Morocco: Issue º3

So what`s up from my Don Quijote read-athon. I spent last night reading in the study and then reading today at the beach. I`m almost done with the first half of the first volume. I am getting set to go out and buy some Aloe Vera gel.
I`m not too sunburnt don`t worry.
Here are some more photos from Morocco.

This was our dromedary and guide through the desert. We named him but it was a very long and un-pronounceable and unwritable name so just imagine something like that. That part of the name was in Arabic but then we added ¨T-rex feroz the gentle.¨ This was a very good camel.



An even better camel was Megatron which was the camel behind us in the caravan. Megatron let me pet him the entire way to the village (I was sitting super-back saddle).


This is a friend that I shared the camel with. He is studying with ISA in Madrid.


This is the desert village we visited.



A small friend that I made in the desert.


A desert friend I now share friendship bracelets with.


My desert Erin. Ignore the creepy face I`m making.



My roommate Nicole dancing.


The musicians that threw our party on the last night.


Our group directors.




A house without walls where we had a picnic on the way out of the desert.


A jungle where there allegedly were monkeys. (I didn`t see any)


Our fantastic guide and bus driver. He gave me the nickname ¨la chica mas simpatica de los Estados Unidos¨.

Morocco was a great place to visit. I would love to live in the desert sometime. It was the perfect environment for my allergies. They have conserved an incredible way of life.

I was also very happy to return to Spain where I could show my shoulders again.

Back to el Quijote.
Saludos!
By the way... thanks to everyone who made blogs with cute little names so that they could give me their comments. We are creating a very impressive little world.

A little disclaimer

If anyone loves me and is reading this blog please leave me comments!!! okay??

Morocco: issue º2

Here is the Moroccan star in the middle of a patio of one of the places we stopped to eat at on the day of our 12 hour bus ride into the desert.



My friend Adam among others trying to find a bush to hide behind. This was how most of the bathrooms worked in the desert.



This is a wall where we sat up on at one of the rest stops. I hurt myself trying to climb up but eventually I made it.


You can see the huge cut on my arm here... sort of. I felt like a super-warrior.


You can see this wall in the background. Here are some friends and a dog that had been sitting tranquilly for the photo who then decided to run towards me in mid-photo. He was a very sweet dog. We passed this place another time on the way out of the desert and I shared my bread with him both ways.



Eventually we got to the end of the road of our 12 hour bus ride and packed into 4 by 4 jeeps and drove like Indiana Jones through the desert (driven by an Arabian Indiana rather).


We drove through the desert this way for about two hours in caravans of jeeps and stopped at one point to see the desert sunset.



It is much more beautiful in person.


Finally we got to the campgrounds.



Don`t you just love the suspense?

I have two tests this week. Lots of study study to do.
More photos later. xoxoxoxoxoxo

Morocco: Issue º1

So I`ve gotten back from Morocco to find out that an awesome band that I really enjoy (Xiu xiu) is playing at Bennington. Hopefully a lot of kids go to it for me and see a great show. Anyhow, Morocco was definitely a trip well done. My program made sure that just about every moment was planned out just the right way. It was a very good adventure.
It began when we left at 5AM last thursday and drove to the port in Algecires where we took a ferry across the Straight of Gibraltar into a Spanish port on the border of Morocco. In this way, we didn`t have to go through customs until we were about 10 minutes into Africa already. ISA group leaders took our passports in a big group to have them stamped and then a customs official walked through the bus inspecting our faces and our visas. My first minor adventure happened here, where I had fallen asleep due to a ton of traffic still on the Spanish side and awoke to the official asking to see my passport. I had given mine to our ISA director before and was asleep waiting to get it back and at the moment was awake to the horror of not knowing where my passport was. The official was very stern with me and another ISA director, upon seeing that a mistake had been made got on walkie talkies and tried to get everyone searching for my passport. Then the ISA director tried to stall the customs man for a bit but he ended up having to take me off the bus and put me in a fenced off location on the side of the road containing metal bear traps to bust holes in bus tires and the like. I was quite angry.
After standing there for a while with an ISA director on the other side of the fence named Eugenio, my passport was found in the bag of another girl on my bus. I was very very thankful to have gotten it back and then finally we were all on our way to Fez, our first destination.



Everywhere in Fez you can see banners of the President hanging. He has a very kind face. Their flag is red with a green star. For the most part, Fez is a pretty modernized city for Morocco. As you can see, it has McDonald`s, sophisticated cars, men and women walking down the streets. This is the city center where our hotel was.


