Day 37: DST

Today was a lazy sunday. Last night, Morocco "sprang forward" as a result of Daylight Savings Time so now the time difference is one hour greater from home (+5 hours from EST). I slept in until 10, which was really 11, and this kind of set the tone for the day. I turned down eggs in favor of toast for breakfast and watched some of Step Up 3 with Lotfi. I'm a bigger fan of Step Up 2: The Streets, but you get what you get and you don't get upset, especially when it's in English. I spent the rest of the morning watching 8 episodes of 30 Rock in bed. Lunch was at 2 pm and was noodles, olives, and chicken, all mixed together. After lunch, I met up with Marissa and Elle to do something fun. Unfortunately, it was raining and we were all tired, so we decided to just go to the riad and try to watch a movie. However, because of the time change, the riad opened an hour later than we expected. We couldn't get a movie to load on Netflix, so we spent 3 hours just hanging out. We went home at 7:30 and I decided to start doing work for the week. I read all of Tahar Ben Jelloun's The Sand Child, which I am presenting on this week. It is about a family of 7 girls. When the 8th child is born, the father decides, regardless of gender, the child will be a boy to the world. The story is told from the point of view of storytellers in a square in Marrakesh who read the story of the child from a diary the person left on their death bed. It was interesting how the narrative unfolded especially once Ahmed hit puberty and after the death of the father, who had been controlling this whole scheme. I worked on my presentation, watched some of "The Longest Yard" with my brothers, and then went to bed by midnight.

Not a very interesting post...

Putting up pictures tomorrow morning

Day 36: Paradise Beach and the Cattle Car

We slept in today which was a good idea because the forecast called for clouds and rain all day. There was a delicious breakfast buffet upstairs of Moroccan pancakes, whole grain bread, and croissants. After breakfast, we packed up and decided to brave the wind and clouds and walk to Paradise Beach 3 km to the south of the city. You could take a horse and buggy there but we didn't want to pay for it and had the time to walk. Our journey took us on a dirt/mud road along the coastal cliffs to Paradise Beach. 

A stretch of road we got to walk on

It was really scenic, despite the clouds, and I got to be a little boy and climb on some big rocks and jump around as we hiked. We got some stunning views, but, unfortunately, my camera was not charged, so it died 30 minutes into the walk. We got to the beach at 1 and it was low tide and sunny. Most surprisingly, we had the whole stretch of coast line to ourselves! We walked along the pristine beach, dipped our toes in the cold water, and drew some in the sand. We found a washed-up jellyfish which prompted my naturist tour guide alter ego Scuba Steve to give an anatomical discussion about jellyfish and to show them how you could pick it up. It seemed like Elle's Wyoming mind melted, but that might have just been her eyes glazing over as I got my nerd on at the beach. We stayed there for about an hour until a storm began to roll in from the ocean (Scuba Steve used Eagle Scout knowledge to predict and explain this and to also portend the storm movement based on wind patterns). Because of this, we scrambled up the cliff side and began to briskly walk back towards Assilah in the rain. It only rained on us for 15 minutes because the storm was blowing north, but the hike was a cold and wet one. Hungry and wet, we went to a restaurant for lunch, only desiring warm food. As a result, I got calamari again which didn't help me much because it wasn't that warm and didn't really fill me up either. So afterwards, Elle and I went and got these awesome ice cream treats. Though the price point was slightly steep (15 dh! What is this? It felt like a bread shortage in North Korea), they were the most incredible treats you could imagine. They were half ice cream bar (ICB) and half ice cream sandwich (ICS)! To properly gorge yourself, you first hold the ICS part while feasting on the ICB side. Once done, you flip it over to start on the end of the ICS half. We had them on Friday and just had to have them again on Saturday. It was a culinary revelation on par with other major breakthroughs from the past couple of centuries like salting your meat, putting cheese on an angus patty, or mashing tomatoes and naming the delicious result, ketchup. 

Paradise Beach!

We went back and bought our art just before the rain picked up again. We sat in a gallery and had tea while we waited for it to blow over. At 5:15, we went back to the hostel to pick up our stuff. Christina, the hostel owner, proved she was crazy by first not answering the door for 15 minutes while we stood in the rain, then forgetting that we had stored our stuff in her room, and lastly, despite living in Assilah for 5 years, not knowing where to grab a cab or the number to call to catch one. We showed up at a cab stand that we had remembered passing at 5:45, believing our train left at 6. There were no taxis in sight. Instead, a horse and buggy pulled up who said they could get us there in 10 minutes. Rather than just jump in, Marissa tried to BARGAIN the price down from 50 dh to 30 dh. Why she did this still eludes me, but we only paid 30 dh and made it to the train station in under 10 minutes. Fortunately, the train didn't leave until 6:15, but that horse ride would be the first of many strange occurrences on this journey home.

The train showed up 10 minutes late. As we soon found out, it was because it was more crowded than a JC Penney's on Black Friday. We pushed and shoved our way onto a car and settled down comfortably in the aisle. I punched a man in the face getting on but exercised my right as an American to not have to say sorry. We sat in the crowded aisle for 45 minutes, praying someone wouldn't pull the fire alarm before we got one seat. Elle and I shared this seat while Marissa continued to sit on the floor. Then we got another seat that Marissa and I shared so that Elle could do work. For the hour and a half ride, Marissa and I kept passing my phone back and forth and typing messages about the various characters around us (they transcended being just normal people into the realm of character-dom). When we switched trains, we pushed and shoved our way into an 8 person compartment. At this point, we also decided it was time to discretely finish off what was left of the vodka and that we had been keeping in a diet coke bottle. We took turns taking swigs and chasing the swigs with cheddar pringles and pistachios. We ended up having a phenomenal train ride back to Fes where we openly discussed intercourse in front of Moroccans and taught them about American rap music. Marissa and I also talked a lot in Spanish to one of our compartment mates who was from Lebanon. What can I say, I get pretty multicultural and multilingual when I drink!

