I should've learned Spanish

A couple months ago I booked a flight with six other girls to Madrid over the Moroccan Independence Day holiday weekend, and it ended up being the best girls weekend I've had in quite a while. The saga began when my compatriots (Gretchen, Megan, Brittany, Ana, Emily, Elise) and I left Rabat at 5:30 am Friday morning to get to the airport in Casablanca by 7 to make our 9 am flight to Madrid (EasyJet, $120!! I love budget airlines). I'm not a morning person so the whole way there I was just sleepy and bored, but as soon as I stepped outside of the metro from the airport and into Spanish air I realized something that made me really happy: "I'm not in Morocco!!"

Getting a break from Morocco was much needed. It was so, so, so nice to to be in a western country, where I was free from the restrictions and differences of Morocco. The first time we went walking down the street from our apartment, we counted four different Starbucks on our way. Halleluja!! I don't really even miss Starbucks in Morocco, but it made me so happy just to see something so American that I don't have access to here. And oh, how I've missed chai tea! It never tasted so good as it did then. Starbucks already had all their holiday drinks out, and that Peppermint Mocha was a nice change of pace. It was so wonderful to see Christmas decorations up, to walk on well maintained sidewalks, to see trashcans every fifteen feet (what a novelty!), to not have to worry about how I dress, to not be stared at, to eat bacon and pork (!!!!!!!!), to be able to go out at night with absolutely no fears of harassment, to take a long, hot shower in a tub with a glass door and a holder for the shower nozzle. But maybe the most wonderful part of it was staying in an apartment with some of my favorite girls from the program, with the complete freedom and privacy that we all miss so much and don't have with our home stay families.

About the apartment: our friend Ana's family lives in Madrid, and her grandparents weren't currently using their apartment in downtown Madrid. So we got to stay in a beautiful, furnished full apartment in the best part of the city for completely free. Ana's aunt lives in the apartment directly above, and so we got to see her a lot. She and Ana's grandmother brought us so much food: pastries, bread, cured meats, tortilla (an incredible Spanish egg dish, not flour tortillas like from a taco). I felt like I was eating like royalty the whole time I was there. We were invited to a family lunch on Saturday, and it was sooo incredible. It was at this restaurant owned by an American expat, and it served some of the best American food I've ever had - you would never find food this good in the states. The meat for the hamburgers was the most delicious, melt-in-your-mouth high quality meat I've ever tasted. The onion rings were wonderfully fresh, the corn on the cob was perfect, the chili was incredible, the oreo cheesecake and brownie sunday were delicious. The restaurant had a Southern/Texas theme, so I felt especially at home. There were two TVs on, one showing a rodeo and the other a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert. Nothing made me happier than when they played Sweet Home Alabama :). That makes the second country I've been in where I've heard that song played (first was Morocco, amazingly enough). The only thing that could have made the whole experience better is if there was Alabama football on.

I was able to shop my heart out at H&M and a Mango outlet. Dresses! Boots! Short skirts and tank tops! I couldn't resist buying one adorable dress that's a little too short for Morocco. (But I'm wearing it to the Thanksgiving dinner at the American Club today, so there you go). Also, my other most favorite thing about Spain was that people are out ALL NIGHT. In Rabat, as soon as it gets dark, the harassment gets worse, and though some people go out, it's not generally accepted to be appropriate. In Spain, as soon as it gets dark, the streets get sooooo crowded and only keep getting more and more crowded. We were out until past 4 am one night and felt perfectly safe.

Madrid was probably the most beautiful city I've ever been to. There is the perfect balance of beautiful preserved historical sites and modern conveniences. There is so much to do and to see. The people are beautiful and fashionable, yet very friendly. It reminded me of Paris minus the hype and bus loads of tourists.

Oh, what else? The whole weekend was just so wonderful, and when Sunday rolled around I kept thinking how much I didn't want to go back to Morocco Monday morning. We had to get up at 4:30 that morning to make our flight and we all got about two hours of sleep, so that morning I was not at all excited to be awake or on my way back to Morocco. But once we got back to Casablanca and on the train to Rabat, I wasn't upset or depressed to be back. I felt like I was back home. As much as I can't stand certain aspects of culture here, and as hard as it is to get used to the different ways of living, I love this country. I love how inefficient everything is, I love hearing the call to prayer even when it wakes me up at 4 am, I love how cheap everything is here, and I love seeing kittens wandering around at every single cafe I frequent. I love my host family, our little apartment, and our doorman. I love everyone at AMIDEAST, I love all the classrooms and the five flights of stairs that lead up to the study abroad room, and I love seeing all the Moroccans there learning English. I probably should have learned Spanish (based on my performance in Arabic class), but Morocco is my home now, and I love this place.

