Of Fathers, and France, and other things that start with F

As I said in my last post, my Moroccan days have cemented themselves into a recognizable routine, namely one that does not include updating this blog and does include a lot of lying around doing nothing. Case in point, two weekends ago I didn't leave my house or change out of my PJ's for two whole days (stop judging, I did at least take a shower on Saturday). Two events have unsettled my usual schedule of eating, sleeping, and avoiding homework at all costs. These are the visit from my dad three weeks ago, and my trip to Paris last weekend.

The visit from my dad was amazing. It was so nice to see someone from home, when I haven't been home in seven months, and it's great knowing that when I go back the the US there will be at least one person who can picture Rabat, my host family, and Morocco in general when I talk about it. My poor parent had to put up with a very busy schedule during his trip to the Maghreb. Half an hour after his plane landed we were in a car with my independent study adviser driving to Sale to watch a candle festival annually held to celebrate the birth of the Prophet. The parade itself as really interesting, with the giant candles held by members of different organizations, the many religious brotherhoods with their own performances, and the crowd of celebratory Moroccan all clamoring to get closer to the action and being pushed back by police officers. My dad actually held up remarkably well and came out of the experience no worse for wear. That night we ate couscous with the host family and my French comprehension was put to the test as my Moroccan host dad (Baba for purposes of clarity) sees European/American and immediately thinks French. My family found great amusement and mild confusion with my dad's lack of language skills, but were pleased with his response to the food, so everything was fine.

On Saturday we headed over to Meknes and the Roman ruins of Voloubilis. It was a scorching February day with temperatures nearing the nineties. I got my first sunburn of the year and my dad got some nice exposure to the Moroccan countryside. The Middle Atlas region is particularly lovely. Sunday was spent running around Rabat, seeing the standard tourist sights, drinking overpriced mint tea in the scenic Kasbah, and souvenir shopping for the family back at home. My dad also got to see where I go to school and meet a couple of my AMIDEAST friends, which was nice. Monday was also pretty laid back and we ate dinner with my host family again Monday night. This dinner was much more amusing than the last, as it involved Baba tripping over the bread basket and almost falling into the tajine, as well as an intense shouting match over the meaning of one of my vocabulary words when Neda tried to help me with my Arabic homework. All in all, I was very impressed by my dad's ability to just go with the flow, and cope with my crazy, loud Moroccan family. He says that he particularly enjoys telling the folks at home about our trip to the neighborhood vegetable souq with my Moroccan mom, during which she advised me to hold his hand and make sure he didn't get lost or bothered by any of the neighborhood denizens.

After my dad left, I spent the next two weeks chilling in Rabat. I finally broke down and bought a pair of skinny jeans (ostensibly to wear when I went to France, but also to fit in better with the Moroccan crowd) and managed to find an English bootlegged version of The Ugly Truth (after having bought the same move twice before both times in French). We take our victories where we find them here in Morocco.

Anyways, by the time this past weekend rolled around I was in the mood for some adventure, and found it in PARIS! My friend Kathryn and I boarded a jet plane to the City of Lights where I spent the weekend hanging out with my roommate from last semester, Evelyn and my friend Janelle from AU. Friday Kathryn, Evelyn, and I wandered around Montmartre and Pigalle. We saw the gorgeous Sacre Coeur, street artists, an I Love You wall (a wall with I Love You written on it many times and in many languages...including MSA and Darija). Highlights of Pigalle included the Moulin Rouge and a three story sex store (the theme of this trip was pretty much do things that we can't do in Morocco). Friday night we ate great Chinese food, went to a bar, and watched movies. Absolute Perfection. Saturday we got a late start, saw Notre Dame, and I met up with my friend Janelle. Janelle took me to the oldest church in Paris, her school, and Bon Marche, Paris's most expensive department store. Janelle touched a dress that cost 1000 Euro and we sat on a couch with a 300 Euro price tag for one pillar. I got a death glare from a store employee when I impersonated Sherlock Holmes in a fabulous velvet arm chair. Upon return back to Evelyn's apartment, Kathryn attempted, and succeeded in making Moroccan food for Evelyn's French host mom, who talks all the time! She is never quite, it was really impressive actually, although slightly awkward when she would look at me and say "Oh your friend doesn't understand anything." (Which I totally understood!). Saturday night involved dancing the night away in Parisian club with Kathryn, Janelle, and Evelyn. Overall, a very good time was had by all and I cannot wait to get back to Paris! The only losers this weekend were my feet, who still hate me after forcing them to run all over cobblestones in high heeled boots. Ah well, wearing heels and not feeling like a prostitute was well worth the potential nerve damage.

