Fall Break and Marrakech

So for my fall break, the entire IES group went to Granada, Spain, and then I continued on to London. We took a bus to Tangier then took a ferry to Tarifa, Spain. In a span of about 30 minutes, we went from Africa to Europe, which was very cool.

The IES group on the ferry:

Being in Spain was a refreshing break from Morocco. Even though I understood even less of what was going on in terms of language, the streets were clean, no one stared at me, and there was pork (the IES group was very excited for pig products). However, the south of Spain has striking similarities to Morocco in its architecture and the occasional mosque. On a day trip to Cordoba, we went to the Mesquita, which is a church turned mosque, turned church again.

Mesquita:

In Granada, we went to the al-Hambra, which is a palace designed by an Islamic architect.

The al-Hambra at night:

And the view overlooking Granada:

The time in Spain that wasn't spent in tours and sightseeing was full of tapas and all of the food we can't get in Morocco. And around midnight every night, the group would go out and stay out until around 4 AM, which is unheard of in Morocco.

In London, I did the normal sightseeing things and just revelled in the fact that everyone spoke English, which mostly involved me becoming very chatty with strangers on the street. But because I still had henna on my hands from Morocco, I actually met a group of college girls who had just returned from Fez, and Moroccans would stop me on the street to ask about my henna. My other London activities included eating as much ethnic food as I could (I had Indian food twice, Thai food, Lebanese food, and English food). I also went to a Moroccan restaurant with my London friends so they could get a small taste of Morocco. The food was pretty authentic, but the restaurant was fancier than anything I have seen here.

I returned to Morocco for Eid al-Khabir, which is when every Moroccan family slaughters a sheep. My main lesson from this holiday is that a sheep takes a really long, agonizing time to die. I will refrain from posting pictures.

This past weekend I went to Marrakech with Jenna Smith (Alex's friend from Chile), which is the most popular tourist destination in Morocco, and I can understand why. The most famous part of Marrakech (I think) is Jemaa el-Fna, which is the main square, where every night there are hundreds food stalls set up that serve amazing Moroccan food. Although the main downside of this is that the workers at each food stall are unrelentingly aggressive when trying to corral tourists into eating at their cart. Even a few harsh words in Darija (Moroccan Arabic) did not deter them in the slightest.

This is Jemaa el-Fna in the evening (not my picture):

Marrakech is also home to some of the most interesting medinas (which is the old city, where there are no cars) that I have seen. All of the walls are red, which is a striking effect. In the old city, there are old mosques and Qu'aranic schools from the 11th century.

These are the Saadian Tombs, which were built in the 16th century but discovered in 1917, and it serves as a mausoleum for the members of the Saadi dynasty:

We then continued onto two palaces: Badi and Bahia, but I have no idea which is which anymore. One is in a significant state of disrepair though, while the other is quite nice.

The other palace was for a royal family in the 15th century and featured typical Islamic architecture, meaning beautiful doors and tiles.

We also visited the Ben Youssef Madrasa, which was once the biggest Qu'aranic school in North Africa. It is also incredibly beautiful:

Finally, we went to visit the tannery district, which is marked by the horrible smell wafting from the entire neighborhood. Apparently pigeon droppings are the best way to soften leather. Of course this begs the question: where does it all come from? So of course Jenna and I asked, and people in the villages in the mountain collect it. This is as far as I was willing to research the topic. It was raining the day we went, so there aren't good pictures, but this is what we have:

And here I am with my sprigs of mint to help with the stench:

In the square one night, my adventurous friends ordered meat from the head of a goat, which is apparently very delicious, which is how Jenna and I ate goat lip.

Some miscellaneous Marrakech pictures:

Assorted Moroccan Thoughts

It's been a while since I last posted, and Uncle Tom is making me look bad with his novel-esque e-mails after only three days here.

Weekend Trips:

Essaouira: I still can't spell this without using Google, but it is a small town in the south of Morocco on the Atlantic coast. It is famous for being a favorite spot for Jimi Hendrix and Cat Stevens to meet up. There weren't many attractions here besides the beach and the seafood, but a lovely trip nonetheless. The sunset over the Atlantic:

Bensmim: This was a group sponsored trip to a tiny village in the Atlas Mountains. We were warned that the accommodations were going to be modest, but it was actually about the same as my house in Rabat, which is not saying too much. My host father was very sweet though and spoke French. My host mom only spoke Moroccan Arabic though, and I don't think she understood that we didn't speak Arabic, so she happily chatted away the entire time we were there. Sometimes it was hard to tell when she was talking to us though because we understood none of what she said, and her eyes didn't point in the same direction, so she might think we were very rude.

