Wandering in and above Chefchaouen

Chefchaouen looks like a Pinterest-gasm of peeling paint and antique doors exploded over the physical walls of a fifteenth century city. I spent three blissful days there with friends over the long weekend for Muharram.

A morning view of one of the many mosques in the old medina

My best advice for you is to wander through the old medina (Arabic for city). Leave your watch and your phone in the room. Don't even bring a map. All roads in the city lead back to the main square and the Kasabah. If you are climbing up many flights of stairs, you are likely heading out of town. If you are descending stairs, you are eventually going to end up back at the Kasabah. If you truly are lost, ask a local. Many speak four or five languages (French, Arabic, Spanish, and English, to name a few).

The best time to explore (in my opinion any new city) is in the early morning. Wake up before the other tourists and explore. You experience the immense pleasure of watching a city wake, of smelling the first batch of bread as it bakes in the communal oven, and of relishing in the cool and quiet of a soon-to-be-bustling tourist hub.

Hiking
Do you like to hike? Do you like it when you quads scream from exertion after four continuous hours of steep incline? If you answered yes to these questions, then you should recreate our hike up the mountain of Jebel el-Kelaa. We used this blog post by two intrepid hikers as our guide up the mountain. The views are incredible all the way up with panoramic vistas of the pale blue city visible from the early switchbacks and a sprawling expanse of the semi-desert valleys visible from the summit.

At the summit Jebel el-Kelaa

This hike is not for the faint of heart. The altitude makes the climb particularly strenuous. You will be walking/sweating/crawling up and down an entire mountain. 12 miles. 8 hours of continuous movement. There is no clear path. You'll be on the road for the first half of your journey, but at the small, red water fountain you will veer off the road onto a goat trail that will lead you through fields of marijuana and past the homes of those self-same marijuana farmers. They will offer you tea and will hand you their goats to cuddle. You will love them.

My new best friend, Florido the Goat

Eating

• Restaurant Morisco (breakfast/lunch/dinner): We ate here three times. I recommend the mango juice, the Nutella crepes, and the harira (Moroccan soup with chickpeas).
• On a budget? The restaurants in the main square are the most expensive you'll find in the old medina. At the same time, "expensiveness" is relative. The average meal will run you less than 50 dirhams ($5). But if you want cheaper eats, check out the local food stands on all the side streets or find local restaurants tucked off the main square. 
• Really on a budget? I'm a huge advocate of the DIY dinner. My friend, Olivia, and I made a delicious meal of goat cheese, olives, dates, and local pastry. The whole meal cost 15 dirhams per person total ($1.50).

Lodging

• We stayed at Pension Soukia, which is your basic hostel. I would recommend it for any traveler on a budget. The staff is friendly and helpful and you cannot beat the central location and cheap price.

Exploring Chefchaouen in the heat? Check out the swimming pool at Hotel Atlas. It offers beautiful views of the city below and a frigid dip in a pool really beats the afternoon heat. (Note for the wise, it has quite the unseemly reputation because it serves alcohol. If you take a taxi there, your driver will judge you and your life choices.)

Solo Travel to Marrakech for Eid

For the Eid holiday weekend I travelled alone from Ifrane to Marrakech via a one-hour car ride followed by a seven-hour train ride. The train taught me about the limits of my patience and the tolerance of my stomach against motion sickness, as I persisted in reading my book despite my better judgement (For future-me, when you're re-reading blog posts instead of writing new ones, it's about an hour). It also taught me more about the friendliness of Moroccans stuck with me in the same train compartment. I made a number of new friends who live both in Morocco and France.

The roof of my hosts' home

Upon arriving in Marrakech I promptly went to the home of the Moroccan family with which I would spend the next three days. Their home, built in the style of a Moroccan riad, circled a common interior courtyard. Beautiful stained glass windows crowned the interior courtyard. Detailed plaster carvings, one of my favorite features of Moroccan architecture, graced the high ceilings. After a whirlwind tour, my host, Amal, took me to the local hammam for a truly Moroccan experience. I highly recommend the experience - which involves copious amounts of hot steam, black Moroccan soap, and painful exfoliating scrubs.

One of the detailed mosaic floors of the Bahia Palace

The next day, Eid, found me to the home of a neighboring family that had bought a sheep for the occasion. We spent the morning drinking tea and waiting for the neighborhood butcher to arrive. When he did, he made slow work of the poor sheep and, while I felt guilty, I emerged from the morning still an omnivore.

The sheep didn't make it.

