Getting My Feet Wet

It is official that Brian and Clark will be visiting me in Morocco in a few short weeks and I am very excited!

The photo uploader is not working right now so I am going over my week but I have no pictures posted. If you would like to see more photos of Marrakech, please click here.

Emma and I had an absolutely breathtaking view in the morning of the Atlas mountains from the outdoor stairwell in our hotel. I have never seen snow covered mountains (except in a plane) before, and this sight was amazing. Hopefully I will be able to cross over them sometime during my stay here and visit the Sahara desert on the other side. The parts of Morocco I have visited (as well as Rabat) are lush in vegetation, not at all the dry and dusty streets I imagined before my departure.

I had a very good Friday as well. The morning I played tennis with Emma at the club...again we were exiled away from the cute Moroccan boys to a far flung corner, but we did manage to sneak a few peeks at the boys playing (as well as the awe inspiring boy who was no older than ten who could kick both our butts). Emma won, but I do not mind as she is super nice and did not rub it in my face! :)

After that I went over to my host brother's house for some couscous since it was Friday after all and it was very yummy. They live about five blocks from my host mother and myself and their apartment is beautiful. It has the traditional Moroccan tiled mosaics all over the walls. They also had the same gigantic flat screen Samsung that my mother owns tuned to a French channel for me. Watching television during meals is just part of Moroccan custom and when they have foreign guests over they usually will have a channel on that is in that guest's native language (or one they know fairly well in my case).

After a lovely meal and watching a French circus on television, my host mother and I headed back to our apartment and I headed to the former church down the street and met up with Maria. We walked to the Centre Ville and took a rather bumpy bus to Temara outside of Rabat. Temara is a beach town along the Atlantic coast and I have a feel full of rather prominent families. We met up with her friend Kenza who lives there and walked along the cliffs and down to the beach. Maria and I took off our shoes and walked in the water, despite the fact it was probably 40 degrees outside. Kenza thought we were nuts, naturally. My host mother thinks that me being sick yesterday is due to wading in the water...

Following our ocean excursion we went back to Kenza's house, preceded by a brief stop at the hanuut (little store) where her and Maria bought an insane amount of candy and tried to give me a huge pile of! Don't worry mom and dad, I only accepted a little bit! I do not know how all these people are so skinny! Anyway, I met Kenza's parents (and briefly her brother) and they served me tea and we spent a good hour and half talking about American politics and policies and my experiences in Morocco. He also put on the European news about a plane crash in New York since I had no idea something had happened in my country! It was amazing because our entire conversation took place in French and they were very friendly. Maria's dad picked us up and drove me back to Océon (my neighborhood in Rabat), all the while explaining to me the history of Berbers (Maria's family is Berber, an ethnic group in Morocco that most North Africans are descended from) in Morocco and I even heard snippets of Berber when Maria and him were talking. It is amazing, she is fluent in Berber, Arabic, French, and English and is taking Spanish classes.

Images are not uploading right now so I will post them in my next blog entry with explanations about what everything is. Sorry about the content heavy, photo light entry!

With that said, I am thinking about putting up a new layout for the Blogger because it seems rather squashed in terms of viewing photos, and those, I think, are the most important thing of a travel blog! We'll see how lazy I am this week.

"Mosques don't really interest me." ~ Brian

When talking to my older brother about things we could do when he visits (in-sha'allah) with my father, I suggested visiting the Mosque Hassan II. His response is quoted above.

This is my answer to that statement:

1: View of costal buildings of Casablanca 2: Hassan II Mosque and Minaret 3: Room where people wash themselves before prayer, the room has a greenish tint which I found very neat but the camera could not pick it up 4: View from inside the Mosque 5) Another outdoor snapshot of the Mosque.

To view all photos I took of the Hassan II Mosque, click here.

Memory Card Purchased

So I will be going photo crazy over the next couple of weeks (especially this weekend at Marrakech) due my deprivation over the past three weeks due to me being highly intelligent and misplacing my original memory card the first week I arrived. The picture in the very beginning of this post is from Rabat (which is right along the Atlantic coast)...it is part of the Casbah, which is an ancient fortification and engulfs the Odaiyas (forgive the misspelling) neighborhood I mentioned yesterday. You will see plenty of photos from inside the Casbah eventually. It's a nice look at how Morocco blends its ancient history with modern life.

My host mother thought it was odd that I snapped pictures of the Riifa and tea today, and in my broken Arabic I explained to her the concept of a blog and tried to express the fact that people don't have any idea what riifa is! Anyway, photo number one is my host mother cooking it...and I cooked some too but mine didn't turn out as pretty, but it worked. The other photos is just a picture of the actual outcome of riifa. I am making tacos tomorrow and I am thinking about using that for the tortilla because it's closer than the chawarma pita-style bread that they use in the fake taco joints around town. Anyway, my dear friends, you will probably get a taste of that when I make you all a myriad of Moroccan dishes when I return...and you'll probably like them (assuming I learn how to cook well enough...).