Happy Thanksgiving, y'all!

Some complaining and some preaching

A poor sheet awaiting his fate.

The past couple weeks have been really hard. Initially after I got back from fall break it was so wonderful to be back in Rabat, but those feelings faded as soon as I got back into the grind of classes. I thought I had adjusted to life in Morocco weeks ago, but I’ve been feeling even more out of place and homesick than I did when I thought I was at the low point of culture shock. I miss Tuscaloosa and everyone there so much (and a few people in Huntsville, too).

Certain things about the culture here are just so hard to get used to. Yesterday I forgot I needed to get home for lunch by 12:15 since that’s when the men start overflowing from the mosque for Friday prayers and blocking the entrance to my apartment building. I decided to try to get home at 12:30 anyways, and as I walked up my street and saw rows of men already lined up on the prayer mats spanning the whole length of my apartment building, I got so incredibly angry. I had been sick the day before, so I hadn’t eaten breakfast that morning. I was hungry, hot, and tired, and all I wanted was to go home and eat lunch with my family. But Friday prayer trumps all in this dominantly Muslim country, and for those few moments I just wanted to storm through all the stupid men who were so rude to keep me from getting in or out of my house every single Friday afternoon. It wouldn’t be that hard for them to leave a path to my door so that I and all the other people in the building who don’t pray can have access to our houses. I stormed off to the grocery store which is the normal getaway for Katherine and I when this happens. I did my grocery shopping and impatiently waited for prayers to be over. When I finally could go home, I was still mad. I walked up to the door of my apartment building, and the men were leaving but they hadn’t taken away the giant prayer mats yet. I knew that walking on the mats (with shoes on) is incredibly disrespectful, and I thought for a split second about asking the men who were standing around to move it. But one, I already felt (as usual) very self conscious wading through hundreds of religious men as an obviously non Muslim foreign woman, and two, the thought of asking the men who I already had a grudge against to move the stupid mat that, in my opinion, shouldn’t have been there preventing me from going home in the first place was just too much for my ego to take. So I walked across it and got some very dirty looks and mutterings.

Some things are just hard to get used to. Like seeing sheep butchered and skinned.

Earlier this week was the Muslim holiday Eid El-Adha, which is kind of like Thanksgiving except instead of turkey you eat sheep, and instead of buying a frozen turkey at the grocery store you buy a live sheep (or, usually two) and slaughter it on your roof. So I got to experience the killing, skinning, gutting, and eating of not one, but two poor, poor sheep. I’m not a super sensitive person, so I watched it all happen (and documented it with many pictures), but I’m not going to lie - it was pretty disturbing. To see, in the span of ten minutes, a sheep go from alive and baaaing, to dying with blood spurting violently from its slit throat, to thrashing and trying to gasp for air through it’s severed sheep larynx in the few minutes it takes to die, to dead, to a giant piece of meet hanging from the ceiling by it’s back legs, is, well, unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. Then in the next 30 minutes I witness it’s skin being slowly cut from the body, so that it didn’t even look like a sheep. Now I’m eating parts of those sheep almost every day. Appetizing, yeah?

The bloody aftermath.

But honestly, the hardest part about Eid was that it reminded me so much of Thanksgiving and Christmas that I got really depressed thinking about how I’m going to miss celebrating those holidays at home with my family and friends. I was at my host grandparent’s house for two days with a bunch of relatives who didn’t speak English for Eid, watching sheep be killed, then eating the weirdest organs, and no one really talked to me until the afternoon of the second day when I made friends with my host cousins.

I know that a lot of people would give a lot to be where I am right now. People think I’m brave, living the dream, and having the time of my life. But I think so often how much I would love to just be in Tuscaloosa this semester, living at Jamestown, tending a little vegetable garden in the backyard and some flowers in the front yard, being on leadership in RUF and worshipping with my church family every Sunday at Riverwood. But if I was in Tuscaloosa, I would be complaining about how boring my life is, and thinking how much I want to go discover the world and do something exciting. It’s all a matter of perspective.

What I came to remember last night and this morning is that I’m not here by chance. I’m here in this city, with this program, living with this family and this roommate, at this time, for a reason. My Lord and Savior didn’t live a perfect life and die a perfect sacrificial death to redeem me so that I could just live life randomly, doing what I feel like, with no purpose. I’m here for a reason. Living in Morocco has ended up being harder than I planned, but that doesn’t mean it was a mistake. I miss my friends, my family, and my church, but the Lord is providing me with new friends, new family, and a new church. The Lord is using these experiences to teach me more about Him, to mold me more into His likeness, to make me long for Him even more, and for other reasons that I may never understand. And even when I feel like a miserable excuse for a Christian (which has been a lot lately), I can still rest assured that when God looks at me, He sees Jesus. And even though I don’t really believe this most of the time, I know that God is using me as I am, right now, in all of my shortcomings, failures, and depression for His purposes. I don’t have to be a better person for Him to use me. I don’t have to pretend that I’m not as messed up as I actually am, or try to convince other people that my life as a Christian is all nice and fuzzy. I am a very messed up person, but because of the work of Jesus, I am salt and light, right now, as I am, no exceptions.

