1-1 The fam comes to Morocco continued…

Happy New Year! But I have some catching up to do. After Essaouira, we took a very very long bus ride to Casablanca (it was supposed to be 6 hours, but ended up being more than eight) and then caught the train to Rabat. It was so nice to be back. Rabat is like home; I know my way around, and see people I know on the streets. I dragged my family all over town to all the sights and we visited my host family, my adopted host family and Erin’s host family. It was a bit awkward for my family since they couldn’t actually talk to almost everyone, but I did my best at playing translator. Of course, everyone fed us and gave us tea. My host family really pulled out all the stops for my family—they made couscous, which they had only done once during the semester. I tried to feed my mom and sis all my favorite foods (I told them they had it easy—they were in morocco for more than a week, whereas Hannah was only there for a weekend…) and they loved my juice place as much as I did.

On Monday, we took the train to Fes, where we stayed the night before catching a bus to Chefchaouen, a little town in the Rif mountains. We really only spent an evening exploring the Fes medina, which wasn’t enough to experience how crazy and huge and winding and chaotic it is, but I probably wouldn’t have been brave enough to take them far in anyway for fear of never finding my way out again. As I did when I visited with my program, I found Fes friendly. Somehow it’s not as in your face and rude as Marrakech, or even Rabat sometimes. I was looking for a certain kind of hat and I asked a guy from whom my mom had just bought a scarf if he know where I could find one, and he lead me to several shops, where he asked if they had them, and where we could find one, before finally finding someone who had them.

The Rif Mountains, which cover the north portion of the country, are beautiful. They are splattered with olive groves, terraced farms, grassy meadows, goats, sheep, palm trees and yucca plants and are a shade of green that is almost surreal. Chefchaouen was also quite pretty. It’s all built on a steep hillside and covered with narrow streets and stairs winding up through buildings that are all painted blue.

Our taxi got lost and dropped us nowhere near our hotel. He dropped us in a deserted parking lot with stairs leading up into the medina. Since we were hauling around giant suitcases (my fault—I’m making my mom and sister bring home all my summer clothes and have filled my own suitcase with gifts) I went in to try to find the hotel. I had all but given up and was thinking that there was no way we would cary the suitcases up so many stairs, but I met a Dutch woman who asked what I was looking for and said she was going in the same direction and would take me there, so I followed her. The hotel was so cute that I decided to try to get the suitcases up. Luckily, I also realized that we could take the road around and only had a few flights of stairs instead of the dozens that I had climbed.

Somehow, the only one to get food poisoning on this trip was me. I’m not sure how that worked, but it was probably better me than them, and it was very mild.

After not nearly enough time, we got back on the bus and headed to Tangier to spend the night before catching the ferry to Spain. I realized that this time, I was saying goodbye to Morocco for real. My adventure isn’t over—I’m travelling a bit in Spain with my mom and my sister, and then I’ll spend another week in Tunisia visiting a friend—but my time in Morocco is. So maybe now is a good time to think about summing it up. I don’t think I necessarily got what I came in expecting, though honestly can’t even remember what that was. I guess I came in without a whole lot of expectations and maybe that’s why I enjoyed it so much.

I learned to appreciate the ease of knowing how everything works and being able to communicate freely, but also became comfortable in a foreign city and by the end, tasks that were at first daunting and unforeseeable complicated, such as printing a paper in the medina or navigating the city buses became facile and normal. Over the course of three and a half months I accustomed myself to a modes of conduct, routines, table manners to the point that it feels weird to go back to what was normal. I got used to speaking four languages on a daily basis, but also learned enough Darija to be able to get around mostly without breaking into French. Not to mention all the wonderful people I got to know. I think the friends I made were the biggest surprise, but also what kept me alive and sane.

I think one of the big questions of the semester was: What is Morocco? People keep asking me to pin it down, and though I myself spent so much of the semester trying to figure it out, I still don’t feel confident answering their questions. I think my final answer is that Morocco is very diverse and is in so many transitions and constantly changing. There are so many different—and often contradicting—aspects of life. I say that Morocco is historically quite religiously tolerant, but also advised my mom against mentioning that she is Jewish. There are modern cities that host businesses from across the globe, but I also don’t bat an eye when I see chickens or a donkey cart in the road. There are people who speak five languages but can’t read or write. Many people can read and write Classical Arabic, one of the country’s official languages, but feel uncomfortable speaking it, while Darija, the language that most of the population speaks, is not an official language. There always seems to be construction everywhere. Pretty much everyone has a TV—though they don’t necessarily have a toilet. These are just a few things that came to mind. I’ve spent my semester trying to learn without judging. Eventually, I became used to going along with things without necessarily needing to understand everything that was happening and why.

12-24 And I return

Sorry for the delayed posting. I've been super busy showing my mom and sister all around Morocco, and then the flaky internet hasn't helped anything. I'll try to get caught up soon.

I’m back! This time accompanied by my mom and my sister. It’s nice to be able to communicate again—in Spain, I felt completely useless and just made other people talk for me all the time. It’s also fun to show them a bit of my life from the past few months.

We arrived in Marrakesh by plane on Monday afternoon, and they were sports about being dragged all over the craziness that is Morocco after not sleeping for over 24 hours. They did, however, like Morocco better the next day after sleeping for a solid 12 hours.