Toes in the water

We were back in Fes by 9:45 and home by 10. The whole way home, I debated and talked to the cabbie in Arabic (I was still feeling pretty "multicultural" at this point). I talked to my family some when I got home because they were all still up. After, I talked to my American family some too. Shout out to Sarah and her water polo team for winning their fourth consecutive state championship (her first!). Went to bed at like 11.

Day 35: The Streets of Assilah

My early morning did not begin as early as it should have. We decided to meet at Batha at 6:30, but that was when I woke up. Sleepy Andrew woke up at 6, turned off the beeping alarm, and fell back asleep until Lla Fatima came in to check on me and found me still asleep! I hurried down to Batha and got there at 6:50, so we still had plenty of time to get to the train station and catch our 7:10 train. 

Elle, Marissa, and I made it and began our journey to Assilah. We talked for the whole four hour train ride. We had to switch trains at one point too, something we didn't know ahead of time. Luckily, Elle noticed, so we didn't miss our switch. We pulled into Assilah at 11:45 to a very sunny and windy day.

Ramparts by the coast

Rather than pay 40 dh for a cab to drive us the two kilometers from the train station to the medina, we walked along the beach-side boulevard to the walls of the medina. We stopped along the way at a restaurant called Casa Garcia for some lunch. They imported ham from Spain, sold wine, and served delicious seafood. We walked around the walled-in medina some before a faux guide walked us to our hostel which was actually in the Ville Nouvelle. We stayed in a place called Christina's House, owned by a British ex-pat in her 60's. As we later would find out, though the hostel was very nice, Christina was, what we would call in American slang, a bit "cray-cray." 

A wall of murals in Assilah

In the afternoon, we walked around the medina and checked out the cool murals. Every August, Assilah has a festival where they invite artists to paint murals on certain walls. It creates a medina that is a neat combination of white houses and colorful houses, interspersed with crazy murals, all right on the Atlantic coast. We checked out some galleries and went to some spots where you could climb on the old ramparts. We took so many pictures and went to a cool art-shop where Elle and I each negotiated buying paintings. The artist was super nice and spoke better Spanish than English, so I got to practice my Spanish with him. Being only 50 kilometers from Tangiers, almost everyone spoke Spanish in addition to French and Dirija, so Marissa and I spoke a lot of Spanish this weekend. After walking around the medina, we walked down to the waters edge and hung out on some big rocks where there were tide pools because of the low tide.

Man at Work

At 5, it dawned on us that it was 5 o'clock somewhere, and that somewhere was in Assilah, so we went back to the hostel and split a bottle of wine while sitting on the roof. We went to dinner on the main boulevard that draws the line between the Medina's ramparts and the Ville Nouvelle. I had some delicious calamari. After dinner, it was about 8 o'clock, which meant it was approaching 5 o'clock in Argentina, Brazil, and Greenland, so we brought out a small bottle of vodka, made mixed drinks, and played a fun card game called Kings, where you take turns drawing cards and each card represents a different sort of activity such as having to rhyme words, point up, or all the guys/girls have to take a sip. Drawing a Jack allows you to make up a new rule for the duration of the game, such as you must refer to each other only by last name or you can only hold your drink with your left hand. An infraction result in a penalty of sips. The three of us had a blast playing Kings and ended up laughing for two to three hours straight. Elle laughed so hard at one point that she threw up a little on the floor! We ended up falling asleep all snuggled up together in the queen bed after a very successful Friday.

Day 34: Trials

Today was a looooonnnnnngggg day. Shower, toast, walk to school was how I kicked things off. Then began a 8.5 hour day at ALIF. In Arabic, we had a big quiz but all of our fretting the past couple of days was for naught because it was pretty easy. I skipped going home for lunch and went to Casa Nostra with Christie, Tash, Joe, and Meredith so that I could spend some time studying for our Gender in the Medina midterm during the lunch break. We had the first 30 minutes of class to respond to one of two questions in a two-page essay. I think it went pretty well too. She lectured for the remainder of class, but at 4 o'clock we still weren't done. We had a guest lecturer, Prof. Sadiqi's husband, who was going to speak to us for an hour about language and education policy. While the talk was interesting, most of us were too burned out to really appreciate his lecture. He also spoke until 5:30, which didn't make matters any better. 

"Leap Day William" from the 30 Rock episode

Free from class, we decided to celebrate by having wine o'clock in the afternoon. Although there is no where we can really drink, this has never stopped a Dartmouth man before. We decided to discretely take mixed drinks into the riad and just hung out and listened to music. We played a fun game with the Leap Day episode of 30 Rock where we had to take a sip whenever they said "Leap Day." We ended up hanging out from 6 to 9 and all involved parties had fun. Afterwards, I went home for dinner and to Skype my friend Abby Cohen. We had a lot of fun talking, laughing, and catching up. Afterwards, I watched some more 30 Rock on my laptop, packed, and went to bed. 

Day 33: A Discourse on Pringles

Today was a rough day because of the presentation I had to give and all the studying I have to do for Thursday. While the presentation went well (I got an email after from her saying I did a good job!) and the studying has been coming along well too, I will just ignore discussing these facets of my day in this post.

Usual start to my day: toast, 7:30 wake-up, skipped a shower, walked to school. I got chided by some of the people on my program who get to take cold showers every other day for passing up the chance to take my daily hot shower! Arabic in the morning, lunch at the center, and then Lla Mary Jean's class in the afternoon. I got caught up on Modern Family and How I Met Your Mother during study breaks in the riad and at home. I skyped with Maddie for an hour but didn't really communicate much with America otherwise.

