12-16 I saw ice today and I even stepped on it

Madrid is a bit of a shock. The weather is just the beginning. I realized that though I may have though from time to time in Morocco that I was cold, I had completely forgotten about the kind of cold in the winter that just bites and numbs fingers and noses. For the first two days, I would go out, and very soon I would be thinking, “My nose is cold, my feet are cold, my head is cold. Lets just go back to the hostel. We can see Madrid another day—it’s too cold today.” Then I realized that that is how winter is, and normally, I just face the cold and walk around…

Today, Hannah took me to sort of a Spanish equivalent of Macy’s, but even bigger. This store was seven giant floors; the escalators just kept going and going and all I could say was “What is the purpose of all this STUFF?!” I hadn’t expected such a shock because I was constantly bombarded by the material in the medina, but this was on so much of a larger scale. I felt a little nauseous. It was kind of scary—I think you could live there and never leave. They had everything—clothes, food, a post office, a supermarket… I thought it was hilarious when we were looking for the post office. It was on the lingerie floor, along with a travel agency and a craft shop…

I was also amused by the exhibit of singing, dancing dolls in the front window about Christmas around the world. The one about the US had Christmas and Thanksgiving rolled up into one with cowboys, Indians and the Empire State building. Hannah and I were left kind of speechless, but I realized that the average American probably isn’t any better informed about Spain or any other country. It made me wonder what kinds of errors we make on a regular basis.

I found some Moroccans at the hostel. I heard them speaking Darija. Now they’re trying to pick me up…

To catch up, Lauren and I spent a day walking around Sevilla, which was adorable—and clean, and acceptable to sit outside, even at night. Everyone I talk to about coming home from Morocco talks about crossing streets—I was so surprised when people just stopped for me (though also a bit baffled by the need to wait for the crosswalks in Madrid—“What do you mean we can’t cross? This side of the road is completely clear and in a minute, we’ll be able to get across the other half, too!) Somehow, as we randomly wandered through the twisting maze of streets without really knowing where we were going, we almost always wandered right where we wanted to go. I’m not sure how that worked.

We went to the Giralda, which is a Cathedral, but was originally an Andalusian mosque, which was supposedly modeled after the one in Marrakech. I was surprised at how church-y it was. Aparently they did quite a bit of converting (I think it wasn't actually finished as a mosque to begin with) and they pretty much hide the muslim side. I didn't understand anything, but Lauren said that they explained the various stages of construction, but didn't mention that it used to be a mosque...

While in the apartment in Sale, we bought a blender, and we were trying to figure out what to do with it afterwards. We hauled it all over Morocco (and didn’t end up using it at all) and thought it would be funny to bring it to Madrid and give it to Hannah as a Christmas present. However, when I found out that she decided not to stay all year, I decided that I had carried it long enough. So I gave it to the hostel in Sevilla. They were so confused as to why I was carrying a blender. So after traveling from New Sale to Safi, Essauira, Rabat, Tangier, and crossing the Strait of Gibralter, the travelling blender is residing in Sevilla.

The bus ride from Sevilla to Madrid was six hours, so I decided that was a good time to henna my own hand. Surprisingly, I managed to do it without seriously screwing up or making a giant mess.

12-12 Bislama Morocco

Bislama means goodbye, but I’ll be back in nine days—my mom and sister are coming, but for now, I’m in Spain. I didn’t have to say real goodbyes to Morocco or my families, but it was rough saying bye to all my friends. We’ve been through so much together and gotten so close, but I have no idea when I’ll see them again—especially the ones who are going abroad again next semester.

I’ll be travelling up through Spain with my friend Lauren and meeting my family in Madrid. We spent last might in Tangier (one last hurrah fro 12 dollar hotel rooms and Turkish toilets) and took the ferry over this morning. The mountains on the coast were breathtaking. I’m preparing to be shocked by European infrastructure and prices. Though so far, the bus isn’t too different—it’s still arriving two hours late, and I’m hearing plenty of Darija.

During the last week of the program, we all came back to Rabat to present our projects and say goodbye. We stayed in a wonderful hotel—the first day, our toilet didn’t flush and though we were excited about the hot water, we missed the cold—our cold taps just didn’t turn on…

I finally got around to buying henna powder and proceeded to cover anyone available (mostly Erin) in henna. People at home are going to wonder what happened.

