Marrakesh Pictures

Yves St. Laurent Monument in the Jardin.


Perkins the Dog the turtle



Gorgeous Walkway

Cool Fountain

The entrance to the Garden

The awesome decor at our first hotel

More awesome decor at our first hotel

And even more awesome decor at our first hotel.

Bathroom at the Riad! It was very long and skinny.

Awesome fountain in the Riad.

Marrakesh!

WARNING: THIS ENTRY IS SUPER F-ING LONG!

10/2/09-10/04/09

We went to Marrakesh this weekend!

Marrakesh is situated about 4 hours south of Rabat. Henry, Ronan (not sure if I've mentioned him yet - he's a young British guy deferring his enrollment to Oxford for a year and is here studying Arabic), Will, Barbara, Amrita, Chloe, Fabienne, and I left La Gare Rabat Centre Ville at 5 45 on Friday. The trains here are comprised of many different compartments rather than open rows of seating like on the LIRR or the Subway in NYC, so we snagged two almost empty ones and split up.

The trip there was pretty hilarious for a few reasons:

-The door in our compartment didn't work and it was hilarious to watch people try to enter and exit.

-The lady sitting next to me had a pair of small scissors on her keychain...ok, fine, maybe she's a seamstress or something. But did she have to hold them on her index and middle fingers so that the blade stuck straight out threateningly? Halfway through the ride she got up and stood out in the tiny hallway instead, staring menacingly at the people trying to push past her and her large suitcase.

-The train stopped at one point and nobody could figure out why. First we heard that a young man jumped off the train and died, then we heard that he simply had fallen and broken his arm...after about 45 minutes of sitting there we heard that it was an "April Fools Joke" and really it was just an electrical problem (we were told it doesn't have to April for April Fools Jokes to occur....a little frightening)

-Ok so technically this happened after we got there but it was right before we went to our hotel so it still kind of counts. We had just met up with Tom (he had gone down to Marrakesh to catch his flight the next day) right outside the Medina and were figuring out what we wanted to do for food when this guy just walked up, took Tom's water bottle from his hand, took a sip, poured some water over his head and scrubbed his face, then handed the water bottle back to Tom and walked away.

-Welcome to Marrakesh.

Ok, so here's the thing about Marrakesh: It's a huge tourist trap. Remember in Aladdin when Jasmine dresses up as a peasant and goes into the town and everyone is talking to her and people are charming snakes and have trained monkeys and all that? Ok yeah, Marrakesh is like that. It was pretty tiring to have to constantly be warding off people and haggling for prices, but it's a nice city none the less. The great thing about being in the tourist capital of the country was that things were a little cleaner and upscale than in Rabat. The bathroom at the train station was actually like a normal train station bathroom - a little dirty, but still flushes and has toilet paper. AMAZING!

The hotel we stayed in the first night used to be a house where all the members of one extended family lived. It is a courtyard style house with 30 rooms and lots of really awesome decor. I would definitely love to decorate any future homes of mine with Moroccan flare. It's so gorgeous!

The next morning we all had breakfast on the terrace to make our plan for the day. We went to this really beautiful garden where the ashes of Yves St. Laurent are scattered and saved this tiny turtle (which Henry named "Perkins the Dog") from the sidewalk...at least I think we saved him rather than hurt him. Not too exciting, but I always appreciate moments of shade and tranquility. We then ventured back the Medina for lunch where I had the supposedly famous "Couscous aux Sept Legumes." It was tasty, true, but when they say "seven vegetables" they mean literally seven pieces of vegetables sitting on top of the couscous (I think it was something like 3 pieces of carrot, 2 slices of eggplant, and 3 slices of zucchini). We then set out into the Souk to do a little shopping!

