¡Listo!

So it's been a week since this actually happened, and I apologize for that, but I will try my best to recap our trip to the fullest.  We'll go step by step.

It all started when Elizabeth mentioned that we could go on a 3-day trip to Morocco for quite a good price.  This was near the very start of our program, so of course we, screaming "We love traveling!", all jumped at the opportunity, booking ourselves in the program without a second thought.  All was well and good, the applications went through for most people, and when they didn't the people at the office in Sevilla spoke English, which is always a good thing when you're dealing with money.

Well, then protests started happening in Morocco, with the more serious ones being in bigger cities like Marrakech, Casablanca, and Rabat.  We were not going to be coming anywhere near these places, but we were staying in Tangier, which is the biggest city in the northern half of Morocco.  So there was cause to be nervous, even if in retrospect, it was somewhat foolhardy to do so.  Needless to say, a lot of people got cold feet, and whereas before a good 12 of us were going on this specific trip, that number had been cut in half.  (Evidently, it was more than just UNC in Sevilla's program that dropped out -- there were 200 people going, but we all managed to fit in 1 1/2 buses.)  Us 6 (Meagan, Elizabeth, me, and our friends Callan, Christina, and Will) all stuck around, mainly because (a) when would we ever get to go to Morocco again? and (b) they would only refund 40% of our money if we dropped out a week before the trip.

So that was settled and we commenced our journey!  It started off on a great note: Elizabeth and Callan kept joking around and calling this a "couples retreat" (with them facetiously included) because Meagan and I and then Christina and Will both make up couples.  (It was a kind of you-had-to-be-there joke.)  Between that and the magnificently beautiful drive between Sevilla and Tarifa (seriously, it's the most beautiful thing I've seen since I've been here), everything was going smoothly.

We got to Tarifa and commenced the unnecessarily long process of getting tickets for and boarding the ferry.  The ferry was cool, and actually pretty nice -- and of course, crossing the Strait of Gibraltar is incredible (although going to Morocco, we couldn't see anything because we crossed at night) -- but the entire experienced was marred by the fact that the travel agency guides that we were traveling with took our passports without cause.

Which brings me to a big point I should make before I continue: this trip was poorly organized.  Granted, the guides always knew what they were doing, but they didn't tell us anything about where we were going, when we were going there, what we were doing, if there was anything potentially dangerous going on, etc. until the time actually came to do it.  That's fine, I suppose -- I can go with the flow pretty easily.  What I can't deal with is when you take my most important lifeline from me (a.k.a. my passport) and don't tell me why until you give it back to me, especially when going to a less-stable-than-Spain country on a completely different continent.  (I'm not trying to be dramatic; Meagan and I were just freaking out together, especially since ours were the last passports to be given back to us.)  Of course, it was a perfectly good reason that they took them from us: it made crossing and getting stamped go faster.  But could you please tell us?  Case in point: my mother asked me for the name and number of the hotel we'd be staying at.  I didn't have that information until I got to the hotel.  Itinerary of things we were doing?  No.  Numbers of my tour guides in case we got separated?  No.  Maps?  No.  It was really kind of shady.  But all in all, it was fine.  We never separated from the group and we never got stranded anywhere.  But I'm jumping the gun.  Proceeding:

We got off the ferry and took a 5-minute bus ride to our hotel in Tangier, which was very, very nice.  All our meals were provided for, but even so, we were told to be wary of the water and anything that was going to have to come in contact with it while still fresh (i.e. vegetables).  But the food was awesome.  I just have a really soft spot in my heart for Arabic food and spices.  Whenever my mom cooks with fennel or cumin at home, it's always one of my favorite things.  Not to mention, what with the Arabic influence in Spain, it was nice to see (and taste) the roots of that influence, whether in the food, the architecture, or the lifestyle.

That was day 1.  Day 2 consisted of three things: camel rides, the village of Chefchaouen, and lots and lots of (unfortunate) down-time.

