Busy Busy Busy!!!

Uff da! Man has it been a busy few weeks! I rarely have access to my blog since the internet here is pretty shoddy so I'll probably be updating it less often but I'll try and include some highlights. I realized that I never really described the university I am attending but can do so in three words: overgrown concrete jungle. It needs a little help with yard work and the buildings need some paint, but man do I love that place! I am taking beginning Arabic, which is by far my favorite class, Darija (which is a Moroccan Arabic dialect course), a gender studies course, a geostrategic placement of Morocco course and a course on the history of Morocco. We have class at some random times throughout the day, even at night! One thing I am really starting to love about Moroccan culture is how the meal at lunch is the main meal of the day. Everybody comes home between classes and we sit down and have a huge meal around 2 o'clock every day. It is a reat time to talk about everyone's day and what their plans are for the rest of the evening. Oh and did I mention how the food is AMAZING?! On Fridays, our cooks, Saida and Nora make us the traditional couscous platter and after that meal we have leftovers for days! The other days they make other types of traditional Moroccan cuisine and we all love it, maybe a little too much.

About a two weeks ago we went to the Roman ruins of Volubilis and the holy city of Moulay Idriss. It is about a 45 minute bus ride from Meknes and it is one gorgeous place. There are tons of old Roman pillars and traditional Roman architecture and it looks/feels like you're in Tuscany. The reason the Romans actually settled there was because they did feel so much at home due to the rolling hills and Cyprus trees growing all around. We walked around Volubilis awe struck by everything just trying to imagine what life must have been like that long ago. It was so fun. We also had a hilarious guide who made inappropriate jokes the whole time so he had us roaring. After chilling in the Roman's old hood, we drove through the hillside and ended up in the holy city of Moulay Idriss. Moulay idriss was the first king of Morocco and he was a descendant of the Prophet and he settled in the area, which is now known as Moulay Idriss, and made it the capital of Morocco. Many Moroccans see the town of Moulay Idriss as sort of a Mecca and if they cannot afford a pilgrimage to Mecca they go there instead. To Moroccans, Moulay Idriss is a mini-Mecca. We took a tour of Moulay Idriss and it was a town completely different from any I've ever seen. It is a very religious and traditional city that never used to let non-Muslims come visit until only about 10 years ago. All of the buildings and mosques are extremely old and they are painted in every color. The guide brought us to a traditional public Moroccan bakery which is where the whole community bakes their bread. We all got piping hot bread that was by far the best bread I've ever tasted. I was also starving, so it could have been a Joyce mentality type of thing :)

During that week, we came to find that there was a professor's strike for one day. So we got a random free day on Wednesday! Some people decided to go to Fes for the day and get lost in the Medina, but some others and I decided to stay in Meknes and wander around our Medina. It happened to be a beautiful, sunny day (which is rare during this time of year) and we just leisurely walked around finiding some great stores and shopkeepers. After the people who went to Fes for the day got back, they had the travel bug. They decided that they wanted to go to either Casablanca or Rabat for that coming weekend. We frantically starting planning trips and a few of us decided we wanted to take a day trip to Rabat on Saturday so we still had time on Sunday to get some homework and laundry done. But before the weekend came, we heard some awful news.

During the taxi ride to the university on Friday we kept seeing a bunch of ambulances zooming past and we asked our cab driver, in French of course, what was going on and he told us that a minaret from one of the mosques in the Medina had collapsed over the worshipers right before the Imam's sermon started and killed a total of 41 people. Nothing like this has ever happened in Morocco and everyone was pretty distraught. The collapse of this mosque prompted the King to issue some orders to have all of the old mosques inspected and fixed if they needed it. Hopefully this will help prevent future catastrophes.

Now on to Rabat! We woke up at the crack of dawn to catch a 7:30 train to Rabat, but since we're in Morocco, the train actually came at around 8:10. The train ride was only around two and ahalf hours so it wasn't a bad ride. We got to Rabat and just sort of wandered around the city looking for an American bookstore to buy some books for our classes and much to our professor's dismay, none of the books we needed were there. And if we were going to find any of the books we needed for that class anywhere, it was in Rabat. Looks like we won't have to read them! After some good lost wandering, we caught a taxi to the American Embassy just to see what it was like there. Long story short, we got kicked out of our cab right outside the embassy, didn't want to go in the embassy due to the fortress-like nature of it and we couldn't find a cab for about 20 minutes. We decided that lunch and the beach was now necessary so we high tailed it out of embassy row to the beach. We grabbed a quick bite in a beachside cafe and then went to the Medina. The Medina was amazing. The streets were actually quite wide which didn't make it seem so claustrophobic. I bartered my way from 200 dirhams (around $25) for a purse to 200 dirhams for a purse and a sweet pair of traditional Moroccan slippers. It was a great deal! After a busy day in Rabat we hopped back on the train and tok a late trian home to Meknes.

After arriving to Meknes, all of us took a big sigh of relief realizing we actually know our way around. "Man it feels good to be home," one of my roommates said as we walked up to the apartments. I think we are all starting to realize how much we love this small city in the middle of Morocco. We're finally getting to know the city and we are the only foreigners for miles but we wouldn't want it ay other way.