Let me tell you, the guys in the Souk in Marrakesh are AGRESSIVE. I can handle people calling after me or saying things to get me to come into their shop - I get it, they're trying to make money - but the amount of times I was grabbed by the wrist was uncanny. I'm normally a very polite person but I really cannot stand this attitude toward foreigners and have no problem saying with complete disgust "Don't touch me," or "Ne me touche pas!" as the case may be. They would never grab a Moroccan woman like that. Don't get the wrong idea, not everyone is like that and I met some very nice people while I was shopping that day. I got presents for some of you! Be excited! Some of us got really great deals because we were with Amrita. Amrita is Indian but people here think she is Moroccan all the time and give her the "Moroccan discount." Her usual story is that her parents are Moroccan but moved to America and so she grew up American. The funny thing is though that she puts on this really weird accent that she totally wouldn't have if she grew up in America and spoke only "shweeyah" Arabic. (shweeyah = "a little" in Arabic) But whatever! It works out well for us!

That night we had a pretty wacky experience going to dinner. We first attempted to go to this restaurant mentioned in Lonely Planet, but the prices were double what the book stated, so we left. It was pretty fantastic though, they had this little fountain of fire in the middle of the restaurant (I don't remember what the actual name of the restaurant was, but it translates to "FireWater.") So we left and went to this little place in the Medina that Will had popped into before to see if it might be a possibility for dinner. Apparently the guy there said that he would serve us wine with our dinner and had asked him to call if we wanted to come there. So we walk in...and it was incredibly dark, as in, only the candles on the tables were lighting the place. The couples at their candlelight dinners all glared at us...weird...but ok, maybe they all happen to be in the middle of arguments. After a few moments of waiting in this odd side room we were taken to our table. The owner seemed very strange (we think he may have possibly been drunk) and kept coming over and talking to us. He mentioned several times to Will that he did not call before we came to the restaurant. We tried to explain that it was a spur of the moment decision but I don't think he understood. When Will inquired about the wine, the owner seemed especially dismayed. A while later we saw him enter the restaurant with a bag - he had gone outside the Medina to purchase it for us and tried to charge us 300 DH (about $40) for the bottle, which is absolutely insane. The wine was crap and you probably could have bought it for under $20 at any grocery store in America. He told us that wine is illegal in the Medina and he went to great lengths to get it for us, but we told him that we're sorry he took the risk but he didn't explain this to us beforehand and we were not going to pay 300 DH. We got it down to 100 DH and tried to get out of there as quickly as possible. He did send us on our way with lots of statements like "You are my customers, if you pay or no, I love you." He also gave Will a small glass of wine to take on the way out the door, which we immediately ditched. Oh, and did I mention the random women that seemed to be coming and going all throughout the restaurant? One was wearing all leather...SHADY! The tagine was pretty good though.

The second night we stayed in a Riad, which is basically just a nicer hotel than normal. Marrakesh is known for its Riads, so we had to see what they were all about. Some are very fancy and have pools or hammams directly inside them, but ours was pretty basic - just nice rooms and people. The bathrooms were amazingly large! Definitely the biggest one I've been in since coming to Morocco. And we had a really baller breakfast on the terrace in the morning. It was complimentary and it came with fried eggs, pain au chocolat, crepes, bread, coffee/tea, and juice. Yumm!

And after the amazing breakfast, I discovered I had a major problem. I had lost my debit card and 400 DH (about $50). I have no clue how it happened. I used my card to get money out of the ATM to go to dinner the previous night, and that was the last time I saw it. I thought that maybe when I was trying to quickly pay for dinner the night before it fell out of my bag onto my lap and I didn't notice. So....I had to ask Will to accompany me back to the restaurant. It was the last thing on earth either of us wanted to do...but we did. It wasn't there. It also wasn't at the bank where I took out money the night before or at the hotel, and therefore it was completely lost.

