Morocco...revisited.

So my Morocco experience the second day there was completely different than the first. Now, I know I’m a little late on this blog entry, but the last few days on the ship have been crazy. First we had rough waters, and then I had a quiz and a paper due. So I apologize. But I promise to update how Neptune Day goes (It’s a ship celebration for when we cross the equator…we don’t have class, there’s competitions, and people shave their heads-it’s an old sailor’s tale). Anyways, back to Morocco. Hmmm Morocco. What an incredible country. Though next time I visit I’m going to explore Marrakech and Fes for sure. But the 2nd day, February 4th, I woke up early and got some reading done, had breakfast and then got on a bus with Kristina (my roommate) to go to visit an orphanage outside Casablanca. We drove for about twenty minutes and went to visit the International School for lunch and a tour of the campus. Our inter-port lecturers for Morocco started the school and we were able to see some of the things they had done. It’s a beautiful building and right now the school has a little less than 700 students. They cater to grades K-12 and the building has security 24/7. It was literally three times nicer than my high school at home.
It’s named the George Washington Academy (no association with GW University). Look it up online, it’s a beautiful school. All of the students are fluent and taught in English, French, and Arabic. Man did I felt dumb. We met a nice couple from Irvine, California who wanted to retire and heard about the school from a website called finishers.com or .net, I haven’t looked it up yet. But it’s basically for people who want to retire and “finish”out their last years giving back. So her husband teaches art to high and middle school students while she works in the administrative office. They have a two year contract and are renting a house in Casablanca. They even brought her mother over and were able to hire a full time assistant to stay with her at the house while they are working. This is something they would never be able to afford in America. They loved the people in Morocco and their lifestyle here. The lunch at the school was delicious and they served mostly American food. They had fajitas, paninis’, burgers, fries, and sandwiches. I felt like I was in a restaurant. We got a huge tour of the school, which was amazing.
Afterwards we went to the SOS Children’s Village, which was very well organized. It was almost as if I saw a light at the end of the tunnel. With all my work I have done with nonprofit organizations and other people who are trying to make the world better place, this was a small sparkle of good. It was organized into a village, with 11 little houses with about 9 children of all ages in each house. They were centered among the administrative building. Each house had a mother, who was paid and there were also aunt’s who helped the mothers with the kids and on their days off. They took in children from the first few days after they were born up until 16. They had a school and different programs for the kids to participate in. There was a music program and a computer lab sponsored by McDonalds and a library sponsored by another company I forgot. We were taken around the entire facility. It was small, but served as a home for 97 children in the village. We didn’t get to see that many kids because they were out doing different activities, but we saw a few girls in a room learning how to sew scarves and socks for another SOS village in the North of Morocco. It was really cool to see. I enjoyed talking to one of the aunt’s and how the children transition between 16-18 in leaving the village and getting jobs or continuing higher education. I enjoyed learning about the program, “SOS”which I don’t remember what it stood for has locations all over the world and in the United States. I would love to visit one when I return to the States.
We eventually left and stopped to have tea along the beach. There were a ton of restaurants and shops along the beach you could tell this part of town was definitely a lot nicer than where we were in port. There were these beautiful HUGE houses, it looked like Santa Barbara. That evening after we returned, I waited to be set up for a dinner with a Moroccan family. It was INCREDIBLE. Everything was set up through SAS and this will be the highlight of my experience in Morocco. It was a group of about six of us, with a total of five girls and my guy friend, Doug from Boulder. We didn’t really know each other very well beforehand, which made it even better. This family’s home was incredible. They had 5 or 6 living rooms. All were in a different style. Some more modern, some very Moroccan, and all were HUGE. They were all open to the larger lobby of the home and didn’t have doors separating them. We came in and had some coffee (espresso) from Italy with these little sugar cubes shaped like a card deck with hearts, spades, and diamonds. It was so cool, those were from France. Then we had a ton of little Moroccan tea cookies and Moroccan mint tea which is SO ADDICTIVE. I literally had 3-4 cups of tea each day we were in Morocco (I brought some home don’t worry). After we talked for awhile with the mom who had two daughters, one was 13 and one was 18. They spoke perfect English and the mom was pretty good herself but still learning. We talked to the two daughters most of the time and they helped translate a bit.
The husband came home, and he had started to learn English two weeks prior. We then all sat down to dinner and our first course included a large platter with black and green olives, tomatoes, and cucumbers all separated around the sides with a large rice mixed with fish, tomatoes and corn in the middle. It was huge and sooo yummy. We then were served two platters of egg-roll looking things. They were very hot, one platter had fish on the inside, and one had powdered sugar on top and cinnamon, rice, and meat on the inside. It was soooo good. I must have had five or six. They were so yummy. After that we had the main course and they passed around small little round pieces of bread. It had a rough outside with a cornstarch texture and a soft interior, about the size of a bagel but a little thinner. We had sausages on skewers with two choices of sauces. One was a lima bean type vinegar salsa mixture which was yummy to dip the bread in, and then the other was made with chopped red bell pepper, some green bell peppers and olive oil. It was like a sweet salsa, and I LOVED that one the best. After we ate enough for an army (there was so much food), they eventually brought out desert. The servants brought a HUGE silver platter of fruit. There were tons of fresh bananas, apples (red &green), oranges, and clementines.