The day after Eid, when the shops had reopened, I wandered the old medina, starting from the luscious gardens and the breathtaking mosaics of the Bahia Palace, to a delicious lunch at La Famille, to the stunning panorama of the Maison de la Photographie.

The view from La Maison de la Photographie

 I did all of my long-distance travel and old medina explorations alone. *Gasp* Women can travel alone? You ask. Why yes, we do. If you, like me, are a woman who loves to travel, I have an (in-progress list of travel tips):

1. Make use of that network! Let people know where you're traveling, both inside and outside the country in which you are traveling. The more the merrier! 
2. Have a functional phone. In addition throw in the number of at least one person you know and trust in that city. This could be the manager of your hotel or your friend's cousin's mom. But if you get lost and need a friend to bail you out, that number will come in handy.
3. Perfect your RBF. Your Resting Bitch Face, that is. While traveling (alone or with others), shopkeepers will bother you. If you don't want to add a myriad of other local men to that list of persistent shopkeepers, you will perfect the stony stare of indifference. As an American, not smiling sometime seems sacrilegious. However, in a different cultural context (i.e. Morocco) a smiling woman sends a different (often not desired) message. (Note for the wise: Only a woman can christen her own visage with the RBF moniker. I will personally disown the person who tells me that I have one who is neither a woman nor my best friend.)

The view during lunch at La Famille

Where to next? While it may seem ridiculous to plan future travels abroad while having just arrived (3 weeks) in Morocco, I cannot help it. I am a compulsive list maker (pro-cons, to-do's, travel bucket list, etc.). You name it, and I probably have a list of it somewhere. Where do I want to go? Well (in vague regional groups)...

Where to next?

• Middle East/North Africa:
• Tunisia
• Lebanon
• Jordan
• Syria (one day, insha'Allah)
• Africa
• South Africa
• Tanzania
• Madagascar
• South America
• Peru
• Chile
• Argentina
• Oceania
• New Zealand
• Australia
• Southeast and East Asia
• Thailand
• Cambodia
• Laos
• Japan
• Non-continental Europe
• Ireland
• Scotland
• Iceland
• Continental Europe
• Belgium
• Switzerland
• Croatia
• Greece
• Finland
• Norway
• Sweden
• The Netherlands
• Luxembourg (which comes highly recommended by Margot)
• Central Asia
• Turkey
• Afghanistan (one day)
• Tajikistan

Seven. Eight, If You Include the Sheep.

As I have done in the past, this is my "first week in Morocco" post to compliment my first week in India and first week in France posts from 2013 and 2014, respectively. Predictably, moving to Morocco has been full of challenges and successes. Challenge: Having a few unstructured days before I began work in which to completely rethink moving to Morocco in the first place. With that internal freak-out over, I moved on to some successes: Buying a SIM card and getting a fully-operational phone, completing my HR paperwork, navigating an overwhelming supermarket to find spoons, and having a productive conversation in a mixture of classical Arabic (fus-ha), Moroccan Arabic (darija), French, and hand signs with my office's building manager. In my studies abroad I have found that a day's small successes can reassure me that I made the right choice in moving halfway across the world.

The sun sets behind the soccer field

Before I even had navigated the supermarket in Fes to find spoons, I ventured to the outskirts of Ifrane (my city and home to Al Akhawayn University [AUI]) to find the souk (large, open-air market). In Ifrane the souk happens every Saturday and Sunday. There, locals from Ifrane and the surrounding countryside converge on a dusty hill to buy every possible good imaginable from hairbrushes to live chickens to underwear and popcorn. It was as if a supermarket had lost its roof and each aisle had divided itself into winding, narrow pathways.

At the age of 22 I have already had the privilege to live abroad for over nine months through three Davidson College-sponsored study abroad programs: India, France, and Colombia. This year in Morocco will more than double that time abroad. However, this time, I am living on my own. I have my own apartment, office, and salary. I will travel within and outside of Morocco on my own. Thankfully, while here, I have a support network of my fellow Presidential Interns and of the thoughtful faculty and staff at AUI. In comparison to my study abroad programs through Davidson, though, I am much more on my own.

The view from my office window of campus' main entrance

One moment that reassured me that I had made a good decision in coming to live in Morocco was a hike sponsored by AUI's interfaith group. Early last Saturday morning we (30 students and two AUI faculty) trekked to a nearby village. Along the way we learned about the region's depleting and increasingly privatized water supply. Due to consistent low rainfall over the past twenty years, the water supply available in the water table and the region's many springs has decreased by 20%. Coupled with the overall decrease, some local villages have lost access to and control of their private springs to water bottling companies, such as AinIfrane. Though a sobering lecture, the combination of hiking outdoors, learning, and meeting other students provided me with the sense that I was beginning to create a new life here.