Not much excitement is in the cards for the next week. I have begun conducting interviews for my independent study project, which is an adventure given the fact that I am more uncomfortable that my interviewees most of the time. I think I have an official from the Ministry of Islamic Affairs and Dar al-Hadith (an imam school) next week. What I am really living for, though, is my trip to Ireland in less than two weeks! I will spend my spring break touring around the Southwestern part of the Emerald Isle and I cannot wait! English, alcohol, and my 21st birthday, what more could I want! Anyways, I probs won't update this blog until after Ireland, so wish me safe travels and a Happy Birthday among the Irish!

January: School and Beachy Vacations

The first month back at school has been pretty good. The first week was a little chaotic. I got a new roommate, another AU student named Rachel, and was told I have to do an independent study project in lieu of a third humanities class. My roommate situation changed when Rachel, who had requested to have a roommate, was put in a family without one. I am the year long student who lives closest to AMIDEAST and my family wanted another student, so Rachel moved in. At first I was a little wary as I had just started to settle into a roommate-less routine with the host fam, but Rachel is really great and settled right in, so all is well. She's different enough from Evelyn that the experience will not be comparable and the two of us are both AU Honors students. It turns out that we have tons of mutual acquaintances, but had never gotten to know each other. Rachel also speaks French, but is an Arabic beginner. Thankfully, my family has decided that they are only going to speak to me in Arabic, so I still get lots of practice there. It's actually kind of funny because my mom now only speaks Arabic to Rachel as well, so I had to play the role of translator for the Rachel's first week in the house.

As for the independent study project, I was supposed to take a sociology class about North Africa, but everyone else signed up for the class dropped it. My only other option was a French literature class (discounted for obvious reasons) and so I now have to an independent study project in order to have enough credits to keep my scholarship. To be perfectly honest, I didn't really want to do this project. It works out to more reading than any of my regular classes, and I spent all summer doing an independent research project. I also meet with the professor I'm working with twice a week for at least an hour, so it's a considerable amount of pressure. That being said, my topic of research, the relationship between the political and religious spheres in Moroccan society, really interests me, and my advising professor knows a lot about it. He's been pretty good about helping me sort out what kind of research will be feasible given me lack of sociology experience and French language skills. Given these rather important hole in my knowledge, all I'm hoping for is a reasonable well put together paper to turn in at the end of the semester. At least I should come out of this experience with a cool capstone topic to explore further next year.

My other classes are also fine. My Amazigh (or Berber) history and culture class is taught by the guy who practically invented the field of Amazigh studies, so it's interesting. My political science class is also OK, although we talk about a lot of things that I covered last semester, so not the most exciting three hours in my week. Surprisingly enough, my language classes are actually the highlight of this semester. My MSA class is taught by my Darija teacher from last semester, which had me slightly concerned in the beginning. As it turns out, my worry was needless because Toriyya is an absolutely fabulous MSA teacher. She is very receptive to questions and willing to work with us outside of class to fill gaps in grammar knowledge. She also holds us accountable for memorizing and retaining all of our grammar and vocab, which is more than any other Arabic professor I've had to this point. My class is also really small, 5 people, so it can be tailored to fit each of our needs. Darija is also good. My teacher is the head of AMIDEAST's Arabic program and she really knows her stuff. We use Darija to reinforce what we're learning in MSA and each of us has to give an in class presentation before the midterm.

Outside of class, life is falling into a pretty standard routine. I wake up, go to class, procrastinate by screwing around on the internet for a few hours at AMIDEAST, do some homework, go home, drink tea, avoid doing more homework, eat dinner, sleep. Pretty boring, truth be told. Last semester everything was new and exciting, now life in Rabat has the comfortable familiarity of routine. It's kind of nice, actually. My family seems to have achieved a certain level of familiarity with me as well. Neda and Sarah, having discovered that I startle easily, try to scare me at least three times a day. Rahma and I have conversations about school, cooking, and her family while I drink tea. My mom has finally started remembering my name with some consistency, and my dad told me I peeled my orange like a Moroccan last night. (Interesting side note, oranges are in season, and delicious so I'm averaging about three a day in consumption.) I've even managed to insinuate myself in neighborhood life. My tailor friend who I walk past whenever I take a cab home invited me in for tea last week, and the hanut guys all say salaam! when I walk past. It's nice to feel solidly comfortable with my family, my neighborhood, and my day to day existence.