This was out hotel in Marrakech. It was an old house and was so beautifully decorated.

We watched the sunset from the terrace.

Next we went to Essaouira, where I brought them back to the same nameless hotel wehre I stayed last time. They were a bit skeptical at first, but then they say how adorable it was. We took a camel ride, because that’s what you have to do in Morocco.

This evening, the fam got their first Turkish toilet experience. It was a particularly gross one in a bus station so I felt a bit bad. But Mom said it was fun…

I can’t wait to be back in the familiarity of Rabat and introduce my family to the families I have gotten to know there.

The rest of my time in Madrid was a blast. I sort of got a little used to the cold (I didn’t always want to immediately start thinking about the next time I would be inside as soon as I stepped out). Madrid was Christmas-y—all the main streets were lit, there were Christmas trees everywhere, and I did Christmas-y things like ice skating and baking Christmas cookies. It was a bit of a shocking explosion of the season, as I was not around for the buildup. It was also strange to be walking around at night, and to be able to stand alone in a square without having anyone approach me. My friend Eli though it was strange that no one asked him if he was lost and offered to give him directions.

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.

11-26 Happy Bibi Day! (slightly belated, but that should be no surprise)

Cooking bizzef continues. And somehow, it continues to succeed.

Cooking bizzef continues. And somehow, it continues to succeed. Erin’s Sheep stew turned out deliciously, and we managed to cook an entire thanksgiving dinner without an oven or a fridge. I am still baffled as to how that

worked. But we cooked a turkey leg and stuffing in a pot, as well as all sorts of other Thanksgiving-y

dishes: green bean and carrot/pumpkin casseroles, cream cheese pumpkin pie (on a plastic tray), mashed potatoes, gravy, and cider. The only things missing were sweet potatoes and cranberry sauce—it seems that cranberries don’t exist here (along with canned pumpkin, but we bought a slab of fresh pumpkin at the souk)—but I made applesauce, and it did the trick. We had a total of 12 people who had at one point or another said they were coming, but Megan ended up being the only one to actually make the trek out to Sale, so we had way too much food and sent her back to Rabat with a bunch. Aside from misgivings about the origins of the holiday, for me, Thanksgiving has always been about spending time with family, so I felt their absence. But Erin and Megan are almost family at this point, so I was glad to celebrate with them.

Today, I went into Rabat for Couscous Friday to eat couscous bizzef with Erin’s host family. In case I wasn’t full enough already… It was fun hanging out with them. It seemed to be a day of kitchen gardening. The 14 year old brother, Ahmed, had a bee caught in a jar and he created a whole little ecosystem with flowers, mint and dirt. I learned that worm in Darija is douda. His friend, Hamsa, was carrying around an onion in a cup of water, claiming he was going to grow it into a plant and get two

Also, I got Megan’s pictures, so I’ll post some that I’ve missed.

Ouizane: the little girl in this picture gave me a tour of the garden, named all the fruit for me, and found out all the big bananas. Check out the flying olives in the next pic. that's how they sorted out the sticks and leaves!

Souk--it's in a field, so it gets a bit muddy when it rains, but I love it. Everyone is surprised that I speak Darija, and confused when I try to buy vegetables in singular quantities. Sometimes I end up with half a kilo instead.

Food bizzeff: (and this isn't even all of it...) Sacrificial sheep stew, grilled cheese, burritos, rice crispy treats, spanish x-mas candies from Hannah

My fruit buying adventures also continued. We saw this at the supermarket and wondered what it was. It's called a kiwano, or African horned cucumber. It wasn't as exciting to eat as it was to look at. the inside is kind of the texture of a tomato, and tastes a bit like banana, but it is pretty bland.

In other news, after getting NO work done at all during the week of the Eid (the whole country pretty much just shuts down. We couldn’t even find bread in New Sale the weekend after, and a bread deficit in Morocco is something I thought I would never encounter.) I finally got moving on my ISP. Two of my professors who teach in English Departments at Moroccan Universities in Rabat and Kenitra let me come in to their classes to find students to interview.

On Tues, I found that the Rabat campus that I was supposed to be goining to, was almost not in Rabat—I was told that the petit taxis wouldn’t go there. So I had some bus fun, and ended up in several other departments’ campuses before finally finding the right school. I set up an interview schedule for the next day, which worked shwiya (I shouldn’t have been surprised—schedules are not a very Moroccan concept) but I came out with four interviews. While I was waiting for one of my no shows, another student started talking to me. I tried to interview him (in French), but I don’t think he really understood my project (or maybe my French), because he just talked about children and I couldn’t get a word in edgewise. On Thursday, I went to Kenitra (another town about half an hour away) to meet some students of another prof. I had mentioned that I needed about four more interviews, but when I showed up, I found eight students ready to be interviewed. The day before, the interviews had run half an hour plus, so I was worried about making everyone wait, but they were really excited about it and sat around while I talked to them one at a time. Luckily, these ran faster, and I somehow pounded out ten interviews (two more showed up) in two hours. I’m glad I had a recorder. Now, I just have a lot of reading, transcribing and writing. Luckily I will very shortly be separated from my kitchen, so maybe I’ll actually get work done.