Independence Day

This is my first time not celebrating the 4th of July playing or watching volleyball in a tournament in Lima, or enjoying the hot Ohio day with close friends and taking part in the events of the Star Spangled Spectacular - making fun of the morbidly obese radio personalities that we hear every day, but never really see. Before this, I spent every mid-summer at Grandma and Grandpa's lake house, water skiing and tubing with my cousins all day until the boat ran out of gas and eating Spiedies for dinner and roasting marshmallows over the fire for smores until the firemen set off that years' fireworks display. Even last year, I rang in Independence Day throwing up on a Chinatown bus headed back to New York from D.C., where I was visiting Kellyn (she did an excellent job of intoxicating me beyond recognition), met up with friends for a Yankees (ew) game (during which I experienced a massive hangover), and watched the fireworks over the East River. There is nothing in my memory of this day where I have not celebrated.

Here I find myself in Morocco, where every day has been more fun than the next. We just went to Marjane and bought two 24-packs of the cheapest beer and a cheap bottle of whiskey (to add to our collection of two bottles of vodka). It's going to be an American Independence Day party to remember.

Gnauwa

All I can say right now is WOW.

What a weekend.

Lets start at the very beginning. Please excuse any typos, because they are probably due to the awful excuse for a Moroccan keyboard.

Im now sitting next to Rafael in a Cyber in Agadir. I havent showered since Friday afternoon. But lets start with Thursday.

I felt semi sick to my stomach all day long. I didnt eat anything but a few noodles, but that night, it finally hit me and I got violently ill. After almost 2 months in Morocco, I get sick the night before a long bus trip to Essaouira. It happened in the middle of a semi important conversation I was having on gchat too, but what can you do.

I got some sleep and then next morning I woke up feeling ok. Kate and I left to catch our bus, and as we were boarding, I started feeling sick again. We made it to Casablanca, and I took a nap on a bench for the 2 hour layover we had there. Finally, I felt kind of better, so I ate a croissant and a packet of M&Ms and got on the bus to Essaouira. Half the way there I had a guy sitting next to me who spoke so quietly that I had to lean in to understand what he was saying. I think that was his reason for doing so. He got off and an older man got on and sat next to me. About an hour and a half from Essaouira, we got off for dinner. I decided it was a good idea to eat tajine. It wasnt. I struggled for the rest of the trip and when we finally arrived, we went up to the house and saw that it was filled with the coolest rastafarians I have ever seen - all Soufianes friends. I wanted to stay up and party with them but I went to sleep. Lindsay and Hicham made sure I was ok before they went to bed which was nice.

Saturday we got up at 130 - meaning I got 15 hours of sleep - and we spent the day exploring the medina. I went on a huge shopping spree and bought a Moroccan shirt, some souvenirs for friends, among other things. At one point we ended up in the back of a shop with a couple guys who served us tea and pretty much wouldnt let us leave until we bought something - I got a head scarf to make a turban out of. nnnnWnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnmmmmmn>
On Sunday I got up a little earlier - at 11 - and went to the medina for breakfast again. I bought a few things that Id been eyeing the day before but hadnt bought. The festival had essentially ended and people were starting to head out, so Essaouira was slightly less touristy and that much more enjoyable. Kate bought a bus ticket for that night back to Rabat, but later on decided to stay with me, Hicham, Lindsay, and Rafael. Since the place we were staying with the rastas was so expensive (100 dirham a night!) we looked for another place for a measly 50 dirham a night, which was a lot nicer. Rafael and I explored the beach, which was beautiful, but ended up going back to the house and hanging out with everyone soon after. Note that by this time, I had eaten at the gelado place about 5 times. A few days before, Liz had gotten a few dreads underneath her hair, so you can see them if she puts her hair up but not if she wears is down. Lindsay and I decided this was a good idea for us too. Lindsay got 3 dreads, and I got one. You cant see it at all when I wear my hair down, but it adds a nice touch when my hair is half up or in a bun. I love it. (Sorry mom). Hicham, Lindsay and I got some delicious fish and a traditional Moroccan soup for dinner, and then we all went for a walk around Essaouira to see the end of the festival and the nightlife. After stopping at a hotel, we walked back through the medina. By this time, I was so exhausted that I went straight to sleep once we returned.

Monday, me and Rafael got up at 5:30am to catch our 6:00 bus to Agadir. We arrived around 8:30 or 9 in a city about 13 km south of Agadir - we had forgotten that it said in the guidebook that the buses sometimes dont stop in Agadir due to space contstraints. Naturally, a man came up and started talking to us about an 80 dirham grand taxi ride to Agadir that would be "quite a deal". Yeah fucking right. He did help us find the local bus for 3 dh, but asked for payment and we gave him 10dh. We picked a random spot to get off of, which was conveniently right next to the beach, where we spent the next half hour collecting our thoughts and relaxing. We decided to basically play the day by ear.

