Sahara (for real)

Riding a camel is not quite as uncomfortable as everyone says it is, but it's still kind of uncomfortable. Every time you get on and off you jolt forward and backward and you feel like you're gonna fall. But we all made it on fine.

I named my camel Gary. He was quite the steadfast desert companion. 10/10 would recommend. Here is a glamour shot of us together:

Side note- yes, we all wore turbans. It keeps the sand out of your face and prevents your head from getting sunburned. I am proud to say that I have become an expert in turban wrapping. People even asked me to do theirs! And here are some of my shameless turban selfies.

Headphones and turbans are my new aesthetic. 

Queens of the desert, basically. 

The desert was so beautiful. The best way we could come up with to describe it is that it was like a Windows screensaver. It looked like a painting. It didn't feel real.

Our guide was really nice. He spoke French and even new a few words of English, which impressed me so much. Even people living in the middle of the desert can learn languages. I'm realizing how much English is taking over, which makes me sad because it isn't even that pretty or logical of a language. The ride was bumpy and the second I got off I could feel my inner thighs burning. But it was worth it. 

Once we got to our camp site, a bunch of us decided to go climb this really talk sand dune. I almost didn't, because I was tired and it looked really steep, but I went up at my own pace and crawled on my hands and feet and eventually made it to the top. And it was beautiful. It was too dark to take pictures, but I could see so much of the desert. We were so high up and looking down would normally have terrified me, but I just felt excited. We talked for a while but then got really quiet because we heard a voice. DJ Yous was singing the call to prayer from the camp site at the bottom of the dune, and we could hear him all the way up where we were. It was beautiful. We stayed silent and could here what sounded like people laughing and talking from far away in the desert. It was so quiet, and the sand absorbed a lot of sound so there was no echoe, but we could also hear things far away. It was beautiful. Sitting on top of that sand dune felt magical, like we could have been in any time period. It could have been 500 BCE or 1200 CE for all we knew. 

I brought my copy of The Alchemist with me on the trip. Though I didn't have time to read it, it was amazing being in the exact same setting as Santiago. I've picked out some quotes from that book that I love, and here are a few that have resonated with me most on this trip:

"Here and there, he found a shell, 

and realize that the desert, in remote times, had been a sea."

"Maybe God created the desert so that man could appreciate the date trees, he thought"

"When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better, too."

"There is only one way to learn, the alchemist answered. It's through action."

"There had been a time when he thought that his sheep could teach him everything he needed to know about the world. But they could never have taught him Arabic"

Especially that last one :)

So we came down from the sand dune and ate tagine by candlelight. We were all pretty tired so we fell asleep quickly. The stars were out but the moon was so bright that we couldn't see too many when we went back. 

However, we woke up at 4 am to head back to where the cars were parked, and by then the moon had calmed down and there were SO MANY STARS. I never wanted to look down. We got on our camels and headed out while it was still pretty dark. But as we rode, it got lighter and lighter, and we made it back just in time to see the sun rise over the sand dunes. 

We ate some more good Moroccan bread and cheese and drank tea, then we headed back to the vans for a crazy long ride back. One thing I like about the bus rides is getting to have random debates and discussions with my NSLI friends. Jack has been my main man to discuss things like that with, and we had a long talk about the future of American politics. Good thing we're both poly sci/IR majors! 

All in all, I feel incredibly blessed. I got to see a part of the world that otherwise I would likely have never even considered travelling to. I also got a pic with a camel named Gary. Pretty good weekend, I would say. 

Here is a description of the trip in Arabic:

And here is the English translation:

One more week left in this amazing place, let's hope I make the most of it! 

Sahara

Too much happened this weekend and it was too beautiful to accurately describe in words. But here is a brief summary:

On Friday afternoon, we left on a 600 km journey from Rabat to Merzouga. After a couple hours, we stopped on the side of the road and got to see wild apes. A couple people fed them peanuts, and I got close enough for a selfie:

My hair was lookin good that day, too 😎

Once we got out of Rabat, we were driving through beautiful mountains, and eventually through a plain/steppe kind of terrain.