Anyway, that is all for now, I'm freezing so I am going to curl up on the faraj (couch bed) and finish reading about Moorish Spain. I miss all of you a ton...except maybe Andrea and Abby because they smell kinda funky. ;-)

Cooking and Clubbing Moroccan Style

Okay, no photos in this post, I apologize but I'll add them as soon as I have the means to do so.

My Friday consisted of helping my mother cook our lunch, which consisted of Riifa, chicken, lentil, and broth and is AMAZING. I forget the name, I will find out from her soon and let everybody know...for my meat eating friends I'm going to make it for you when I get back to the states, it is so yummy.

Riifa is a flat, flakey thin bread which you make by stretching dough really thin and then folding it to form a square...you then follow the same procedure with another piece of dough, stick the folded piece in the middle and fold the second one around it. Then you stretch the two layers flat like before and cook it in a frying pan just like you would a pancake. When it was done my mom cut it into little pieces, put lentils and a melange of veggies including onions (yummy) and then pieces of chicken over it and poured on the broth. It was seriously my favorite dish cooked here so far. Although my mom does make some awesome pizza (better than any of the Italians in Kenosha), I feel like this traditional meal is my current number one!

Anyway, I only helped with the riifa (which I will be an expert at making when I return to the States) due to my need to shower.

Afterwards I headed to the Centre Ville and met up with some fellow Americans and we wandered around the souks in Medina again and headed to Oudaiyas, a neighborhood on the ocean where the Casbah (I mentioned day one) is located. The streets are narrow and the buildings are all in whitewash or blue, and it is stunning. Many Europeans buy vacation homes in this neighborhood. I really do enjoy the slower paced lifestyle of Rabat compared to Casablanca. We enjoyed the views of the Atlantic while being hit on by more Moroccan men who were surprised when Chiara responded in Arabic and when I understood them when they said something else in Arabic.

The evening consisted of heading to Club Yakuut to watch an awesome band from Cote d'Ivoire perform and drink and dance the night away. It was a ton of fun although I was sad to deny the cute Moroccan boy I spent most of the night with a kiss, but I know what they want and alas no life altering decisions in Morocco! :-)

On a final note I have realized how little French my mom knows so I have changed to speaking in Modern Standard Arabic and Dharija as much as I can, although I have to revert to French quite a bit at the moment. I am excited regardless because although it is a challenge to communicate I am actually using my Arabic!

Here's Looking at You Kid

I am standing on the roof or our hotel, that is Mosque Hassan II in the background as well as a portion of Casablanca. Please note, all photos are again taken by Emma since I still do not have a memory card.

As Americans who were interested in Morocco, many of us have seen (and love) the film Casablanca...so of course we dived into the charming tourist trap known as Rick's Cafe, opened by an American woman in 2004. They have the movie playing constantly on the second floor and it is a nice spot to have a drink without getting hit on by twenty different men--but alas, you must have the money to spend. Since we are all poor college students, we settled on lunch and took plenty of photos. It was amazing. Although, I felt bad for the waiters wearing the Fez caps, which according to history buff Jeff, has something to do with Ottoman rule and is considered rather degrading (although I do see men in the street wearing them from time to time).

Our hotel had open access to the roof--a lot of things are open access because the lawyers here are too pious to sell their souls to the devil; thus, most people are not constantly in fear of lawsuits. Anyway, Emma and I (and eventually Nida joined us) ventured up to the very top of our hotel room for some breathless views of Casablanca. We did not get to see much of the city on the ground due to our lack of knowledge and retreating back to the hotel after spending ten minutes attempting to shirk a boy asking us for money.

Above: Another shot of Casablanca. Below: A medresa, which means "school" (and not fundamentalist Islamic training center) in Arabic.

The call to prayer occurs five times a day, and people do not stop whatever they're doing to pray...they don't even pause in conversation (and I no longer wake up to the 6 am call to prayer every morning) and the calls from various mosques do not seem to coincide...at all. Regardless, it was neat to stand up there in a foreign city looking at all the buildings and people living their daily lives while listening to the minarets belt out the recordings of men singing their praise to Allah. Morocco is a very modern country, the women are fashionable and could teach a thing or two to many Americans! People all have cell phones and MSN messenger is bigger than AIM here. University students are fluent in Dharija (Moroccan dialect of Arabic), Fuhs-ha (standard Arabic), French, and often English or Spanish and are very knowledgeable about what is happening all over the world. There are as many women who leave their heads uncovered as covered (although I quickly realized that is not a sign of modernity but personal preference), and many women are in university and careers. Morocco is still very much a patriarchal society, but the Moroccan woman is cutting edge and savvy, and her social status seems to rapidly be climbing.
The image on the left is a park in Casablanca. The right image shows the French influence in a lot of the architecture in Casablanca. Well, that is all I have for now. I will be in the Medina tomorrow afternoon where all the souks are (open air markets) so I'll try to purchase a memory card and take pictures so you can match images with my lingo!

As Time Goes By

I just have to rub it in your face. It's going to be almost 20 degrees here on Friday. That's Celsius by the way...in Fahrenheit it's about 70 degrees.

