18 February 2012

I am on my excursion and am having the time of my life. Currently it's day 4 and we just got to Marrakech. Everything has been really really awesome and I wish I could spend the entire semester traveling. I have been "blogging" on pen & paper and then typing them up whenever I get a free minute, so they are a little late. This is the post from day 1-- Enjoy!!

Today was the start of our week-long excursion to Southern Morocco. I woke up right on time and did some last minute packing. I left my house and slipped right into the group walking to the bus- it was great timing, and I am very lucky to live so close to the CCCL. We boarded a bus named “Aya Tours” or something (Aya is my Arabic name in Connecticut), so I knew it was going to be a good trip. We got snack bags (two packs of cookies, a juice box, a drinkable yogurt… “cereal” flavored), this was our breakfast. Delicious, but not nutritious. I took a small nap and then we came to our first rest stop. It was similar to an American rest stop, but there were like three separate jungle gyms, and a pretty nice café.
We finally got to Ifrane to take our tour of Al Akhawayn (the two brothers) University. Three Moroccan students greeted us, and handed out swag bags- a lot of unnecessary papers, a pencil, and a “pocket calendar”. We took a little trip back in time to Junior year of upper school, going on college tours. About 20 years ago there was a huge oil spill right off the coast of Morocco. The government had no money to deal with the situation, so they reached out to their MENA allies. Saudi Arabia gave Morocco money to clean up the spill, but apparently the winds/tides changed, and the spill was cleaned up naturally. In Arab culture it is not acceptable to return a gift (no Indian givers, or re-gifting here!!), so the King had to figure out what to do with the money. He decided (for whatever reason) to build a university based on the North American School system. The product of that decision was, Al Akhawayn (two brothers; named for the late Moroccan King, King Hassan II and late Saudi King, King Fahd. Although this university is obviously partly funded by the Saudi government, our tour guide (SGA President) said that it is not apparent on the campus. He said that they had only five Saudi students, and the Saudi girls do not even wear hijab.
The University is strangely American. I really felt as if I was on a college tour. I could predict the things that our tour guide was saying: “we have X number of clubs, but you can gather your friends and create a new one”, “everyone gets to keep their own mailbox for ALL FOUR YEARS!!!”. We went to the library, which is the third biggest in Morocco. In the lobby of the library there is a sign that says “NO FOOD OR DRINK: 100 DIRHAM FINE” and a table with a TON of water bottles. From that I assumed they did not have the equivalent of a Blue Camel at their school, unfortunate. The tour was interesting, but got kind of boring- especially because we were all getting hungry. The classes are all taught in English, and a lot of students end up continuing their education in the States or other Western countries post-graduation. After our tour we went to the cafeteria, which is weird because I said to myself earlier in the day that I could go for some Harris brunch. The Al Akhawayn University Cafeteria is a far cry from Harris, but that did not stop me from eating my ENTIRE meal—every single bite. We had limited options, but I was satisfied. I chose a tomato and mozz salad, a cheeseburger (which I never eat in Harris, but it was okay to here), fries and a coke zero- hit the spot. After lunch we said goodbye to our tourguides, and were on our way.
We made a pitstop in a town called Azrou. It was not particularly interesting. Definitely rural, and I read in my guide book that the market is only open on Tuesdays, so I guess the town dies on the other days. Our second pit stop was at the cedar forests. It was snowy in this part of the country, but it was not particularly cold. The forest was beautiful, and on the way I saw a monkey on the side of the street! My sighting was confirmed when we were parking in the forest and Abdelhay said that we might see monkeys in the forest! I knew it. Anyway as we were walking into the forest, some men were leading horses around and trying to get us to ride them. Some of my classmates fell for it, but I did not. We didn’t go far into the forests because we only had 15 minutes, but we were able to see the trees, and a few monkeys. Apparently they sometimes grab things from you and are very bold, but these monkeys kept to themselves. It was VERY slippery because of the snow, and we saw an entire Moroccan family eat it domino style. It was very funny. They were laughing too, so it was okay to smile/laugh. Back on the bus!!!
I passed out. We traveled over an hour, but it actually felt like 5 minutes, and I was awoken when we were in Midelt. The hotel that we were staying at was BEAUTIFUL, and warm. I was a very happy girl. We had the same roommates as orientation week, so I was with Sara again. We had time to settle, and then it was dinner, which was on par with the hotel. We had an entire fish to ourselves (trout, with the bones and skin and head). I had some trouble eating it, but it was delish. I ate every bite except the head. There was also some sort of pesto sauce, and rice and fries. I am considering this week vacation, and when we get back to Rabat I am actually going to think about what I eat, and hopefully go on a few more runs. After dinner we had a talk with Abdelhay. He found the owner of the hotel in the restaurant, and he asked if he would talk to use about the area and the hotel. The owner also happened to be the mayor of the town Midelt. He built the hotel in 2004 in order to build tourism in the area. He said that it has been a success so far, but is excited for it to grow even more. Someone asked about the design of the hotel, and he said that it was French inspired, but wanted to keep some authenticity to it. Later in the night Abdelhay said that nothing about the hotel was authentically Moroccan… yikes. The mayor also said that he hired men from a nearby village to carve the wood designs, but he also had to pay for their hasheesh supply because it helped them “concentrate” He was also very open about drinking alcohol, which I found surprising coming from an Moroccan official. The police deputy was also present for the lecture, which was even weirder. This guy was a character. E also told us that he wanted to open a fossil/mediorite/dinosaur museum soon, and that this area is known for the giant meteorite that hit Morocco a while ago. Some people made fortunes off of the space rock that they found in their back yards. Abdelhay continued the discussion by talking about urbanization and the new shift of people moving from bigger towns/villages into smaller developing cities. It would be interesting to come back to Midelt (we are always welcome) in 10 years to see how far the city has come.
I took a marvelously warm shower before bed. I put my pjs on the radiator while I was showering, so they were very warm when I got out. It was heavenly.