Kadie: Here’s to belly-dancing, eating snails, birthday weeks & a Good Rosé

So the smell of Jasmine is EVERYWHERE in the Medina these days, and it has made me come to realize that it is now spring here in Fes. Its April already, I’m not sure how that happened….but, as the changing weather and tree blossoms might be hinting, time never does stop or slow down.

Since my last post, I’ve had the most amazing experiences, with a few really rough days scattered in between. I guess, even when you are “living the dream” you can’t expect every day to be absolutely perfect? I suppose if they were, you would never appreciate them anyway. BUT some of the more perfect days were the ones spent in the Sahara Desert. We were able to spend an entire weekend gallivanting up and over sand dunes via camels! Let me tell YOU: riding Camels is HARD work! I was so sore afterwards…but it was also such a rewarding experience. My camel’s name, in case anyone is interested, was Petey. He did great, and he had a nose ring…which. was. AWESOME. After a couple hours of camel-riding to our camp, we were able to watch one of the better sunsets I’ve ever seen, and one of the most spectacular moon-rises. It was an interesting night, filled with a lot of clichés, but, something I’ve been realizing is sometimes, clichés aren’t so bad…and actually, sometimes, they make an experience all the better. So I clapped along with the “locals” who played music for us all night and made us tea, and I took all the touristy pictures on top of my camel, and I thoroughly enjoyed every second of it.

After such a weekend, it was almost inevitable that we would need a weekend to rest here in Fes. (Our weeks are so packed full of programming and classes and homework that no one gets the proper amount of sleep, so we’re always playing catch up on the weekends). Last weekend, a few of us traveled to Rabat (the capital). We had a relaxing few days of laying on the beach, (fully-clothed mind you, well, at least all the girls were), shopping and watching protests in front of the Parliamentary building from our hotel balcony. (No worries, everything here is still SUPER peaceful).

The girls at one of our Hefla Hefla Party Discos

Sunset in the desert

ME! on a camel!

And now, it’s our last week for our first term. My birthday is in coming up, and so are my finals, and then, our spring break! And then, it’s almost too painful to think about, my last six weeks in Fes! Its unreal how quickly the days are slipping by.

Speaking of my last six weeks, I, along with a friend of mine here, have decided a change of pace is in order for the next term. We’re going to be moving out of our homestays and moving in to our very own place here in the medina! I’m so excited about all the possibilities, cooking all our new favorite Moroccan dishes, inviting our friends over for tea, tanning on the rooftop terrace, shopping for all our weekly groceries, etc. Should make for even more fun experiences and surprises next term.

BUT before the next six-week session starts, I’ve got to make it til the end of this one. I’m a little nervous for my finals, not only because they’re on my birthday and the day after (and I’ve been known to have less than perfect concentration skills when I’m so excited) but also because a full college semester in six weeks equals a LOT of information to know, but I’m feeling okay about it for now. We’ll see if I’m singing the same tune come Friday afternoon?

And then, on Saturday, we’re setting out for our road-trip through Southern Morocco! The plan is to rent a car and see all we can/want to. Hopefully driving stick through Moroccan mountain roads is easier than it sounds?? I’m sure there will be too many stories to tell.

OH and if you’re wondering about the title to this post. Last week, this was an actual toast of ours at a party we had. YES I took belly-dancing lessons (they were awesome, and we have more planned!) and YES I ate a snail. (Mummy I still can’t believe I did it, like, I literally scooped it out of the shell and in to my mouth. I’m sad nobody caught it on film, because I realize that most who know me will NEVER believe me…but, trust me, I did it!) And we’ve already celebrated a few birthdays within our group, and mine is coming up! Along with my friend Jake! LOVE celebrating! And…well the last part is fairly self-explanatory? I’ll never turn down a good glass of wine.

Eric: July 4 in Rabat

You know what is a test of endurance and patience? A 3-hour train ride with practically no air conditioning when it’s 95 degrees F outside and the sun happens to shine on your side of the train. I haven’t sweat this much for a while. Opening the window didn’t really do anything since the wind blew elsewhere.