We rode the train (which was nicer than the Metra to Chicago, and cost less than four dollars) for an hour south of Rabat to Casablanca on Saturday morning. After checking into the very inexpensive, but clean and colorful, Hotel Centrale (less than a ten minute walk from the train station and about $20 per person per night), we sat down to enjoy a cup of mint tea. Mint tea (tay d'el ban-ah) is popular in North Africa, and I drink it everyday in Morocco. It's very good and super sweet (I'll probably have diabetes when I come home from all the sugar they ingest in this country) . In this photo you will find Emma (who took all the photos in this post due to me being too lazy to purchase a memory card) and Nida, two girls who I hang out with quite often and will probably mention in passing quite often during my blog post. After a good half hour of chatting and tea drinking, we headed to the Hassan II Mosque to meet our fellow students who arrived the day before.

Hassan II Mosque (Masjid el-Hassan el-Thanii) is named for Morocco's previous King Hassan who died in the earlier part of the decade. Construction began in the 80s and it will not be complete for at least another decade (according to AmidEast staff). It is breathtaking, beautiful and intricate mosaics, and at nearly 700 feet tall, the world's tallest minaret (the mosque itself is the second largest). We did not take a tour inside; however, we will in a couple of weeks on our way to Marrakesh.

The top picture is the minaret, right about the caption is another part of the mosque with Casablanca peering through behind it.

Smiitii Kayla u kinskoon feh L'Océon

Nine things I've learned:

1) Men aren't afraid to offer you $5 for sex
2) If you are a woman alone in a bar, you are a prostitute...no really, you are.
3) Allowing your eyes to stray from the sidewalk results in you stepping into a hole and spraining your ankle
4) Henna people are not your friend, no matter how friendly they seem--keep your hands away from them or they will start drawing on you not matter what you say
5) Moroccan people are some of the nicest people in the world--until they get behind the wheel of a car
6) Keep reminding myself that I'll appreciate the fact houses aren't heated in about a month when it starts getting warm outside
7) The loud sound that sounds a lot like a tornado siren every morning at 6AM is really the beginning for the call to prayer
8) Keanu Reeves is still annoying, even when dubbed in French
9) Morocco is probably the best place I've ever been

Despite some issues and a minor case of culture shock, I've found that Morocco is probably one of the most amazing places on earth. Not that I have much credibility in that arena considering I'm not a world traveler...yet. I have yet to find another memory card for my camera, so you'll have to make due with photos from day one. I've been too busy/lazy to look for a memory card in the medina which is only a twenty-five minute walk away.
The next time America's Next Top Model goes to another country for the competition, they should totally come here. The girls are some of the most beautiful and stylish people I've ever seen in my life--they could give a many European and American girls a run for their money. And the craziest thing of all, the Moroccan girls (and even guys) have no idea how beautiful and stylish they are. Maybe that's a good thing, if they were conceded they might not be nearly as friendly!

I'm all moved in with my family...I have a mom named Khartoum who is about the same age as Clark (my father) and is super sweet. She stays at home most of the day, cooking, praying, and cleaning. Perhaps she goes out and socializes while I am gone, but I have only seen her leave once or twice to buy bread since I've arrived four days ago.

Moroccans love to feed you--and they will not stop feeding you and that's another thing I've learned...Schbet. It means full, and I put my hand on my stomach and say it and smile. My mom is good about not forcing food down my throat; although I do not feel that the other Americans are as lucky. She also had her son, Nadir, come over and set up Internet, so I am one of a few who actually has access to the world wide web from home--and I haven't heard of anybody else really having it on their computer (except for a girl who got the password for her neighbor's wireless service, which she only got because he wanted to date her, sneaky girl).

I live in L'Océon, which is a area of the capital, Rabat. It is not the most aesthetically pleasing area (and a fellow student informed me of their epiphany that L'Océon is the car garage capital of the city) and walking around late at night alone is a bad idea--but it's home and I love it with all its quirky charm and character. I live two blocks from one of (I think) two churches in the whole city--which is great because I can just tell the cab driver "el-Kiniisa feh l'Océon" (the church in Océon) and they know right where to take me! I also learned that if you walk quickly with a mean look on your face, men won't harass you as much, possibly because they are afraid you are going to punch them in the face if they make one more kissey face at you!

L'Océon is near the ocean, and I am grateful for that when the weather gets warmer. It is about a 45 minute walk to school when you get lost, 35-40 when you don't. The bus here isn't as complicated or threatening as the other buses in Rabat, and it takes about 20-25 minutes to get to school using that...as long as you figure out where the unmarked bus stop is and the driver doesn't decide to skip your stop or the bus breaks down...

It's kind of a random city, Rabat, but that's part of the charm. You can't really get frustrated with all the insanity that goes on in this city, because it becomes a part of you and amidst all the chaos you find the pattern and things seem to make sense. You even learn to either laugh at, or ignore the constant barrage of catcalls and you master your fear of being run over by a little blue taxi that may not have breaks that work very well.

Oh man, I typed so much and I didn't even begin to cover what I wanted to...I'll have to work on updating this more often. Maybe tomorrow? We'll see.