As we rode up the mountainside to the highest point in Tangier and then down again, we were offered this great view of the city, which looks magnificent from above.  (You will know this if you have seen The Bourne Ultimatum.  That hand-to-hand chase/fight scene he has with the assassin, the one where he's jumping over the rooftops to chase him?  We were in the city where that takes place.  SO COOL.)  It's just too bad that the most we saw of Tangier was from our hotel or through a bus window.  Anyway, we traveled a little while along the coast of some ocean, to get to this side-of-the-road stop where stood -- I kid you not -- 5 camels with their 2 trainers.  We all got a chance to ride the camels -- and I know that I should be more excited to ride a camel than I am to see the ocean -- but going down on the beach was more of an experience than riding the camels in a circle for 30 seconds.  (Although, one of the trainers was the funniest person ever -- he kept shouting the 8-10 English words/phrases he knew in a loop, even if they had nothing to do with camels.  Examples: "Oh my God!"  "Cheese!"  "Giddyup, camel!"  Also, all of these were in a distinctly Arabic accent.  Another you-had-to-be-there moment.)  Anyway, we reasoned that the water we saw was the Mediterranean, but it very well could have been the Atlantic.  Either way: awesome.




We then proceeded to see this cool cave, called The Cave of Hercules.  It was right on the shore, so you could see the waves crashing in through the orifice, but other than that, that's all it was -- cool.  With a name like "The Cave of Hercules" you would expect a bigger cave, or at least more of them.  But it was still quite wonderful to see.


We then proceeded through back-roads to Chefchaouen, otherwise known as the blue-and-white village.  Literally.  This place is SO blue.  I don't remember the significance of it, but I know that each color, especially when painted on the doors of the houses, means something in regards to your ethnic background or religion.  (I would guess, since the majority of places have blue doors/walls that blue would refer to an Islamic religious background or at least an Arabic ethnic background.)  We got to Chefchaouen just in time for lunch, and let me tell you, the food was even better than at the hotel.  In one of the dishes, there were these yellow-ish slices of some kind of vegetable.  Upon trying them, we discovered that they were lemons, somehow with the skin and rind blanched off of them so that you could chew through the outer flesh of the lemon.  They were so good.  Later, we took a walking tour through the bluest blue of the village, which was amazing of course.  The village is on a mountainside, and the streets aren't really organized.  But that doesn't matter because the part that we walked through was full of mainly pedestrian streets, which allows for a lot more spatial conservation and, secondarily, creative innovation in terms of structural construction.  It was really unique and different.



We walked for awhile, all in the same group, around with a tour guide.  About the hardest thing for me to do, though, even amidst all of these unique experiences was to have to refrain from holding Meagan's hand.  Which is completely reasonable, given the fact that it's out of respect for the Islamic religious tradition, but it was painful.  But we tried our best and managed to get through without even the littlest sign of affection, because that's what respect is.  WHICH BRINGS ME TO THE OTHER DETESTABLE POINT ABOUT THIS TRIP:

THE PEOPLE WE TRAVELED WITH.  UGH IT MAKES ME SICK.  Basically, I have discovered through talking with people in other study abroad programs I have met while being here, that the ratio of guys to girls that study abroad is about 1:6.  There are always a very small number of guys compared with the number of girls.  Well, out of the hundred or so people that went to Morocco, about 8-10 of them were guys (not including our tour guides, who were part of this problem that I'm about to explain), so it was an extreme example of this ratio.  The rest were girls.  This makes very little difference normally, except that when everyone except for us 6 from UNC and maybe about 5 other people in all are the most annoying, irritating, rude, disrespectful people ever.  Not just the girls or the guys: all of them.  The girls we traveled with, on the matter of respect, had none: they constantly complained about the state of things in Morocco; they showed the most skin possible, either because it was too hot or they wanted a tan; or they constantly said stupid s*** to get attention, especially when it involved criticizing Moroccan culture.  And most of the time I just wanted to slap all of them.  I mean, come on: yes, Morocco is a third-world country, so yes, you are not going to be pampered like you always have been your entire life.  But it's a way of life and not respecting it is a crime, especially when it could be offensive to the native population: showing skin is NOT appropriate.  But I suppose in the end it's your loss because you're the one that's going to end up looking like a prostitute.  No wonder the foreign perception of American girls, through movies and music and all that, is that they're easy.  The girls we were traveling with were the epitome of hard-partying, stereotypical disrespectful people that couldn't give two s***s about anyone lower than them.  But the guys were even worse: they catered to this.  Especially our tour guides.  Their job is practically to flirt with girls and flatter them with attention so that they can keep making money, even when it comes as an insult to the places they are visiting.  We stopped at the bathroom on the way down, and one of the tour guides came in and said, out loud to the bathroom, "Man, I'm lovin' the amount of girls on this trip."  I mean, they're responsible for these people.  They could put a stop to it, but I suppose they would feel like doing so would make them feel too juvenile.  Well, that's too bad, because they were juvenile.  The whole thing just made me sick.  Really, really sick.  (Rant over.)