After the hike, I returned to my apartment hoping to buy a train ticket to Marrakech online. Following many unsuccessful attempts, I realized that I would have to make a 1 hour+ journey from Ifrane to Meknes, the 11th century imperial city, to buy my ticket in-person. The next day I embarked on my first mini-adventure. To get there and back required five separate taxis - "grand" and "petit". The petit taxi took me from my apartment to the grand taxi station. From Ifrane's grand taxi station, grand taxis leave every fifteen to thirty minutes and travel to nearby cities such as Fes, Azrou, and Meknes. While some grand taxis are shiny new vans, others are rather-worn Mercedes sedans c.a. 1980. Into that contraption pile seven people: the driver and two passengers in the front and four passengers in the backseat. We finally filled the last seat in our car and pulled out of the grand taxi parking lot only to find that we had one more passenger. A sheep! Our eighth and most-uncomfortable passenger was unceremoniously shoved in the trunk. Ready to leave, all eight of us made the crowded journey to Meknes, where I bought my train ticket.

Sheep outside a supermarket (think Target/Walmart) ready for Eid

This weekend I will travel to Marrakesh to celebrate Eid al-Adha (The Feast of the Sacrifice) with a Moroccan family. There are two Eid's in the Muslim lunar year: Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha. Eid al-Fitr marks the end of the month of Ramadan, the month in which Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset. Eid al-Adha serves to commemorate the day upon which Abraham was willing to sacrifice his only son to God. Just as God replaced Abraham's son with an animal, so Muslims sacrifice sheep or goats to celebrate Eid al-Adha. With the substantial amount of meat from the sacrificed animal, families traditionally keep 1/3, give away 1/3 to family and friends, and donate 1/3 to the poor and needy.

AUI right before a thunderstorm

More posts to come! Let me know if you have questions that I can answer!

The Beginning of a Moroccan Adventure

Below you will find a variation on the now-obligatory blog post announcing that I will be leaving the United States for Morocco. I do actually plan to occasionally blog (*gasp*). I can make a few promises just so that you have some baseline at which to establish your expectations: 

1. There will be lists. And lots of them. (Case in point, this is a list.) Lists about the challenges of living abroad, the best foods, the most stunning travel destinations, my favorite things about Morocco, etc.
2. I make no promises on the exact number of posts I will write over the course of the next year. Based on my previous study abroad semesters in India and France, I would say around four.
3. The blog post entailing, "How life is as a foreign woman in Morocco", and its many iterations do not tend to produce interesting or thought-provoking discussion. At a minimum, my blog is for you to keep appraised of the basics. If you have interesting questions, send them my way so I can blog about them!

Is this* a slightly impulsive, crazy thing to do? (*This = moving to Morocco for a year.) Why yes! Yes it is. Am I nervous? Yes. Should I be? Maybe. Statistically, Morocco is one of the safest countries in the Middle East and handily trounces the United States in its few deaths due to gun violence. According to a 2015 NPR article, "If the United States were in the Middle East, it would have the second highest rate of gun deaths of any nation — more than Libya, Egypt, Sudan and Israel combined." If you include casualties incurred in war zones, only Iraq surpasses the United States in gun-violence deaths. (This revelation produces a wholly-unrelated, but equally important, discussion about addressing America's gun violence epidemic to which I do not have time to do justice.) Moral of the story: I am safer in Morocco than I was during this past summer in Washington DC.

Always the quintessential 20-something, recent college graduate, I am unsure of what I want to do with my life. I have considered everything from grassroots development work abroad, to nonprofit management, to consulting, to becoming a yoga instructor. Of two things I am certain (ahem, second list): First, I hope that my blog and I can serve as a bridge for you to delve into new cultures, new religions, and new languages. My privilege to travel abroad should serve as a way to broaden the perspectives of those around me. Two, whatever career I have in life, I hope to use my life to make the lives of those around me better.

