This past week was spring break and I took advantage of my current location and went to Madrid for the week.

            It was beautiful and I loved it. I have never spent more than 24 hours in Europe (and most of that time was spent in airports, so it doesn’t really count) so this was an entirely new experience for me.

            My friend from Boston, Tom, is studying in Madrid right now, and he had a long weekend two weeks ago, so he and a few friends came to Morocco for four days and I showed them around Rabat, and then we flew back to Spain on the same flight. I showed them around the medina, the kasbah, and the beach, and I brought them to my house for tea and to meet my host family. My 7 month old niece was over, so they had fun playing with her and seeing my roofless house.

We flew to Madrid last Sunday and I went with my friend Monica and two other girls from our program. We stayed in a hostel near Puerta del Sol, which is a big plaza in a kind of touristy section in the center of the city. It is near the Plaza Mayor as well as a bunch of museums and there is a lot of shopping and tons of places to walk around near Sol, so we were in a great location. We took the Metro from the airport to the hostel, and learned how wonderful the Metro in Madrid is. It is huge (12 lines) and runs everywhere. It’s also probably the cleanest subway system I’ve ever seen. Trains also come every three minutes, so there’s also almost no waiting time. It’s also pretty cheap: each ride is one euro, or you can buy 10 rides for 7.40€. We ended up taking the Metro a lot because it was so convenient.

            By the time we got to our hostel on Sunday night, it was around 7:30 and we were really hungry (I hadn’t eaten since that morning), but we had to wait a while to get dinner because in Spain they don’t eat dinner until after 10.

            At around 9 we couldn’t wait any longer, so we decided to walk around and see if we could find any cheap restaurants that were open. Our goal was to get a meal for less than 10 euros, so we walked around for a while, but then we found a place called Maoz, which is a vegetarian falafel bar that is a popular chain all around Madrid. You can get falafel with humus, guacamole, or feta cheese and then there is a salad bar with tons of different kinds of salads and noodles, and you can put as many as you want in your falafel. In short, it is delicious. Plus, it only costs 6 euro (and that is with extra stuff, if you get it plain it’s costs less than 5), so we were ecstatic. After not eating for so long, it tasted heavenly and we wolfed our dinner down. Then we walked around Sol for a little while, but we were pretty tired, so we went to bed kind of early.

The next morning, we went to see the Palacio Real (the Royal Palace), which was really beautiful. The royal family actually doesn’t live there anymore (apparently, they live somewhere in the country, outside of Madrid), so now the Palacio Real is just a museum. Some of the rooms are decorated kind of outrageously (supposedly having 3 dimensional fake fruit all over the ceiling and walls was the trend back in the day) but for the most part, it was really pretty.

            On our way there, we passed a huge cathedral and it was free to go inside, so we decided to check it out. It was called Cathedral Nuestra Señora De la Almudena, and it was ginormous and gorgeous. We were really happy that admission was free because it was a beautiful cathedral and you usually have to pay to see things like that, so it was a pleasant surprise.

            Another one of our friends who is studying with us in Morocco, Hilary, was also in Spain that week, and we had made plans to meet with her, so after lunch, that is what we did. There is a museum in Madrid that is made specifically for the blind, and it is completely hands on, which we thought was super awesome, so we planned to meet here there. Unfortunately, it was Monday, and what we didn’t know when we made our plans was that all the museums in Madrid are closed on Mondays. By the time we figured that out, we didn’t have any way of contacting Hilary, so we went to meet her anyways. We took the metro and then were wandering around for a while because the part of the city that we were in wasn’t included in the map that we had, so that was a little confusing. We finally got oriented and were only about a block from the museum when we ran into Hilary. Instead of going to the museum we walked around for a while. It was really nice to spend time with her and it was fun to explore a part of Madrid away from the touristy section our hostel was in.

My friend Tom finished class that day at 5:30, so I met up with him and got to see the Instituto Internacional where he takes classes. Then we walked around for a while and hung out in a café until I met up with Monica and the others again for dinner.

