Asilah!

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.

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