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

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

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!!

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!