I suppose I shouldn't feel too complacent though, as this weekend proved that there's still a lot of Morocco that I have yet to explore. This weekend was the first time that I've gotten out of Rabat since Erin went back to London. Emily, Shino (another AU person), and I went to Essaouira while all of the other AMIDEAST people went on the school sponsored trip to Fez. We started out our adventure on Thursday afternoon with a train ride to Marrakech. We spent the night in a hostel, and had an enjoyable evening chatting with four brothers who owned the soup stand we ate dinner at in the Jamaa alFna. The next morning we took a bus to Essaouira, a small beach side town and apparent tourist mecca during the summer months. One of the AMIDEAST administrators is from Essaouira and he reserved us a room at a great hotel, complete with a roof terrace and breakfast. Our first afternoon was spent walking along the dock, exploring the medina, and eating tapas at a fun little restaurant. Saturday found me knocked out with a weird stomach virus, but I rallied in time to enjoy an afternoon of ice cream eating, people watching, and sunset viewing from the dock. It was the perfect weekend after a month back in the school routine. Emily, Shino, and I spent hours chilling in a cafe, watching life go by and soaking up the seaside atmosphere. There was no rush, no hurry to see everything, or have a super-structured trip. It was relaxation, pure and simple. I was reluctant to return to Rabat on Sunday, but glad to see my host family again, especially when Neda greeted me with a yell of Catherine! and three kisses on my cheek. It was good to be home.

Journies to Distant Lands and a New Semester

Well, I'm officially back in Morocco after a whirl wind of a winter break full of lots of exciting travels. Whew.

To begin the recounting of my winter break adventures, let us travel back in time to December 19, 2009 when I boarded a plane to Cairo, Egypt. My mother and I had plans to spend ten days traveling in Egypt, first in Cairo, and then on a Nile cruise from Luxor to Aswan, and finally back to Cairo for another two days of sightseeing. Our first day of Cairo sightseeing was great. We explored all of the pyramids in Giza, and several "step" pyramids built in the surrounding area. It was incredible to see the pyramids standing there against the backdrop of smog filled Cairo. Talk about places where the past a present walk hand in hand! Our guide was entertaining and knowledgeable, and a good times was had by all. The hotel we stayed at was also a total trip. Apparently late December is a big time in Egypt's tourist season, because all of the little resorts in Giza were absolutely packed with foreign tourists. Going outside the hotel was strongly discouraged, as my mom and I found out when we attempted to take a short walk after dinner, and each hotel had a whole complex of restaurants and shops. Our first night we ate at a Tex Mex restaurant in our hotel. It was wild.

After our day in Cairo we boarded an early flight to Luxor. The rest of that day was spent touring the monuments along both the East and West banks of the Nile in Luxor. We went to the Valley of the Kings and actually walked through three tombs with all of the original hieroglyphics still in place! We also visited the temples of Luxor and Karnak, which were amazing in their scale and detail. It's so hard to believe that all of these buildings were erected thousands and thousands of years ago, and still mostly standing!

The next few days were spent sailing down the Nile and stopping at various points so that all of us tourists could disembark with our various guides and visit the historic monuments located close to the shore. It was absolutely crazy floating down the river seeing ship, after tourist filled ship passing by in both directions. On the cruise, my days were mostly spent reading novels and chatting with a group of Sri Lanken teenagers who befriended me (I think in large part because I was the only person under 35 who spoke English on our ship), and avoiding the remarkably persistent spa workers who absolutely refused to believe that I did not want a massage.

Probably my favorite place that we visited was Aswan. In Aswan we saw that high dam, the Nubian Museum, and a temple devoted to Isis, which was one of the twenty or so monuments that a UNESCO project moved to a new location when the rising waters behind the Aswan dam threatened to flood them. I had no idea that so many temples were physically moved to new locations, or that so much Nubian history had been lost because of the dam. Anyways, the temple was located on an island, and was absolutely gorgeous. Especially with the water and flower filled backdrop. My mom and I also visited the Coptic cathedral in Aswan on Christmas day (their Christmas wasn't until our Epiphany). After Aswan it was back to Cairo for another couple of days of sightseeing within the city itself. The biggest highlight here was a trip to the Egyptian Museum of Antiquities where all of the loot from King Tut's tomb, plus a number of mummies were on display.