Nearby is the old royal palace. In the middle, next to me is our tour guide. His name was hard for us to pronounce so he asked us to just call him Banana. His friends in the street also called him Banana.



Banana and his colleague Hashi took us into the Medina. This is the ancient part of Fez that still runs exactly as it did during the middle ages. This is the entrance to the Medina. The word medina just means city as in Medina New York for NYC.


This is our other guide (in the red) Hashi
We were looking at giant soup pots. These are exactly like the ones we were fed soup out of in the desert.

Here is a close up of the fish market. The things with the tails in the front are sting rays.


This is one of the views into the local school.


The outside walls of the school.


This is the inside of a giant carpet store. They gave us a long presentation about their rugs, served us tea and then tried to sells us lots of rugs.

The rugs are made by women who live their entire lives having children and making rugs and cleaning. It is very sad. The rugs are classified by the age of the woman who made it. Her age determines the style of the rug.



This is a man later on making a silk scarf/sheet/table cloth. It is a full body work out. He has to press down on levers with his feet (like organ pedals) and raise and lover the two metal and wooden lever things using both ands and feet at the same time. He has a very sweet smile and helped me try on all kinds of turbans and scarves. I bought a cushion cover here.

Some of the girls in full turban from the demonstration in the silk shop.


This is the tower where the calls to prayer 5 times a day came from. It is a piercing and beautiful sound.


Below is the leather tannery site. It smelled horrible here.


In order to be there they gave us mint leaves to shove up our noses.
(--- my friend allie with the mint leaves.

This is what an art school in Morocco looks like:

Artisan school takes over 15 years to complete. Students are all men. The smoke is from the firing kiln.

They make things like this (pots, table tops, tea kettles, ash trays, candle holders) at artesian school. They hand cut tiles to make these mosaics.


The only tools they really use are small axes and screw drivers. They do this all day and make maybe 100 tiles.



This is a scenic view of the Medina.



This is our room in the 4* hotel. The pillows were super comfy.


Now I will leave you in suspense for a while and let my computer rest a bit.
I still have a lot of things to show and write about.
Adios!!

It`s been a while (forgive me!!)

Okay, so-- major reflection time. I have had a super busy last two weeks. I am going to show some pictures but they may be a bit out of order (because every time I upload new ones they go in front of the others). So to recap-- this is what has been up. Two weeks ago I was in Sevilla. I saw my friend Jess there, went on a lot of tours through gardens and climbed monuments and ate tapas and all that. That night I slept in a comfortable bed at a hotel directly across the street from both Starbucks and Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Look hard and you will see the starbucks.

The next morning I woke up and pretended to be a New Yorker for an hour drinking coffee in front of Starbucks while reading ¨sin noticias de gurb,¨ an innovative ficciòn about an alien who personifies himself as famous historical figures in Barcelona while searching for his friend Gurb who is somewhere on planet earth. Every day his entries end with ¨still, no sign from Gurb¨... quite sad.

Anyhow, after Sevilla, I had a week of school and we had a little group meeting that involved going to a nice Teteria where we sat on cushions drinking tea and meeting our Spanish ¨intercambios¨. My intercambio`s name is Antonio, born and raised in Granada (!!) We hang out a lot and have lots of little things in common. He speaks hardly any english, but we have very thoughtful conversations and his friends are a blast. The night after intercambio we (my roommate, a friend Marissa, and all the intercambios) went out and showed each other all our favorite places in Malaga downtown. Now we all do things together like go for tapas and go to the beach. It is nice to finally feel like I have a steady group of friends here.

The next weekend (last weekend) I went to Cadiz to visit Tamar. Cadiz is super-tiny and quite labyrinthine. All of the buildings are about the same height and are about as long as city blocks. The streets are very narrow and when turning corners one must constantly watch for motorcyclists speeding around the turns and other pedestrians. Of all the spanish cities I`ve seen, Cadiz seems the safest. It has a sort of dull night-life scene, but a beautiful beach. Tamar and I had a great time. We did some cooking and lots of eating (probably the best thing about Cadiz besides the beach) and did all the catching up we certainly needed. She also has a lovely group of friends and it was fun to learn about them.