The next morning Monica and I met up with Tom after his class, and we went to El Escorial, which is a small town about half an hour outside of Madrid. There is a monastery there that was constructed in the 16^th century by Phillip II who was king at that time. It was giant and because it was constructed of stone it was also freezing. It was kind of an austere place, which makes sense because apparently Phillip II was against the lavish lifestyle that a lot of kings lived, so he decided to build the monastery and live there. However, he really liked gardens, so he constructed a bunch of them around the monastery and had the rooms situated so that he could sit inside and still enjoy the gardens. We also saw his bedroom and the bed that he died in, which is still in the same place and position that it was when he died, which is a little bit creepy, but kind of cool at the same time.

            After walking around the monastery for a while, we were hungry and wanted to get lunch. But here’s the catch, it was around 3:30 and this was in a small town in Spain, where they really enjoy their siestas. In fact, most shops and many restaurants in Spain are closed between the hours of 2 and 5. So we wandered around for a cheap place to eat that was open. It took us about 20 minutes to find a place that fit both requirements and it ended up being a kebab restaurant. For some reason, kebab and felafel are both really popular in Spain, but neither of them are found in Morocco, which is think is kind of strange… Anyway, we ate lunch there and then took the bus back to Madrid.

            We spent the afternoon in the Parque Del Retiro, which is the biggest park in Madrid. It has a bunch of fountains and gardens and statues of obscure kings everywhere, and it’s a nice place to hang out.

            In the evening, Tom had to go back to his house for dinner with his host family, but we met up with Lauren, Monica’s roommate, who is also studying in Madrid. The next morning, Lauren was going to the Canary Islands (which are ironically located next to Morocco) for a short vacation, so it was good that we saw her before she left.

The next morning we woke up early because we wanted to go to Toledo, which is about an hour outside of Madrid. The guide to Spain said to take a bus from Madrid’s Estacion Sure de Autobuses (the bus station) and when I asked Tom, he said the same thing, so we figured that was the way to go. When we got there however, there were no buses to Toledo listed. So we asked someone at the information desk and she said we had to get back on the Metro and go to a different stop, where there was another bus station, and from there we could catch a bus to Toledo. So that’s what we did. We ended up making it just in time, and through our very broken Spanish (we basically asked “Tickets, where?”) we were able to find a ticket machine and board the bus just before it left.

            We took a direct bus, so it only took us 45 minutes to reach Toledo, instead of the hour and 15 minutes that we were expecting. So even though we had to go to two different bus stations, we reached Toledo at around the same time we had been planning on originally.

            Once there, we walked around the town and went to the Museo de Santa Cruz, because it was free and because it had a big El Greco exhibit. El Greco lived in Toledo during the 16^th century. He painted a lot of pictures of Toledo and it was really cool to see his pictures and then the actual town for ourselves. After that we went to the Toledo Cathedral. You are supposed to pay to go inside, but somehow, we managed to get in for free. The entrance we went in put us in this fenced in section, but we could still see most of the cathedral and we didn’t really want to pay the 7€ entrance fee, so we were happy with what we saw. It was bigger than the Cathedral that we saw in Madrid and so ornate it was unbelievable. Unfortunately, we weren’t allowed to take pictures inside, but it was absolutely beautiful.

            After that, we walked to the Jewish quarter of Toledo and to the Sinagoga del Transito, which was built in 1357. There is the Museo Sefardi in the synagogue, which houses traditional costumes of Sephardic Jews as well as old Hebrew books, and general Jewish objects, like seder plates and Torahs. Everything came from Toledo and all of it was really old, dating back to the 14^th century. Toledo used to have a sizable Jewish population, before they were all expelled in 1492, but as we walked through the streets of the Jewish quarter, we saw a lot of shops that were selling menorahs and magen davids, so there has been a really big push to bring back the Jewish history and background of Toledo. The Singoga del Transito was beautiful and I enjoyed visiting it a lot.

            The day before, we had gone shopping at El Corte Ingles (a huge store that sells everything and includes a grocery store in the basement) and bought food for a picnic, so we found a park to eat lunch. Our picnic included bread, cheese, strawberries, and apples and it was delicious. We split up the cost, so it only ended up costing us each 2 euro, so it was also our cheapest meal.

            After lunch, we walked to Alcazar, which is a fortress that is now a museum. It was closed for renovation, so we couldn’t go inside, but we saw the outside of it, which was still cool.

