Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Two continents, one birthday: MOROCCO

October has been ridiculously busy. We voyaged to AFRICA this past weekend: Marrakech, Morocco to be exact. It was incredible, and definitely a trip worth doing.


Since our flight left at 6:25 am Friday, our friends Stacy and Heather and I got to the Madrid airport at approximately 1 am because the Madrid metro closes for the night at 1:30. We had some delirious conversations until Hilary and Felicia arrived a few hours later in a taxi (they were smart and well rested. and not so cheap.). Our flight went smoothly, despite being so early, and we landed in Morocco at about 6:40 am (2 hour flight- 2 hour time difference= 0 time technically spent on plane?). When we got there, we took a taxi from the airport to our hostel. This caused a little bit of confusion because we knew there were "big taxis" and "small taxis," and we thought the 5 of us would need to take a "big taxi," but a "big taxi" turned out to be the size of a small, normal, 5 seater car. I am still wondering how big a "small taxi" is. The driver was nice and put on his American girl mix, so we listened to Moroccan remixes of Mambo #5 and Genie in a Bottle on the way. 


The taxi driver dropped us off in a small parking lot and found some man to lead us to our hostel. We were staying in the old part of the city, so many of the streets were too narrow for cars. There are also no street signs, which, combined with the narrow, twisty streets, turned the city into a labyrinth. A lot of men volunteer to be guides for confused tourists and will lead you where you need to go for a price, like this man did. We followed him on a 5 minute walk to our hostel, which turned out to be awesome. Even though we arrived at about 8 am and check-in was technically not supposed to start until 12, they let us in, offered us tea, gave us a map, and eventually ended up letting us into our room anyway.

inside of our hostel. very bright!

enjoying our room

terrace lounge. One of the two hostel bathrooms was also on the terrace. I liked showering partially outside.


We decided we didn't want to waste the daylight sleeping, so we headed out immediately to explore the city. This was fairly hard, considering it was a labyrinth, but we managed to find the main plaza and the souk (GIANT marketplace) pretty easily. We spent the rest of the afternoon mostly walking around the souk. By about 3 or 4 pm, we couldn't handle the sleep deprivation anymore and tried to go back to the hostel to take a nap before dinner, but we could not find the right street for at least 30 minutes. After that we were very wary about getting lost for the rest of the weekend.


All the streets mostly look like this. Very old, very narrow.

SOUK (marketplace). Imagine an endless maze of streets looking like this filled with bags, clothes, jewelry, spices, etc.

Main plaza. Very big, open space. There were some snake charmers and guys with pet monkeys on leashes begging for money, but I think they were mosly trying to attract dumb tourists.

All the shopkeepers (all men) spoke a little bit of English, and they would unfailingly call out bizarre things to us as we walked by to get our attention to buy things. They got more and more ridiculous. Some examples/favorites:
-CHICKS! Come look!
-Beautiful girls. I like you. Come back now.
-Chillax, lady, you're in Africa, not Baghdad.
-Hey LOOK! (*points to small lizard on his leg*) FISH AND CHIPS!

We all ended up buying a few things, including some very cool (and very cheap!) leather bags. This was my first experince bargaining, and my friends all laughed at me because I was so excited to lower the price by the equivalent of about 5 euros that I conceded right away very happily. The shop owner kept eagerly pulling out a lighter and trying to light the bags on fire to demonstrate that they are real leather. I learned that real leahter does not catch fire, after being slightly alarmed by the lighter at first.

in the hostel with our new bags. They smell like cow.

We also visited a palace. It was pretty, but fairly small, and might have been built in the 1870s, which is not very impressive. None of the signs were in English and all the rooms were empty, so we didn't learn anything about it, although it was nice to see.

palace courtyard


Muslim palaces have the best ceilings

We didn't do anything else specific in Marrakech because all the other touristy places were longish walks away, and the lack of street signs was too confusing for us. We spent some time looking for a museum, but gave up after a while and decided to enjoy the center of the city. (We were only there for Friday and Saturday.)  We also couldn't leave the hostel after about 7 pm because the sun went down by 6:30 and we were told it wasn't the best idea for us to be out alone after dark. So we had fun hanging out in the hostel sharing crazy family/childhood stories and playing the dating game. This gave us a much-needed opportunity to catch up on sleep.