So for me the morning was spent mostly at an internet cafe frantically checking my bank account (no charges were made), trying to see if I could cancel my card online (I couldn't) and trying to find phone numbers to call to get it cancelled. Of course, I had run out of money on my cell phone (almost all phones here are pay-as-you-go). Luckily I had accidentally purchased a regular calling card for payphones a couple weeks ago. Unluckily, it was in Rabat. So I just kind of prayed nobody used my card until I returned home. I immediately went to a payphone and called my mom to see if she could call and cancel the card for me since her name is also on the account. Everything is fine and now I am waiting for the new card to arrive. Disaster averted. Also, after calling Visa myself I learned that there is such a thing as "Visa 911" where if you lose your Visa card while traveling, they can wire you money from your own account. At that point my Mom and her fiance Curtis had already wired me some cash, but it's nice to know that such a service exists.

TRAVELLERS: NEVER STORE ALL YOUR CASH IN THE SAME PLACE.

Luckily I had not put all my cash in my purse and still had enough money in my backpack to buy lunch, get me home, and to travel to work for the rest of the week.

Ok so even though the trip was filled with strange characters and the loss of my debit card, it was still great and I'd like to go back to Marrakesh another weekend and see all the things I missed!

Pics

Ok so here are some pics I wanted to put with the last post. Tom and Henry on Tom's last night, and Fabienne, my new Swiss roommate!

Comings and Goings

Note: more entries to come about Marrakesh and other things, but I need to buy more batteries for my camera so I can upload pics.

So there have been lots of comings and goings the past couple weeks.

9/30/09

My running buddy Tom has gone back to England. :( He is going to be working there in a lab (I think) for two or three months, then he sets off for Argentina where he will be teaching English for a few months. His grand plan is to then drive home to England, yes that's right, drive up through South America, Mexico, the States, Canada, Russia, the whole shebang...we'll see if it happens or not.

The upside of him leaving was that we all went out to celebrate for his last night!

This guy Alex, from Maryland, used to live with the same host family as Will and Tom but now lives on his own and teaches English. He's become friends with all of us and he took us to this hotel bar in Centre Ville which serves alcohol (hard to find in a Muslim country and illegal in many places) and has live music. The band was so amazing! I hope I can get a copy of their music before I leave. It's this funky mix of Latin and African music. The rhythms are out of control and made dancing very interesting! However, their beats were not as impossible to dance to as the Moroccan music played while the band took their breaks. Will and Tom's host brother had been showing me some neat dance moves earlier in the night, and he kept trying to show me how to dance to the Moroccan music but really all he did was gain a good laugh at my expense. I think I deserve an A for effort though!

Note: there is no proper dance floor in this place, just a small area which happens to not have tables. But everybody squeezed in the small space and gleefully shook their tail-feathers - I have been thirsting for a good "dance-break" in my life for some time, and it really hit the spot!

We will be frequenting that place for sure.

PS - Tonight is technically Will's and Simon's last nights with Projects Abroad, but they will both be in Rabat for a couple weeks so it doesn't really count.

10/1/09

A new volunteer arrived in our house today! Her name is Fabienne and she is Swiss. She seems pretty shy but also very sweet. I'm sure she'll start to open up after being here a little while and getting to know everybody.

Her story for coming here is very sad. Her brother died in a plane crash here four years ago, only a few days before his 22nd birthday. He and his friends were all hobby pilots and they were flying from Marrakesh in a small plane and never made it to their destination. The plane crashed near a small Berber village. There are a lot of mysteries about the crash and the Swiss government and the Berber eye-witnesses have different stories about how it all happened. Her family is also forbidden by Swiss law to speak with the families of the other victims. It's all very strange. The Swiss government told her family that they tried to land their helicopters to pick up the bodies but all the villagers tried to attack the helicopter and that the family should not go to Morocco because the people there would try to kill them. After months the family still had not received the body of Fabienne's brother, and they decided that they'd had enough. Two years ago they went to Morocco to climb the mountain where the plane crashed and speak with people in the Berber village. The bad impression the Swiss government had given her of Morocco was changed after her visit here, and she decided then she wanted to come back to Morocco later on her own terms, for her own reasons. It's a way of making piece for her.