This post has been curt because I'm struggling. For weeks now, I have been falling into a downward spiral, a black hole, a dark chasm… addiction. I have become addicted to red tubes of Pringles since I got here, eating a small one for 10 dh every afternoon on the walk home. There are three Pringles dealers I usually go to: the food stand at school where they only sell the Red and Green small tubes for 10 dh, the Australian women on the walk home who also sells the Paprika variety but ups the price to 12 dh (I like to justify paying the higher price as paying for service in English), and, lastly, the grocer just outside the Riad who, if I can hold out for that long, sells a full tube for 22 dh and even has multi-grain sour-cream and onions Pringles. While I have stuck to consuming only the Red Pringles, I have since recategorized them as "gateway potato chips" because I have also developed a craving for the Cheddar Cheese flavor, one that I haven't been able to find. I have also seen other flavors such as a mysterious purple tube of unknown taste sensations and a Jalapeño flavor, but I don't think I have fallen far enough to try to eat those. 

I didn't realize I had a Pringle problem until yesterday when it dawned on me while making a duck bill with two chips. I realized that I had used the phrase "Once you pop, the fun don't stop" 6 times this week, which is six times more than you are allowed to say it in your whole life. I also realized my addiction developed as a coping mechanism with a tajine chicken diet and the lack of chicken tenders in my life. I've begun working with my host grandmother to help me overcome my problem, as she used to be addicted to raw artichoke. This explains why she never eats it when we have it for lunch, which I had attributed to her being an old wise women who had realized decades ago that artichoke is not meant to be eaten raw. 

Never Again, Mr. Pringles

I'll let you know how my recovery goes. In the mean time, I've got a midterm tomorrow to study for. Anything to keep my mind of that salty crunch.

Day 32: The Baguette Strikes Back

Unfortunately, this post has nothing to do with Star Wars; I have just been dying to make a Star Wars reference.

Today was not a good day food-wise. The return of goat milk yesterday should have been seen as an omen of bad news to come. At breakfast today, I had my choice of day-old khubz (bread) or the dreaded baguette. On the bright side, my parents ate breakfast with me. I just drowned my sorrow in nutella and tried to move on with my day.

In Arabic, we learned a lot of really useful phrases and verb conjugations today to help us better express our wants, as in I want to play soccer with you(ana bgheet nlAb lkara maAk), you want to buy a kilo of tomatoes (n'ta bgheetee tshree kilo dyal taneesha), and we don't want to go to school (Hna mabgheenash nmshaaoo l'mddrasa).

Unfortunately, I did not tell my family "ana mabgheetsh n'kool heut." As you try to struggle through that last sentence, Spoiler Alert: this story ends with me eating fried sardines for lunch. I politely ate half of one and just ignored the rest. The fruit salad for dessert made up for it though.

Taken from google images. Fortunately, there weren't this many on my plate

Class in the afternoon was interesting and I followed it up with some time in the riad doing more readings. I have two more articles left. Unfortunately, they are 50 and 90 pages each. I watched a hilarious episode of Modern Family as a study break and also skyped with my friend Paul Finklestein back at Dartmouth. Most of the night was spent finishing my write-up for Year of the Elephant because I had to do some outside research about Islamic Feminism.

Lastly, in travel news, plans to travel to Spain this weekend have been nixed. Instead, Marissa, Elle, and I are going to travel to the beach town of Asilah on Friday. It's like 50 km south of Tangiers and supposed to be gorgeous. We're leaving on Friday during the day day and coming back on Saturday night, so we can hammer out work on Thursday and Sunday. Should be a pretty low-key, recovery weekend at the beach.

Day 31: Tired

It's hard to get back at 8 o'clock on Sunday from a great weekend like that and not feel completely exhausted. Rather than try to resist, I embraced my lack of energy and spent the whole day in a groggy state of affairs.
Breakfast was more toast and some goat milk. Arabic was long. I walked all four directions to and from school. Lunch was tagine with carrots and some fruit salad for dessert. I managed to dodge a bullet in the afternoon and didn't have to do my presentation on Welcome to Paradise because we watched a powerpoint about Orientalist art. It's European artwork that's not nearly as fun to look at because the women in the paintings aren't allowed to be naked.
This week is going to be hard because it's midterms period. Ranting for a minute:
Tuesday - 3 page paper due summarizing my Year of the Elephant presentation from last week
Wednesday - Welcome to Paradise Presentation
Thursday - Arabic Quiz and Gender in the Medina midterm (have to read 220 pages of articles before then)
Monday - Sand Child presentation
Wednesday - Arabic Quiz and Lla MJ's midterm and Welcome to Paradise 3 page paper due

Not sure if Spain is going to happen this weekend because this week has the brunt of the work on the program. As much as it pains me to say it, work takes precedence over adventures. As a result, I spent 3 hours doing readings in the riad this afternoon, spent some time after dinner working on my write-up and refining my presentation for wednesday, and am dreading the rest of the afternoons and nights between now and Thursday. Sorry for the depressing write-up. Don't worry it's not that time of month for me. Here's a silly picture to make up for it.

New Look

Today I started using the new interface for Blogger. It's much cleaner and streamlined on the blog management side of things. One of the options available to me now are new templates. I switched the blog over to a more dynamic template, hence the different page you're looking at now. You can switch the way you read the blog by clicking the drop down menu on the top left. I personally enjoy the "Sidebar" style the most but try them all out and find the one you like the most! For fans of the old look, I recommend the "Classic" style. To access the list of labels or to subscribe, you scroll your mouse over the right side of the page and a little menu will pop out. 