            After walking around all day, we were exhausted, so we decided to go back to Madrid. We got back at around 5, so we decided to take a siesta before dinner. Everyone in Spain goes home for lunch and a nap at around 2, and then goes back to work at around 5 until about 7 or 8. Then they go out for tapas and then back home for dinner at around 10 or later. And then they go out. The early people are out at 11:30, but most people aren’t out until after 1. We hadn’t managed to fit a siesta into our busy schedules yet that week, so we were really excited about it. It made all the difference, I felt so much better after my siesta, I really wish I could have one everyday in Morocco and Boston.

At El Corte Ingles we also bought pasta, tomato sauce and mozzarella cheese, so Monica and I made pasta for dinner. It was both of our first time cooking in months, so we felt very accomplished, even if it was as simple a dinner as pasta. We loaded it with cheese, which neither of us get very much of in Morocco, so we enjoyed it immensely. It was great that our hostel had a kitchen that we could use because it saved us a bunch on meals. The guy who ran our hostel was an older man who was really nice. He spoke Spanish and Italian, and we spoke English, French, Arabic (and in my case, Turkish), so communicating with him was interesting, but we really enjoyed staying there. It was a large apartment that had been made into a hostel and it was really comfortable and homey.

Thursday was our last full day in Spain, so we decided it was going to be our museum day. We went to the Museo Nacional del Prado, which might be Madrid’s most famous museum. It is huge and has so much incredible art. I saw work by Raphael, Goya, El Greco, Rembrandt, and Velazquez. Last semester, in one of my classes, I studied art by Rembrandt and Velazquez and some of the paintings that I studied are housed in the Prado. It was amazing to see them in real life. We spent four hours in the Prado and saw everything. After that we went back to the hostel for lunch and a quick rest and then Monica and I went to the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, which is Madrid’s most famous modern art museum. We saw a lot of Picasso and Dali as well as works by a ton of other artists. We spent 3 hours there and really enjoyed it, but by the end our feet were aching from walking so much.

Next, we decided to spend some time in the Retiro before dinner. Tom had told me about this restaurant, Casa Mingo, that his señora (that is what all the students in Spain call their host mothers) recommended. Because it was our last night in Madrid, we were fine with paying a bit more for a meal in a real restaurant, so Monica and I decided to go there for a real Spanish dinner. We ordered sheep cheese, salad, and Tortilla Española, which is like an omelet with potatoes and onions. Everything was delicious and totally worth the 13€ each that we paid. Considering we had spent less than 7€ on every other meal that week, we felt justified in splurging a little. When we got there at 10:15, the restaurant was packed, and there were still people there when we left at 11:30. I am going to have a hard time getting used to eating before 7 when I get back to Boston. Even here in Morocco, I eat dinner between 10 and 11 every night.

The next morning we went the airport for our flight back to Morocco. We got into Casablanca at around 2, but Monica’s mom was coming to Morocco to visit for a few days and her flight was supposed to get in 45 minutes later, and I didn’t want Monica to have to wait by herself, so I decided to wait with her. The only problem with that plan was that Monica’s mom didn’t show up 45 minutes later. We waited and waited and Monica walked all over the airport, but we didn’t see her. It had taken us 45 minutes to get through passport control after our flight (because the guy checking the passports decided that he needed to know everyone’s life story before he would let them into the country), but after waiting for an hour and a half, we figured she must not have been on that flight. Monica’s mom finally made it to Morocco at 6:30: she was flying from London and had missed her connecting flight in Paris, so she had had to wait for the later flight.

After she found us, we all got on the train, because they were going into Casablanca for the night and I was going back to Rabat. To get back to Rabat I had to change trains, and by the time I boarded my second train, it was already after 8. The second train looked really old and slightly sketchy, and wouldn’t you know it, 20 minutes after we pulled out of the station, there was a really scary noise and then the train broke down. We were stuck for an hour in the middle of nowhere. It was 9 o’clock before another train came by. This one was a very new, double-decker train and we all got off the sketchy train onto the new, shiny one. By the time I finally made it back to Rabat it was after 10 and I was exhausted. I went back to my house, ate a little dinner and fell asleep.

So there’s my account of my break in Madrid. My trip was really amazing. If you haven’t been to Madrid, I highly recommend it!