Last Monday was apparently the Muslim new year. For the most part, nothing happened—some people got t he day off, and kids set off fire crackers all of=ver the medina all week. Erin’s host brother had three GIANT fire crackers, which he set off on the roof. My ears were ringing for a good 15 mins after. I went with Erin to couscous Friday with her family and we decided to try eating with our hands. There are a lot of foods that can be eaten fairly easily with fingers. Couscous is not one of them. I had to make a scoop with my hand and dump it into my mouth. I think we ended up with more couscous on our laps than in our mouths. After couscous, Ahmed decided to try to make fire crackers by stripping the lighting tuff off matches. Unfortunately (or probably fortunately) he was unsuccessful at lighting them.

Over the course of the semester, my hair has been getting gradually longer and stragglier, and Erin has repeatedly offered to cut it. I finally decided to take her up on it. I think my time in Morocco has skewed my sense of whether it matters how I look. I was brave enough to let her try to layer it. But it will grow…

12-6 The Home Stretch

40 pages and way too many hours holed up in various hotel rooms and I’m done with my ISP!

My plan was to spend the first two weeks researching (or cooking) and the last one writing. Erin and I decided to travel to Essaouira and Safi. We left Rabat bright and early—too bad our train was an hour late. I think it was stuck behind the party train. There was a big soccer game happening in Casa that day, and as we were waiting for our train, a train pulled up without an announcement. It was crampacked with boys, who jumped off as it stopped. After a few minutes, it started moving again, and they hopped back on—a few almost got left behind and had to run and jump on as it pulled away. As usual, we—being blonde—made a scene. When we started laughing at the boys running to catch the train, the whole bunch started yelling and singing. We could still hear them five minutes later.

On the train to Safi, we chatted with the people in our cabin, both of whom tried to invite us to stay with them. I don’t remember how we chose it—I think it came up when we were looking at the train map. We found the transfer stop to the bus to Essaouira and looked at what other cities were near by. Safi isn’t exactly a tourist destination; as we walked around, instead of catcalls, most people simply gave us confused stares. One evening at a café, a couple of guys started talking to us and were very curious how we ended up there.

We stayed in a super sketch hotel with a shared Turkish toilet. I think the man running it was pretty confused as to why we were spending all day in the room, but the fact that it was raining made it seem slightly less suspicious. The whole country pretty much flooded. The streets in Safi were rivers, and for a day or two, apparently they shut down all t he trains between Casa and Rabat because there was so much flooding. So it was a good opportunity to get some work done and not feel bad about staying inside all day.

Really, the only time we left was for diner. (Well, I went out around noon each day to pick up bread and yogurt for lunch.) At the restaurant, when we told them the food was bneen (delicious), they got really excited and brought out someone else (presumably the cook) and told us to say it again.

We tried to leave Safi on Wednesday, but unfortunately Erin got food poisoning. After throwing up in the street on the way there, she was ready to get on the bus—until she threw up again in the bus station… So we found a hotel and she slept all day. Mashi mushkil (that means no problem).

We took the bus to Essaouira. Good thing we weren’t in a hurry—the bus showed up half an hour late and then took half an hour lunch break in the middle. As we were walking through the medina looking for our hotel, we were approached by several men trying to get us to come to their hotels. The first one followed us forever even after we pretended to speak only Croatian, told him no, and tld him to go away, but for some reason, we trusted the second. He took us first to one, where the cheep room was already full, then to another, which didn’t even have a sign on the door, but was adorable and bright.

We had to stop back in Safi on the way back because Erin left her wallet at the hotel, and ended up eating lunch at a tiny little restaurant down the road. No one spoke French and the menu was in Arabic, so I went to try to sound out some options. After trying to explain that I wanted a vegetarian tajine, I ended up being shown a bunch of different tajines and pointing to the one I wanted. We ordered a tajine and an omelet, but they served us lentils, salad and fries as well…

I tried another new fruit. Unfortunately I didn’t have a camera. It was another variety of prickly pear, but this time, it was BRIGHT MAGENTA. Yes, that bright. It made my lips purple. It tasted a bit like pomegranate juice, which is funny, because pomegranate doesn’t taste like pomegranate juice.