Day 30: Return from Chefchaouen

We all woke up at 9:30 and hopped into the queen bed Marissa and Elle have been sharing to talk and snuggle. We didn't really have a plan for the day and we had done most of the highlights that Chefchaouen has to offer. We had breakfast at a cafe on the main square where they had some pretty good milkshakes.

Afterwards, we checked out of our hostel and went shopping. They had a lot of cool art of the blue city and some cool tapestries of Chefchaouen, but if I'm going to get a tapestry, I'd rather get one that says something about Fes on it. Alice got a cool bag and I got a pretty exciting sweater. I bargained him down from 300 to 120 and had some fun. He held at 160, but I got him to crack. I'm convinced I could have gotten it a little lower, but not a bad deal nonetheless. I'm considering joining the amateur bargaining circuit.

The new sweater

We sat in a cafe for two hours and just talked and people watched. I had some kebabs (brochettes) for lunch, but they weren't that good. At 2:30, we walked down to the bus station for our 3:20 bus. We had the entire back row together which was nice because there wasn't a single free seat on the bus. There were a bunch of Australians on the bus with us too. I spent the whole ride listening to music and looking out the window because I had finished my reading on the bus ride to Chefchaouen. For the hour and a half, as the sun set, the girls quit reading and we talked the rest of the way home.

Sights on the drive home

We got back to Fes at 7:30 and were home by 8, despite almost being killed by the reckless Moroccan taxi driver. It's incredible how much faith we put in these guys who drive stick-shift clown-cars haphazardly at lightning speeds around the city for no more than $1.50. I spent the rest of the night working on a presentation for class tomorrow on Welcome to Paradise and catching up with people on Facebook chat.

Sunset hits the mountains outside of Fes

Day 29: The God's Bridge

I started my day by retching my brains out at 7 in the morning. Because of the cavernous nature of the bathroom, I'm pretty sure the entire hostel could hear me vomiting. It was just a bout of food poisoning that I was over by 11 but the bad news was that it meant I missed the 8 o'clock departure for the hike. 

On the bright side, Joe, Tash, and Meredith showed up at our hostel at 11 am to check-up on me. They had arranged through their hostel owner to drive out to nearby Tesseltamane National Park to do some hiking. I joined them on this excursion and we had a blast. The drive deeper into the Rif was even prettier than our drive yesterday and sitting in the front seat, I got a ton of pictures. 

Once we showed up at the park, we hiked along a bright blue river (from saturated minerals like copper) into a valley to see a site called the God's Bridge. It's a giant natural arch that is 25 m (~82 ft) above the valley floor. The hike was only about a mile and a half each way but steep switchbacks were a pretty prominent feature. We took a bunch of pictures on the walk and made it all the way out to the arch pretty quickly. We could stand on top of it and look over the edge. On the way back, we tried to take a small trail that wound along the other side of the valley, but it quickly turned into a combination of hiking, rock climbing, and slipping. After 20 minutes of scrambling down this trail, we decided to cut our losses and go back to the arch and go home the normal way. While scurrying back, we kept slipping down the steep dusty path. It was so bad that by the end of it, Tash had dirt permanently adhering to her butt crack so that it looked like she had crapped herself while we hiked. I'm don't think she has been able to get it all out. All in all, the whole area was gorgeous and we were so sweaty by the end of midday hiking.

God's Bridge is behind Meredith

We got back to Chefchaouen at 3 and cooled off in the hostel. We then ate lunch at a restaurant in the square; this is quickly becoming a motif of this weekend. After lunch, I went back to shower before the other girls got back and said goodbye to Joe Tash and Meredith because they were leaving for Fes at 6. 

The other group came back at 5:15 and had had a great day. They made it to the summit and spent two hours up there, eating lunch and resting. Once we had all showered, we began to look for restaurants off of the main square to eat dinner at. We found one and ate on the terrace but the meal was kind of marred by our position right next to the disgusting bathroom. Fortunately, I wasn't eating so it didn't affect me too much, but I think it added some unsatisfactory extra flavors to the others' food. After dinner, we hung out with 8 international travelers on the terrace of the hostel. It was a mix of British guys, German people, a Lithuanian, and a Norwegian, and it was fun to talk to them. We retired at 11, excited by the prospect of sleeping in after hard days of hiking.

Be sure to check out the pictures I put up yesterday:

https://www.facebook.com/andrewrobe

Day 28: 420 in Chefchaouen

Happy 420 Day readers! For those of you more aged viewers out there, 420 is an unofficial American holiday celebrating the use of marijuana. It is so named, and celebrated on April 20th, because 420 was the code number used by the San Rafael county police back in the 1970's to report a "marijuana smoking in progress." (cite Huffington Post). Ironically enough, we decided to begin our trip to Chefchaouen today, commonly referred to as the marijuana capital of the world. 

Before I get into the details of our incredible day, I'm going to generally talk about Chefchaouen. As mentioned in the previous post, it is called the "Blue city" because of the color of the walls, streets, and buildings that comprise this town of 45,000. It is tucked up between two mountains in the Rif Mountain area of Morocco. The Rif is notorious as a "land beyond the law" (cite Lonely Planet guidebook). Although guns are illegal in Morocco, many people in the Rif own guns. This is because of the marijuana plantations. A whopping 42% of the world's marijuana is grown in the Rif (cite Lonely Planet guide book). Even right outside of Chefchaouen's walls, the mountainsides are covered with plantations growing massive amounts of pot. When Morocco petitioned to join the European Union, they were denied admission because they refused to crack down on the marijuana farmers in the Rif Mountains. Walking around Chefchaouen is a little daunting as a male because you get frequently propositioned to buy marijuana (called kief) or hashish. I got asked over 20 times on Friday as we walked around. Despite these facts, Chefchaouen is a very safe city and the countryside is safe too as long as you are smart.