Overall, I'm really glad that I went to Egypt and got to see all of the incredible monuments, temples, and historic artifacts. That being said, going to North Africa when it quickly became apparent that I really wanted a break from North Africa was not the best idea. I am so thankful that I got to spend Christmas with my mom at least (and she was a perfect saint for putting up with all of my whining and emotional moments that frequently occurred during this trip), but it was still depressing. It was high sixties and sunny on Christmas day, and I missed cold weather, familiar carols, trees, and traditional decorations. Instead of being at home with my family, I was in a weird sort of tourist limbo and it made me ache with homesickness in ways that I cannot even begin to describe. I think my lowest point came while waiting alone in the hotel (my mom's flight was much earlier than mine) for my ride to the airport. "There's No Place like Home for the Holidays" came on the loudspeaker as I was wandering aimlessly through the sprawling complex full of tourists three days after Christmas. I felt like crying. Ah well, next year I'm going to be so full of Christmas cheer that my family will probably want to strangle me long before the holiday season is over.

Egypt was also difficult, surprisingly enough, because of my Arabic skills and Moroccan background. People on the cruise, and both of our guides (we had a different one in Luxor and Aswan, nice guy but not nearly as knowledgeable as our Cairo guide) were stunned to hear me speak Arabic. Sometimes this worked in our favor. My mom and I made good friends with the barman on our cruise, and our Luxor/Aswan guide told us more about his personal history than he would have if he hadn't developed some personal interest in us. Other times though, I just wanted to be left alone and that was simply not an option. Waiters came up to me just to see if it was really true that I spoke Arabic, and I was given a significant amount of teasing for not knowing how to speak Egyptian Arabic, even though I can get along fine in Moroccan Darija, and Classical Arabic. Also, Morocco is just close enough to Egypt culturally that I thought I would be able to successfully navigate Egyptian streets and markets without a problem, but also significantly different enough that my mom and I still ended up getting ripped off when taking taxis or shopping. This frustrated me to no end, as I felt like I wasn't able to relax and act like a complete tourist, thanks to my Morocco experience.

OK enough whining! Sorry for the angst in this post! I hope I haven't further alienated my already dwindling readership with all my complaining. Luckily, my depressing Egyptian Christmas was followed by a spectacular New Years in London with my friend Erin. Erin and I spent an enjoyable few days visiting museums, such as the Natural History Museum, the Royal War Museum, and my personal favorite, the Sherlock Holmes Museum. We also saw the Sherlock Holmes movie, ate in pubs, drank alcohol, and took a thoroughly touristy trek past Westminster Abby and the Houses of Parliament. Erin took me to an Evensong at St Paul's Cathedral, a wonderful Anglican tradition that once again had me in tears, and on a slightly more contemporary note, we saw a fabulous hip/hop rendition of the Pied Piper story. The highlight of the trip, though was seeing my AU friends again and ringing in the new year, on the bank of the Thames, with some of the most wonderful people I've had the pleasure of knowing.

Erin and I finished both of our vacations with a trip back to Morocco. We toured Fez and Chefchaouen, two of my favorite places in the country, and managed to get around by ourselves just fine with a strange mix of French (on Erin's part) and Darija (on mine). Despite the rain (it rained all week) and several travel setbacks, including having to spend the night in Portugal after missing a connecting flight, forgetting the PIN to my debit card, and leaving my Moroccan cell phone on the train to Fez (I know, I apparently really do not travel well) I haven't passed a more enjoyable week in quite some time. For those of you who don't know, I spent the summer working on a research project with Erin, which involved several trips up and down the eastern seaboard, and it was really fun to carry on the Adventures of Catherine and Erin in Morocco. Erin is a wonderful travel companion, as she did not complain about the general dampness or lack of indoor heating in most Moroccan buildings, and she charmed the pants off my host family. It was great coming back to Morocco with her, as I was a little worried that I wouldn't be able to handle coming back all by myself. I'm living alone with my host family now and I was not looking forward to the lonely space left by Evelyn's absence. Luckily, a week of fun was just what I needed, and although I certainly suffered bouts of homesickness, especially after I dropped Erin off at the airport, my transition back to Moroccan life has been OK.

My classes started today, as I mentioned earlier, and so far everything seems to be going well. The new group of students seem great, it's just a little weird figuring out our relationship, since the six of us year-long folks are on a rather different plane now. I'm sure that in a couple of weeks everything, including the new dynamic with my host family and the new American students, will have settled and I'll be back at an equilibrium again. For now, I'm going to sign off, start my Arabic homework, and try my best to get back in the swing of things!

