. And we didn’t know what to do. There we were, pretty much naked, surrounded by similarly naked women who were all scrubbing themselves, and we’re feeling awkward and confused, but we waited. Finally she came back, and rubbed the oily black soap all over us. She decided it was my turn first, and motioned me (she didn’t speak French, we didn’t speak Arabic) to lie down on a mat on the floor, which I did, and she promptly proceeded to scrub me HARD alllllll over. As much as I felt like it was entirely inappropriate, I found myself suppressing - with difficulty - the urge to laugh out loud and how ridiculous the situation seemed. I also quickly found out that there was absolutely no point in keeping my underwear on - they certainly didn’t deter her from scrubbing EVERYTHING.

    (THIS PART GETS A LITTLE GRAPHIC. READ WITH CAUTION) As awkward as this was, I also definitely got really clean. Actually, it was kind of gross how much dead skin she scrubbed off me. I wonder if that would have happened no matter what, or if it was exacerbated by my 6 months of bucket baths, in which I’m sure I don’t get as clean as I should. After my scrub was over, I sat back up on my little stool, had a few buckets of hot water poured over me, and sat back as Heather got her scrub. So I’m sitting there, not sure what to do again, and I look around to my left, and what do I see? A large, middle aged Moroccan woman sitting on the floor shaving her nether parts, of course! I had nooooo idea what to do, and I’m pretty sure my surprised/shocked/disgusted face was apparent to anyone for the next few minutes as I tried to simultaneously wrap my mind around the vision I had just seen, and try to forget it, and try not to look back that way. Yeah. That was really awkward. Luckily Heather was spared this vision, since she was in mid-scrub.

    After Heather finished with her scrub, we both had more buckets of hot water poured over our heads, and then our lady washed our hair, which is a delightful experience. I always enjoy getting my hair washed when I go to get it cut, and I could just close my eyes and enjoy this while I forgot about the awkwardness. We had been in this sauna-like room for over half an hour at this point, and the heat and humidity was making it a little hard to breathe, so we moved into the next room, which was just warm. Here, we got doused with water again, and scrubbed again, this time with regular soap, which was good, because the black slimy soap left a gross residue.

    After this scrub, we were deemed clean enough to be finished, and headed back to the locker room to dry off and put clothes back on. As ridiculously awkward as this experience was, I’m SO glad we did it. For one, I felt super, super clean afterwards. For another, it was awesome to partake in this aspect of Moroccan culture that I know average Moroccan people actually do all the time - not touristy! I learned that it’s definitely better to just embrace the awkwardness and do as the locals do (in terms of being almost naked), because Heather and I were definitely less awkward looking than the three European ladies who came in after us wearing full one-piece bathing suits. One thing’s for sure - Heather and I are definitely a lot closer now!

      A memorable piece of Rabat, for sure!

PICTURES!!!

Alright, pictures are up in my online gallery - check them out! This is only a small portion of the almost 500 pictures I took, but they’ll definitely give you an idea!

For some reason the pictures uploaded all out of order, but I tried to give them all labels for where they were taken, but some of those didn’t show up either…just let me know if you have questions!

http://gallery.me.com/sag4#100090&view=grid&bgcolor=black&sel=0

Marrakech Express

So, here’s where I start to try to explain what we actually did on this trip! I’m gonna do roughly one blog post per city, starting with Marrakech!

          Marrakech was the first big city we saw, arriving at the bus station around 9:30 or 10pm, after 24 hours straight on buses. As soon as we got change and figured out the pay phones (they still have pay phones everywhere all over Morocco - really weird! I think I had maybe used two or three in my life before this!) to call Heather, we walked 15 minutes to the train station, where she was waiting. I was a little bit delirious after three days of travel with little sleep, and amazed at the big city after six months in Senegal, I spent the whole walk pointing things out to Ryan in a shocked manner (“The cars are all so new and shiny!,” “Woah, a GUESS Jeans store!? I can’t even afford that in the U.S.!,” “Traffic lights?!?!,” “I don’t know how to cross the street with crosswalks anymore!”) - I’m amazed that he managed to put up with me for this whole trip actually. When we finally got to the train station, my amazement reached a whole new level - this was the most beautiful train station I’ve ever seen, all shiny and new, with lit up time schedules, and shops, and restaurants (“McDonald’s?!? In Morocco?!?”). Seeing Heather after almost a year was fantastic though - some quality girl catching up time!

