Allah, Country, King

Thursday

       Class was good but we decided to pass out evaluation papers so that we could split people up by their learning level and preference of pace. The class was really too big to function the way we wanted it to. Lunch was so yummy because we got to make sandwiches out of baguettes, fresh veggies, cheese, and a choice of meats. They had little sausages, mini hamburger looking things and some kind of breaded chicken that was to die for. It sounds simple (which it kind-of was), but it was a nice break from the more traditional dishes. As much as I LOVE the tagines, a good ol' sandwich is welcome every once in a while!

       After lunch I worked on my computer until the living area was invaded by a Moroccan band with drums and crazy noise makers. It was sooooo loud but tons of fun because they got us all up and dancing despite our self conscious grins and clumsy imitations of their dance moves :D  The songs were so long that by the end of one or two songs we had a break for tea time before they came back and did two or three more. I'll try to post a video of them later so you guys can see!

        Since it was our last night with a lot of people in the house leaving this weekend, a few of us went out after dinner to a nice hotel downtown Rabat called the Golden Tulip. Jordan and George had been before, and maybe Carly but Ashley, Jenna, Christine and I hadn't gotten a chance to check it out yet. It took a bus ride and a 15-20 minute walk to get there, but it was nice out and kind of an adventure so we didn't mind. They took us upstairs to the rooftop where there was a great view and tables out by a pool. It was very relaxing and nice. We got a few fun pictures too :D ...At the end of our shenanigans up there we took taxis back, smoked some hookah, and called it a night.

Friday

        It was a rough start on Friday morning since I had been out the night before but I hardly felt how tired I was because I was so excited (like REALLY REALLY excited) for the camel trek to start later that day. I headed out in a nauseously optimistic mood for my last class of the week but it was quickly dampened slightly by some confusion splitting up our classes and finding classroom space for them. In my new (truly beginner class) it seemed like the levels and willingness to learn were very different among a few groups of my students. The review seemed like I was teaching it for the first time (and took most of our class time) and a group of younger students were being rather distracting. As I said I WAS in a good mood and I always like laughing and having fun but they came in late and loudly, they giggled and talked while other students were trying to practice their role plays. Two of them really had NO clue what was going on and took their answers word for word from one of the other girls. I could tell it was frustrating the other students possibly as much as me so I decided to skip over them if they busted into their giggling fits instead of trying to do the exercise. At one point I told them to leave the classroom if they wanted to talk loudly because I couldn't hear a student who is really trying hard. I hate to see them ruin these other peoples' learning experience :/

        Back at the house, I threw the last of my stuff together and hung around until Hamza, our fearless leader for the weekend, and his driver pulled the "Touriste" van in front of Home Base and we piled in. I immediately wished I had brought a pillow with me because it was a rather tight squeeze with not much to lean on. The drive was wonderful otherwise because my eyes were glued to the window and my camera was put to good use the whole way. The scenery was hypnotizing as it changed from town to town. There were so many sheep and their shepherds, ruins, crumbling buildings, and random donkeys piled high with odd things that I was never bored with what I saw.  I couldn't concentrate enough to read though and I didn't even listen to my iPod because I was really enjoying the music that Jane had the driver put in. Hamza was hilarious how he would turn around in his seat to face us with his gigantic grin to tell us random facts about things we passed or tell us the names of towns we passed through. His english wasn't quite perfect and he speaks rather fast so after each little announcement he would nod, say "ok? Thank you," plop back in his seat and leave most of us with question marks dangling above our heads and looking for someone to translate parts of what he said. We drove by a couple of big hills and buttes which gave me a chance to break out singing "I like big buttes and I cannot lie..." --Yeah, REAL mature. I know. The best part of the day was when we drove through a forest area and stopped the van because we saw monkeys by the road! Hamza had brought some almonds for us to feed them (this was all part of his master plan) so the monkeys would come up to us and grab the nuts right out of our hands. They were so calm and chill around us, even the monkey momma with her baby riding on her back. It was completely precious and I couldn't believe how close they would let us get to take their pictures, I almost died of excitement. That night we stayed in a hotel in a little mountain town called Zaida. The rooms were clean-ish and the beds were pretty cozy so it was a welcome rest after 5-ish hours in the van.