It was so delicious; we had really amazing conversations with them too about our travels, how life was like in Morocco and how we were enjoying our visit. The 18 year daughter had already been accept into college and was going to London next year; she was really interested in doing Semester at Sea. We eventually left, the driver taking three of us, and the father and his wife taking the other three. They even sent us home with more tea cookies, which we ate as soon as we snuck them onto the ship.
Our last day in port, Kristina and I woke up a little later because the stores didn’t open till 9 to 9:30 am. We met up with a girl and a guy she had at her Moroccan family dinner, and one of their friends. Hadley goes to ASU and is from Broomfield, CO, so we joke we decided to switch places. Alex knows a friend of Kristina’s and goes to a school n Minnesota and then Andrea is from and goes to South Carolina. Alex eventually left us a few hours in cause he wanted to wander, but I had so much fun with the girls all day. We just walked around, went shopping, bought a lot of stuff and enjoyed getting to know each other while traveling together. It started raining so we went into a store and ended up buying way more than we thought. I got a beautiful silver teapot, with four different designed and colored teacups. They’re adorable. I also bought four or five (they are all wrapped up underneath my bed) beautifully painted ceramic bowls. I also got a cool leather yellow camera case. They are known for their leather products in Morocco, so I got a little something. I LOVE everything I bought.
We then went to lunch, which was delicious. We ate at a little place, where we had a margarita and chicken pizza. We needed a little something American for some comfort food. The margarita pizza in Morocco just in case you needed to know has cheese, red bell peppers, and olives on it. Not really a margarita pizza in the United States. Everything was yummy and we ordered some Moroccan tea along with it as well. We decided to look at a few more shops and then find Rick’s Café from the movie, Casablanca. I wanted to find a piece of art to take back with me (I’m trying to collect them in every country).
We ended up walking around and talking and this man bumps into us and asks if we are Americans. We were a little worried so we tried to keep walking and he was like, “Where are you from?”As we were slowly walking away we went around saying where we were from and Kristina says Minnesota. He stops dead in his track and says,”You’re from Minnesota! So I am!”We were a little worried at this point and really started walking away and he was like, “No, no I really am!”He then reaches into his pocket and…pulls out his license. He totally had a Minnesota license. Kristina flips out and was like Oh my gosh! Where? All of a sudden we’re all talking and laughing by the fact that here we are in MOROCCO and Kristina finds someone from Minnesota. He invites all us four girls into his little shop and invites us in for a cup of tea. We’re talking and laughing about the crazy situation while Kristina and this man talk all about where they live and who they know, and some of his friends boil a pot of Moroccan tea. It was hilarious. He asked all about where we were from and what we were studying and it was just a great moment in time. Here we are tucked into this tiny little shop with five chairs drinking sweet mint tea and talking to someone who lived a suburb away from my roommate. It was crazy. We ended up talking and visiting for a good hour when we said we really needed to go and do a few errands before we got back on the ship.
He asked what kind of errands, we said we needed to buy some of the mint tea to take home, find me a painting and a few other things. He says wait ten minutes, He brings over three or four pieces of art that I loved and his friend brought in a bag full of boxed tea for each of us. It was so sweet! They just gave it to us, not accepting any money for it either. I bought a piece from him, mostly to keep the memory with the girls I was with and the person I had bought it from. The tea was sweet, and we thanked him but said we needed to be on our way to get snacks at the grocery store and we wanted to see Rick’s Café. At this point it had started to rain and he offered to drive us.
Now, my mom is probably freaking out at this part in the story, and you really shouldn’t do this, EVER. A Honda civic, four squished girls and two friendly Moroccan men later, we’re on our personal tour of Casablanca. We go to the store and he picks out a ton of Moroccan cookies and candy that his kids love to buy. We drive over to Rick’s and take pictures, then have a dance party in the car to Rihanna on our way back. He kindly drops us off by the entrance to the port. It was such a nice afternoon! He switched contact information with Kristina before we left. We started walking back and realizing what just happened. But, with only three hours left before we had to get back on the ship we decided to walk back to find Hadley a phone to call home. We walked around for a bit and while she was making a call we found this little street cart serving some kind of food. I tried asking what it was, and after some attempt with the men standing around it, I just asked for two. It was this delicious roll like breaded thing which is deep fried, cut in half with this delicious sweet marmalade spread over it and then dipped in pure sugar. OMG it is sure goodness in food form. I ate the entire thing, and so did Kristina. Then I gave a big bite to Hadley (while she was on the phone with her boyfriend) and then bought her and Andrea one as well. It was 1.50 Dirham, so like 10 cents in US dollars. We talked to some of the men there how we were students traveling around the world. As soon as we said we were Americans, they all held up their hands saying, “Obama!”
We saw that a few places too, in Morocco and Spain.
Overall, we walked back to the ship, happy with our purchases, experiences, photos, and people we had met our last day. So far my last day in port has been the best in Spain and in Morocco. I’m getting really excited for Namibia. We’re only there for two days, and we are doing a Safari for the whole time and camping out in the desert. We’ll be driving around in the Etosha National Park and along the Skeleton Coast. I just looked up photos and it looks incredible.
Tomorrow is Neptune Day on the ship!! Means we pass the equator! It’s tradition, or an old sailor’s tale to shave your head. So Kristina (my roommate still) will be doing that tomorrow. We have no class either, which I’m excited about. :-)
More updates soon and I hope all is well at home.
Missing in and out burger, just a little.