And by the way, while she climbed the mountain where the plane crash happened she was able to collects pieces of the debris from the crash. Her family also was able to collect her brother's body and give him a proper burial. They still don't know why the plane crashed - the hypothesis is that it ran out of fuel because there was no explosion and there would have been if there had been fuel in the plane. Sometimes the people who sell gas here mix it with water to save money...

I would like to give her both FORGETTING and TD/BC to read.

-------

The strange thing about playing roles that really mean something to me is that I sometimes have a false sense of my own experiences. Because of FORGETTING I somehow felt like I really strongly connected with Fabienne about her brother...I know that that sounds absolutely ridiculous and I know that the experience wasn't mine and in no way do I seek to undermine what it truly means to experience that kind of loss....but Trista's writing and her presence in rehearsals made me feel like I was inside her experience of it all somehow....I know it sounds strange but I think a couple people reading this might kind of understand what I mean.

I miss acting.

Some details about work

Me and Ismaha. She is deaf. One day last week she suddenly showed up with a head covering, basically in the fully veiled ensemble minus the part that goes over her face. I am always sort of disgusted to see such young girls covered because I just think "Really? She's 9 and you are sexualizing her hair? Pervs." It was just so sudden...and I wonder if there was an instance or if she had a birthday or something that made her parents start changing her dress.


This is Fahid. Very cute. Very energetic. Very tiring. The main reason I now have a cold.



Don't tell the other kids but Ibrahim is my favorite.

10/01/09

This past week has been a little rough for me. Working with the handicapped kids kind of wears on my soul a little bit. Some of the kids with downs syndrome are really poorly behaved, and I feel as though their parents completely ignore them at home. One kid, Farid, the littlest one, has had a cold since I've been here and its gotten progressively worse. He always has thick mucus running down his face and his eyes have become crusty and watery also. He is also very poorly behaved which I refuse to believe is solely the product of his condition. He knows full well that throwing things at other children is bad behavior. I hate to be the bad guy, but I feel that if I don't discipline them somehow then they will never learn. Nothing crazy, don't think I'm a Nazi or anything. But if you throw the legos after I ask you to stop, then you don't get to play with legos and you have to sit alone with me for a few minutes and not play.

Another kid...well he's 25 actually though you'd never know...is mentally and physically disabled. His name is Saiid and he lives his life in a wheelchair. He likes to draw. We tape all four corners of a piece of paper down in front of him and put a pencil in his hand and with with concentration than I've ever had to use he puts pencil to paper and creates all he can. He also loves to play this one memory game with very large pieces which he can actually flip over, though it takes him a while and quite a lot of energy. The amazing thing is that I lay the pieces out face up and leave them for 15 second or so then flip them all over. He owns me every time. And not like he gets a match or two more than me, he has a map of the game in his head and is never wrong. I suppose that's what happens when your life IS observation. I can't help but think about all the obstacles present in his life. If we're talking in theatre terms...what your objectives even have the possibility of being is completely changed by those obstacles...and he has to make concessions about what a successful achievement of objectives are based on those things which are completely out of his control...

I think that last bit will make sense to a couple people reading this blog...

Our mission is to teach these kids how to function as properly as possible in society. And I refuse to treat them like they are incapable of learning. Whenever I try and work with Fahid my boss says "No, no, its ok, he will make you tired." I politely tell him I don't mind and continue doing what I'm doing, but secretly I'm thinking "You have no idea how much tiredness I can handle buddy. Working with one kid three hours a day ain't nothin."

The three volunteers who work at the center rotate days helping out the teachers with the "normal" kids. They are so tiny, 3-5 years old, and the classes are absurdly large. In one tiny classroom there are 43 children, and in the other there are 31. This is a very general statement, but I feel like the children here in general are very poorly behaved (of course this is from my Western perspective - I have no idea what "well-behaved" means here). It is very difficult for me and I feel very useless because I can't speak Arabic, so I really am no help at all controlling the kids. Usually I just say "la!" (that means "no") with a lot of conviction then stare them square in the eye until they look away....animal style.

