Tangier, Asilah & Rabat

Hello...okay time for a quick post before embarking on a crazy week of homework, projects, and ending in Spain to visit Nicole (a friend studying in Germany this semester)!

Last weekend, three of the other international students (Anna, Anna, & Aileen) and I signed up to go with the Explorer's Club (group on campus) to Tangier and Asilah. It was quite the adventure.

We left at (get this) 3 am in the morning from the AUI campus and drove the 6 hours to the northern coast where Tangier is located (it's the port to go across the Strait of Gibralter into Spain by ferry) stuffed into two 15-passenger university vans. I proceeded to sleep the entirety of the trip waking up just in time to see the first sight of Tangier the next morning. Good times.

So, the group started out in Tangier that day with breakfast and then went and explored the medina where we met some characters from AUI, I bought some sweet green beaded shoes, and we ended up having lunch in a McDonalds [pretty much the same as in the US just with smaller portions, no value meals, and less choices] with a great view of the bay, see below:

After our walk around the medina and some confusion amongst the group over times and such, we got in the vans again and headed out into the hilly countryside...which was gorgeous. This was the best part of the trip because we never would have seen the views of the coast or gone to the cave Hercule's Grotto (see photo album for pics) on our own, not the kind of place grande taxis take you too. So that was awesome and if you have time to look at the pics you can see that we saw some beautiful views!

By that point I was exhausted, so I basically went back to the hotel and slept waking up briefly for my daily dose of carbohydrates (I swear most of what I eat here is carbs...good times). The next morning, we woke up and left Tangier for Asilah a small town a bit eastward I believe...we stopped for what I thought was just a brief stretch-your-legs-time, but ended up being right on the coast! We tooks some pics and then yours truly thought it would be a great idea to take off her shoes and play in the water...which was awesome. Sometimes there's nothing more freeing than running through shallow waves, digging your feet on the sand, and doing cartwheels on the coast! Small price to pay for being wet and sandy for the rest of the day!

Okay, after that we went to get lunch which took forever and wasn't that great. But it was fun to chat with the other Moroccan students who by this point were buddy-buddy with us and joking around, which was great since sometimes it feels like its really hard to get to know the Moroccan students here. Unfortunately lunch took so long that we didn't have very much time in the medina, which was actually really nice and spacious with some great stuff in the shops. I got some jewelry and really enjoyed just walking around, but before too long it was back in the buses for what seemed like a much-longer van ride back of course. But we played some car games with some of the other students, so that made it go by a little quicker. We arrived back on campus at 11, right on the dot (which is shocking for Moroccan time!). Overall, it was a really enjoyable trip!

SHIFT to this weekend...Aileen and one of the Anna's and I headed up to Rabat for a short day and a half trip...we took a grande taxi to Meknes and then took the 3-hour train to Rabat from there. It was a bit confusing as there were no clear station names nor announcements, so we would have missed our stop had we not seen a friend of ours get off! But luckily we made it and after one random misstop found a decent hotel and set off to explore the city a bit.

We started off by looking at the maps in our guidebook which made the medina (old part of the city) look really far away...yeah when we got in the taxi to have him take us there he looked us pretty funny, and took us the long way which even then was only like 8 blocks. Hilarious. But we had fun going around the city, did some shopping of course. Rabat's medina is a bit more spacious than for example Fez, and the shopkeepers are a lot less hovering which is really nice.

After that, we continued out of the medina to the kasbah (fortified area with an old palace) and got attacked by this young girl wanting to put a henna design on our hands...she grabbed Aileen's hand and stopped before Aileen could even say no! By then, we were all flustered and laughing as the girl instructed me to take pictures while she rapidly drew a henna design all over her hand including what she said was Aileen's name, assuming that we could not read Arabic, but alas we may look like tourists but we can read Arabic and will soon have our Moroccan resident cards! So, of course Aileen had to pay her a bit even though she didn't want it, but it was another good lesson to learn to immediately say "LA!" (no in Arabic) to dissuade any young teenagers who may want to take advantage of foreigners.

We walked around the gardens in the kasbah for awhile and then headed back through the city in time to see the sun set over the city walls and see this really huge fortress of a church that was built in the 1930s. It basically looks like the colonial powers wanted to say, "BAM we're hear to stay" and so built a huge two tiered white church...massive. We dropped our purchases off at our hotel and went off in search of a sushi resturant that we'd heard was really good.

At this point I must pause and explain. I am all for eating cultural foods when you are overseas, and I have certainly tried tangine and couscous and other foods native to Morocco and the region. I even enjoy them. However, being at AUI most of what I eat is the same thing over and over again as the dining hall here is much like any college campus dining services across the world...not very good. So, I eat a lot of carbs. I exist on bread. And therefore there is a lot of discussion of foods that we miss from back home and dreaming of Jimmy John's Turkey Tom sandwiches, Donatos pizza, Olive Garden pasta (they manage to ruin pasta here at the dining hall, and I realize this is hard to do), green bean casserole, macaroni and cheese, peanut butter...you get the picture.

Thus, Anna and I were craving sushi and so we found this resturant, called Matsuri which ended up being excellent! It was set up apparently like a traditional resturant where the chefs are out in the main area cutting up the sushi and then they put it on plates on a conveyor built and it goes around and you can just pick up what you want from your table! It was sooo good! We had a really good time and got ourselves dessert and wine afterwards and so just had a perfect girls night out! It would have been even better had the movie theater been open afterwards, but alas we can't win them all (it's become a game to find an actual movie theater in Morocco in the hopes of seeing Babel or some other movie while we're here, but I'm rapidly losing hope).

The next morning we got up and had breakfast at a bakery (breakfast is the best meal of the day here in Morocco!) and got some cookies for the train ride home and then grabbed and early train back and arrived back in Ifrane safely about 4 hours later! In time to go to church and do some homework!

So, that was the weekend finishing off my February travels with a bang! This week, I have some work to catchup on as its getting close to some paper deadlines and midterms, alas. Academics does intercede into more fun travels at times, but hopefully all will be well!

God's blessings wherever you are!