          Although Ryan and I both wanted to fall down and go to sleep immediately after arriving at our host Hassan’s apartment, we stayed up to talk and drink tea with him (you can never say no to tea) before finally getting to sleep around 2am. We spent the next two days walking around the city with Hassan, mostly in the Old Medina (the old walled city, now mostly a huge market). We did the touristy stuff, and went to a Moroccan art museum housed in an old palace, and a beautiful old Madrassa (Koranic school) that used to house 800 students in its 130 rooms. We went to Les Jardins Majorelle, a beautiful (but out of place) garden in the middle of the city, and Jamaa el Fna, the huge square in the middle of the medina that during the day has snake charmers, henna artists, singers, musicians, storytellers, and tons of vendors, and at night has rows and rows of food stalls, fresh orange juice stands, and dried fruit. This square, and the part of the market surrounding it have become very touristy, and are crowded with souvenir shops and tourists. Still the fun and crowds of the market, but a very different experience from the more local market where Moroccan people actually do shopping. There, you can buy shoes, clothes (Western and Moroccan), fabric, jewelry, electronics, fruits, vegetables, meat, fish, dried beans, couscous, rice, pastas, spices. Oh gosh, the spices! They’re piled up in cones in shops - cumin, saffron, paprika, cinnamon, curry, black pepper, who knows what else - they smell and look so good! Ryan and I bought a little bit of each, and are going to experiment with them here back at UGB - yumm!

          One of the best parts of our time in Marrakech was when Ryan, Heather, and I were wandering around the market alone in the late afternoon, trying to find the old Jewish quarter, because we had heard that the spices there were even more amazing than elsewhere. The medina is made up of tiny, winding alleys though, and so we got a little (okay, a lot) turned around, and ended up wandering around the residential areas of the medina for about an hour that night, before we found out way back to the main market. We got a lot of funny looks from the residents, who obviously weren’t used to seeing very many tourists in that part of the medina, and we never did end up making it to the Jewish quarter, but we got to see the absolutely beautiful architecture of the houses and streets. I discovered on this trip that I’m obsessed with Moroccan doors (I probably took pictures of at least 40 or 50 doors), which are almost always intricately designed and painted - so beautiful!

          Hassan made us Moroccan couscous one night - light, fluffy couscous, topped with a huge pile of chicken and vegetables, deliciously spiced, eaten around a communal bowl on the floor of Hassan’s room, followed by Moroccan tea. The next night, Heather and I (sort of) helped him make tagine, which is a Moroccan dish, though the term actually refers to the way it’s cooked rather than the ingredients, as they can vary so much. We made tagine with beef, potatoes, peas, spiced, and a fresh hot pepper. It’s all put in a shallow, round, earthenware dish, which is a matching conical cover with a steam hole at the top, and put on the stove (or in this case a gas cooker) and left for a few hours until the meat is beautifully tender, and it’s eaten with Moroccan bread called khoobz (I can’t write a good pronunciation for this word, but it’s a little bit like “hobbes”). Both of these meals were eaten around midnight, in true Moroccan/college student style, and while the meals were cooking there was plenty of time to talk and play cards! The guys taught Ryan a really fun new game called “Rhonda,” which Ryan, Heather, and I played for the rest of our trip.

          Hassan was a really awesome host, but there were some awkward moments when the three of us wanted to do some wandering around on our own, and it was difficult to explain that to him, but it worked out! He showed us how to wear traditional Berber turbans, practiced Arabic with Heather, and was just generally super nice. We bought him and the other guys in the apartment a bunch of Moroccan cookies to thank them, though it didn’t even begin to cover our thanks.

          Everyone I had talked to before the trip who had been to Morocco said that Marrakech was really beautiful, and it was, but it was also really, really touristy. It wasn’t my favorite Moroccan city, but I definitely had fun regardless!