Morocco!

Well hello all!

Today we’re going to talk about the great country of Morocco. Although this trip happened a little while ago, I still think that its enormity in importance to me still warrants this post. Therefore, sit tight, relax, and enjoy.

At around 3:00 AM on March 26, just three days after the anniversary of my birth (thanks, Mom), my alarm went off telling me that I had to be at the bus in approximately 30 minutes… the very bus in which I would spend around 40 hours over the course of the next six days.
Our first stop was Algeciras, a small port city in the south of Spain. From there, we took the ferry across the Strait of Gibraltar to the Spanish city of Ceuta that is in Africa. (side note: Spain has two cities in Africa… Ceuta and Melilla) In fact, this was the same exact trip I had made a little under four years earlier with our Spanish class my junior year of high school.
Next, we made our way (slowly) across the border into Morocco and onto the highway for the five hour trip to Fez, the third largest city in Morocco. Also, let’s take a small break to give some interesting factoids about Fez.
1. The city through which Aladdin ran thieving was modeled after the Medina (old part of the city/ marketplace) of the city.
2. The Medina has 12,000 alleys in all and is a labyrinth of epic proportions.
3. The Medina is thought to be the largest car-free urban area in the world.
4. The university there called the University of Al-Karaouine was started in 859 and is the oldest continuously function university in the world.
5. I think that’s all I have.

Well, as Moroccan tours always go, you are led through the Medina from shop to shop to “stimulate” the economy. Those shops included a spice/ drug/ cure-all-medicines, carpets, leather goods, and ceramics. The leather goods place was really interesting because of the tannery right outside of the store (pictured somewhere I’m sure). There were tons of pits with different solutions for tanning leather such as urine and other goodies. I’ll tell you what, you just don’t get quality like that in the States. Think of the jobs that could be created!

That night, we went to a magic show/ spectacle. There was a crazy magician, a scandalous, overweight belly-dancer, and a drum show.
The next day, we left early in the morning for our whole day of travel into the Sahara desert where we would spend the next two nights. On our way, it was really neat to see the landscape slowly change from Mediterranean to something similar to the grand canyon and then to rocky followed by sandy/ dune-filled desert. When we got to the rocky part, we all got out of the bus and were introduced to the Berbers, people from the desert regions of Africa, who were our guides. (You can call them “sand people” if you like… if that makes you think of Star Wars or something) They took us in their 4X4 Land Rovers on a race into the desert…. off-roading for about an hour until we got to our camp.
We basically had free reign in the desert, which made it probably my favorite trip this semester. We could just wander as far as we wanted from camp, and the Berbers would just keep an eye on us and make sure we didn’t walk to Algeria or try to drink the sand or something crazy like that.
The next day, we got up, bought our turbans, and went to our camels! I was pretty excited about the whole idea until I realized that I would be sharing a camel with my good friend Murphy. The saddle is not the most comfortable thing in the world, and when coupled with a lack of space, there are groin issues. ‘Nuff said.
We took an hour long camel ride to a mountainous dune where we got off and ascended. After that, we rode our camels for a little while again to the village – specifically to a little shop that sold water and soda. Then we went to another carpet store.
That night, we had a great big dinner and then had a dance. The Berbers had brought in a band that played incredible Arab music that played while we ate. Directly after dinner, the Berbers came around to (figures) my table and pick me and Meta to be the first ones on the dance floor. Now, I know that most of you know me as a dancing machine, but I haven’t always been that way. I was one of four people in front of about 70 Americans, and I was determined not to ruin my Moroccan dance like I ruined Prom, so I left my inhibitions in my seat and had a blast.
Sadly, we had to leave the next day to go back to central Morocco – to Meknes, a city just west of Fez. We really didn’t see much of that city because we got in so late, but on the way to the city we stopped for lunch and had a blast chasing around monkeys. We would toss them oranges, and they would peel them and eat them. We even tossed one a bottle of water. He bit a hole in the bottom and drank it all!
Then we just headed to Meknes, spent the night, and made our way back to Granada.

The trip was an awesome one! One of the most interesting things, I would say, was the incredible difference in culture. When we went to walk through either Fez or Meknes, we got stared at badly. It was completely obvious that we were different and didn’t belong. Also, when we were out at night, there were absolutely no women in sight. There were only men at the tea shops and restaurants. Different.

Barcelona

FINALLY,

I’m sure that more than a few of you have been waiting for an entry on my trip to Barcelona with Uncle Kevin… here it goes.

This trip marked my first time to try to navigate airports/ buses and whatnot by myself, and it ended up being ridiculously easy. Along those lines… A lot of people tell me, “Wow, I can’t believe you’re studying abroad. I could never do that. You’re so brave. I can’t believe you can travel by yourself, etc…” That is bogus. I have been on a 2.5 month vacation since leaving in late January. Basically, my classes are very easy and require little to no effort. My main job while I am here is literally to make Spanish-speaking friends and hang out with them. All I have to do is talk to people, and I am doing well. I just figured I’d get that off my chest before starting. Don’t put me on some pedestal.

Ok, when I arrived in Barcelona at around 9:30 PM, I simply followed my Google MAPS directions to get to the hostel, and who is the first person I see in the hostel? It was none other than our family’s world traveler, Kevin Stout. He had been kind enough to wait for me to eat dinner after hearing that Spaniards don’t eat until around 9:30 or 10:00… and he was starving. Therefore, our first job was to find a cool place to eat.

