after two weeks in morocco

I just finished my second week of Arabic classes and am laying on my couch, listening to the call to prayer. I don't live that close to the mosque, but I usually wake up for the first call to prayer (right now, around 5am), then fall back to sleep. It's kind of soothing in a way. Granted, if I lived directly next to the mosque, I might not feel this way.

I have been on such a whirlwind adventure here in Morocco, that it seems I have little time to relax or write much about my experience. I miss everyone back home and want to hear what's going on in your lives, so please write and tell me what you are up to.

I was away last weekend with four other students, visiting three cities in central-eastern(ish) Morocco. I kind of felt like it was a mini UN tour, as we had several countries represented. There was one other American besides myself, along with an Italian man, and two other women, one from Switzerland, one from Germany. I'm sure we sounded funny with our mix of French, Arabic, English, German and Italian being spoken. I was confused myself most of the time about what language to speak, so I can only imagine what anyone listening to us was thinking.

The three cities we saw were Volubilis (Walili in Arabic), Moulay Idriss and Meknes. Volubilis is not really a city any more, but an area of ancient Roman ruins. It's a pretty cool place with original mosaics still intact and was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site 10 years ago. If you want to know more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volubilis you can read about it there.


Secondly, we went to Moulay Idriss, a town built on the site of a hill. This made for some steep stairs and more of a workout than anything I've been doing since arriving. So, I was grateful for the opportunity to exercise. The best part of the town (for me at least) was walking through the souk (open air market) to check out the wares of the local butchers. I've become obsessed with the dead animals hanging from their ankles and the random animal heads displayed proudly in front of butcher's stalls. Along with Nick, another student from the states, I've found some pretty interesting "delicacies" here. Apparently, the hoof of some animal (a cow, I think) is supposed to be quite tasty when cooked with cinnamon and sugar. I'm sure I'll have plenty of opportunity to try some. I'll also get to work on the pics of these places. I'm usually totally overstimulated and not thinking about photos when I'm there, but I have to share this with my friends and family!

After Moulay Idriss, we made it to our stop for the night, Meknes. I guess there is a lot to do and see there, but somehow, we only made it as far as a night club Saturday night and the souk for most of the day on Sunday. As for the nightlife in Morocco, I have to say that I'm surprised at how hard they can party for an Arabic country. Mohammed would be rolling over in his grave if he could see this! We went to some shisha bar, where they smoke hookahs (just tobacco!!) and listen to music. The bar was mostly full of men and their accompanying prostitutes. I apologize in advance for having no pictures of this, but even I could not figure out a way to "discretely" take a photo of this. I'm not sure how true it is, but I hear that men cannot go out to clubs like this with their girlfriends/wives, so they hang out with prostitutes. I, personally, think this is a lame excuse, but it was kind of fun to try to pick out who was a hooker and who was there for free.

After the first bar, we found a club with what I can only assume were more expensive prostitutes, since they definitely had more expensive liquor. However, for western standards, it was about equal to what one might pay in the states. We people watched and danced until the bar closed and Nick and I had fun placing bets on who would hit on Jasmina next. Jasmina is the woman from Switzerland and she has really blond hair. Of course, this attracts the men here like flies to honey and it's really amusing to watch them look her over like an exotic animal. She claims to have been offered 2,000 camels from some guy in Tunisia one time, as a marriage proposal, but I personally don't think she's worth more than 1,000. However, we escaped when the club closed (around 4am--just in time for us to make it back to the hotel for the first call to prayer!) without any animals exchanging hands.

The next day, we spent at the souk, with the guy from Italy kissing every baby he could get his hands on and buying shoes for every woman he's ever met in his life to bring home to Italy. (Can you tell this was not my favorite part?) I think part of my problem was that I was not feeling well, since we were apparently food poisoned at some point during our trip. It hit us all, at various times, and took a few days to clear from our systems. There's nothing like making your experience in a foreign country more "authentic" by eating the local produce that's been tainted by some sort of bacteria. Sweet.

I'm finally better from that and am off this weekend to check out Marakesh with some other students and a couple of our teachers. What will happen there is anyone's guess since from what I hear, Marakesh is pretty western and very touristy (i.e. full of debauchery) and I'm interested to see how our experience will differ when accompanied with some pretty strict Muslims.