Marrakech, Marruecos

Hi, everyone. I'd like to tell you about my trip to Morocco, if you have time. (If you don't have time, what are you doing surfing the internet?)

My roommate Keyla and I booked our plane tickets to Marrakech wayyy back in April... and I remember when I told Keely of our plans she said, "Wow, Morocco! That's Africa, dude." Yes, dude. I went to Africa. And it was awesome.

This trip was the first time that I´ve left Spain since being here, and it was so weird to be experiencing culture shock all over again. Seeing all the signs and everything written in French and Arabic took some getting used to, but I did find that the local people spoke more Spanish than they did English, so I actually didn´t speak much English while I was there. Which is fine by me. :)

The first thing on our list to do was to go to the currency exchange booth in the airport to exchange our euros for dirham. The exchange rate is actually pretty simple - 1 euro is approximately 10 dirham, so that made the converting easier on us during our trip. While we were in line to exchange our money, we started chatting with 2 other women from Alicante who were on their way to Marrakech as well, and we actually ran into them a few times in the city, which was fun.

Once we were on the ground in Morocco, we had to go through customs and passport control, which was basically a lot of standing in long lines. Some guys (who were from Morocco originally, but living in Spain) gave us some advice and offered to help us get a taxi into the city, which was really nice because he could explain the directions and such to the cab driver in Arabic, which left things alot simpler than if we had tried to explain things in a mix of English and Spanish.

The cab driver dropped us off right next to the city square, where there is a huge open air market. While crossing the square on the way to the hostel, we saw snake charmers, monkeys, and various other things that are essentially a money trap. Which leads me to explain one thing that Keyla and I quickly learned in Marrakech - there is no such thing as "free." If anyone offers you anything, they expect money from you. Which is fair, in some aspects. I mean, if you walk up to a guy selling bread, it's only polite to buy something if you want to ask him directions. The problem was that people would see us looking at our map and then approach us and offer to guide us to our destination, but they're going to ask you for compensation, which can really drain your cash quickly. So Keyla and I quickly had to learn to say no to people, which can be tricky, because some of them were really persistent and adament about helping us.
While at our hostel we met 2 other guys from Mexico, Rúben and Luis, and we ended up going to see some of the sights with them. On the first night we were there, we just wandered around the central square.

The next morning, we went to the Jardín Marjorelle, which is a beautiful botanical garden. There's also a memorial there for the designer Yves Saint Laurent, who lived in Marrakech for most of his life.

After the gardens, we went wandered through the streets and went into some of the little shops. I found after a while that most of the shops were selling really similar goods - leather purses/backpacks, antiques, tea pots, or clothing. Since I´m not really in the market for any of that stuff, I wasn´t really tempted to buy anything. I did want some sort of souvenir, but so far I hadn´t seen it.

The next day, we went to see one of the palaces. We were looking at it on our map while eating breakfast, but when we compared our map to Luis´, we found that they didn´t really look at all similar. The city is a network of incredibly narrow streets that kind of start and stop out of nowhere, so none of the maps are similar, nor are they very accurate. Luckily, Luis had been to the palace yesterday, so he showed us how to get there on our map. It turned out to be really simple actually. So here are a few pictures of the palace:

While walking back from the palace, this store window caught my eye. It was filled with these glass teacups, handpainted and in every color imaginable. The shop owner saw us looking at the glasses and he invited us in to look around. His name is Selman (not sure on the spelling there) and he told us that his father owned the shop before him and his family makes and paints all of the glasses by hand, and the shop is known throughout Marrakech for the quality of the products there. His shop has even been featured in France´s edition of ELLE magazine - that´s something. However, despite all that good publicity, the shop is struggling to make it. Selman told us that we were his first clients in 2 whole days. We each bought a few teacups - I chose these lovely little blue ones that are hand-blown. I can´t wait to have them in my kitchen at home!

 

Here we are with Selman. He showed us how to wear the scarves like the women here. :)

We visited other sites around the city, such as the Museum of Marrakech and other buildings. Mostly the trip was a lot of wandering around and finding little shops and outdoor gardens. It was a really fun 3 days. :)

The full album of photos is posted on Facebook. Thanks for reading!

