Destination: Morocco

This spring break FINALLY my dream of returning to Morocco came true. Last year I travelled to Tangiers, the northenmost city of Morocco and its city closest to Spain and the European mainland, getting only a glimpse of the marvelousness that is Moroccan culture. Since then I have been dreaming and planning and wondering how to return...but this time to the city of Fez. The medieval city that boasts the best preserved medina (meaning:city) in all of the arab world as well as one of the world's largerst vehicle-free urban areas.

Many people (most of whom have never been to Morocco) warn that one should never travel alone there- especially women. Because of this I thought I wasn't going to be able to go; I couldn't find anyone that could commit to the trip, most people lacking interest and those that wanted to had other spring break obligations here in Spain. So at the beginning of January I thought for sure I wasn't going to be able to go, that I would return to the US without having been able to take the one trip that I had really dreamed of taking. Thankfully, after talking to Adela, a teacher from my school last year who has been to Morocco many times and is certain that with common sense a woman can travel safely and confidently in Morocco, I was convinced that I would rather take the 'risk' of travelling sola than lose the opportunity altogether. In the end, a week before leaving, one of my Spanish roommates, Miguel, decided to come with me. I was happy to have the company since I was nervous thinking about navigating the medieval streets alone and I think that having a travel partner allowed me to see more hidden corners of the medina than I would have seen had I been alone.

I hope you enjoy the pictures that I have posted and that through them you can get a glimpse of what Fez is like. There are many more pictures I would have loved to post here, but I think this is a good start.

Here is the lobby and entrance to our hotel. We were in the Ville Nouvelle, the french-created, new section of Fez that gives you a brief escape from the chaos of the medina.


Day 1: The Moroccans could tell we were novices in the art of bargaining and used it to their advantage (for which I don't blame them). The minute we entered the zone around the entrance to the medina friendly shopkeepers and shopkeeper's friends begain offering us goodies: homemade sweets, bread, fruit, clothes, sunglasses, etc. We let one man take us to a restaurant (a literal hole in the wall), which wasn't even his, sit us down, and serve us several plates of whatever we pointed to. This is the picture of the kitchen/dining room/entire restaurant. Missing from the picture is the communal tin drinking cup that is used by all clients that come to eat. Funny thing is we didn't even care that it looked like this because 1)we were hungry, 2)the food was good, and 3)we were making friends with the locals.




Fez is known in all of Morocco for its high quality leather goods- purses, babuchas (slippers that men and women wear in the street and can be taken off easily when they enter the mosque to pray), jackets, wallets, etc. Here are the pits of a leather cooperative where the hides are died by hand in large vats of chemicals. The colors when we went seem to be white and black, but there are photos online and in guide books of the same pits filled with brightly colored dies.


This is a picture of the hides drying above the leather dying pits below. Impressive sight and smell: among other things, they use urine to cure the hide.


After visiting a fabric cooperative, where all fabrics are made on old looms worked by hand, we were taught how to tie a head wrap. The scarf I have isn't from the cooperative, rather it is a hard-earned good that I bargained for at about 5 or 6 different shops.


It took us 3 days to find the synagogue in the old Jewish Quarters of Fez and in the end we were successful only through the help of friendly neighbors. This picture was taken on the terrace of the synagogue. The children below were trying to call what I first thought was a cat and later realized was a pigeon down from the roof of the house next door. To do this they grab another pigeon like a football and toss it up in the air to catch the attention of the one on the roof. Our theory is that they were throwing the female to get the attention of the male but due to the huge language barrier we couldn't ask. In the picture I am asking the kids how old they are through the help of the 'Useful Phrases in Arabic' section of the guidebook. In the end, gestures and pointing was the most effective way of communicating but beyond names and ages it was difficult for us to converse.


Meat market. The big sausage-like rolls on the right are baked cow pancreases stuffed with ground camel meat, hard boiled egg, olives and spices. The meat man cuts a thick slice for you and cooks it on the skillet he has going right in front of the stand. After slicing it apart a bit on the skillet he puts it in a pita shaped bread, pours a spicy red sauce over the top, and wraps it in a napkin. Delicious! Perhaps the best meal we had.


In Morocco it is typical to see men lining the chair filled sidewalks, facing the street, relaxing and drinking tea. On the other hand, it is very infrequent that you see women partaking in this cafe culture, neither with men nor with other women. As we were eating our camel sandwiches, one by one women began sitting down across the street in front of us...perhaps this is their alternative to the cafe?

The Fallas!

In mid-March the Spanish city of Valencia, south of Barcelona on the Mediterranean, celebrates the coming of spring with The Fallas: a festival announcing the coming of Spring with fire, firecrackers, and gun powder.

Highlights:
The massive virgen, protector of the city, and her dress of carnations.
The daily 2pm firecracker noise 'show' that lasts 5-10 minutes. Each day a different group of people set up the firecrackers to have different rhythms and booms, echoes and whistles, hoping to win the prize for best firecracker display and converting the Main Square into a smoky maze of people. (The picture was taken on a partly-sunny day!)
The huge satirical works of art that paid groups of artists work on throughout the entire year.
The last day of the fallas, the 19th of March (Day of Saint Joseph, a carpenter) when all the work that went into creating the massive wooden figures (caricaturing events and people and general society), literally go up in flames and are burned to ashes to mark a literal and figurative new beginning.
Best of all was seeing Emily, who I had not seen since December, and being together again to celebrate, for a second time in a row, the coming of Spring and making a new-beginning wish upon the golden flames.

Volunteer Conference

Late in February I went with other volunteers from the organization where I was giving English classes (Asociacion Pro-Inmigrantes de Cordoba)to a conference for volunteers throughout Andalucia about Multicultural Integration Methods. The make-up of the conference was really interesting as many of us were from other countries (most with Spanish citizenship all currently living in Spain)- there was a Berber woman from Morocco, a man from Senagal who had lived 8 years in Italy and 2 in Spain, an English/Iranian woman, and the professor, a woman from Tunisia, who later studied in Morocco, moved to France and then to Spain where she has lived the past 20 years. It was such a diverse cultural mix that it was impossible not to be enthralled in the conversations and histories that we shared throughout the weekend.

Another plus was staying in this stunning 18th century Seminary on the outskirts of Malaga : )


Also at the conference I met and was roommate with a Spanish/Swiss girl named Emilie who has become one of my closest friends in Cordoba. Don't know what I would do without her! So even though I was nervous and at first questioned why I signed myself up, I am happy to have had the experience, I learned a lot about multiculturalism, and I proudly made it through my first weekend conference getaway in Spanish!

the rain in spain

There is a saying here in Spain that goes, "The rains in Spain fall only in the plains." I don't know where the saying comes from...but apparently Cordoba is a huge plain (which it actually isn't) because it has rained here ALL winter. (This is the excuse I will use to explain why I haven't updated this is so long...)

River and the Mezquita.
The pictures are of the River Guadalquivir that runs through the southern part of Cordoba all the way to Sevilla and the Atlantic Ocean. This year saw record rainfall and the river reached record heights, flooding many small towns and villages and ruining hundreds of homes along the way.

Sitting on the south side of the river with the Roman Bridge on the left.

When I got to Cordoba in October you could see the river bottom and the only water running through were a few small streams that gurgled along. As you will see in these pictures the river has grown tremendously and now the parks and walkways that bordered the river are flooded. Now the brown water rushes through with a furious current trying to get all the water under the old Roman Bridge and head down stream.

Old flour mill in the river. You can see that by the time I went to the river the water level had already dropped a few feet.