We took two taxis from Batha at 7:15 am to the CTM bus station in the Ville Nouvelle. Round trip tickets were only 130 dh! Over the four hour drive, I read Mahi Binebine's Welcome to Paradise, a fantastic book about a group of immigrants' histories as they recount their pasts before trying to cross the Straits of Gibraltar to Algeciras. It was riveting. Fortunately, it only took two hours for me to read, so, for the other two hours, I drooled as I looked out the window while listening to live albums by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. The drive was incredible; if there is one drive I recommend in Morocco, it is a trip through the Rif mountains. I'm not going to try to describe what I saw because there just aren't words for it. It will shatter anyone's preconceived opinions about Morocco because it was just so green. 

We pulled into Chefchaouen just after noon and began to climb hills. The city rivals San Francisco in terms of all the hills contained within the city limits. Rarely is there flat ground; it's all blue steps everywhere you turn. Our group of 7 was staying in two hostels:

Alice Meredith Tash and Joe were staying in Riad Baraka

Andrew Marissa and Elle were staying in Hostel Souika

We split up to find our hostels and eat lunch and then rendezvoused in the afternoon. Marissa, Elle, and I spent some time after lunch walking around, taking pictures, and figuring out how to navigate the small medina. When we met up with the others, we hung out on the terrace at their hostel to take in some golden afternoon sun and look out over the valley. We split up again an hour later because some people didn't have return tickets home yet, so, when they left to buy them, a group of us hiked 2 km up to a nearby Spanish mosque that overlooked the city to watch the sunset. It was gorgeous and we took a bunch of pictures up there.

Once the sun set, we all went back to the main plaza for some dinner. After dinner, we just hung out at the other group's hostel and talked for a while. We then went home to rest up because Alice, Elle, Marissa, and I were planning on doing a full day hike tomorrow to summit a nearby mountain and take in the views.

Day 27: Tea with Alums and Leila Abouzeid

Today was a change of pace. Rather than class, we had an interview with Leila Abouzeid, a Moroccan author who wrote two of the six books we are reading this term. We discussed her books, Year of the Elephant and Return to Childhood, in addition to her thoughts on the Islamic feminist movement, Islam in Morocco, and the evolution of Moroccan society since independence. Based off of her books and our discussion, she is clearly a big proponent for the advancement of women in Morocco and supports what would be considered "radical" views on social life and politics. It was fun to talk to her all morning as we sat in a big circle in a classroom at ALIF. The interview lasted from 10 to 12, at which point we were free until the late afternoon.

I walked home with the group and we tried to buy some "Berber" sweaters in the Medina. We weren't getting very good prices because we were in such a large group, so I opted to go home for lunch and return later by myself. For lunch, we had some tagine. I rested up after lunch and then went back to the main street, Kbira, by myself. I bought a navy blue zip up sweater at a pretty good price. He started at 600, I said 80. He brought it down to 500, I said 80. He said 500 again, so I left. The walkaway won. He said 300. I said 80. He said 200. I said 80. Then the real negotiating began. He refused to drop the price below 200, so I walked out. When he didn't chase me, I went back and said 100. He said 180, I said 100. He said 170, I said 100. He said 170, I said 100. He said 160, I said 100. After some more back and forth, he refused to go down from 150 so I left. As I was leaving, the other sales guy said 120, so I went back in. When I kept trying to get him down to 100, he threw me out of the store, so I settled at 120. Considering that Alice and Christie had bought them earlier for 170 and 250, respectively, earlier that day, I was pretty happy with my bargaining.

I then wove my way through the Medina to the Sofitel Palais Jamai hotel, a gorgeous hotel that overlooks the medina. We were supposed to have tea with an alumni tour that Si Ron is leading around Morocco for two weeks. We weren't that excited about it, but it ended up being a TON of fun! All of them were from before the integration of women at Dartmouth, but they all had their wives with them. They had some cool stories and I even met a man who lived in my fraternity back in the 50's before it became Alpha Chi! After an hour and a half, it was time to leave. Our group left the alumni and went to Cafe Scorpion to hang out. I got home at 8 in time for a delicious dinner. After dinner, I packed for our trip to Chefchaouen and did some Facebook chatting and skyping to get caught up with people back in the States. I've also begun to watch a show called Through the Worm Hole with Morgan Freeman, a cool show about the crazy theoretical physics that scientists are doing around the world. Each show has a question that they discuss. The three episodes I have seen attempted to answer: Does God exist?, What are black holes?, and Is time travel possible? It's nice to see something really academic like this finding popularity on American cable television. Time for bed because we have an 8 am bus tomorrow!

Back in Fes; New Pictures

The fifth album, featuring all of the pictures I took in the Rif mountains and Chefchaouen this weekend, is up on Facebook. Try this link:

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151543299820461.837400.867195460&type=3&l=ff45da39af


I heard that sometimes the links are not working, so as an alternative method, just go to my profile and click on My Photos to see all the albums.

http://www.facebook.com/andrewrobe

Day 26: Untitled

Today I had more toast. Yes, for those of you who have been keeping track, I have had something other than baguette for breakfast every day for more than a week now. What a game-changer.

We had a tricky quiz in Arabic class today, which was made even harder because we didn’t know we were going to have one. I think I did well though by cramming effectively. We had lunch at ALIF today, our weekly lunch with Lla MJ to check in and catch-up.

Class in the afternoon was long. Even though we’ve been doing this 5-hours-a-day schedule for a couple weeks now, I don’t think any of us will ever get used to it. It’s hard to believe I used to do 7+ hour days of class in high school, but I think the 45 minute classes (my attention span) and the variety of subject material covered in a single day made it more feasible. Sitting in one subject for over an hour and a half is just unbearable.

