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!