Some pictures (and proof that I have friends here!):

 This past weekend I stayed in Rabat and slept in for the first time in a while. This weekend I will be in Dakar, Senegal with Uncle Tom, and the next weekend I will be in Granada, Spain!

Sahara Desert

What I've been up to for the past week:

On Thursday night, I was sitting in my living room in my pajamas when my host father motioned for me to go outside with him. Because I had recently put my clothes into the washing machine, I thought that he was trying to tell me that I should hang them up to dry. However, when we went outside, he got on his motorcycle and my host sister (Aya) hopped on as well. So then we ended up driving 30 minutes to go out to dinner, with me still in my pajamas. Aya was so tired on the way home that she kept falling asleep on the motorcycle, meaning she kept slumping over and almost falling off. My host father (Abdulwahed, a police officer) was not concerned. When we returned home at 11, a second dinner was waiting on the table. Usually, there are five meals a day at my house. And everyone gets mad if I stop eating.


Friday morning, after little sleep because of my two late dinners, we left for the Sahara desert. After a lot of driving, I ended up here:

The group took a camel ride from our tents (I slept in a tent! With spiders and scarabs!) to the sand dunes to watch the sunset. Some more pictures of that:

Some other miscellaneous Moroccan things:

• My host family is so nice to me. When I returned from the Sahara, there was a pile of freshly folded laundry on my bed and my room was cleaned.
• Someone's host mother put sugar cubes in a glass of Sprite because it wasn't sweet enough. Other foods that have had sugar inexplicably added: pasta, jam, and orange juice.
• My host sister, Imane (16), wears a head covering but no one else in the family does! I would like to get to the bottom of this.
• A Moroccan boy in Fez had a crush on me, in the words of his host sisters, "because you are smaller than he is and don't talk too much." And that summarizes Moroccan men.
• I started my internship today, and the museum is very unusual. There are rocks with prehistoric engravings that are hung on the walls. The walls appear to have been painted recently, and the exhibits also appear to have been painted a bit. This is a very Moroccan thing to me, to not care that prehistoric artifacts got red paint on them.

This blog post didn't really have content or a direction, but it did have pictures, so I hope that suffices.

2.5 Weeks Later

To all of my adoring fans, I've finally succumbed to the pressure to start blogging, so you can rest easy once again. I am currently at the IES Abroad center in Rabat, and I just finished my first Modern Standard Arabic class. For the past two weeks though, I have been taking a Darija class, which is the Moroccan colloquial dialect of Arabic. Besides the Arabic alphabet, Darija and Modern Standard have almost nothing in common. I will also be taking a French class, North African politics class, and an internship course. I will be interning at the Archaeological Museum in Rabat. I don't know why I was placed there, but I think my program was so surprised to have a biology major in their midst, that they didn't know what to do with me.

I currently live in a four room apartment in the old medina of Rabat, with a couple and their four daughters. Even though the house is painfully small, my family is so nice that it doesn't matter. Like all the host families here, they are very intent on making me eat all the time. This morning, I was ready to leave for school, but I hadn't eaten all of my breakfast, so my host father wouldn't let me leave. Every time I tried to stand up, he would gently push me back down and tell me to finish breakfast. By the end of breakfast, I had five minutes to get to my school that is a half hour walk away. So my host dad took me to school on his motorcycle (Sorry Mom!). Speaking of transportation, the driving here is crazy. I don't think there are any actual traffic laws. Anyways, most of the food here is wonderful, but I've had a few run-ins with some unusual foods. On Fridays, every family in Morocco has cous cous for lunch, which is delicious. But this past Friday, my host family served sour milk as the drink to go with cous cous. The milk was intentionally sour. It was less than appetizing.

Rabat itself is a wonderful city. I was apprehensive about coming to a quieter city in Morocco, but Rabat is perfect. It's on the Atlantic coast, so the weather has been nothing but perfect and my house is a ten minute walk from the kasbah, which looks like this:

These aren't my pictures, but it's pretty all the same!

This weekend, I went to visit Casablanca for an afternoon. Though Casablanca itself wasn't my favorite, the second biggest mosque in the world is there, and it's the only mosque in Morocco where "non-believers" can enter. Here are some pictures from that:

So far, everyone in Morocco has been very helpful and friendly (sometimes too friendly), and very receptive to my broken French and Arabic.

Some final pictures from my trip to Volubilis (Roman ruins in the countryside) and Moulay Idriss.