We went to Café Scorpion this afternoon to hang out and plan the upcoming weekend. We decided not to go to Jazzablanca in Casablanca because the price of tickets did not mirror the amount of love we have for the artists we would be seeing. Instead, there are two groups of us going to Chefchaouen, a city in the Rif mountains. It’s one of theplaces to visit while you’re in Morocco because the entire city is painted blue. If you don’t believe me, copy and paste the name into Google Images (trust me, you won’t be able to spell it correctly). It was also closed to all foreigners until the 1920 when the Spanish took it over. Only three foreigners (all of whom disguised themselves) had been within the city walls before that. Marissa, Elle, and I are going on Friday morning, doing an all day hike on Saturday, and coming back on Sunday, while the other group is going on Friday morning and coming back on Saturday.

While in the café, I skyped with Maddie for 20 minutes. While not the longest conversation, it was nice to catch-up with her. They went to a farm in the countryside all weekend where they rode horses and did some other fun gaucho things. She’s excited because she and a group of friends just booked a trip to see the Moreno glaciers and visit El Calafate during their week-long break.

I went home for a diner of meatballs and soup. I read some Scar Tissue and watched the first 45 minutes of the 4^th Pirates of the Carribbean movie before going to bed. Tomorrow we have an interview with the author Leila Abouzeid in the morning and no class in the afternoon so we are all excited to start the weekend early.

Day 25: The Network

Still tired after the weekend and staying up late working on my project. Rolled out of bed, ate more toast, and walked to school. Arabic class was long today. Then I chose not to go home for lunch and to go to Chicken Mac with Christie and Ron so that I had some time to finalize my presentation before class. Walking home for lunch would have only given me like a half hour of time to work because I get home at 1, eat till 1:20, leave to walk back at 1:30, and then have 15 minutes before class to work. Alternatively, eating at chicken mac meant I had from 1 - 2:30 to sit and work.

The presentation went well. I had to discuss how the author, Leila Abouzeid, reconciles her Islamic Feminism with her faith in the book. After class, I walked home with Joe, Tash, and Meredith and hung out at Tash and Meredith's house. Their older host brother was over with his wife and 7 month-old baby so it was fun to play with the baby and eat cookies. They were basically throwing her around like a rag doll! Afterwards we did some work on the roof before I went home for dinner.

Dinner was good: spicy noodles and veggie soup with an egg and meat casserole that you put in your bread. Meals are so funny in my opinion because we always watch the same four shows at lunch and dinner. They are:

Egyptian Soap opera - follows people who dress in the colonial style. Not sure what's going on but it's clearly dubbed in Dirija. Recently, there was a huge wedding followed by an episode where a woman gave birth to a stillborn child.
Turkish Soap opera - a show about people who dress like they are in the 1940's. In the episode we watched last night, there was a pretty exciting car chase where some soldiers chased a man they thought had drugged a royal woman, but it turns out, the woman had been put in another car. My mind was blown!
Studio 2M - a show kind of like American Idol where they sing songs in both Arabic and English. I've seen women perform Adele and Jessie J, but we don't watch this program that often. There are three judges who critique people but I can't decide if they rate on a scale of 15 or 20 because I've never seen higher than a 14. They do text-to-vote but I'm not sure if anyone has actually been kicked off the show yet. This show is pretty popular, but competes with Arab Idol, which is on a rival network.
The News - self-explanatory

After dinner, I read some more Scar Tissue and hung out with my brothers before bed.

Day 24: The Day to Day

Exhausted after a fun weekend, I slept well. Lla Fatima surprised me by giving me toast again for breakfast. I walked to school with the usual crew and made it in time for Arabic class. Arabic has been getting a lot harder because the volume of what we have learned has started to explode as we have begun to learn verb tenses, verbs, and their conjugations. I went home for an artichoke-free lunch and then walked back to school by myself. I put on my djellaba with my headphones underneath and had a very introspective walk back. This week, we have four classes with Lla MJ to make up for having four classes with Prof. Sadiqi last week.

After class, Christie and I went to Maroc Telecom so she could buy a wi-fi stick and I could get mine fixed. Turned out, it has a data limit of 3GB per 200 dh so I had used all that up. I've got internet back though, so I'm happy to spend the money. We then went to the riad where I got some work done and skyped Mom and Amanda. They caught me up on what's going on at home and revealed to me the details for our June 2nd to June 11th trip to the Galapagos!

Afterwards, I went home and read some Scar Tissue after dinner. I have a presentation tomorrow on The Year of the Elephant so I spent some time preparing for it too.

If you still haven't checked them yet, check out the pictures I put up from the weekend.

Day 23: Home

So once we got to the 5 o'clock train, it was time to pass out. We got back to Fes at 12 so we basically had a whole day at home today. I went home and napped, ate lunch, and hung out with my family some. In the afternoon, Elle, Marissa, and I rendezvoused to go shopping for four items I wanted:
1. Pineapple - I was craving it
2. Watermelon - I was craving it too
3. Prune Juice - I was having issues
4. Djellabah - Because one is not enough. Mine is like a business djellaba, so I needed a cocktail chic djellaba to complement it.

Of these items, all I got was a bag of dried apricots. We were too tired to hunt in-depth so we went back to my house and watched the movie Like Crazy, the winner of the Grand Prize for documentaries at Sundance in 2011. It's a sad movie about a college couple who have visa issues once they graduate because the girl is British and overstays her student visa. I had seen it in the winter and liked it, so I enlightened them too.

After the movie, we went to Cafe Clock where we met up with Christie to tell her about our adventures and to hear about the fun weekend they had in Marseille. At 7:30 it was time to head home for dinner. I spent the night starting Anthony Kiedis' autobiography Scar Tissue, which is about the formation of the Red Hot Chili Peppers and his battle with drug addiction that started in his teenage years. Afterwards, it was time for bed.