Here’s my entry about my week-long excursion all over Morocco:

2-14-09: On Saturday we met at the CCCL at 7:30 and saw our tour bus for the first time. The SIT students (students participating in another program with the CCCL) were also headed on an excursion and they had normal size tour buses. But the center must really like us because we had a teeny bus, basically an oversized minivan. It was a bit of a squeeze and you couldn’t stand up all the way inside it, but it made us get really comfortable with everyone very quickly.

We started our trip by going to Marrakesh. When we got there we were greeted with warm weather, which made me like the city immediately. Marrakesh is a very touristy city and our hotel was in the downtown section of city, which felt like it had more tourists than Moroccans. It was kind of overwhelming to see so many foreigners and hear so many languages that weren’t Arabic or French. After lunch, which included delicious pasta that everyone ate way too much of, we had a few hours to explore the city on our own. So we went to the Marrakesh Museum, which was pretty interesting. It did not have too many exhibits, but it did have a sword exhibit, which was cool. The architecture in the building was also beautiful and made up for the lack of stuff to see. Next we went to see Ben Youssef Madrassa, which was an old Quranic boarding school. The dorms dated from the 15^th century and were beautiful. There was a huge courtyard in the middle and the rooms on the second floor had windows into the courtyard. Some of those rooms were nicer than the rooms in Warren Towers at BU.

            Then we spent some time walking around the souq (market). It reminded us a lot of the souq in Rabat, except for the huge amount of tour groups. We had to keep walking quickly, because every time we stopped or hesitated about which street to go down, people kept coming up to us and asking us if we spoke English and needed help. They would have made us pay of course, so we ignored them. After wandering around in a giant circle for a while, we finally made it out of the souq. Then we walked around Djeema El Fna, which is a huge square and market place near the souq. There we saw different groups of people forming. Musicians were in the middle of these groups, which were made up of mostly men, and when we joined they immediately came over to us and asked for money. Then we would wander away and watch something else for a while. There were people selling things everywhere and women walking around asking if we wanted henna painted on our hands. There were also a bunch of restaurants around the square, so there were people yelling at us to eat at their restaurants. There were also spice and fruit sellers everywhere and a few booths selling snails, which you eat right out the shell. That seems to be a delicacy in Morocco; next to the hotel that we stayed in during our first week in Rabat, there is a booth that sells snails and orange juice…Seems like an odd combination, but people seem to like it because there are always people there…We wandered around the square for a while, and then went back to the hotel to eat dinner.

2-15-09, Sunday: The next morning we had to wake up at 6:45 and leave early because we were driving to Zagora. We all fell asleep on the bus, but woke up a few hours later in the middle of the Atlas Mountains. Our bus (oversized minivan) was zigzagging around curves and getting dangerously close to the edge of cliffs, so it was kind of a rude awakening. We ended up having to stop a few times because people felt sick, but then we had opportunities to take some beautiful pictures of the countryside.

At one point, one of the tires on our bus literally exploded, so we spent some time climbing a mountain while our bus drive changed the tire. That tire actually ended up being cursed because it went flat again a few days later. That time we were near a small town and the students were just getting out of school, so there were a ton of kids crowding around our bus. Probably almost 50 kids stopped to watch us while we waited and we met a man who plays football (soccer) professionally for the Sale team (Sale is a city across the river from Rabat) but he was injured so he was back home.

After our tire was fixed, we continued to Zagora, a small town near the Sahara. We spent a night in a beautiful hotel there and the next day we walked around a part of Zagora made of kasbahs. Our tour guide told us that the kasbahs used to be inhabited by Jews, but they all moved to Israel in the 1950’s. That is pretty typical of Morocco. There used to a really large Jewish population here, but after Israel was established, they all left. We got to see a synagogue in the kasbah though, and that was really amazing. We visited a jewelry maker and watched him melt silver and make pendants. It was really interesting to watch him work.

After that we went to the home of a nomad for lunch. His name was Saleh and he and his family are real-life nomads who raise camels and ride around the desert finding places where it has recently rained, so that their camels can eat and stay alive so they can be sold. When he is not out in the desert, Saleh lives in a house with 42 other people. And I thought having 10 people in my house was a lot! Besides welcoming us into his house and feeding us lunch, Saleh also told us about his life, which was really amazing. He is the head of the tribe that he and his family belong to and the heads of the other tribes in his area meet every few months in his house. Eating at Saleh’s house might have been my favorite part of the trip: it was so interesting to meet a modern day nomad and learn about how his life works.