Nita, if you read this, I know that you’re cringing… Uncle Kevin and I are terrible at choosing places to eat. I’m going to take a positive stance and say that it is due to our adventurous natures to think that there always might be something better ahead, but together we cannot choose a place to save our lives. We ended up sitting down to eat dinner at 11:15 PM. I had some sort of spicy sausage or “chorizo”, and I encouraged Uncle Kevin to try some conejo… rabbit. They both were delicious, but we were ready for bed – because it was around 1:00 AM at this point, so we made our way back to the hostel and tried to sleep through the sounds of the metro flying beneath our beds.

At this point, I’ll have to be a little less detailed with my descriptions or this will be a post that no one finishes (which it very well could be already). Thursday, we decided, was walking day. We set out on our first Gaudí tour and saw two of his famous houses. They both were a little steep in price, so we then headed to the Sagrada Familia, one of the most impressive things I’ve seen since being in Europe. The Sagrada Familia is a Cathedral that was started a little over a hundred years ago and still is not complete. In fact, the projections say that it won’t be complete until around 2030. We spent about 2.5 hours in there, and the Lonely Planet book really enlightened us on a lot of stuff. Also, we met two exceptionally large and masculine British women… who ended up being imposturous men pretending to be women! It was kind of funny because they ended up being pretty lame drag queens because they flirted with the girls in our elevator and not us.

Well, when we finally left the Sagrada Familia, we made our way to the giant colorful cucumber building. Barcelona advice: don’t bother going to the colorful cucumber building. There is absolutely nothing there. It’s a water-treatment company.

That night, we went to a cool two-story bar and had great conversation over some good wine…. Then called it a night.

On Friday, we rented bikes to travel a little further than the 8 hours we spent walking the day before, and it was a blast. We went to Park Güell, another Gaudí creation, the Barcelona Stadium, the Museum of Catalonian Art, which had the best collection of Romanesque art in the world, the Olympic Complex from 1992, and the end of Las Ramblas, where there is a pretty stylish (like most things in Barcelona) dock. We spent the majority of the day (7.5 hours) on our bikes bravely weaving in and out of traffic, our hair blowing in the wind. We were only yelled at on two occasions. The first was a shopkeeper who saw Kevin riding up a one-way street. The second was a bus driver telling us to get in the bike-lane. Also, some cops stopped and checked us out when they saw me laying on the dock trying to take pictures of the water. I suppose they thought I was recuperating from the famous Barҫa nightlife.

Well, early on Saturday morning, Kevin had to catch his plane and head off to India. It was an awesome weekend, and I had a blast. Besides the restaurant indecision, we made a pretty good team. Thank you, Uncle Kevin, for an great weekend.

Sevilla!

Sevilla is a pretty cool city.

We went to Sevilla and Cordoba two weeks ago (March 5-7) with the ISA group, and it was a great time. I’ve got to admit, I’ve been a pretty haughty/ proud study-abroader when I tell people that I’m studying in Granada. So far, I haven’t been in any city that I would rather study in. It’s small, great weather (at least theoretically), and really cheap. I was feeling this way when we pulled into Sevilla, and Sevilla almost changed my mind… almost.

Sevilla is a city of about 730,000 people… about 2.5 times as big as Granada. Although you can’t walk from one side of the city to the other, there are tons of stuff to do all of the time, and the river running through the middle puts the “Rio Darros”, in Granada, to shame.
The first night that we were there, we had free time. We ended up walking around the city for a while and found a bar in which to eat that had the craziest bar tender I have ever seen. First of all, he was a dirty son-of-a-gun that flirted like crazy with the girls in our little crew (I wasn’t the only guy in this case thanks to my good friend Jerry). Also, he brought over a little thing of incense because of Semana Santa coming in a few weeks and proceeded to bow to the incense and wail every few minutes. Needless to say, it was an interesting “dinner”. After that, we went to meet my friend, Natalie Fahrner, from Grove City who is studying in Sevilla. We met her in Plaza Nueva and went to go walk along the river when the hardest rain storm I’ve seen in Spain hit us out of the blue. We ended up stopping for churros under an overhang to wait out the storm, which didn’t happen. The rain was “sideways rain”, as Forrest Gump would say, and it did not want to stop… so we made a mad dash for our hotel, which was only a few blocks away. We got absolutely drenched, and since I only brought one pair of pants… I enjoyed some wet pants the next day as well.
On Saturday, we had the usual tour of the major historical sites such as the famous Alcazar (the royal palace) and the cathedral of Sevilla with its huge Alminar (tower) that used to be the tower for the call to prayer in the mosque. In the Alcazar, there was even a wedding going on. Apparently, it's a pretty popular place to get pictures after the wedding... I'm glad I wasn't taking the pictures because it was a miserable day. We got to climb up the Alminar, and it had 35 ramps and not stairs! Does anyone know why? Well, the Muslims were smart and realized that it would get really old to walk up and down 34 (it used to have 34 flights before the Christians built a new top to it) flights of stairs five times a day. Therefore, they built ramps so the call-to-prayer-guy could ride his horse up! Pretty clever, huh? Also, we went into the Cathedral, which is the third largest Cathedral in the world... after St. Peter's in Vatican City and the one in London. Some bones of Christopher Columbus are there as well.
That night, we met up again with Natalie and her friends from ISA Sevilla, and they showed us around town without the rain. We walked along the river for a while, and I got a chance to take some cool river shots. Enjoy!
Ok… that’s enough of this trip (we also went to Cordoba, but I didn’t take pictures because I was tired of carrying my camera around in the rain). I’ll try to get Barcelona up now.