A Beginner's Guide to Ritual Sacrifice

Today's the big day! Eid Mubarak Said, my good readers! Today, Muslims all over the world are celebrating Eid al-Adha. This day commemorates the occasion when God told Abraham to sacrifice his son Issac. For all of you who don't know the story, God told Abraham to take his heir, Issac, up to the top of a mountain and offer him as a sacrifice. Abraham, being the good patriarch that he was, agreed, dragged Issac and a ton of wood up the mountain, and right as he was standing above Issac, wicked huge knife at the ready, God realized that Abraham was actually going to go through with it. God then sent an angel down just in the nick of time to prevent Issac from becoming a sacred barbecue, and Abraham sacrifices a ram instead to express his heartfelt thanks. The good Moroccan Muslim way to honor this occasion is to sacrifice your own sheep or ram.

My family's Eid preparations began on Thursday when I woke up to my dad yelling the Darija equivalent of "Watch out!". I peeped out my window into my apartment's courtyard, and was greeted by the sight of a ram. This animal was freaking huge and had a pretty massive set of horns, at least in my inexperienced, city girl opinion. My dad tied the ram up by its horns to a little stake in the center of our courtyard. By the end of the morning, the ram was surrounded by a large pile of hay and nicely situated under an umbrella to protect it from the sun and rain. Throughout the day everyone in my immediate and extended family kept drifting in and out of the courtyard to look at, and make baaaaaaing noises to the ram. My little cousin Khalid was by far the cutest viewer. He kept dashing around the house on his hand and knees chattering away and making sheep noises. My brother Aymen yelled and gave the poor ram a bit of a fright, which my dad apparently thought put the beast off it's food. For the rest of the evening, every time my dad passed the ram he would look at it for a minute, point at they hay, and say "Kul!" which is exactly what my family says to me when they want me to eat more.

So, living with a ram outside my window for three days taught me a good deal about these fuzzy creatures. First of all, they smell bad. Not at first, really, but after two days of eating hay and digesting said hay, and well the hay really does have to go somewhere else eventually, the sheep starts to smell pretty ripe. So did my bedroom. I suppose it could have been worse. The sheep could have been living inside a closet, like the one my friend Alyssa's family got. I also learned that sheep can be quite loud. You know that cute little Mary Bo Peep baaaaa, that you think of when you hear sheep? Such not the case in real life. Our ram roared...at three in the morning. In reality, it wasn't that bad as long as I slept with earplugs. The biggest inconvenience was that neither Evelyn nor I could help laughing whenever the thing made noise.

For two days our ram just hung out on the patio, under it's umbrella, being baaaaed at by the likes of my father, my sister Sarah, my cousin Khalid, and I. Then, this morning, I awoke to the special Eid morning prayer being called from all of the neighborhood mosques, and a very loud sheep. Maybe he knew that his hours were numbered and just wanted to give life one last bellow, maybe he didn't like the call to prayer, maybe he was hungry. Either way it was quite the sound. My family all ate breakfast together, and Evelyn patted the sheep one last time. Then, while I was getting dressed, two guys in blood spattered clothing showed up at the house. My dad led the to the back patio, and they pulled out a rather impressive array of sharp, shiny knives. Evelyn and I rushed to my window, which overlooks the courtyard and pulled out the cameras. Then the slaughter began.

*Warning- What follows below is not for the particularly squeamish or faint of heart, as it compromises a true account of the killing, skinning, and dismembering of a sheep.*

Step One: Guys flip sheep over, ties feet together, and approach with huge knife. Moroccan host mother runs up and shoves some salt in the sheep's mouth. Not entirely sure of the significance of said act, but will ask my Moroccan Culture professor on Tuesday.

Step Two: Guys take aforementioned knife and slits (by this I mean hacks at) sheep's throat. Sheep makes surprisingly little noise, but spews an impressive amount of blood.

Step Three: Sheep's feet are untied and dead (or almost dead) animal flops around for a while. Evelyn and I go nuts with the cameras.

Step Four: Sheep is decapitated. Head ends up rather close to my feet.

Step Five: Guy puts a slit in (now headless) sheep's leg and uses that slit to (no joke) blow up the sheep. Apparently this helps with skinning. Evelyn remarks that she will never kiss a man of that profession.

Step Six: Guy breaks sheep's leg and uses tendon to tie sheep to a rope and hang carcass off of a ladder.

Step Seven: Skinning. Involves knives and treating sheep as a sort of macabre punching bag. Also much more photo taking.

Step Eight: Slice sheep open and pull out the insides. Highlights include more blood, intestines, and lots of organs going into different bowls.

Step Nine: Mom and sisters separate, clean, and chop up sheep's organs. Sheep is still dangling from ladder by its leg. Dad waters sheep carcass with a yellow watering pail. Ranks as one of the strangest things I've seen in this life.