As a woman traveling to the Muslim world, I am often asked how women are treated in the Middle East. The subtext behind this question often seems to be: "Aren't women oppressed in the Arab world? How will that be for you?" The answer to that well-intentioned yet misguided question is thus: Women are treated pretty poorly all around the world. I just spent four years at a prestigious American liberal arts college in which my chances of being sexually assaulted were one in four. In the United States three women every day are murdered by an intimate sexual partner. I have the exquisite pleasure (intentional sarcasm) of walking down a good-old American street (more intentional sarcasm) and being made to feel unsafe by the catcalls of my fellow Americans who just want me to feel liberated (#Amuricah #freedom #sarcasm). If you want to learn more about the problematic sexualization of women and girls in the U.S. and the broader West, please read Do Muslim Women Need Saving?, a wonderful book by Lila Abu-Lughod. In summation, women face discrimination and oppression all around the world. Critique of Arab or Muslim-majority nations must come with an equally healthy critique of the shortcomings in American society as well.

With that cursory introduction into my new adventure in Morocco and perhaps to some of my political opinions (I mean, it is the internet. What's a good blog post without some unwarranted political opinions?), I leave the country! If you want to stay in touch, please reach out via Facebook, email, or your favorite carrier pigeon (I'm looking at you, George).

Leaving Home for Home

The word "home" for me evokes the aroma of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies, the soft patter of thick snowflakes on my windowsill, and the golden rays of evening sunlight as it filters through the trees in the backyard.  Nothing quite compares to the tranquility of being home.  And in a few short days, I will be home!  Until that day I plan to profite bien of my last few days in Tours.

The sun as it set during my run

It is in thinking of home that I am reminded of my privileges.  Not only am I privileged at the young age of twenty to be able to study abroad in France and India for a total of eight months, but I am also privileged to return from these travels to a warm, happy, and healthy home where I can pick up my life with my two loving parents and cuddly cats and delude myself that winter break will last forever.  

In my blog posts I have talked frequently about privilege.  The more I travel, the more I interact with people who have different religious backgrounds, ethnicities, and life experiences than I.  As I start conversations with the fascinating people who surround me, the more I realize that the confluence of my educational opportunities and my natural curiosity has placed me in an opportune position to use my privilege to help others.  How exactly I will accomplish this vague goal to "help others", I am not entirely sure.  My ideas range from international human rights lawyer to public health specialist to journalist to philanthropist, and, to be honest, my Life Plan changes weekly, but that's how your tumultuous twenties are supposed to be (or so I've been told).  Realistically, there are a multitude of different paths that will lead me to my ultimate goal of leading a life that makes a positive difference in the world.

On verra.

I am completely content to live ten minutes away from this lake

Profite Bien: 102 Days in France

      What do I love about France?  After living here for exactly 3.5 months, I find myself defaulting to see the negative aspects about this temporary home.  For that I've made a list of things I do love about this country (there are many more, but these stand out).

• Sunny blue-sky days: Though rare during these cold December days, they are stunning and the whole city stops what they're doing to go outside and enjoy the sun.

A beautiful, sunny day in Paris

• My host mom who loves to explain aspects of French politics and culture to me as we watch French TV shows.

• 6 hour lunches with friends over good food and pastries and long strolls through the garden have become something to which I look forward all week.

• I love walking absolutely everywhere.  On a normal day I walk at least 1.5 hours from home to class to lunch and back.  I just feel more in-touch with the city than I do even with my own city at home by whose streets I swiftly drive rather than casually stroll.

• I love going for runs in the city through the charming parks or alongside the river as it sparkles in the sunlight.  I've even found an island, which I call the Goat Island, that is filled with goats, sheep, and cows.  Though this might have been common in India, I certainly did not expect to find it in the middle of a French city

• I love that the French set aside copious amounts of time to spend with friends over coffee or to spend with their families on Sunday ("family day").  In the U.S. I get so caught-up by the next deadline or my over-stuffed schedule that I forget to take time out of my day to enjoy the moment and spend time with the amazing, intelligent people around me.

• I love Christmas markets (les Marchés de Noël).  Christmas lights twinkle above you as vendors sell hot wine and crêpes sucrés from their cozy stalls.  For a decidedly secular nation, I do not know if I've seen anyone get quite as much into the Christmas spirit as France.

The Christmas Market in Tours

• Finally, I love that vacations and free time here are understood as critical for mental and physical health.  The French get the misnomer of lazy due to their gracious yearly vacation time (minimum 5 weeks) but I find it lovely that people have the time to prioritize their family and themselves every so often.  Then they can return to their jobs and be better employees, daughters, mothers, and sisters (etc.).