We stopped a couple more times at gas stations and cafes, but finally made it to our hotel around 8. 

Our hotel was BEAUTIFUL- it had Berber designs all over the outside and our rooms were huge and had sitting rooms and Berber rugs and huge beds with blankets. We ate a delicious dinner of salad, chicken kebabs, French fries, potatoes with cheese on top, and melon. And bread of course.

 After dinner we went to the POOL (!) and swam around. It was so cold, quite possibly the best feeling ever after a long, hot bus ride. After the pool, Jack, Lexy, and I went up to the roof of the hotel to see the stars. We ended up bringing blankets and pillows up with us so we could sleep outside. Cameras don't do s good job of picking up stars, but here's a picture of the view before it got dark:

It was just a wide open plain. It was a little hard to fall asleep because some non-NSLI students were up there talking and laughing pretty loud, but they eventually left. The stars were beautiful and it got so quiet. The breeze was blowing and when it was dark, it was so cold. But I just curled up in my blanket and it was okay. It was a nice kind of cold.

John and me looking out into the sunset

We woke up around 5:40 the next morning, right when it was starting to get light out. Around 6:20, some other kids came up, and we watched the sun rise. It just looked like giant orange circle and it rose pretty fast. There weren't any clouds or pollution to give it cool colors, but it was still beautiful. 

We had the most delicious breakfast yet- a buffet of juice, tea, coffee, Moroccan bread, cheese, honey, jam, and scrambled eggs, the first non-hard boiled eggs yet! My new favorite thing to eat is Moroccan bread (mesmen/ragheefa) with honey and spreadable Les Enfants cheese, and a glass of mint tea. I ate a lot which was good because I wasn't hungry during the long bus ride. We spent a lot of time winding down the sides of mountains, making lots and lots of turns. 

The landscapes are so beautiful out here- so wide and open. You can see foggy silhouettes of mountains in the background and we went right in between two mountains in a little valley. I feel really out in nature here. Men are selling honey in coke bottles along the side of the road. 

It's so cool being here and seeing how simple people live. They farm or shepherd and eat the food they make, or will go into town only occasionally. And everything they have at home is hand made. 

We stopped over this oasis valley called Ziz. People bought scarves for turbans and took photos at the overlook.

We also stopped at this fossil museum because apparently fossil museums are big in desert towns? And apparently they make stones with fossils in them into plates and tables and decorative objects?? And toilets???!?!

There was a point in the drive when we switched from our nice tourist vans to these four wheel drive Chevy SUVs. Good thing we did, because we had a very bumpy ride over the desert. We went to this restaurant where we had Saharan pizza (bread with spiced chicken, onion, and eggs inside) and tea that for the first time ever wasn't mint flavored! It was gingery.

Then we listened to live Gnaoua music, which was just guys in white robes and turbans playing drums, metal castanet-type things, a stringed guitar-like instrument, and singing. 

They were really good! Muhammad and Yousef (another Qalam teacher who we call DJ Yous because he would come on our bus and jam out to Nikki Minaj and Enrique and Moroccan pop and sing on the microphone and try and get everyone to sing along and dance. He also dresses impeccably. I'm a little obsessed with him) joined the band and played along:

Muhammad was getting so into his drumming and Yousef was just dancing and jamming on the castinet things. Look how happy they are!!!!! 

After that, we took the SUVs across more bumpy sand. It felt like a crazy roller coaster safari, which reminded me of one of the bonus features in the Lion King 1 and 1/2 DVD, when you take a roller coaster across the savannah. It looked just like it.

But FINALLY we made it to our destination!! We had to wait an hour for our camels, one of the most suspense-filled hours of the trip. And because I'm evil (also because my wifi doesn't like long blog posts) I will leave you in suspense until the next blog post to find out about our camel ride! 

Selfies with giraffes, dance parties with orphans, conversations with college students

Every week, our school organizes excursions for each class and each group. This week, we got to go to the Rabat Zoo, as well as an orphanage in Sale (the city next to Rabat). At first, I thought I wasn't going to get to go on the trips with my NSLI group, due to my new afternoon class schedule. But as luck would have it, my class was scheduled to go to the zoo as well! It was really hot outside but I'm glad I got to go. Not quite as nice as the Smithsonian in DC, but it was very clean and well organized and the animals all looked like they had enough space and everything. 