Step 10: Clean up. Dad and sisters clean up remaining blood, intestine goop, and sheep bits from patio. Sarah and I walk sheep's head down the street to men who are roasting them. (Sheep's head is later given back to us...blackened and hornless. Was told this will be cooked in couscous sometime in near future.)

So, there you have it. Ritual slaughter of a sheep in ten easy steps! Let's try it at home next year, yeah?

The remainder of the day so far has mostly been taken up by cooking and eating. After all of the organs were chopped and sorted, by mom stuck the lungs, heart, and some other bits I really can't identity into a giant pot. This mixture has been simmering for the past five hours and I think it's going to be dinner. I assisted my mom in making the Moroccan version of chestnuts wrapped in bacon. By this I mean we wrapped sheep's liver in fat and roasted it over some charcoal. The resulting smoke flooded the apartment, and I was once again reminded of the differences between Morocco and America when there was a noticeable absence of smoke detector induced screeching. Said meat skewers actually didn't taste half bad, and my family ate such a huge lunch that I think I can make it to our 9 PM dinner without a snack!

Today was a good bonding day with the host fam, even though communication was possibly at an all time low. My Eid vocabulary extended to the words "sheep" and "dead". I'm afraid my Arabic just isn't up to questions like, "Dad, why are you roasting that heart over an open flame", "Sarah what is that disgusting goop you're squeezing out of that white gunk", and "Mom, when are we going to chop up the rest of the carcass still dangling in the middle of the patio." Luckily, my family was just happy to ask me repeatedly if I was enjoying myself, and I was more that happy to give an exuberantly positive response. I guess holidays really do have a way of bringing a family together, even if they involve death, gore, and intestines.

To sum up. Eid = best cultural experience I've had to date. I will be happy to show pictures to anyone who doesn't think looking at them will cause vomiting.

A Month in the Life

Ok, I admit it. I clearly suck at blogging, but tonight I have managed to work up sufficient levels of guilt and an intense enough desire to not do my homework to give this thing another go. The past month has been rather eventful, to say the least. When I last left off, I believe midterms were fast approaching. No use dwelling on that subject except to say that now finals and final papers are looming large as the end of the semester is rushing forward faster than I want it to. It's more than a little weird to think that in about a month's time most of my current AMIDEAST buddies will be heading home to the States, while I stay here in Morocco. I know that a new group of kids, who I'm sure will be fabulous, will arrive in January, but I've made some great friends this semester, and I will be genuinely sad when they leave. My roommate has definitely heard a fare share of angst ridden whining on the subject as I cannot possibly imagine a better person to live with. I am fond of telling her that I am going to request "another Evelyn" as my roommate next semester.

But I digress. The past month has certainly been an exciting one. I have been to Spain...twice, visited Marrakesh, spoken to a member of Parliament, and tomorrow I am heading to the Sahara desert for a five day excursion. Where to begin? I suppose Spain is as good a place as any.

Spain part I was part of an AMIDEAST trip to Tangier, Chefchaouen, and Ceuta. Ceuta is a little tiny bit of Spanish territory hanging out in northern Morocco. For reasons that I cannot fathom, Spain sees Ceuta and its fellow territory Melilla as its foot hold in Africa and steadfastly refuse to relinquish the land to Morocco. Either way, what it comes down to is that in order to get into Ceuta we, literally, left Morocco and entered Spain. This was more than a little weird. Upon entering Ceuta we filled out our entry cards and walked through a set of chain link fences that looked disturbingly like something out of Children of Men. We then spent two hours walking around streets that were beautifully paved, looking at architecture that was decidedly European in design, and eating pork. It was quite a nice little break. When it was time to return to Morocco, we trooped back through the Children of Men gates, pas some disgusting toilets, a tiny little cat, and the random guys smuggling stuff back into Morocco, and as soon as we set foot on Moroccan territory we were sexually harassed by a group of men standing near the customs booth. It was good to be home.

My second trip to Spain was over Green March, or the long weekend that celebrates when King Hassan II organized a massive march of Moroccans into the Western Sahara to expel the remaining Spanish colonial forces and return the land to Morocco. It's a pretty big deal here, and my friends and I found it more than a little ironic that we chose to spend the weekend of Green March in Spain. Anyways, I passed my weekend exploring the cities of Grenada and Malaga. Grenada was a gorgeous mix of Moroccan and Spanish architecture, which is not that surprising given that it was the last Muslim hold out during the time of the Reconquista. Highlights from Grenada include the Alhambra, which is a spectacular old fortress full of lovely gardens and a palace absolutely covered in spectacular Arabic calligraphy, totally failing at tapas, eating an entire plate full of food only made from pork products, and drinking red wine. Our time in Malaga was spent shopping, sampling the tasty local seafood, and making poor life choices that involved blue drinks called playa iguanas. Needless to say, Spain was a lot of fun, although I did embarrass myself quite often by trying to speak Arabic with cashiers and waiters. It appears that Arabic is now my fallback language to use when I do not understand what people are saying to me. I suppose that's progress...of a sort.