I ended up liking Agadir a lot...but in the same way I like Florida. Agadir is like no other city I've seen in Morocco. Its actually more like the south of France. The city gets 300 days of sun a year - although, we were lucky enough to be there on one of the cloudy days. The restaurants are expensive (25 dh for a milkshake? EXCUSE ME?) and there are people standing outside of them trying to persuade you to enter. The becahes are beautiful though. Europeans everywhere. We went to the fish stalls for lunch, which was refeshingly Moroccan - meaning the fish was delicious and relatively cheap. We went up to the ruined Kasbah. Basically, Agadir used to be a trading post on top of a hill. On Feb 29 1960 (what are the odds), there was this ginormous earthquake and pretty much everyone in the Kasbah died. So, they filled in the Kasbah with sand and now its this massive grave. So, when you go up there, you're pretty much standing on dead people. We didnt stay up there too long...the place kinda creeped me out. Rafael and I did a great job of killing time, photo shooting, and conversating until our 1030pm bus ride back to Rabat.

The bus ride was awful. We had seats in the very back of the bus, which was heated due to the engine being directly beneath us. I got whiplash from my head nodding down and snapping back up when I fell asleep. I dozed but didnt really sleep, and arrived back in Rabat not a moment too soon. Rachid, after all of his calling about how much he missed me, was conveniently at University taking an exam so I went back to my house and went straight to sleep.

So thats the weekend of my life, folks. I have lots more to blog about but Im way too lazy right now. Expect more soon.

To Do List

I´m finally beginning to be productive again after a long week of being sick and tired. Yesterday I went to work for two hours, and learned a few phrases in Arabic from Naima, the permenant English teacher. She taught us things like ¨fuck you¨, ¨I am married¨, and other extremely useful phrases. We left because no new students came in, but Kate stayed for her daily class (she teaches two 15 and 16 year old girls, and a little boy. Cute). Aziz approached her after her class and told her that there were new students for her. She responded by telling him that he should probably give one of his other 5 trainees students before he gives her anymore. So now I have students, after a month and a few days of being in Morocco! Today is my first class, and I´m very pumped slash nervous.

I´ve found that the only way I can stay productive in the lazy country of Morocco is to keep an up-to-date to do list going. Most things aren´t very important on my list, but it´s nice to have in case I find myself sitting around doing nothing - which happens more often than I´d like to admit. My list right now includes--

>Read more books. So far this summer I´ve only read 5 and a half. A sad average for a month of doing nothing. Today I´m going to start Ken Kesey´s ¨Sometimes a Great Notion¨. It was in Peter´s library of books and has a pretty cover.
>Get a fucking Russian visa. Rachid and Romain, who I´m traveling with in August, want to visit Moscow. Unfortunately, it´s going to be very complicated for me, since foreign citizens can only obtain Russian visas in their own country. But being the stubborn Caitie Hawley that I am, I´m going to make it fucking happen. Ideas, anyone?
>Get stamps and mail the postcards that I wrote two weeks ago. The post office is on the other side of the medina. Mailing them means going through the medina, which is a) kinda far and b) runs the risk of me buying the world when I go through.
>Add all my pictures on facebook. This is tough, because my computer is slow as fuck - it takes about 15 minutes to boot up, and then loading the website takes a while as well. Overall, it takes about half an hour to load 5 pictures. Slowly but surely, they will be uploaded, dear friends.
>Finish setting up the specs for the Reds game for the Labor Day AIESEC event. My frustration with AIESEC in Morocco is starting to spread to AIESEC in general (uh oh) and makes it difficult to do AIESEC work. Let´s reverse that...
>Learn FRENCH! I´m learning more every day from Rachid and from listening to everyone talk, but it´s not enough. My natural instinct to understand everything all the time is nagging at me. Time to put the nose to the grindstone and STUDY this language.

Oh yeah. And blog more. ha.

Last night I went with Rachid to Kenitra. Something about that little town just to the North makes me really happy. It´s probably how quiet and serene it is compared to Rabat and the craziness of the craziest house in the Oudaya. It sounds like I missed out though, because Soufiane and the other American trainees went out to a hookah bar and then dancing at a club. That´s something I´ve only done twice in the entire month I´ve been in Morocco. It´s so strange, because when I´m at home, I spend most of my time uptown at the bars.

When I got back today, I started feeling a lot better than I´ve been feeling recently, which is excellent. I celebrated by going with Gabriel and Cassie for our first surf lesson with Soufiane. On my first try, I stood up for about a second! I was so excited. Cassie, Gabriel and I took turns for about an hour. When we had to quit because all the waves were gone, I was pretty happy because I was pretty tired, and pretty proud of my accomplishments. I look forward to my next lessons and improving.

