¡Michelle va a Granada!: Morocco!

So I went to Africa for the weekend (how weird does that sound?!) Through CEGRI they organized this trip and there was basically a bus load of us, plus a few random (I mean random too) people. We went to Tetuan, Tanger and Chef-Chaouen. In only three cities we were able to see so much, since each city was really different. Friday mainly consisted of traveling, which seemed to take forever after a long bus ride, then ferry then bus into Tetuan. The views off the ferry were gorgeous and crossing into Morocco was quite interesting. From what we saw it looked like mass chaos, but I’m pretty sure it was just a regular day. There were lines of cars and people getting out of their cars and walking around, and then there were also tons of people just walking across the border. It took quite a while and we were instructed that we could not take pictures. We got situated into the hotel, Katie and I had dinner with a Japanese man who didn’t speak Spanish and barely understood English (I’m not sure how he got anything out of our basically all Spanish tour.) I asked him what he thought of Americans and Obama and he told me America is dangerous because we all use guns. He was pretty funny too because he was a little odd.

Saturday we got up pretty early to go to breakfast and leave for the ancient medina (old city) of Tetuan. In the medina we walked the “streets” of the village. It was amazing; there were basically just a million different vendors/stores (they don’t really qualify as stores) out on the “streets”. I say streets because there is no way a car could ever fit down there because they were really narrow but it is their equivalent of streets. We saw everything from fruit, olives, nuts, chickens (living and dead), fish, shoes, games, pots and pans, clothes, basically you name it… it was probably there. Everywhere you turned you could find a vendor. There were probably just as many cats as there were vendors, the cats were EVERYWHERE! Later I had the pleasure of being one of the 3 girls chosen out of group to be dressed up like a countryside woman. Basically, when they were finished all you could see was my eyes and nose. We learned a lot about Islamic culture, religion and got to peak into a beautiful mosque (you are only allowed to enter if you are Muslim). In Muslim culture they pray 5 times a day, and when it is time to pray they have a call for a prayer. In the past they used to have a person go to the top of the tour on the mosque and call, and then people would come and pray. Now they use speakers, but it was still really cool and intriguing to hear the call to pray quite a few times! We went to a place that taught us about rug making (Morocco has the 3^rd best rugs in the world). They tried to sell us rugs and it was reaaaaallly long. It was pretty funny though because in Morocco there surely isn’t type of political correctness and the ridiculous things they said shocked us/made us laugh. The guy turned to Greg and said “SHUT UP. YOU LOOK LIKE MISTER BEN” he meant bean, but that became the motto of the trip because it was so funny. After looking at overpriced carpets, we had lunch at this really cool restaurant. We had some great shiskabobs and couscous with vegetables. We were also entertained by a man with a with a unibrow who put a tray of candles on top of his head and jumped/rolled around… that was very interesting lol.

After, we headed to Tanger. On the way we stopped to ride camels in a parking lot, when in Africa haha. That was pretty hilarious and well worth the 1 euro it cost. We then went to Tanger, saw the point at where the Atlantic and Mediterrean Sea “hug” which was beautiful. We decided to get banana smoothies; I had a great allergic reaction because there were apples in it and then we almost missed the bus… we literally ran after it yelling “DON’T LEAVE US IN AFRICA!!!!” That was hilarious and we laughed for a long time on the bus at ourselves. We then went into the city of Tanger and had some free time to check out the stores there. It was pretty funny because the people tried to lure you into their stores and would say “hello” in about 5 languages to see what you spoke. People here could speak on average about 4 languages it was amazing. Their first language in Morocco is Arabic, the second is French (no idea why), then Spanish and English. Nearly all of the people/venders I talked to could speak English very well. It was amazing, I am so jealous!! We then went back to the hotel and ate dinner and went to bed.

Sunday bright and early we went to Chef-Chaouen. It was a beautiful bus ride there because it was hilly, mountainous, lush and everything was Green. We pulled into Chef-Chaouen and it was gorgeous x 20. Everything is painted white with blue doors. The medina is made up of entirely Muslims, which is really unique. It was on a mountain so the walk was super hilly but once we arrived at the river it was so worth it. The water was so pristine since it was straight from the mountain and our guide told us that even we could drink it without getting sick. It was cool to observe the people going about their daily behavior since this town was much smaller. We went for a great tour around the town. We saw a woman with her pet goat... yes, a pet goat. We also saw some of the cutest little kids ever. The kids in Morocco just ran around wherever they pleased without their parents, it was really interesting. We got some time to shop around here, which certainly had the best shopping I am glad I saved my money. I got a few gifts for people and a bracelet for myself. The vendors loved to tell us “student price for you” and used the word please between every word “please beautiful necklace please” which was pretty funny. But you could bargain so that was pretty fun. Then we had dinner at a 5 star hotel and made the journey back to Granada. GREAT weekend!! Just made me want to travel to more interesting places like Morocco, I love learning about all these different cultures!

Granada has been great! I have found myself really missing American food. I think everyone has been though; we had a nearly 2 hour conversation on the bus about all the food we wanted to eat. Abruzzo and Buns, you would not like how there is basically NO spicy foods here. I have been craving some BWW lately, please it for me. I think I might go invest in some peanut butter soon. I say invest since I’ve heard it is about 4 euro (6 dollars) for peanut butter here. One of the girls on our program got a pack of all American food and a huge thing of peanut butter and that might have been the best bite of PB in my life.

Schoolwork has certainly picked up, although nothing in comparison to U of I. Kaye and I have to give a 1 hour long presentation about Cataluña next week. This week I will also start volunteering for my culture class. We are required to volunteer 2 hours a week and I am going to be teaching English at a school right by my casa. Soon I will be starting my intercambio also. I am going to be paired up with a college aged student who is learning English and one day we will only speaking English, the next only Spanish. I am really excited about that. But I am starting to get sooo busy. I’ve been kind of stressed with it all because I haven’t been able to keep in contact with everyone as much I would like to. It’s hard to go from being so close to people then leave and hardly be able to talk. I hope everyone realizes that even though I don’t get the opportunity to talk often, that doesn’t mean I’m not thinking of you all! I barely have time to get on the internet and when I do get on I am constantly playing catch up. Also, now I am using a lot of my time on the internet for homework. I miss you all; I wish I could talk to all of you more often!!!!

PS... I can't remember if already said this but I switched my pictures to Picasa since it seems to work better.
http://picasaweb.google.com/mapayne2