Right next to a peacock

Turtles eating basically the same salad humans eat

A giant tortoise (in the shadows)

Giraffes :)

First time I saw a rhino

You can barely see it but that's a cheetah, and we saw a zoo keeper go in and groom him and feed him and it was one of the most adorable things ever

Me outside of the giant lion at the gate

On Thursday, we were scheduled to go to an orphanage but we had absolutely no idea what we would be doing there. When we walked in, we were greeted by 30 or so kids of all ages eating big platters of food, with Moroccan pop music being blasted from the stereo. We stood around awkwardly for a little until a lady said we could help her carry out dessert. The kids got plates full of chocolate eclairs and fruit!!! What?!?! They were probably of the best fed orphans in the world. We think the king has some special connection to that orphanage. Either that, or the king just really likes to take care of Moroccan kids. After passing out the eclairs (which all the kids insisted we eat) and trying to make small talk in Fusha/Darija/French (which consisted of a few words followed by lots of smiling and hand gestures and more awkward silence), we were led into a bigger room with even louder music. And we had a a dance party. 

Little kids are the best because they will go so hard when they dance and show you up like nobody's business. I danced with a girl who was a way better dancer than me in every way. It was so fun. There was one kid who was messing with all of the boys and daring them to do weird dance moves and poking them in the stomach and then jumping to the middle of the circle and showing off his own funky moves. He was by far the MVP of the afternoon. It reminded me of working at Imagination Stage/Art Ability, and how even if you can't communicate the same way with someone verbally,  it doesn't matter because you both can get down and have a dance party and enjoy yourselves. 

This week, Nabeela told us that we had to have a long conversation in Arabic with someone who wasn't our host family. Which, not gonna lie, was a daunting task. However, my friend Rebecca from my B3 class invited me over to her host family's house for dinner one night, and I got to talk with them! Her house was one of the most beautiful I had seen:

That's Rebecca in her sitting room/study space. She and her roommate got a whole floor to themselves! Her host family was so kind. Her mom was pretty typical, cooking a lot, always telling us to eat, making sure we felt welcome. She also had two host siblings in their twenties who spoke really great Fusha and English. I had been curious about how the university system in Morocco worked, so I talked to them about it! In Arabic! Turns out that university is free in Morocco, and almost everyone is expected to go to university. It's a bit more like European schools, where each university is specialized for a certain field. There's no application for university, but in order to go, you have to pass the Baccaulaureate exam for high school. They call it the "Bac" and it's extremely long and difficult. It consists of everything you studied in high school. And it's possible to retake the Bac, but only up to three times. And each time you retake it, you forget more and more of what you learned in high school. Also, elective courses aren't really a thing here. It's so different from the U.S. Some of the other NSLI students and I were discussing the merits of the different systems, all coming down to the central question of whether it is better to specialize early in a subject, or to be well rounded and know a little about a lot of different things. I personally am an advocate of the well-rounded route, and that's essentially the philosophy behind liberal arts colleges and education in the U.S. And hey, it seems to work pretty well for us! It just seems so impossible to know what you want to do by the time you're in high school and only study that for the rest of your life. But then again, that system produces really skilled and dedicated professionals. Plus, it's free...

After dinner, Rebecca and I studied a bit for our midterm (that was really our final because we both are leaving before the real final) which, after taking it Friday, I think went well! I was more confident in my spelling, I understood almost the entire reading, and I knew the vocabulary and grammar. I'm definitely making improvements. I've gotten so much faster at reading and much better at spelling, which are the two things I was struggling with the most in the beginning. I can also conjugate a bunch of verbs, which I couldn't do in the beginning. But sadly, I had to say goodbye to Rebecca on Friday, her last day. I'm very glad I had a wise, motivated, 30-something PhD student as a friend throughout this trip. It definitely put my experience in perspective. So far, one of my favorite things about traveling is meeting so many interesting people. Hopefully at college and throughout my life, I will continue to meet many more.