On my bus ride to Cadiz, my first independent bus ride, I was (un)lucky enough to sit next to a full-blood Asturian gypsy man. I tried to sleep on the bus ride and the entire time he was trying to accommodate me in all kinds of ways. First he took off his super smelly jacket and tried to make a pillow out of it for me to use. I refused it saying that I dont like pillows. Next he sang me lullabies to help me sleep. This included high-pitched cries and lots of hand-clapping. He also reached across me several times to make sure the window shade was completely shut-- ruining the beautiful view for anyone seated in front of me or behind me. At the end of our trip he asked me for money for his special services. I was completely fed up. I told him that I hadn`t asked him for any of the things he did and told him that in the future he should ask first-- it`s only polite. I understand that it is their way of life but how obnoxious!!

This week I have had exams all week for all of my classes and I am positive that I had plenty of success with all of them. I also, por fin(¡¡!!) received the most awesome package ever from my family. It was totally worth the fiasco of faxing the copy of my passport and waiting extra days and everything. In it were cards from my family... a super awesome baseball card style swim photo of my sister which I bring everywhere and show everybody... a necklace that I wore today and am absolutely obsessed with (don`t worry I will include a picture of it here eventually) by my favorite designer, Bestsy Johnson, of course. There were face masks... one of which I have already treated myself to, a peel-off that left my skin feeling super-refreshed.... milano cookies, which I have to admit, are almost gone already... travel sized things that will be perfect for my trip to Morocco... two super-bonita dresses that go perfectly with the aformentioned necklace and pearl earings that are very very very special(!!!!!)... and a perfume that is exactly my style. On my 21st birthday, my family definitely hit the mark... opening this box was like opening a treasure chest. On top of all of that, I got a super special kitty cat card and a very creative other card and we mused over it for a while making all kinds of animal sounds to say Love as according to mom, I believe. Receiving my magazine subscriptions was also a huge treat because right now I am even more removed from American pop-culture than when I`m at Bennington. Also, all my intercambio friends are going crazy over my Blender magazine. I thank them very very very much for this package. It definitely made my birthday much more special... it is hard for anyone here to really be personal about things like birthdays here because none of us really know each other.

Now for los fotos:


Above we have the gorgeous ceiling of one of the palaces in Sevilla (one of four palaces within the same vicinity). This palace was designed for a Christian king and admirer of Muslim art, who also reigned with very close friendships with the Arabic peoples living in Spain at the time. His palace was designed in a strategic maze-type fashion that allowed only those in the know to navigate the palace and find the king.


This is the more gothic-style palace... virtually connected (not from the inside) to the other palace. These arcs here are very stereotypical of Gothic style. It was built much later than the previous Muslim design.



This is the view of the famous Cathedral of Seville from the inside of the entrance of the city`s Jewish quarter. It is a very famous view.

This is right in front of the Cathedral-- the main tower. Usually there are two towers to a gothic church, but because this was built over a mosque and this is the old tower that the crier would climb to tell the people (5 times a day up a spiral ramp on the back of a mule) that it was time to pray, they just kept this one and stuck some bells in it. The top of it also functions as a weather vane.


This is about half-way up the main tower and my view out the window.



All of Sevilla from the tip top.


View straight down from the top. These are the bitter orange trees. Naranjos. They are always outside mosques in what is called the patio of absolution. Many mosque-turned-cathedrals keep them there because they are pretty and smell amazing.

Making my way back down. Here you can see the arcs of the cathedral`s laterals (like the arms of the cross).


A very eye-catching stained-glass window (gothic style) inside the cathedral.

I know it is a super-awful photo, but it is dark and we can`t use flash in here. This is the official tomb of Christopher Columbus.

These are more photos from the royal palace-- the gardens.


Pretty!


A wall near a fountain.


The fountain.


I saw this spot when I went with the fam to Sevilla. They filmed a scene in Star Wars here. We came here aboard a horse and carriage. This is Raquel-- one of the ISA office people. She is tons of fun.


My group of super-americans waiting to go back to Malaga.


This is a tree that I especially enjoy in the front of my school (we`re back in Malaga now for a sec).


This is the beach in Cadiz. Compare this to my photos of Malagueta. Much cuter...and the sand is white!! (AND REAL WAVES!!) The skyline in Cadiz isn`t really much to see but you can see the Cathedral kind of (the buildings with the round things on top).


My t-mar on the beach.



This is what you get when you ask for chips and salsa at a Mexican place in Sevilla.
Yes, that is, a small bowl with 3 chips balancing on the outside.



Another view of ¨chips and salsa¨.
LAME.

Anyhow. I`m off to the Museo Picasso now.
Hasta luego. Thanks for making my birthday super special everybody!! Im wearing my coolest necklace ever right now (and as many times as I can get away with it.)
xoxoxoxo
Mame