Saturday

         In the morning, I looked out the window of our room to see "الله، الوطن،الملك" written on the hillside. It's the Moroccan motto "Allah, Country King." I hadn't noticed that it was there when we'd driven up in the dark. As I was admiring that, I noticed that I had unfortunately gotten some unwanted attention from some men standing around talking in the parking lot. I had forgotten that we were right by a gas station... so my moment of admiring the outside turned quickly to embarrassment and the long drapes on my windows being shut immediately. 

        After a quick breakfast, we hit the road for another 5 hours or so. The ride was even more fascinating and the landscapes began to become increasingly dryer, sandier and dramatic. I loved it when we started driving into the foothills and winding through the Middle Atlas Mountains. Rosemary plants grew like weeds and colonies of bees were kept by men on the sides of the road selling their honey. We stopped at one of many scenic overlooks to take pictures so Hamza jumped over the barrier wall and grabbed a handful of rosemary for us :D It smelled soooo delish! 

       Along the road and in the towns we passed, I noticed that the color of the locals became generally darker and they looked slightly more asian in their features. Their skin was very nice looking and in my opinion the people were quite beautiful.  The towns became fewer and far between... we were going until the the end of the road... literally. At one point we came over a hill and saw a vast bright blue lake of some kind, cradled between huge contrasting orange-ish brown mountains. The sight was mesmerizing and I took way too many pictures of the darn thing! Hamza announced that it was the largest reservoir i think. All I wanted to do was run down the hillside and jump in. It looked so clean and seemingly untouched, how could I not? Unfortunately there were no stops there and we sped right by. We did stop, however, at a marble "factory" that took fossils from the dessert and stones like alabaster to make them into pretty things... or I should say to make ordinary things like toilets, sinks, showers, tables and other little odds and ends out of polished stone that still contained some long deceased creatures inside of them. Yousef, the owner showed us around and comedically demonstrated how things were done. I had little interest and more than slight disbelief in much of what he said, but his humor alone made the stop worth while. He would yell the approximate age of things in a deep official sounding voice for dramatic purposes... comments saying that certain fossils were "billions of years old!!" then he would crack himself up. Yousef's laugh was enough to crack all of us up since it sounded like a hiccuping donkey with asthma.  I also enjoyed his all too frequent and out-of-context uses of the word please. He almost used it in every sentence as punctuation or just a filler word (kind of how a Valley Girl would use the word "like"). 

        Our last stop was at a Casbah (Which means fortress); it was nothing like the one in Rabat. This one was a home to around 200 families and was bade out of an adobe-like clay, mud and straw mixture. In the courtyard there were a few women sitting around separating huge piles of dates and yelling at the old man that was guiding us to not let us take their pictures. We followed the man through tiny unlit passage ways with an increasing amount of children following at our heels, some on bikes and trikes, others on foot and one on a donkey which he kept beating with a stick to show off in front of the other kids. That was slightly disturbing and sad to see. We got to go into the old man's house and meet some of his family; he showed us pictures and took us to the roof where there was a huge panoramic view of all the other rooftops in the casbah. Dates lay out to dry everywhere and a boy on the porch next door yelled "skut!" (which means "hush" basically) at a dog that was alarmed by our foreign presence on his roof. An interesting observation (made by Jason) was that even in this seemingly primitive method of existence in mud houses, almost every single house had a satellite dish! We went and walked back and around the casbah some more, along the oasis stream and palm trees, the kids found us again and started to ask for pencils and candy. Two boys even started to slightly mock me when I said I had nothing. It was rather creepy and I wasn't prepared to handle the situation so I kept walking until we arrived back at the van. We all piled in and a few people actually HAD brought pencils for the kids so Hamza and the old man gave them out to the now swarm of kids around the van. The kids fought over the pencils. This bothers me terribly and is one of the reasons why I support CCS in their discouragement of giving handouts to the people they help. This is just a minor example of the issue but many places in the world are becoming or have become reliant on hand outs  instead of being taught or learning how to make decent lives for themselves. They also get an attitude about tourists, that they are selfish and greedy if they don't give things out and share their "riches," or they think that visitors think that they are superior and need to help the poor lowly people. This is damaging and degrading to both parties but mainly that of the locals. It's very hard to control, and even harder to fix once the damage has been done. Okay, I'm off my soap box now, and I know that all the tourists mean well and the local people are just trying to fend for themselves the best and easiest way they can :/

I feel bad for leaving you on such a negative note, but I really cannot keep my eyes open and I DO have to teach tomorrow so I'll finish my update on the best part of my trip (Camels!) later.

Much love :D