Well we are all extremely behind on our blogging efforts... it has been difficult to either bring our computers with us, or find the time in our busy days to spend writing about the awesome things we've been doing!! haha Our Arabic classes have been quite demanding, and unfortunately are broken up into two parts of the day which makes it difficult to have more substantial blocks of time free during the week. Weekends, when we normally might have the time for these kinds of things have been packed full of short trips to other cities by bus and by train (and it always feels safer to leave our computers in our apartment). For our second weekend excursion, we travelled by rail to a small fishing town called Asilah, in the very North-West of Morocco. Because of the proximity to Spain, the local people from this absolutely adorable and beautiful little town spoke quite a bit of Spanish, and generally less French unlike the Southern parts of Morocco where speaking and understanding a little French has been most useful. Kendra of course was thrilled again by this change and took the reins in all of our haggling and bargaining (which is an integral part of almost every transaction here).
The town is right on the beach, and the Medina walls hang over small cliffs at the shore- it's very beautiful. The Medina itself was exceptionally so- we learned that the riads and homes inside the Medina are predominantly owned by Europeans now, which explained the generally cleaner and 'more Euro' feel. One man we met was convinced we would be back to either rent or buy one of the riads in the Medina, and took us to see a few of the homes he had available for rent or purchase... they were surprisingly affordable, considering the location and beauty of each. Every year a festival is held in the Medina in Asilah, and artists are invited from all over the world to come and paint new murals on the white walls-- there were some really beautiful murals that we saw while walking around, and they contributed in large part to the 'artsy' feeling of Asilah. There were some beautiful galleries as well, which we spent some time admiring the second afternoon.
I was SOO pleased to be by the ocean again, and when we heard about this amazing beach (aptly named 'paradise beach') about 6 kilometres south of Asilah we set out on foot with our beach toys and water-bottles. This turned out to be a really excellent decision because the coast was spectacular, each rocky cliff overlooking the waves crashing into the tide-pools and reefs below seemed more wonderful than the last. And at the end of our trek- several kilometres of spectacular sandy beach almost completely to ourselves. We spent the remainder of the day here, and had such an excellent time soaking up the sun- we left feeling rejuvenated and thrilled with ourselves and our good luck in general. The following day we decided to return to the beach and skip the long walk (beautiful as it was) but were side-tracked when we went searching for a taxi by a man with a horse-drawn cart who offered to take us instead. Naturally once a bargain had been struck we piled on the back of a flat cart and a horse named Stevie trundled us off to the beach. Sadly Stevie took his time arriving at the beach, and we actually only had time to walk along the cliffs that overlook Paradise beach before we had to pile back onto the cart and be taken back to Asilah to make our train home to Fes. Still it was a really hilarious cart ride, and we commended ourselves for our ability to wind up in funny situations. We left Asilah feeling warmer, slightly more tan, and happier in general than when we had arrived- and would definitely have liked to have the time to return.
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Belated Updates
Okay! Lets try this again. Sorry we've all been so bad at updating this over the past few weeks! Various things found ways to continually keep us all busy : )
So since our wonderful weekend in Chefchaouen we've been back in Fes in the apartment and learning massive amounts of Arabic! We just had a test last week, on which one of the questions asked us to write a paragraph in Arabic describing our lives and our families... which intimidated all of us, but was also a nice indicator that something has been sticking over these past 4 weeks of class. We've had a few more afternoons wandering around the medina, and spent quite a bit of time on two occasions in different Berber pharmacies, which are full of herbs and spices and soaps and perfumes and oils, all for traditional medicinal purposes. It was a lot of fun hearing about all the uses for things, and what the various remedies were for things like a runny nose or cough. Also in the medina is a restaurant called Cafe Clocke, which has a beautiful rooftop terrace to eat on, and a camel burger on the menu! obviously we tried it - delicious!
Our weekends have been full of various excursions, one weekend there was a house warming party on Friday night and a Birthday party on Saturday night for other students from the ALIF school who life in GORGEOUS riads in the medina, so both of those nights were a lot of fun and socializing outside of our class of 5 was exciting and nice. The following weekend we hoped on a train north west up the coast to a town called Asilah, which was really really beautiful, and which Darwyn will write a longer post about soon!