"Take delight in the Lord, and He will give you your heart's desires." - Psalm 37:4

Fall Break

I don't even know where to begin. Fall break was incredible, if a bit challenging. I experienced the varying extremes of Moroccan climates, from the snow covered High Atlas mountains to the hot and cold Sahara desert, and everything in between. I had wanted to go to Europe for fall break, but I'm so glad I didn't. Exploring this country that is my home for nine months was mind blowing.

My plans were up in the air until the day before I left, but it worked out perfectly. I went with three friends: Gretchen, Elise, and Zach. We started out by taking a train from Rabat to Marrakech on Saturday morning the 22nd. Once in Marrakech we needed to take a grand taxi to Imlil, the small town where treks to Mount Toubkal (the highest mountain in North Africa) begin. We had an unfortunate slip in judgement in Marrakech and decided to let a taxi driver who approached us drive us to the taxi stand that was five minutes away, after which he proceeded to try to charge us over 3 times too much. Somehow I was the bargainer in our group, and I refused to pay his exorbitant price. I insisted on him agreeing to a lower but still exorbitant price, after which we hashumad (shamed) him. Thus began my battle with dishonest grand taxi drivers. After that fiasco, we finally found a taxi driver to take us to Imlil for a fair price. It was a less than two hour drive, and about half of it through the beautiful Atlas mountains.

In Imlil, we discovered two surprising facts. It was much colder than we thought it would be, and it had just snowed on the mountain tops. I was SO glad that I had brought warm clothes, although they were actually intended for night time in the desert, where it ended up not being that cold, at least compared to the mountains. Once we got to Imlil, we ended up going to a different hostel than the one where we had a reservation, but it actually worked out well as this one was cheaper. It was run by an older French woman, who was alternately very nice and very scary. She had a younger Moroccan man named Abdu as her sidekick and we all speculated about the relationship between the two. Abdu took care of us, cooked for us, and arranged for us to have sleeping bags at the refuge in the mountains where we stayed the next night. I experienced a Moroccan toilet for the first time here, and spent the first of three nights wearing every layer of clothing I could possibly get on my body.

A mountain goat enveloped in fog on our way to Toubkal.

Early Sunday morning we set out for Toubkal. Were were supposed to get to the refuge at the base that day, then summit and return to Imlil the day after. The 4 to 6 hour hike to the refuge turned into 8, and even though it it wasn't said to be a difficult hike, the three of us girls were pretty out of shape (it's really hard to exercise in Rabat), and I had forgotten how hard it is to hike uphill. It was such a beautiful hike. We saw herds and herds of mountain goats, and were continually being passed by donkeys loaded up with supplies for the base refuge. There is no car access in the high recesses of these mountains. We came across the snow right before we got to the refuge. People told us there was a meter of snow on Toubkal, and none of us had any snow appropriate hiking gear. The people at the refuge wouldn't let anyone attempt to summit without gear.

This was the farthest up we got.

That night we chilled around the fire talking to other people from Switzerland, Germany, England, and the States. Even though the refuge we stayed in was pretty nice, it was absolutely freezing - barely warmer than outside. The only source of heat was one fire in the main room, and all the bed rooms were unheated. We spent another night bundled up, but this time we had sleeping bags and heavy blankets.

The sunrise

The next morning I got some great sunrise pictures, and then Zach and I set out to hike up a little ways in the snow. It got really deep really fast, and it was a super steep climb. We made it up a decent ways, took some pictures, then went back to the refuge to thaw out by the fire. We began our hike back that afternoon, and the way down was much more pleasant than the way up. We were given delicious apples by a sweet Berber lady who invited us to her house for couscous, but sadly we couldn't take her up on the invitation because we had to get back to Imlil before dark.

Tuesday morning we taxied our way out of Imlil and went back to Marrakech, where we spent the night and took the first showers of the trip. Marrakech is absolutely beautiful, but we were all exhausted so we didn't do much sightseeing.