I wish the classrooms were larger - that way we could do more physical activities that would keep the kids engaged. What kind of 4 year old is going to sit still for three hours, however well-behaved they are? I think the center accepted way to many children and now everyone is suffering. I'm still trying to figure out what I can do with the handicapped kids one day. All we really do is give them toys and paper and crayons - it's not really an active time and I would like that to change. There is a park closeby and my boss has mentioned several times taking the kids there, but so far it hasn't happens. Peut-etre un jour semaine prochaine. Ou peut-etre je se dis de je voudrais aller un jour chaque semaine. hmm....(again pardon my lack of accents and the grammatical errors...mais j'ai besoin pratiquer souvent!)

Another strange thing at work is when the fully veiled women drop their kids off. I still have a strange reaction to these silhouetted figures of relatively human forms floating through the streets. They seem goulish and frightening to me, and I feel like I'm not supposed to speak to them...mainly because I don't know how to speak to people when I can't see their eyes. Usually I mutter a "Labess?" ("How are you in Dareeja") in their general direction and keep walking like I'm busily going somewhere. This is behavior I will have to work on. But I guess acknowledging that they kind of freak me out is the first step.

....right?

chefchaouen

Here are some pictures of Chefchaouen itself. It's really gorgeous there and I'd love to go back!

chefchaouen

All of us soaking wet after being rained on all day.




The big waterfall we hiked to!





Tom leaping through the air. To the side you see Dodge, Henry, and Lyall


In the minibus on the way to the bottom of the 'trail' we hiked


Pretty!

The small waterfall halfway through the full hike (some people only hike to this point)

Chloe by the pond at the base of the bigger waterfall where we swam!

9/27/09

So this weekend we went to Chefchaouen! I'll divide the entries up by days. All in all, this trip was a great test run for weekend traveling. Basically Chloe and I learned some valuable things about traveling in Morocco such as, don't trust boys to make travel arrangements for you, always pray before entering taxis, and always start trying to get home first thing in the morning - that way you might actually find a bus or train that will get you home by the night. The transportation systems here are extremely unreliable and we found we were better off bargaining with taxi/minibus drivers for rides places.

Ok, so Chefchaouen is known as "the blue city" because many of the houses and medina walls are painted blue, an influence from the large Jewish population which used to inhabit the town. Now it is part of "Spanish Morocco" and we had a rough time communicating with anyone because they speak a funky mix of Spanish and Arabic whereas down in Rabat people speak Dareeja (i don't know how to spell it, but its the Moroccan dialect of Arabic) and French. My French is pretty awful and I have a hard enough time trying to communicate in French here in Rabat, but even the people fluent in French couldn't speak to folks. Plenty of people spoke English and could help us though.

I have come to realize that money talks - and it speaks English.

The first day we decided to hike to a waterfall we read about in Lonely Planet, so we set out via minibus on the 40 minute car ride to the bottom of this hike. After starting out then realizing we really didn't know where in the world we were going, we took a guy up on a led hike to the waterfall. Of course, it began to rain. It wasn't torrential, just a sprinkle, but we were in it for so long that we all ended up soaking wet.

Oh yeah, and I swam at the waterfall. It was the coldest water I have EVER swum in, but I loved every moment of it. I think it might be the coolest thing I've ever done. The hike back down the mountain was a lot faster than the hike up because we were all soaking wet and MORE than ready to get into dry clothes - although we did see monkeys scaling the side of the mountain on the trip down. Total the hike there and back was 6 hours.

That night after getting back to the hotel and dry again we all went out to dinner. I had some really great pastilla, which I've never had before. Yum!

I won't get all fruity on you, but suffice it to say that I was feeling really free and one with nature and all that getting rained on in Africa.