After lunch we got into Jeeps that took us into the desert! Our driver was speeding around and jumping over dunes, it was so much fun! After a while we came to our campsite, which consisted of a bunch of four person tents and one really large tent that we ate meals in. Surprisingly enough there was a bathroom in the desert! With western toilets! And although there was a button to flush them, there was no water in the tank and we had to pour water in them using a bucket instead, so it was basically like being back at my house in Rabat…

After we got to our campsite, it was time for the thing that everyone had been looking forward to for weeks: camel rides! We all got on camels, which were tied to each other so that they wouldn’t run away, and were lead out into the desert. It was so beautiful. I was incredibly excited for the desert and it didn’t let me down. It had awesome dunes and everything. We rode around for a while (I named my camel Cocoa) and took some amazing pictures and then it was time for dinner.

After dinner there were musicians who performed traditional Moroccan music for us and we all danced all around the dining tent. Then a fire had been made outside, so we went outside and danced around that for a while as well. The boys from my trip, Matt and Keith, had brought guitars with them and there were some drums at the campsite, so we stayed up singing and playing music. We also stargazed and in my opinion, the stars in the desert are the most beautiful thing ever. Because I’m used to living in a city, going to a place with absolutely no light pollution was a breathtaking experience.

2-17-09, Tuesday: The next morning we woke up at 6:30 so we could see the sunrise over the desert. It was early, but absolutely worth it. It took a while for the sun to start rising, but once it did, it seemed to shoot straight up into the sky. It only took a little over 5 minutes for the sun to rise and it was gorgeous.

            After breakfast, it was time to leave the desert, even though none of us wanted to. We got in the Jeeps and drove back to our oversized minivan, which took us to N’koob. N’koob is another really tiny town in the south that also has a ton of kasbahs. We took a tour of a kasbah house that had been turned into a museum. We saw traditional cooking materials, like a clay bread oven, and traditional clothing of southern Moroccans. The women usually wear a black cloak-like garment, which they embroider with bright thread themselves. The results are these beautiful bright designs and each one is unique because they are all handmade. I saw tons of women wearing them during our trip. Our tour guide took us to the roof the museum-house (which he and his family still live in) and said that in the summer, they put rugs down and sleep up there. In the hot weather, it must be so nice.

            Next we went to a pottery village, which was really interesting. We got to watch pottery being made step by step, from the clay being collected from the ground and it made into pottery by a man at the pottery wheel, to it being painted and fired in the kiln. The village we went to was really tiny and every single person there was involved in pottery making.

            After we left the pottery village, we drove to our hotel in N’koob, which was a hotel in a really old kasbah. The hotel was really cosy and nice: it had fireplace with cushions all around that we ended up curling up and reading around. Because the hotel was made out of a kasbah that is several centuries old, the bathrooms were in a separate building. So, it felt just luck being back at home in Rabat! Except that the bathrooms were way nicer than the one at my house.

2-18-09, Wednesday: This day was a long one because it was the day of our 12 hour drive from the south of Morocco north to Fes. We enjoyed the desert so much that we didn’t want to leave it and rejoin civilization, but once we got to Fes, we really enjoyed it.

We spent two nights in Fes because the first day all we did was drive there and basically go right to sleep. But the next day we went on a tour of the medina. The medina in Fes is the biggest in Morocco, so you basically have to have a tour guide. Our program director, Fadoua, says that she has been to Fes many times and yet she still gets lost in the medina when she goes on her own, so lame Americans like us had no chance. The medina in Fes has 9,600 streets, which is basically a lifetime opportunity to get lost. So for once I was actually glad to be on a tour.

            Our tour guide took us all over the medina, including to the tannery of Fes, which was huge. Surprisingly, it didn’t smell at all, but our tour guide said that that was because we came in the winter. In the summer, he said the smell is unbearable. After the tannery we went to a place where they sold scarves as well as traditional clothing like chellabahs and caftans. Chellabahs are worn over clothing when one goes outside and caftans are worn for special occasions like weddings.

Interesting side note: If anyone has seen Star Wars and remembers the sand planet Tatooine, the scenes from that planet were filmed in Morocco. Also the costumes of the sand people, the cloaks with pointy hoods, were modeled after the Moroccan chellabahs.