Sunset in Ouarzazat

Wednesday morning we took a bus to Ouarzazate, a little less than halfway between Marrakech and Risani (Risani being one of the Moroccan the launch pad for desert trips). Ouarzazat might be the most beautiful city I've seen in Morocco thus far. It's small, quiet, and because it was built as a French outpost, it has a very distinct European feel to it, manifested in the huge streets, pretty lamposts, and a huge central plaza. A lot of movies were filmed here, including Gladiator, Lawrence of Arabia, and Kingdom of Heaven.

Another sunset shot in Ouarzazat

After spending a great evening in Ouarzazaet in a real (but cheap) hotel for the first time on the trip and enjoying more hot showers, we got up super early on Thursday to embark on a very long, very stressful day of getting to Risani in grand taxis. We divided the trip into three different legs, as it's really expensive to get a driver from Ouarzazate all the way to Risani. Bargaining with grand taxi drivers is always stressful, and none of us are used to it, as petit taxis in the cities have meters. This experience was no exception. Drivers constantly tried to charge us twice as much as the ride should be. The last leg was the worst, and at that point were were hot, tired, and ready to get to our destination. When we went to the medina before the last leg of the trip to stock up on water and snacks for the desert, I was harassed by a clearly crazy man who followed us and yelled and made weird gestures. That was freaky. After that we finally agreed on a grand taxi price that was still much too high, but after sitting and waiting for 45 minutes, we just wanted to go.

Finally, that evening we arrived in Risani, where we were completely taken care of by the company that organized our desert trip. Our friends Ana and Joe were there waiting for us, and after a late lunch we all piled into a huge, old, white Range Rover and drove out of the city into the desert. Once we were off of the paved road, we climbed onto the roof, where the view was amazing. We drove to the edge of the dunes where two guides and six camels awaited us. We rode the camels through the dunes just as the sun was setting to a permanent campsite where we spent the night. It was so incredible. Our guides cooked delicious couscous for dinner, and we sat around in candlelight talking and playing games.

Trekkin the Sahara

The craziest thing that happened in the desert is that night it rained! It was only a light shower and didn't last too terribly long, but it was so unexpected. Our guides rushed to put plastic over our tent. Thankfully the rain didn't stay long. The night in the desert was amazing. No electricity, no light other than candle light, and the stars were brighter than I'd ever seen them. It was really windy at one point, and strong wind in the desert is pretty nasty.

Unfortunately, the next morning, Friday, I woke up early throwing up. That was pretty miserable. And no, there was no toilet of any kind there. The dunes were our toilet. In a sense it was nice, because I could vomit wherever I wanted to, but it was pretty gross. I think it was something I ate, because after throwing up for four or five times I stopped, went back to sleep, and felt much better by the afternoon. That afternoon, about the time I was feeling human again, we left the camp on camels and went to the tallest sand dune nearby. We left the camels behind with one of the guides, and the other guide, Mohammed, took us to the very top of the dune to watch the sunset. Such an incredible experience!

Sunset in the Sahara Desert

That night we stayed in a more comfortable camp right outside the dunes. There was a big building with real showers and toilets, and tents with electricity. We had more good food, and I had the best sleep there I'd had on the trip.

Finally, Saturday morning we left the desert and hung out in Risani until our bus left at 7:30 that night. We had a guide show us around and tell us a lot about the Berber and bedouin culture. I bought a beautiful Berber rug made out of cactus fibers and a necklace. That evening we left on the bus to Meknes, then from there (at three in the morning) took the train to Rabat. I got home at 6:30 Sunday morning, and after briefly considering going to church at 9, I decided not to, and I slept until 1:30.

But the saga isn't over yet. Starting around the middle of the trip, I started getting these weird bug bites. They started at my ankles, then it was my wrists and hands, then my stomach, and finally my neck. They itched like crazy and just kept getting worse. Elise and Gretchen had a few, but not as many or as bad as me. We were all afraid it was bed bugs, since some of the places we slept were not exactly luxurious. I was super afraid of bringing bed bugs home (if that's what the bites were from), so when I got home I put all my clothes from the trip in plastic bags and stashed them on the balcony until I figured out what to do. In the meantime I went to the doctor who prescribed some creme and pills, and the bites started getting better. I learned that one way to kill bed bugs is to get them really hot for a long time, like in a dryer. No one owns dryers here - clothes are all air dried. Thankfully there are laundromats with dryers, so I took all my clothes there this afternoon and tried to explain the the lady who runs it that I needed my clothes to go through the dryer twice. I don't know if she'll actually do that or not, but I just hope that any kind of bug I brought home with me will die in the washer/dryer.

Monday it was back to the grind. This weekend our program is going to Chefchaoen and Tangier, which means Friday classes are cancelled, and then we have Monday and Tuesday off for the Muslim holiday Eid al Adha. So excited for the five day weekend!