Day 22: Waterfalls, Food Stalls, and the Jad Mahal

Another 7:30 morning today after our 3 hours of sleep. The whole canyoning crew, Meredith, Ariel, Marissa, Elle, and I, managed to rouse themselves and make it to breakfast at 8:30. More delicious pancakes and OJ before we left to meet the canyoning van at the same part of the square where we met the ATV'ing van yesterday. There we met our guide, a Scotsman named Andy Robertson. Too funny! Soon after, we left for the Ourika Valley in the Atlas Mountains two hours away. There were two other guides in our car, one from South Africa and the other from the UK. They had such cool stories and told us all about what we would be doing today. Unfortunately, we were dropping them off so they could lead a whitewater rafting trip, but Andy and his girlfriend took us to the canyon. The drive through the mountains was gorgeous and we could see snow-covered peaks the whole time. We got to our destination just before noon and stopped at a small restaurant to put our wetsuits on. We all had blue or black wetsuits, yellow helmets, and borrowed trainers. My borrowed shoes were a size and a half too small, so, by the end of the adventure, my toes had poked through. 

From the drive out

We spent about two and a half hours canyoning. It's a relatively new adventure sport that combines mountaineering and hiking. The critically-acclaimed movie "127 Hours", about the man who gets trapped in a canyon and has to cut his own arm off, is about a canyoning expedition gone awry. You basically hike through a river, rappel down waterfalls and climb up small rock faces. It's all about getting from point A to point B and doing some really cool stuff in between. It was fun, jumping from rock to rock in the river and being in the outdoors for once. The water was pretty cold and it was in the 70's all day. We got really wet and everyone had a good time except for Marissa who couldn't stand the cold water. We rappelled down a 15 foot waterfall at the end and then, 10 seconds later, down a 35 ft waterfall! Because of the rain on Thursday, the river/creek was very full so we got huge facefuls of water as we rappelled. It was crazy fun though. Afterwards, we went back to the restaurant, changed and warmed up, and had some tea. I didn't take my camera on the trip because it's not water proof but Andy took a bunch of pictures that he is going to put up on his website for us. We returned to Marrakech at 4, had a warm and delicious KFC lunch, and met up with Joe and Tash. They had slept in and gone shopping all day. Joe is by far our best haggler so he got them some good deals (knocked a carpet down from 1800 dh to 300 dh!). We walked through the medina to the grocery store to get some wine o'clock preparations and then went home to shower and nap before dinner.

For dinner, we went to a food stall that Andy recommended to us, #117, cause it "takes you to heaven." We had delicious mixed meat kabobs and fries. Afterwards, we went back to drink the 60 dh vodka we had bought (that's less than $7.50) that tasted and smelled like sharpies washed with moist towellettes. We made friends with three other young people in the hostel and drank with them on the roof top. Their group was a 19 year-old boy from the Netherlands, a 21 year-old girl from Rochester Institute of Technology, and another 21 year-old American girl. The two girls had just finished studying in London and had met the boy in the morning. I got some nerd talk in with the girl from Rochester which was fun because everyone else on this trip it seems is an anthro or humanities major. 

We convinced them to come out with us at 10:45 to a bar Andy had told us about called Jad Mahal. It ended up being a really fun night. Firstly, the cover was only 100 dh and included a drink, so it was much cheaper than the night before from the get-go. Secondly, the bar had a ton of tables and a live band that covered Michael Jackson and a bunch of other fun 80's music like that. We had fun dancing to it and Joe kept flirting with the female back-up singer. He tried his hardest to get invited on stage, but to no avail. The final reason why it was so fun was that it was also connected by a hallway to the fancy club next door called Silver, so we didn't have to pay the more expensive cover to get in there but could go between the two as we pleased. Silver was underground and not nearly as large as Teatro was, but had a couple hundred disco balls on the ceiling. We danced there to the DJ's beats till like 3:30 and then decided to go home. 

In Club Silver with one of our new friends

On the way back, we realized we could take the 5 am train home, so we woke Marissa up when we got back (she hadn't been feeling well) and packed up. Although we disturbed our roommates again, we were in too big of a hurry to care. Marissa, Elle, and I speed-walked and ran in order to make it to the train station on time but the rest of the group took cabs. The three of us made it with like 10 minutes to spare! The train was packed though, so the three of us just got in a cart with two guys and fell asleep. It ended up being a long and loud train ride home, but it was worth our early morning hustle to make it home a couple hours earlier.

Day 21: ATV's, Monkeys, and Clubbing

We woke up at 7:30 in the morning to get ready for our big excursion of the day: ATV'ing! We further angered our three roommates (quickly becoming a theme of the trip) by getting up so early and having to fuss around, but we figure it's part of the silent contract you agree to when you book a 10 person room in a youth hostel. We had some delicious moroccan pancakes with jam for breakfast and fresh-squeezed orange juice, this country's breakfast drink of choice. 

We arrived at the van in the square a couple minutes later than our 8:45 pick-up, but it was fine. We drove around the medina for like 15 minutes, picking up other people, and then 20 minutes outside the city to where it instantly becomes rural and very arid. The ground isn't nearly as fertile in Marrakesh as it is around Fes. 

The group for our excursion was Joe, Tash, Meredith, and I. We were part of a larger group that had about another 10 - 12 people in it, but we didn't mind. When we got to the place, we quickly paid and got suited up in attractive green body suits and mounted our ATV's. The ATV'ing part lasted about 3 hours. We got to go so fast and each had our own so it was pretty fun. We went like 40 km that morning. We drove through an oasis or two, some berber villages, and even up a big hill to look out over the countryside. It was gorgeous and a little breezy so we never got too hot. It had rained a lot the night before so it was muddy, which made it even more fun! The highlight of the morning was Tash fell off her ATV at halfway through the morning and later mistakenly retold the story as she had "wiped shit" ("wiped out" combined with "ate shit" haha). We also stopped in a berber village on the way back to the base camp to drink tea and relax for a couple minutes. It was a really fun morning and we got lots of good pictures in a goofy jump suits. 