In the clothing place, there were weavers there weaving on large traditional looms and one of them saw me watching him and he motioned for me to come over and he taught me how to weave! I wasn’t very good at it at first, but I gradually got the hang of it. He talked to me completely in Darija (Moroccan Arabic) and I actually understood him, so that made me really happy.

            After our tour of the medina, we went to a women’s center in Fes. The center is a place where women in abusive relationships and their children can go. The center houses them and provides them with skills training if they need it, so that they can get a job and support themselves. All of us in the program are taking the Gender Studies in North Africa class, and our professor had recommended the center as a place for us to visit. It was very interesting. The center is only a few years old and it was really nice; nicer even than some shelters in the US. It was interesting that in a country that until very recently did not really practice women’s rights there was a center that was so modern. It’s good to know that these kinds of resources are finally being available to Moroccan women.

           2-20-09: On Friday morning, we drove to Meknes. There we visited a Jewish cemetery where people were buried in the walls. It was super old and really interesting to visit. Meknes has one of the two mosques in the entire country that non- Muslims are allowed to enter (the other is in Casablanca). We were going to visit the mosque, but it ended up being closed for some reason, so that was kind of a disappointment.

After driving around Meknes for awhile, we went to Volubilis, which is a huge site of Roman ruins. There were a ton of mosaics that were really well preserved despite being 2000 years old. Also a lot of foundations and columns of houses had been found, so it was cool to get an idea of what their houses were like.

We went to the small town of Moulay Idriss for lunch. We ate at a hotel, which was actually this woman’s house. It was really cute and the food was delicious. After lunch, the owner took us up on the roof where we had an amazing view of entire town, and she served us tea and cookies. Moroccan hospitality is really great, it actually reminds me a lot of Turkish hospitality.

That evening, we drove to Chefchaouen, which is a small town in northern Morocco. Chefchaouen is known for all the buildings being painted blue. It makes the town absolutely gorgeous. We really liked our hotel in Chefchaouen because the beds were all canopy beds (or, as we like to call them, princess beds)! The two boys in our group didn’t quite share in our excitement, but the rest of us really enjoyed them.

 2-21-09: We spent the next morning (Saturday) walking around Chefchaouen. It is a small town, but a really cute one. I really liked Chefchaouen, and I would like to go back there for a weekend, if I get the chance.

That day was the last one in our excursion, but on the way back to Rabat, we stopped in Ouazzane for lunch. Farah and Abdelhay, the founders of the Center for Cross Cultural Learning, have a house up there, and they invited us for lunch. Brahim, the cook at the CCCL, was there and he made us lunch. Brahim is an incredible cook (he rivals my Turkish host mom, Semra, and that is no easy feat), and we weren’t expecting a meal from him, so it was a wonderful surprise. The SIT students eat lunch at the CCCL each day, and we are so jealous of them. We are supposed to go home for lunch everyday, but occasionally some of us linger around the cafeteria after our classes, and then Brahim offers us food. No one ever turns him down. He can make the simplest dishes taste amazing. During our last week of the program, we will be living in the hotel and eating at the CCCL, and although I am going to miss living with my family, I am so excited to be eating Brahim’s cooking again.

Anyway, we went to Farah’s house in Ouazzane and it was beautiful. It is a traditional Moroccan house with a courtyard and rooms all along it. While we were there, Farah told us a little bit about her family’s history and their connection to Ouazzane. She is from Tangier, but her family is originally from Ouazzane. In fact, her family members were sheriffs, which means that they were considered to be saints, and her family was really important in Ouazzane. She also told us about her great-great grandmother, who was British and whose name was Emily. Emily was a really special lady because she was the first person to introduce the small pox vaccine to Morocco at the beginning of the 20^th century. Emily also wrote an auto-biography, of which only 10 copies were published and they are scattered in different libraries (one of the copies is in Harvard), but Farah had a copy and let us look at it. It was published in 1911, and it was amazing to hold a book that was almost 100 years old.