I spent hours just looking at the stunning stained glass of Saint Chapelle in Paris

All of this is to say that I love the French spirit of profite bien, which translates roughly to enjoy yourself or literally "profit well".  When the French tell you they hope you profites bien from something, they want you to really enjoy it and get lost in the moment and forget about everything except that moment.  A perfect example of this was on my three-hour train from Grenoble to Tours.  For the three hours most people just looked out the window and watched the stunning scenery pass.  A few read books and even fewer did work on their laptops and I only saw one person on their phone.  Phones on the TGV (high-speed train) never work because the train is moving too fast for the phone to find a signal.  The French profite bien  from this beautiful respite from the modern world.

Naturally after 102 days here in France (as of today) I miss quite a few things about America.  Three things stand out:

1. I miss being able to walk down a sidewalk and not worry about stepping in dog poop.
2. I miss living in a culture which is more interested in eating healthfully.  Don’t get me wrong, I love French food, but a girl can only eat so much bread and cheese and meat until she really craves her fresh fruits and vegetables.
3. I miss being able to make friends with ease.  The language barrier is tough, but the cultural barrier here is more so.  The French make friends at a young age and keep the same small group of friends for life.  I’ve made a few lovely connections here, but only just now, really (after 3.5 months) have I been invited to someone's home for dinner.  I suppose you have to start somewhere!

I'll end on a positive note, last weekend in Paris I finally stopped by a café I had passed numerous times in September but had never gone.  Les Deux Magots is a café known city- and world-wide as the intellectual meeting place of some of the world's best writers (think Hemingway and Gertrude Stein).  I had two hours to spare before my train left, so I sat down and ordered chocolat à l'ancienne and a brioche.  Sitting there I started up a conversation with the elderly gentleman beside me who is a international law professor at Sciences Po.  Finally my French is at a point where it is conversationally fluent, so I sat there, loving Paris, while chatting in French and reading Harry Potter in French (thanks, Stephanie!).  It was a magical morning and the perfect end to a perfect trip with my best friend, Emily.

The perfect cafe for the perfect morning (Les Deux Magots)

Learning French

Learning a language is difficult.  The one-in-the-morning commercials for Rosetta Stone could tell you that.  In my twenty years of life I have tried my hand at Spanish, Latin, and, most recently, French.  Considering my memories from Spanish class are only of the songs about the colors and alphabet and considering also that Latin is a dead language which few people speak, starting French in college was my first attempt at actually learning a language.

The Chateau at Villandry in the Loire Valley

My love affair with French is a long-lasting one.  I fell in love with the language with the release of the movie, Les Choristes.  A story set in WWII France, Les Choristes follows the trials and tribulations of a choir for young boys, some of whom were orphaned in the war.  Unfortunately for my parents, who do not necessarily love French-subtitled films, my love of French cinema did not stop there.  My parents sat through countless of French films even though I was the only one who wanted to watch them.  I believe I even went through a phase where the only music to which I would listen was the soundtrack for Amélie.  Let's just say that twelve-year-old Sarah thought she was quite cultured.

I've spent the last three months in France, living at first in Paris and then with a host family, in order to learn French.  I've long wanted to immerse myself in a culture and live with a host family and, in the process, I've learned a bit about myself.

1. Language-learning inspires humility:  I spent last summer teaching English to pre-literate refugees, but I could not appreciate until now how difficult it is to learn a new language.  I have to be like a child - open and curious - while also retaining my sense of self as an "adult" (I say this in quotations because I'm in denial that I actually am one).  The process is a arduous and humbling one, but one in which I am incredibly privileged to partake.
2. Moments of facility in a new language are rare: French is a Romance language, so it draws on my previous knowledge of English, Latin, and Spanish.  On occasion I am able to say an English word with a French accent and it just so happens to be a word in French. Thank you, Norman Conquest!  (I say "on occasion" here because this rarely works.) 
3. I can accept constructive criticism without getting defensive.  A long-term problem of mine, my defensiveness rears its head whenever I am critiqued.  As the French are forthcoming with their grammatical corrections, I simply cannot afford to take offense to them because the advice given is helpful and valid.
4. I have accepted the fact that I will make (numerous) mistakes every time I open my mouth.  To date I'm (fairly) sure I have not seriously insulted anyone.  Here's too keeping up that impeccable record.

I find it incroyable that I only have one month left here in France.  The semester has flown by (insert more clichéd statements of the passage of time here _____).  I still have so much more to learn and not nearly enough time in which to learn it.  But I hope to return to France in the future, so these past three months will not have gone to waste. 

Until next time!

A stunning valley in Provence