Last night I had a couple nightmares, during both of which I sat up gasping. After further thought about these dreams, though, I´ve determined that the scariest part was that someone was in one of these dreams that I didn´t think was still in my thoughts.

Tomorrow we´re going to Casablanca, which I´m not really looking forward to, but 1) the other American trainees haven´t been yet, 2) when I was there it was for a stupid auto expo, 3) we´re not organized enough to make a trip elsewhere this weekend 4) nor do we have time. I guess Casa for a day will be tolerable, but I hate wasting a trip on a purely touristy place, and with next weekend´s trip to Essouira coming up, a relaxing weekend in Rabat will be nice.

Sick in (but not sick OF) Morocco!

The last three days I've had a bit of a cold/cough. Each day, something gets better (i.e. my migraine goes away) but something else makes it worse (I get a runny nose). I haven't been going to work, but it sounds like I'm not missing out on much. Liz taught a class on Monday, but didn't really know what she was doing, so our boss, Aziz, took over eventually at the end. Peter told me that yesterday when she went in and was expecting her students to come for her class, they didn't come - and Aziz basically told her it's because she did a shitty teaching job. Hearing this story and from conversations I've had with him about politics and life make me not very fond of him.

Yesterday we said goodbye to Romain. I'm really going to miss him playing guitar and singing around the house, his drunken antics, and his overall French-ness. I recently decided that I'm traveling with him and Rachid through Europe in late July/early August, so it definitely wasn't goodbye for me. Now that we have an extra space in the house, Rafael might move in, which would be amazing!

In a couple weekends there is a huge Gnawa festival in Essouira that everyone is going to. Karim facebook messaged me today to tell me that AIESEC will be planning a trip for 500dh (about $70). Even though that doesn't sound like much for a weekend trip, I've managed to get by most weekends on about 350-400dh. I still haven't decided if I want to go with this organized group. I know he's trying to do something "cheap" for us, but 500dh is actually a lot. It's frustrating that a lot of Moroccans think that just bceause we're American, we have thousands of dirhams to just throw around. For example, last week in Meknes, we agreed to pay 350dh to a taxi to drive us to and from Volubilis. When we arrived back in Meknes, they asked for another 100dh, when we were actually half a dirham short for train tickets back to Rabat!

Aunt Donna asked if I had noticed the colors of the cities, so I guess now is a good time to talk about it. Rabat has been my favorite so far - it's all white! In the Kasbah-Oudaya, where we live, the walls and floors are whitewashed, except for from the floor to about 5 feet up is light blue. Meknes is green. Marrakech is the red city. I haven't been to the other cities, but I guess each one has a color. It's really interesting to see as you travel.

Gotta love when people make inappropriately judgmental comments about places and situations they've never been in, no matter how "similar" they think their experience has been.

It's even better when they get called out for it, and they freak out because they've been made to look like the fools that they are.

My goal: to surround myself with the open-minded, wonderful, non-judgmental people I've been lucky to get to know here in Morocco and back in the U.S. through AIESEC for the rest of my life. Also, not to let the haters get me down.

I've been out of the blogging loop for a couple weeks, but that doesn't indicate how much has been happened in the last couple weeks. Some event updates first, and then thoughts and reflections.

The last two weekends I have traveled out of Rabat, and I want to continue to do so every weekend I'm here. As much as I love Rabat, it's so nice to see other cities. I've been finding that when I return from trips and get off the train at Rabat Ville, I get a feeling of relief and home.

Last weekend we went to Marrakech because Rachid, Romain, and Hicham were playing in a soccer match for Amnesty International. As always, drama tried to ruin the day. Regardless, I ended up in the Djemaa el Fna around 10pm. It was lit with little lightbulbs, and full of Moroccans playing traditional instruments, trying to get you to take a picture with a monkey, and offering delicious fruits, juices and snails (yes! snails) at the carts. After stopping for some Moroccan tea, we went to sleep and came back to Rabat the next day.

This weekend I went to Meknes to visit Jen, who's group from Spain was doing a short tour of Morocco. I was astounded to hear that he group leaders told her not to drink the water - or even to brush her teeth with the tap water! They weren't eating any meals outside of the hotels, to save themselves from all the horrible Moroccan diseases at street stalls. Also, they told the girls that only prostitutes go out after 9pm. So ridiculous. Lindsay and I told her what real life in Morocco. Add one more person to the list of people who've been educated.

That being said, I want to echo Lindsay's frustrations in people who've been saying really ignorant things about Morocco lately. Just to reiterate: terrorists and prostitutes don't roam the streets. Thanks for listening.