This past week we celebrated Darwyn's 25th birthday, and had cake and a nice dinner and, unfortunately, a test in class. Then the next day (Friday) we got on a 13 hour bus headed south west to a city on the coast called Agadir, where we grabbed a taxi and headed to a smaller little beach town called Taghazout that was full of tourist surfers but a really adorable and wonderful little town right on the ocean. We had a long weekend for the Prophet's Birthday, so spent Saturday through Tuesday there before catching another overnight 13hr bus ride back to Fes just in time to run to class!
More updates soon on the two weekend adventures, and again, sorry for such sporadic updates... Thanks for reading!
Best,
Veronica
So since our wonderful weekend in Chefchaouen we've been back in Fes in the apartment and learning massive amounts of Arabic! We just had a test last week, on which one of the questions asked us to write a paragraph in Arabic describing our lives and our families... which intimidated all of us, but was also a nice indicator that something has been sticking over these past 4 weeks of class. We've had a few more afternoons wandering around the medina, and spent quite a bit of time on two occasions in different Berber pharmacies, which are full of herbs and spices and soaps and perfumes and oils, all for traditional medicinal purposes. It was a lot of fun hearing about all the uses for things, and what the various remedies were for things like a runny nose or cough. Also in the medina is a restaurant called Cafe Clocke, which has a beautiful rooftop terrace to eat on, and a camel burger on the menu! obviously we tried it - delicious!
Our weekends have been full of various excursions, one weekend there was a house warming party on Friday night and a Birthday party on Saturday night for other students from the ALIF school who life in GORGEOUS riads in the medina, so both of those nights were a lot of fun and socializing outside of our class of 5 was exciting and nice. The following weekend we hoped on a train north west up the coast to a town called Asilah, which was really really beautiful, and which Darwyn will write a longer post about soon!
This past week we celebrated Darwyn's 25th birthday, and had cake and a nice dinner and, unfortunately, a test in class. Then the next day (Friday) we got on a 13 hour bus headed south west to a city on the coast called Agadir, where we grabbed a taxi and headed to a smaller little beach town called Taghazout that was full of tourist surfers but a really adorable and wonderful little town right on the ocean. We had a long weekend for the Prophet's Birthday, so spent Saturday through Tuesday there before catching another overnight 13hr bus ride back to Fes just in time to run to class!
More updates soon on the two weekend adventures, and again, sorry for such sporadic updates... Thanks for reading!
Best,
Veronica
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Chefchaouen
A hill village, “white-washed” with stunning pastel blue walls and cobble stoned streets with a relaxing and mellow atmosphere. Near the ocean and nestled in a beautiful mountain range, this old Jewish settlement has attracted not only the admireing tourists but also incessant and very persistent amount of hash dealers and goat herders.
Waking up at 6:00am to catch the seven o’clock buss and meet up with a group of students from our language course, we drove for four hours watching a beautiful landscape filled with flat olive groves, mountains and the occasional lone woman or man walking from no-where to no-where (at least in our range of vision).
We arrived and walked up the steep hills up to the medina while being flowed the entirety of the way up by pesky ‘guides’. They managed to stay with us regardless our best efforts to loose them. Once we made it to the medina we were blown away by the colors and how different the atmosphere was compared to the chaotic hustle and bustle of the medina in fez. We stayed in a beautiful hostel named Andaluz for aprox. 6 dollars. Walked to a beautiful riverside café where we could watch women, men and children playing near the water and washing their clothes in the clear mountain stream.
We then proceeded to work our way through the winding narrow streets of the medina to make it up to the medina wall where we could watch the sun set from above the city. Along the way we came across a school with children playing and asking for our photographs, meanwhile the director of the school introduced himself and explain that he wanted to get help to build a school garden to better their ecology class.
The following day we spent the whole day exploring the medina streets, getting our hands painted with henna, going from one store the to next which was especially fun because this town uses Spanish instead of French making bargaining a much more pleasant and comfortable experience. We then proceeded to almost miss our buss back to fez. We were able to make it just in the nook of time thanks to the scariest 5 min taxi drive I have ever had.
- Kendra
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Monday, January 16, 2012
ok so clearly we are not very good at keeping this thing updated... but here goes round three.