My next weekend adventure was to Marrakesh, with the rest of the AMIDEAST group. This was our last AMIDEAST sponsored trip, and while it was a good time, I don't think I will be counting Marrakesh as one of my favorite Moroccan cities. Fez and Chefchaouen certainly had their fair share of tourists, but no place I've been to, besides Disney Land, can hold a candle to Marrakesh. I swear that sometimes it felt like there were more Europeans than Moroccans in the city! Marrakesh does have some great historic sites including gardens full of olive trees, a gorgeous old palace, and a hidden graveyard with a stunning tomb for the king of one of Morocco's later dynasties. After visiting all of these places, my friends and I devoted ourselves to some serious shopping. I was in rare bargaining form and seriously aided by the fact that most of the vendors were not expecting me to speak Arabic. My favorite part of our trip to Marrakesh though, was the Jamiyaa al-Fina. This is a huge open air market full of food stalls, snake charmers, fortune tellers, story reciters, and henna artists. Walking up to the square at night was an intense experience. Between the smoke visibly rising from the masses of food stalls, the smells, the music, and the yelling it is a complete sensory overload, but a lot of fun if you're in the right frame of mind. My friends and I enjoyed a delicious meal at one of the food stalls and the only shadow on the evening was a crazy little beggar kid who refused our food and insisted on following us for a good couple of minutes even though we were clearly not going to give him any money. Everyone's more aggressive in Marrakesh I guess. The night ended with a trip to the Michael Jackson movie, This is It, which was a ton of fun, as Michael Jackson is awesome and everyone in the theater sang along to all of the songs.

In between trips, school does continue, and I have made some interesting headway on my murshidat project. I have spoken to a member of Parliament, a women who is a leader in the PJD, which is Morocco's leading Islamist party. I have also visited the school where murshidat are trained and attended a class in the Islamic Studies Department at Muhammed V University. All in all, this project has been quite a whirlwind and although I have not yet managed to talk to an actual murshidat, I have still learned a lot about the program and the changing role of women in religion in Morocco. I hope that I will be able to continue looking into the issue of murshidat next semester as there is still so much I have to learn. The one dark spot of this project is that it has rather clearly brought home the sometimes seemingly insurmountable language barrier that I still struggle with. I am unable to talk to most people without a translator and miss-communication issues have resulted in some botched interviews and frustration and embarrassment on my part. Ah well. Hopefully my Arabic will continue to improve with time, and I really just have to come to terms with my decision to stop taking French in college.

The past week as been spent worrying about the three papers that I still have to research and write (which of course did not actually result in starting said research) and the impending doom of finals. I really do hate the end of a semester. Ah well, tomorrow I am heading to the desert, where I plan to put all of that yucky stuff completely out of my mind and instead focus on the beauty of sunrises over the dunes, dancing with nomads, and trying not to be too frightened of the camels! It should be rather wonderful.

The Past Two Weeks

I once again find myself apologizing for a lack of updating! Those of you who know me well are aware of the fact that I have never been able to keep a journal of any kind longer than two days, and I guess even updating this blog once a week became too much for me. OK, that sounds terrible and I promise to at least try and be better about posting in the coming weeks. In my defense, I haven't done many interesting things since Fez. Schoolwork has finally caught up with me and between studying for midterms and starting papers that I've been ignoring, my weekends have become study time, rather than adventure time.