The US Consulate in Casablanca and Embassy in Rabat invited all American citizens living in Morocco to celebrate 4th of July at the Rabat American School. Wanting to see more around Morocco, I RSVP’ed and got on a train.

I was with one other student from ALIF when we arrived in Rabat. My first impression was that it wasn’t really a busy city, but it has a lot of big buildings. As the capital of Morocco since 1912, the city doesn’t really live on tourism, and there wasn’t that much to see. But still, we walked through the medina. The roads in it are a lot wider than those in Fez, and soon we reached the coast and the Atlantic Ocean. I don’t know what it is, but something about oceans or any large bodies of water—I never tire of looking at them. By the coast were beaches, a Muslim cemetery that has thousands of tombs, and the original site of Rabat known as the Kasbah des Oudaias. The last area of the town has the most beautiful door of the medieval Moorish world, according to my travel guide. I quite agree, even though it wasn’t as colorful as Bab Boujeloud in Fez and the gate at Meknes.

We then went on in search for the Hassan Mosque, which has an incomplete minaret that would (in its time) have been the second largest in the Islamic world (the largest would be in Smarra, Iraq). We walked through a different streets in the medina and were exposed to the midday sun when we came out of it. The mosque also has a really nice garden with lots of shade. We didn’t go inside the mosque, as we were hot, sweaty, and hungry and just really wanted to get to the 4th of July party.

The Rabat American School is located in the south suburb of Rabat called Agdal, which has a separate train station. Thinking that we would take the train back to Fez from the Agdal station, we took a taxi to there first. Well, both I and the other student are beginning Arabic students and both don’t speak French. The taxi driver must somehow only picked up the Agdal part of our attempt to try to say Rabat-Agdal train station in French, as he drove us to that part of the town and just stopped. It was a good thing that the taxi driver called someone who speaks some English from the side of the road, and we managed to get to the train station and bought our return ticket.

Finding the Rabat American School turned out to be a little harder than we thought. We knew the general direction, but had no idea where we were going. The area consists of a lot of government buildings and was deserted when we were walking through it. After asking for directions at the Ministry of Economics and the Agdal Culture Centre, we found the place. We passed through a bag check, a passport check, paid for entrance, and found a lot of Americans doing American things. We followed their examples and got hot dogs, hamburgers, and pops (excuse me for being Minnesotan here). Even though they didn’t taste as good as in the US, it was still a pretty nice change from the bread we get every single day. There was also a pool in the school. I didn’t bring my swim trunks to Morocco, so I sat in the shade while a group of students in the Minnesota program Morocco summer session arrived and changed. At this point, this old man came around and shook hands with everybody. He turned out to be Samuel Kaplan, the American ambassador to Morocco, and is actually from Minnesota. He talked with us for a little bit before going on to shake other people’s hands. Those of us from Minnesota got a picture with him and his family later. He is a really nice person.

After the swimming, we moved to the lawn area, where the Utah 23rd National Guard band performed a live concert for us. It is a full concert band and I, personally, playing in band for the past 3 years, have to say they did a really good job. Some members of the band were performing earlier as a rock band, while in the concert the Jazz band within the band also performed a selection of music. We had a wonderful time, and it would have been a wonderful day if it just ended with the concert. We decided to walk to the Agdal station with two other guys studying at ALIF, the distance turned out to be longer than we thought. We got there just before the train got to the station, went on the train and found out that the car with working air conditioning was full. So we went to the next one, which has air passing through the air conditioning holes, but no cooling effect. In addition, since the train was going from west to east, the sun shined on the same side of the train throughout pretty much 2/3 of the trip. I was a very cranky person when we got off the train at Fez.

Anyway: Happy 234th Birthday United States of America!

(Fun fact: the Kingdom of Morocco was the first nation to recognize the US as a sovereign nation back on December 20, 1777.)