So the apartment is great, we've been slowly acquiring more things to make it a bit more homey (like the space heater Darwyn mentioned). Our first week of classes went well, once we had all caught up on sleep, and things are moving pretty quickly as far as material covered each class. We are going through the alphabet first, and learning the names and sounds of Arabic letters, and starting to put them together to make small words (like baab for door!).
The first weekend we went out on a tour of the medina, which was absolutely incredible. Fez is the third largest city in Morocco, after Casablanca and Marrakesh, and has the largest medina in the world. The city is split into two sections, called old Fez and new Fez. Old Fez is the medina, and is the old historic part of the city. It is entirely surrounded by walls, and no cars or bicycles or anything else is allowed inside, only people and donkeys. It is an insane maze of tiny alley-like passageways with shops on all sides, that wind around and connect together. It is built with five big rings, since 5 is the holy number of Islam. The center ring in the middle is all the food shops and food vendors, the second ring is all merchants selling textiles, leather, art, wood, iron work, carvings, etc. The third ring is all residential, with beautiful riad houses with gardens in the middle and incredible tile work, the fourth ring is the wall that encloses the city, and the fifth ring outside the wall is gardens and cemeteries. It was pretty hectic inside, but also quite wonderful, especially getting to see some of the mosques inside the medina, and the leather tannery. Soooo many leather things... holy. That afternoon we did some grocery shopping and checked out a local little cafe for dinner. Moroccan food = delicious.
Week two we had a day off on the Wednesday, so Tuesday after class we went with the three other people in our class (and one of their host brothers) to a local hamam (public bath house), thinking we were actually going to a natural hotspring. What an experience. The genders are separated, so when we got there (and after paying) me, Kendra and Maja (from our Arabic class) went to the women's side together, having no idea what we were getting ourselves into. The first room you walk into is like a large locker room, but without lockers, just long tile benches down the middle of the room and tile benches around the outside edge where women are changing or putting clothes back on and leaving. Normal attire is apparently just underwear and no bra, but the three of us had our swim suits on. Then you give your things to some women behind a counter where there are a bunch of cubby holes, and walk into the steamy abyss. The next room around the corner, is a enormous dark steamy room with a huge half-pool sized thigh deep bath, and one whole wall lined with faucets from the ceiling pouring our hot water. There were probably 200+ women, and half as many children there, with most of them crowded around the faucets filling up big pails of water and using the hot water and bars of soap to wash themselves, their kids and each other. The women were all also combing their hair, and so there was an outrageous amount of loose hair on the floor, the edges of the pool-tub, and free floating in the water. A few women took pity on us since we looked very out of place and didn't really know what to do, so poured water on us and helped us get access to one of the faucets for about 30 seconds. Unfortunately, since we hadn't brought any soap we ended up leaving feeling dirtier than when we had came... But it was an experience to say the least!
More soon!
Veronica
So the apartment is great, we've been slowly acquiring more things to make it a bit more homey (like the space heater Darwyn mentioned). Our first week of classes went well, once we had all caught up on sleep, and things are moving pretty quickly as far as material covered each class. We are going through the alphabet first, and learning the names and sounds of Arabic letters, and starting to put them together to make small words (like baab for door!).
The first weekend we went out on a tour of the medina, which was absolutely incredible. Fez is the third largest city in Morocco, after Casablanca and Marrakesh, and has the largest medina in the world. The city is split into two sections, called old Fez and new Fez. Old Fez is the medina, and is the old historic part of the city. It is entirely surrounded by walls, and no cars or bicycles or anything else is allowed inside, only people and donkeys. It is an insane maze of tiny alley-like passageways with shops on all sides, that wind around and connect together. It is built with five big rings, since 5 is the holy number of Islam. The center ring in the middle is all the food shops and food vendors, the second ring is all merchants selling textiles, leather, art, wood, iron work, carvings, etc. The third ring is all residential, with beautiful riad houses with gardens in the middle and incredible tile work, the fourth ring is the wall that encloses the city, and the fifth ring outside the wall is gardens and cemeteries. It was pretty hectic inside, but also quite wonderful, especially getting to see some of the mosques inside the medina, and the leather tannery. Soooo many leather things... holy. That afternoon we did some grocery shopping and checked out a local little cafe for dinner. Moroccan food = delicious.