Farah’s house is also cool because it has an oil press in it. Before we got there, they had bought tons of olives so that they could do an oil making demonstration for us. They scooped all of the olives into this large trench thing that had a big stone in the middle. A donkey was connected to the stone, and as the donkey walked around, he moved the stone so that it would crush all of the olives. The crushed olives were then put into these baskets that were stacked one on top of the other, under a big press. When about 20 baskets had been stacked up, the press was cranked down and the oil was squeezed out of the olives. It was squeezed into another trench, where it was mixed with water and washed. Then the water was drained out and the oil was drained into another trench. The oil had to be washed a few more times before it could be bottled, but we didn’t get to see that part because it would take a while. It was really cool to watch fresh oil be pressed. A few weeks later, the oil was brought to the center and we got to eat it with bread. It was delicious.

In the evening, it was time for us to drive back to Rabat. None of us really wanted to go, because we had been having such a great time seeing other parts of the country, but it was nice to see my host family again. Our trip was an amazing experience, hope you enjoyed reading about it!

This weekend, I went to Casablanca! All of us (the students) wanted to get out of Rabat for a little while, so we decided to go to Casablanca for a day. Our class finishes at noon on Fridays, so we took a train after lunch. The train ride is only an hour and costs 32 dirhams (which is 4 dollars), so it was really easy to get there. We had hotel reservations, and the address of the hotel, but we were really sure how to get there. We had a really tiny map of Casablanca, which were trying to use, but it didn’t have very many street names, so it wasn’t so helpful. What made it even better was the fact that the minute we got off the train, it began pour. It was only a 10 minute walk to the hotel (once we figured out the correct direction to walk in), but by the time we got there we were pretty soaked. Because we were planning on leaving the next day, and didn’t want to bring to much stuff, none of us had brought a change of clothes, so that was great planning…
It stopped raining after a little while, but nothing in Morocco ever dries, so we were basically damp for the rest of day. After finding the hotel, we decided to walk around the city a bit. It looks a lot like Rabat actually. Every major city in Morocco has an Avenue Muhammed V (the grandfather of the current king), and Casablanca’s is basically identical to the Muhammed V in Rabat. There are a lot of palm trees everywhere and it is super crowded. We walked through the medina (old city) and were touristy and took lots of pictures. We decided to warm up a get some tea, so we stopped in a café for a bit. One thing that we saw when we were walking around was not one, but two KFC’s. We also saw at least 2 McDonald’s. There is also a TGI Friday’s in Rabat. With all these American restaurants, it seems a little bit strange that there are no Starbucks anywhere in Morocco…
We went to a restaurant in a part of the city called Ayn Diab, which is a pretty modern section that has a bunch of restaurant and night clubs. It was a nice restaurant but kind of over priced. But we wanted to go to a fancy place, so we enjoyed it.
The next morning we walked around the city for a bit and got breakfast at the same café that we had gone to a night before. They had a breakfast special that included eggs, bread, a hot drink, and orange juice for 18 dirhams (2.25 dollars), so we figured that was a good choice for our student budgets.
We also went to see the Hassan II Mosque, which is the second largest mosque in the world! It was gigantic and beautiful. We didn’t actually go inside, because you have to pay 60 dirhams to do that (and we missed the times for the tour), so we just wandered around outside, but it was still amazing. It is right next to the water, so we sat on the rocks and watched the waves for a while as well. It was really beautiful. Seeing the mosque actually made me feel like I was in Casablanca. Before that, I felt like I could be in any city anywhere, but the mosque was really special.

Then we took the train back to Rabat, where we learned first hand about the idiotic conductors that exist on Moroccan trains. Two of my friends had purchased round-trip train tickets when we left Rabat, thinking that it would be easier than buying two separate tickets. However, because the ticket back to Rabat did not have the correct date on it (it had the date of purchase, which was the day before the return trip, instead of the return date), the conductor refused to accept it. So he made them pay again, plus an extra 5 dirhams because we were already on the train. It was pretty infuriating. So now we know if you buy a train ticket in Morocco, make sure you have the correct date on it!

Happy Groundhog Day everyone!

I have been in Morocco for one week! It has definitely been an interesting one. I started staying with my host family this past weekend (we stayed in a hotel for the first week). It is probably the most interesting house I have ever been in. When you walk in, there is a kitchen and a living room and then you keep walking and all of the sudden you are outside. The roof just ends. My room, the bathroom, and my host parents' room are all separate from the rest of the house.