We got back at like 1:30 and walked around the main square, Jma el Fna square. Lots of street entertainers and food stalls were open and there were at least a couple thousand people in the square. Tash and I got handed some monkeys against our will and took some silly pictures with them. We got lunch at a cafe nearby and then went home to nap and recover.

After napping and showering, Tash and I walked around the medina some and met up with Ariel, Marissa, and Elle, who had spent part of the afternoon hanging out at a children's shelter and practicing their Arabic with the kids. We walked around the medina and square and I bought a Moroccan soccer jersey. Didn't do the best job haggling, but getting more experience. I practiced the walk-away technique, and it's definitely a solid go-to move.

For dinner, we went to a vegetarian restaurant called the Earth Cafe. It was decent, but some people had some really crappy food. I enjoyed mine though and have decided when I come home, I want to start eating peppers more often. There are some great vegetables out there. At the end of dinner, the power went out! We started freaking out in the small room we were in about how we would never get home, how things were worse than ever, how we were going to be accosted by strange men, but none of that happened. Instead, after waiting 15 minutes and not getting any power back, we paid and left. It turned out, one block away, they still had power! It was just like 6 or 7 blocks without power, so we were actually fine the whole time.

At 10, we decided we wanted to see the famous Marrakesh night life so we walked 20 minutes to Hotel El Saadi, a luxurious resort that looks like a 5 star rainforest that had been transplanted to the dessert. I had seen an ad for a club there called Teatro in the inflight magazine, so that's why we chose it. We didn't have our passports though, so we had to go home to get them and come back. It turned out, it didn't open till 12 anyways, so we had time to kill. We had to pay a 300 dh cover (like $35) but that included your first drink too. 

The club was an eye-opening experience. Short dresses, high heels, and liters of Grey Goose were the norm, the complete opposite of our Moroccan experience thus far. There also were many more guys than girls in the club. The club was multi-storied. There was a ground floor in the middle where the bar was and lots of tables were. Then there was a second floor on the left side with the dj and dance floor. On the opposite side, there was a huge balcony with tables. Above the dance floor was another balcony with tables that served as the VIP area. Because Joe and I were with the five girls, we got into the VIP area with no problems, but he ended up being asked to leave after 5 minutes, presumably because the thought he was a Moroccan teen! We had a lot of fun all dancing together and definitely ran the dance floor, dancing on tables and bleachers and showing Moroccans how Americans break it down. Drinks were very expensive (100 dh each), so we didn't drink that much.

At 3 o'clock, we noticed that the American rapper Lil Jon was down on the ground floor, spraying champagne and giving girls drinks. We went and took some pictures with him. It turns out that he is performing on Saturday and Sunday night at Teatro. Elle, Marissa, and I left at 3:45 after a fun 4 hours, but the rest of the group stayed till like 4:30. They told us that the bartenders lit the whole bar on fire and crazy sequined people wearing fire danced on it. It sounded like quite the show!

Despite the late hour, both groups walked home and had no trouble on the walk. We disturbed our roommates again, coming back in two waves, but we needed to sleep before our canyoning adventure the next morning!

New Pictures

Here's the link to my fourth album which includes everything we did this weekend with the exception of canyoneering. Our guide Andy had a water proof camera and will be putting the pictures online for us sometime in the coming days. Once they go up, I'm gonna grab them and bundle them with this album.


Album 4: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151500340135461.834016.867195460&type=1&l=981d7241b7

More Updates To Come

I just put up what I wrote about last tuesday, wednesday, and thursday. I didn't have my computer in Marrakech all weekend, so I'm behind on my blogging. I'm planning on playing catch-up tonight and tomorrow with pictures from the weekend being put up tomorrow morning.

In a nutshell, this weekend was so fun and all of our adventures were great. Everyone had a good time and we can't wait to go back to Marrakech in a couple weeks during our big trip now that we know where everything is and how the city works.

Day 20: Marrakech Begins

Today we depart. My first departure was from my home stay in the morning. I had baguettes again, but was pleasantly surprised when Fatima brought out pastries! I ate breakfast while packing and working on the internet situation. The wifi stick still isn't working, so I will need to look into after this weekend. 

Arabic class was as fun as it is every day. We also had our second quiz. This was followed by lunch at ALIF with Lla MJ. Afterwards, I withdrew some money and fidgeted my way through Prof. Sadiqi's class. 

When 4 o'clock rolled around, we ran out of ALIF to catch the 4:50 train to Marrakesh. We made our way through the slight downpour to the train station in 15 minutes and we're able to get some dinner before boarding the train. We got 8 seats together in 2 booths of 4 in 2nd class. The train ride was long (4:50 - 12:00 am), but it was fun to all hang out, talk, sleep, and eat. I read The Year of the Elephant on the train because we are discussing it next week in Lla MJ's class. That's the 5th book I've read since I got here!

We rolled into the Marrakesh station at midnight on the dot. It is a gorgeous train station, complete with a KFC. We took taxis to the main square, Jma el Fn, because our hostel was less than a two minute walk from there. The square is huge and always full of people. There are over a hundred food stands set up like make-shift restaurants in the middle of the square and they were still bustling at 12:30 at night. I stopped by one while Ariel and I waited for the other cabs to show up and had some delicious lamb. We moved into our hostel just before 1. Our ten person bunk room is a little cramped but the hostel is nice. Time to rest up before tomorrow's adventures!