Week two we had a day off on the Wednesday, so Tuesday after class we went with the three other people in our class (and one of their host brothers) to a local hamam (public bath house), thinking we were actually going to a natural hotspring. What an experience. The genders are separated, so when we got there (and after paying) me, Kendra and Maja (from our Arabic class) went to the women's side together, having no idea what we were getting ourselves into. The first room you walk into is like a large locker room, but without lockers, just long tile benches down the middle of the room and tile benches around the outside edge where women are changing or putting clothes back on and leaving. Normal attire is apparently just underwear and no bra, but the three of us had our swim suits on. Then you give your things to some women behind a counter where there are a bunch of cubby holes, and walk into the steamy abyss. The next room around the corner, is a enormous dark steamy room with a huge half-pool sized thigh deep bath, and one whole wall lined with faucets from the ceiling pouring our hot water. There were probably 200+ women, and half as many children there, with most of them crowded around the faucets filling up big pails of water and using the hot water and bars of soap to wash themselves, their kids and each other. The women were all also combing their hair, and so there was an outrageous amount of loose hair on the floor, the edges of the pool-tub, and free floating in the water. A few women took pity on us since we looked very out of place and didn't really know what to do, so poured water on us and helped us get access to one of the faucets for about 30 seconds. Unfortunately, since we hadn't brought any soap we ended up leaving feeling dirtier than when we had came... But it was an experience to say the least!
More soon!
Veronica
Thursday, January 12, 2012
lets get started
Well I have to say this has been quite an experience so far... I am so impressed by how quickly we were able to find an apartment and get settled in here. Fez is a wonderful place- generally we have been harassed very little despite how we are so obviously tourists. I am also impressed by how quickly we are making progress learning Arabic. We are already writing and reading using most of the alphabet, and beginning to understand what we are reading... it's slow going in many ways, but I did not think we would be at the stage we are at now for another couple of weeks.
We have a wicked rooftop patio that we discovered and will be spending time between classes up there where we can soak up some sun if we're careful and we stay out of sight-- we made that mistake the first time and got reprimanded by a poor arabic woman who was quite shocked to see me without my shirt.
The nights are so cold here compared to how beautifully warm the sun is during the day. Our apartment is all tiled and does not get much direct sunlight which makes it very cold. The first days we were extremely bundled up and walking around with blankets... we took to leaving our toaster oven on full blast with the door open which worked a little bit-- we have since bought a space heater that has made a huge difference.
We have been so lucky with the weather... aparently it's supposed to be raining- but it has been beautiful and clear every day so far. Amaaaazing.
I thought I had better cover some of the less exciting things before we tell you all about some of the hilarious situations we have landed ourselves in already.
More soon!!
We have a wicked rooftop patio that we discovered and will be spending time between classes up there where we can soak up some sun if we're careful and we stay out of sight-- we made that mistake the first time and got reprimanded by a poor arabic woman who was quite shocked to see me without my shirt.
The nights are so cold here compared to how beautifully warm the sun is during the day. Our apartment is all tiled and does not get much direct sunlight which makes it very cold. The first days we were extremely bundled up and walking around with blankets... we took to leaving our toaster oven on full blast with the door open which worked a little bit-- we have since bought a space heater that has made a huge difference.
We have been so lucky with the weather... aparently it's supposed to be raining- but it has been beautiful and clear every day so far. Amaaaazing.
I thought I had better cover some of the less exciting things before we tell you all about some of the hilarious situations we have landed ourselves in already.
More soon!!
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Here We Go!
We all finally made it to Morocco, whew! Since we were all told to send out updates about what Morocco is like, what we are doing here, and the various adventures we have while traveling, we thought we would all collectively write a blog : )
So... there will be various updates and stories on this blog from Veronica, Kendra and Darwyn over the next two months while we all struggle to learn Arabic and attempt to become proficient at riding camels.
Enjoy!
So... there will be various updates and stories on this blog from Veronica, Kendra and Darwyn over the next two months while we all struggle to learn Arabic and attempt to become proficient at riding camels.
Enjoy!
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