I have a huge host family!

My host mom's name is Amina, my father's name is Mohammed, I have two sisters: Rachida and Siham, 3 brothers: Simohammed, Foued, and Yassine, and an uncle who's name is Boubker. Simohammed is married (his wife's name is Lubna) and they have a 5 month old daughter named Malak. They live in their own house, but everyone else lives together! People are always coming and going, it's crazy! They are all very nice though.

 Rachida, Siham, Yassine, Amina, and Mohammed speak French, so I have been speaking French all the time. Actually, almost everyone in Rabat speaks French, I have never been so glad I studied it in high school! Rachida, Siham, and Simohammed are in their 30's, Foued is in his late 20's and Boubker is only 4 or 5 years older than me. He and Mohammed are brothers, but they have different mothers, hence the huge age difference between them. Yassine is 16 and speaks a little bit of English as well, but we speak French most of the time.

In Morocco, there are both turkish and western toilets and I was so relieved when I found out that my house has a western toilet. But then I found out that it is not really a western toilet, because it does not actually flush on its own. It has pipes and every thing, but you have to pour water down it yourself. So basically, it's a turkish toilet that you can sit on. My house does have hot water though, (and not all of them do), so that is a very very good thing.

 Lubna and Amina took me to a wedding this weekend! Both the bride and groom are family cousins, but I am not sure exactly how... It was a really cool experience. It took place in a house and we wore caftans, which is the traditional clothing worn to a wedding. There was a lot of music, dancing, and, of course, a ton of food. The actual ceremony took place somewhere else, but we saw the bride and groom exchange rings and the bride changed caftans halfway through, which is apparently a traditional part of a wedding.

We also start our classes this week this week. I had Arabic class yesterday, and it is just me and one other student in my class so that's awesome. We have Arabic for 3 hours every day week, then next week is switches to 2 hours Monday to Thursday. Our teacher is really funny and he seems cool, so I think I'll enjoy that class. The Arabic we are learning is Fus'ha or classical Arabic, and in Morocco they speak a dialect called Darija, and the two are not similar at all. I am not so sure how I am going to learn Darija, I hear it all the time at my house though, so maybe it will sink in through osmosis or something...

Happy Inauguration Day everyone!

I'm in Rabat!!

 We landed on Monday at around 2 PM, after traveling for almost an entire day. The airport in Rabat is super tiny, only one gate, and you walk straight off the airplane onto the ground. We had to pass through customs, which took about half an hour, and after that we boarded a bus that took us to our hotel. The weather could not have been more beautiful. It was (and has been every day since) about 70 degrees and sunny. There are palm trees and orange trees everywhere and it's absolutely gorgeous! We spend a lot of time complaining about how cold we are though, because the buildings in Rabat don't have heat. It is not so bad during the day, but when the sun goes down it gets a bit chilly. Oddly enough, it is warmer outside than inside. Most of the buildings are made of stone and are therefore damp and cold inside.

We are taking classes at the Center for Cross-Cultural Learning (the CCCL) which is located in the medina (old city) of Rabat and it is beautiful. The building was built in the 19th century (although the CCCL didn't move here until around 2000) and is centered around a courtyard. The rooms are all tiled with beautiful patterns, which make you kind of dizzy if you stare at them for too long, but are a lot prettier than the boring paint which adorns the wall of BU. The courtyard now has a roof, but it used to be open to the sky (and most of the buildings in the medina still have their courtyards open to they sky), so the building had to be built to accommodate rain. This means that there are steps everywhere, leading in and out of every room, in the idea that rain would only fall on the center of the building and would not get into the rooms. This is a good idea, but I am positive that I am going to trip and break something while I'm here...

We have been having orientation all week and staying in a hotel this week, but our home stays will begin this Friday. I can't wait!

 We have to go to a reception with our teachers and CCCL staff now, but I will write later about what we have been doing during orientation. Hope everyone is doing well!

I'm leaving tomorrow!

Hey everyone!
I'm leaving tomorrow (well, actually today, as it's 1 AM) for Rabat, Morocco where I will be spending the next four months as a part of a study abroad program. I will be taking classes, living with a host family, traveling around, and hopefully having an all around sweet time.
Check back every so often for stories of my adventures and pictures! Hope you enjoy my blog!