Anyway, the point is, that us 6 from UNC tried to be as respectful as possible of local culture, religious preference, and such.  And we succeeded.

Moving on: that was pretty much the end of day 2.  We had to leave Chefchaouen early because there was going to be a peaceful protest in the main square where we were going to do some shopping.  And even though the protest was going to be peaceful, trying to keep track of 100 Americans in the middle of it is not easy.  (Especially when they paint targets on each others back and scream, "I'm American!", due to their disrespectful nature.  UGH.)  So we went back to the hotel and chilled idly for a long time.  A long, long time.  (Unfortunate.)  Then there was dinner and some kind of party that we didn't go to.  So that was day 2.

Day 3 saw us get up early and travel to Tetouan, the second largest city in the north after Tangier.  And they're right -- it is big.  Evidently, it's separated into Old Town and New Town, where Old Town is further separated into the Arab Quarter, the Spanish Quarter (or the Catholic-Christian quarter), and the Jewish Quarter.  We got a chance to walk through a thriving open-air market (which again was met with dissent and discontent from the snobbish in our group), down some side-streets, and through a great plaza where evidently the king comes to speak when he has to give a speech.  All in all, it was very cool.  Things we learned: the Moroccan constitution guarantees religious freedom, even though the majority of the population is Muslim (which, in retrospect, shouldn't be surprising, but still was); some of the rooms of hotels in the Old Town can be rented out for 2 euro a night (which is about 20 dirham, Moroccan currency); and that the Moroccan way of life is incredibly strenuous and difficult.  Yes, seeing the market was cool, but in a way, it was also very sad.  I've never had an experience where I get to see first-hand a family that lives without basic provisions that we have in the U.S. and it all at once made me feel very fortunate and very guilty.  And it got me thinking: how much of the stuff that we have in the U.S. is unnecessary?  If Moroccans can be happy with what they have, then certainly we can too.  That's a message that I feel has been preached several times over, but that doesn't make it any less true.

After that, we went to a Moroccan rug store, where I'm sure they expected us to buy a lot of things, but really, we had very little money and very little space to transport a rug back home.  Christina, however, did manage to bargain her rug down to 50 euro, which is amazing in and of itself.  I don't know how she'll get it home, but I'm sure she'll find a way.  (She was obsessing.  Completely justifiably though: they were beautiful!)  Then we went to an apothecary, or rather, a natural pharmacy, where he showed us several organic cures for ailments such as stress, muscle tension, dry skin/eczema, and other things involving spices and herbs.  It was really cool to see it, and also got me thinking how well they worked over modern medicine in the States.  (Of course, I feel like the FDA would've cracked down on this place hard.)  We went to lunch and had authentic cous-cous (!) and some Coke, which was served in bottles with labels in Arabic (basically awesome).  Then we got a chance to go shopping in the bazaars in one part of the market.  This would've been great if we hadn't been standing around for almost 2 hours.  After I ran out of Moroccan money, I didn't have anything to do expect wait.  And the thing about the market is, it's not in a straight line, so no matter which way you go, you're liable to get lost.  So we stood in this plaza for a long time, waiting for something, but we didn't know what.  (Again, poor organization on behalf of Discover Sevilla.)  When we finally did leave, we boarded the bus back to Tangier to get back on the ferry and come back to Spain.  Crossing the strait was infinitely more rewarding this time, even if the boat rocked harder then it did on the way over here, because you could see from point to point the coast of Africa to the coast of Europe.  It was really unique to be in the waters of what could be the Mediterranean and what could be the Atlantic.  After that, we commenced the long journey back home (which was also interrupted by a "15-minute stop" for dinner at a cafe on the side of the road, but what was really an hour-long stop for dinner at a cafe on the side of the road, at which none of the six of us except for Will ordered anything).

Overall, it was a rewarding experience.  I know I complained a lot, but it was still a trip to Morocco, no matter how annoying the people were or how poorly organized it was.  A few of us thought it wasn't worth the price we paid for it, but the way I see it, it was.  It was totally worth it.  I don't know if I'm ever going to get back to Morocco again, but I sure would love to (especially since we didn't spend hardly any time in Tangier, which was the most exciting part for me).  And I know I couldn't have gotten there on my own.  If you ever get the chance, I would really recommend you do it.

Nick