So, to dredge up ancient history, the last trip outside Rabat I've taken was to my Arabic teacher's farm located about 45 minutes outside the city. Our morning began with a trip to the local souq. Now, I know the souq in Rabat pretty well. I'm familiar with the many stands selling clothes, jewelry, 5 dirham undies, shoes, and crafts. I also know how to get to the tailor souq, the food souq, and the stolen cell phone/ pirated DVD souq. The country souq was like nothing I had ever seen before. There were carts of people selling all kinds of fruits, vegetables, and meats. Some of the meat was still alive. Our teacher took us to the livestock section and showed us how to tell how old a sheep is by its teeth. It was all a little surreal.. The best part of the souq was the Fantasia. A Fantasia is a horse show which mainly consists of teams of guys on horses riding at a judging tent in a straight line and firing off their guns at exactly the same time. Our teacher said that the Fantasia only happens every couple of months and it's an opportunity for the local farmers to show off their horses. Horses are a big deal here in Morocco. I don't know very much about them because my own horseback riding career ended rather unspectacularly at the age of seven when I took two lessons in which I was afraid of the horse and my teacher made me cry. Anyways, Moroccan horses are special because they are a mix of Arabian and Berber horses and apparently really super fast. Watching the Fantasia was pretty awesome even though my teacher said that most of the teams we saw were not very good (meaning they didn't ride in a straight enough line or fire their guns at the same time). I guess that the professionals were supposed to come later in the afternoon. We began our Fantasia watching in the spectator section (read a dirt bank next to the field), but one of the families that owns a stable invited us all to sit in their VIP tent and drink tea while we watched, which was cool. I would love to see a professional Fantasia sometime because even the amateurs were amazing. The traditional costumes were lovely and the horses themselves were breathtaking.

After the visit to the souq we continued on to the farm. My teacher really does own a legit farm with a small orchard, vegetables, and chickens. He's currently working on a swimming pool as well. We all went on a tour around the gardens, and my teacher insisted on sending us home with fresh fruits and veggies for our families. My Arabic class is eight girls, so after our walk through the farm we helped the women of the family prepare lunch, which was couscous, salad, and grilled meat. Dessert was fresh fruit and it was all delicious! Lunch was followed by another walk and the inevitable Moroccan tea. My teacher says that he wants to have us back sometime so we can all stay the night and see the stars.

Even through I've been hanging around Rabat for the past couple of weeks, I've still been doing some cool stuff. Last weekend my friend Sarah and I decided to do a little medina shopping. We wandered around for a little while and I ended up buying two bootlegged DVDs and a CD with three Cat Stevens and one Carole King album on it all for three dollars US. I consider this a rather smashing success even though Inglorious Bastards was completely in French, and thus I understand none of it.

I also spent an afternoon last week exploring Chellah with my language and culture partner, Ilham. Chellah is an old ruin from Roman times right near the Palace and it's in remarkably good shape despite the laissez-faire attitude that Morocco takes with most of its historic monuments. Ilham explained that only recently had the government decided to take an active interest in the preservation and renovation of Chellah. The highlight of our afternoon was being pulled over by one of the gardeners, who guessing that I was American and that Ilham spoke English, asked if he could use me to exchange a five dollar tip he had gotten from some American tourists. After negotiating a proper exchange rate, with much help from Ilham and much joking from the other gardeners, I was the proud possessor of a $5 bill and out 40 dirhams. The gardeners figured out that Ilham is Amazigh, or the politically correct term for Berber, and they all tried to teach me a little of the Amazigh dialect that Ilham speaks, but it was a rather spectacular fail. Our evening ended with smuggling a bag of some really large citrus fruit that I don't know the name of in English (compliments of the gardener) out of the orchards. I really like Ilham because she's an exceptionally nice young woman and very different from my host family. She's studying for her doctorate in biology right now, so she's busy, but she still takes time to listen to my pitiful Arabic and show me around Rabat. She even offered to translate for me if I need to talk to any Moroccans for school projects...which leads me right to my last bit of exciting news!

I have to do a project on some aspect of Moroccan society for my contemporary Moroccan culture class, and I chose to write about murshidat, or women who preach in the Mosque. They are not Imams, so they can't lead prayer, but they do offer classes, advise, and general religious support to the women in their communities. The program to train women murshidat began in 2006 as part of Morocco's "religious reform" which aims to promote a more moderate Islam in Morocco. Since the murshidat program is very new, I quickly learned that there is virtually no material published about it anywhere. All of my research will need to be through interviews and first hand accounts, which is more than a little intimidating. Luckily my Moroccan culture professor and Gender, Islam, and Society professor were able to give me some people to talk to. Next week I am interviewing the director of one of Morocco's leading Islamist newspapers (thank God he speaks English!), and a murshidat that AMIDEAST got me in touch with. I am also supposed to talk to one of the women who teaches murshidat courses in the big religious school in Rabat, and a couple of women's rights activists that my professor knows. I feel in a bit over my head, but hopefully this will be a great learning experience and I won't offend too many Moroccans with my ignorance!

So, that's about it folks. I'll try to update sometime next week, but with midterms it's most likely that you won't hear from me again before next Sunday.