Marockin'

When people ask me what my favorite thing about my study abroad experience is so far, I now have an answer. Morocco.

I just got back from six of the most incredible days of my life. I think it would be hard, as a foreign woman, to live in Morocco, but it was positively captivating as a visit. When we first got to the airport in Casablanca, everyone was wearing white, which was a huge shocker after seeing Paris's standard black everywhere for two months. We felt really out of place, were warned not to trust ANYONE besides Gabriel and Anna Maria (our resident directors), and stuck out like sore thumbs. I don't know about everyone else, but I was feeling a lot of nervousness along with my wide-eyed excitement that I had made it to Africa!

We are really lucky that we made it there, and even more so that we made it back. Our flight to Casablanca was one of the last ones out of the Charles de Gaulle airport last Thursday and the one back on Tuesday night was one of the first arrivals, since planes couldn't fly through the ash in the air caused by Iceland's volcano eruption. I'm really hoping that there will be no chain reaction, because I have flights out the wazoo these next two weeks! In fact, I'm in the airport on my way to Granada via Sevilla maintenant.

In Casablanca, we made our way to the bus and toured the city a little bit before heading to the mosque there. The mosque was the first of many things that I became obsessed with throughout the course of our stay. It is HUGE, one of the biggest mosques in the world, and it's pretty from the outside, but spectacular on the inside. I am in love with all of the detail put into Moroccan architecture. There were mosaics and carvings and a ceiling that was open to the sky but closed while we were there because it was just before noon and time for prayer. We took off our shoes when we entered and walked around this incredibly open building, listening to our tour guide, but mostly marveling at the beauty of the building and snapping as many photos as possible.

The mosque is the only big thing we did in Casablanca, so after lunch we reboarded the bus and made our way to Fes. During our bus ride, I was surprised to see that Morocco has red dirt! I almost felt like I was back in Oklahoma.

The second day of our trip, we stayed in Fes (unusual for us to stay in one place the entire day!) and went to the medina. It's the biggest area where people live but cars can't go...or something like that. It was so cool! It's a good thing we had a guide though, because that thing was huge and with twists and turns and definitely no street signs, I had absolutely no idea where we were.

The guides gave us each a flower they use to make rose water as a welcome, and supposedly they're also good luck to find a husband and serve as an aphrodisiac. They were sure big on those in the medina. It was more than a little awkward. As we meandered through the alleyways (for lack of a better word), guys were reaching out and shouting at us in English, French, Arabic...whatever language they knew and/or thought we might recognize. That part I could have done without, but I did get used to catcalls in Latin America and it's really not all that different I suppose.

In the medina, we visited a carpet place, which had gorgeous things but a bit out of my price range, being a poor college student spending all of my money on the trip itself! We also hit up a spice shop with traditional remedies, perfumes and cosmetics as well as cooking spices, a tannery and a clothing and scarf place, where we dressed up and took pictures. I bought a few things, but I can't say what because they may or may not serve as gifts...;) And after we found our way out of the medina, we went to a ceramics place and got to see the stages of pottery and mosaics there and visited the shop attached as well.

Day three was spent almost entirely on the bus, driving from Fes to Arfoud. I've never been so glad that I can't sleep on the bus, because I saw some great views! I didn't get any pictures though, because I knew I wouldn't have electricity in the desert and didn't want my camera battery to die. It turns out that I could have taken some, because I was too afraid of the sand killing my camera to use it very much, but oh well! I can just take those pics from other people.

Once we got to Arfoud, we hopped on 4X4s and took what I'm pretty sure was the bumpiest path possible to get to the desert, AKA SAND DUNES. Real Sahara sand dunes. I'm still having trouble believing that this trip actually happened.

In the Sahara, we slept on the sand. We were in tents, but we had sand blowing on our faces all night. I'm glad I somehow managed to sleep with my face under the blanket because that would have been interesting otherwise. Our toilets were glorified port-a-potties and there were showers, but it was pointless to try to get clean since you would just be covered in sand again ten minutes later. I got into the habit of wiping off my plate as best I could before eating so that there wasn't much grit, and I didn't see a mirror in 2 1/2 days, but I was completely ecstatic!

We woke up at 5 a.m. the first morning in the desert to see the sun rise, and after trekking over what seemed like endless dunes for about an hour, the orange horizon finally yielded to a burning ball of yellow and took away a bit of the chill that comes with desert nights. Wow.

We had a while to wait until breakfast, so we either wandered or tried to sleep again. I ended up sitting in the sand with some friends since I knew I wouldn't be able to sleep. After breakfast, several of us bought turbans (duh, I was one of them) and the camels arrived! We were doubled up for the ride and the saddle that my friend Amanda and I had was tilted forward, so that was a really interesting hour or so. I was all up on her, and the precious boys leading us kept telling both of us to scoot back, but it didn't help much, as we just slid again the next time we headed downhill, if not before then. I got a little sore, but it was way fun.

We took the camels into a little village nearby and looked at another carpet place and just walked around a little, before climbing back on Daisy Duke's back (yeah, we named him.) and going back to the tents. Getting on a camel's back is easy. No stirrups necessary, since they're low enough to the ground. Buuut the camel standing is sure an experience. They bring up their back legs so you're thrown forward to the point that you're sure you'll fall off, and then stand up the rest of the way. We didn't fall off, but one girl slid right over her camel's butt on the first hill we came to. It was great.

Later that day, we had some people come to the tent, which was a good idea since we were all a little saddlesore. The first people gave us henna tats, which are decorating my hands as I type! I feel so cool. Then some of us followed some little boys to a giant sand dune to go sandboarding. Getting up that last mountain of sand was next to impossible. We were all struggling since it was ridiculously steep at the top and felt like you were doing a stairmaster--moving your legs up and up and up but not getting anywhere at all since the sand moves down faster than you move up. The little boys dragged us up the very last bit like it was no problem at all. We later saw the rest of our group taking a longer but much easier route up, but oh well--we had a cooler experience! Only a couple of people actually sandboarded down the hill, but several rode it like a sled. I would have done that, but I didn't want to climb up the hill again, especially after watching other people try! It was worth going though, just for the view from the top of the dune. And it was really fun watching everyone eat it when they got to the bottom of the hill...or a little before the bottom for some people! When they finally got back up the hill, several had mouths full of sand. Yum!

We had a little party that night during dinner, with live musicians and dancing. None of us really knew how to dance to Moroccan music, and we never quite figured out what the actual Moroccans were doing, but it was really fun. I mean, how many people can say they danced under the Saharan stars? My guess is around 30!

The last two days, we didn't do too much. Nothing as exciting as the 4 that preceded them anyway! We spent most of the days on the bus gazing at the fantastic landscape and made a stop to feed bread to some monkeys and ate dinner with the ISA kids in Meknes for the semester.

We made it back to Paris with only an hour of delay, I got three hours of sleep and headed to the airport again and now I'm in Granada! I'll wait and give you the Spain update once I leave Barcelona. Chao chao!