I´ve been doing a lot of thinking the past few days... not serious, studious, or academic thinking, but more along the lines of daydreaming. I wonder what things will be like when I get back. I wonder in what ways I´ll be different that I won´t become aware of until I´m in a (somewhat) new environment. Well, all this daydreaming has brought about a list of reverse culture shock that I´m expecting to notice once I´m home:

1. I will inevitably forget where I am and kiss someone hello on the cheeks. It´s bound to happen. Surely it will be awkward.

2. I´ll have to get used to smiling again. - That isn´t to say that I don´t smile or laugh here! Oh, boy, do I smile and laugh. I just don´t do those things while I´m walking down the sidewalk. In America, especially the Midwest, everyone is always smiling at passers-by on the streets, but here no one does that.

3. I´ll have to start remembering that in the U.S. when people say, "Let´s meet up at ten," they really mean ten. Not like here where "Let´s meet up at ten" translates roughly to, "Let´s meet up sometime around ten but I´ll probably be a good 15 to 20 minutes late depending on what I´m doing before...so I´ll see you sometime."

Other things don´t have to do with culture, but more with the amenities that I´m not used to having here, like a car to drive, or an electric stove and shower heater that doesn´t require me to light a gas burner to have hot water, or A/C.

Yeah... I´ll have some adjusting to do when I get home. :)

Thanks for reading!
I love you! xoxo

P.S. - There´s a post coming about my trip to Morocco, it´s just taking a long time to get it put together because our internet is running rrrreeeeeaaaaaallllllllyyyyyy slowly and the pictures are taking forever to upload... but I hope to have it up by Sunday. Or Monday. Promise.

"Don´t worry, it´s just a test."

My landlord, Carlos, came to the apartment last night to get the rent for June and to talk to us about last minute house-keeping things, like where we leave our keys when we all go and all that stuff. Anyway, he and I were chatting and he was asking me how my exams were going. I told him that I´ve taken 2 of the 3 that I have and that I´m nervous that I didn´t pass the first one. The school system here is structured so, so differently than in the U.S. First of all, there´s very little homework throughout the semester; I´ve had a few papers here and there and a couple of translation projects, but in other classes, such as my Music class, I haven´t had any coursework as of yet. So the final exam of a class ends up counting as 60% (or sometimes higher) of the final grade. That´s pressure, people.

So anyway, my first exam (in my Syntax class, which has been the biggest pain of this entire semester) didn´t go so well. I was telling my dad about it a few days ago on Skype. The layout of the test was really bizarre and the questions were incredibly ambiguous. I was glad to see a few multiple choice questions on there... until I realized that instead of giving us four options (A - D) to choose from, she gave us 15 choices (A - O). So yeah, at the end of the 3 hours I turned in my test and there were still some Spanish students working on theirs - and they were the kids that were always in class and took really copious notes. So that made me nervous as well... I´m not sure when we´ll know the grades, but I hope it´s soon.

At least the weather has been kind of cloudy and rainy... nothing is worse than having to stay inside and study on a nice, sunny day.

What!? I have to leave? Didn't I just get here?

This whole experience has really warped my sense of time. When I got here in January, it felt like I had a millenium of time before my departure date. It took about 3 weeks for me to feel like I really lived here rather than being on vacation, even after getting my Foreign ID number and opening a bank account. Once classes started I really fell into a rhythm of being here and I fell farther into the fantasy that I would never have to leave.

But the weeks on the hand-written calendar on my wall are slowly getting crossed off. There are only 4 left. At times I feel really excited about the idea of going home and seeing all of the faces that I´ve been missing, but a part of me is still in denial of leaving because I don´t want to have to say goodbye to all of the people I´ve grown so close to here.

I´m trying not to think about that and focusing on crossing things off my To-Do list. My agenda includes, study for my 2 remaining finals, go to Granada, write 5 music essays, go to Marrakech, Morroco with my roommates, finish my translation project, plan for when my family is here, and go to Segovia.

I guess I better get busy. :)