We also had the opportunity to enjoy delicious Moroccan food. We were very careful about drinking the water and luckily none of us got sick. One of the most common meals we ate was variations of cous cous. very yummy. We also tried tanjine, a way to cook meat that was kind of similar to a stew. also very good. My favorite was chicken pastilla, which was kind of like a sweet version of a pot pie with almonds and cinnamon.

pastilla


chicken tanjine


Moroccan mint tea- our new absolute favorite drink. so sweet. so delicious. so comforting. need to find a way to replicate this in the US.

On a restaurant terrace overlooking the plaza after Saturday's dinner. Kudos to Stacy for the excellent camera work.

Sunday was MY 20TH BIRTHDAY. Unfortunately we had to wake up at 3:30 am for another early flight out. One of the guys who works at the hostel, Ali, was nice enough to walk us out to the parking lot to catch our taxi at 4 am. After another smooth flight back to Madrid, I spent the rest of my birthday afternoon studying for a final and frantically writing a paper to accompany it (my human rights mini course ended- THANK GOD...it was an awful experience), with a quick ice cream break. We are going to have extra birthday celebrations this weekend, when we're all in Madrid and Greg, Julia, and Liz are visiting!

In other recent news, today was the first day of my volunteer job. It's at an afterschool program for kids with "bajos recursos" (literally low resources...I'm bad at eloquently translating things back into English). Most of them are immigrants from Central/South America. The kids in my class are all between 6 and 8. So cute. I was really proud that I set this up for myself and had enough courage not to run away at the last minute. But I am so excited to be working and in a community again instead of spending more useless hours on the Carlos III campus. Overall I understood much less of what the kids said than I thought I would, although I can understand the teachers fine. (The kids have such squeaky high-pitched voices and asked me lots of rapid-fire style questions.) Some humorous miscommunications:
-One girl asked me a question that I didn't understand, so I just responded with "I don't know," and then she asked me, "Why didn't your parents ever tell you?" This led to a confusing conversation, and I figured out that she originally asked me where I am from. fail.
-I was convinced that one boy's name was Alice for about 2 hours, and was very confused by this, but eventually realized that it was Alex.
-One girl needed help with subtraction, and I learned that it is REALLY HARD to explain math in Spanish. This is probably a combination of my liberal arts education not preparing me adequately for simple math as well as me failing at Spanish. I need to brush up on my Spanish math terms before next Tuesday. I don't even know how to say subtraction.
-I am embarrassingly bad at commands in Spanish. I completely blanked and didn't know how to say: "Stop doing that- it's not safe," so instead I just let some kids jump on tables for a little while. oops. They were fine.

Despite all this, I had a really fun time and was overall successful at my first day. At the end I'm pretty sure one of the teachers told me I did a phenomenal job, although, for all I know, my brain could have just been filling in the Spanish words I wanted to hear. I played escondite (hide and seek) and helped make vampire costumes for their Halloween party on Friday. It was a fun time. I'm going every Tuesday from 3:30-7.

Things with my host family are still going well too. My host mom and I bonded tonight over loving peas. I had a delicious peas and chorizo dish for dinner (as well as a whole other plate of Argentinian empanadas and french fries...still being overfed). My host brother left this weekend to go back home to Mexico. He lives somewhere in Yucatan, but has been visiting Madrid for the past two months. He talked to me the most, so it's kind of sad to have him gone, but since he left my host mom has been extra friendly and talkative. I'm very excited because GREG COMES TOMORROW and this is obviously going to be a great weekend. Claro.

Hasta la vista,
Raquel

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Valencia and My BIRTHDAYYYYY

Hello All,
Sorry for the long interval since our last post, I will try and make this one extra good to make it up to you, dear reader.

When last I left off we had just returned from Paris. We only had 2 days of school that week because it was a national holiday (I don't know what it was for though (maybe Columbus or something)).  On Tuesday we had a mexican fiesta lunch for our friend Heather's 20th birthday.  Lots of fun and NACHOS!

This past weekend we took a program trip to Valencia where we arrived at the 21st century.  Instead of admiring endless Baroque and Gothic stuff we did some modern things (after we admired some Baroque and Gothic stuff)!  First we checked into the hotel (On the card in the room it said SH Ingles which looks like shingles) it was really nice and we had SHEETS and CNN in English!  We then ate our, as usual, delicious, program lunch.  Paella is a Valencian thing so we had a ton of it.
After we were well fed and drowsy we commenced our walking tour of the city.  As usual, we went to the cathedral:

And saw an old market that was super ornate:


As we had eaten our weight in paella for lunch, we went out for a very light dinner that included Horchata, another Valencian thing (it is like this milky sweet drink made from some nut) and pulpo, our old fave.  Since we were all living together for the first time since Santiago, we had a pj party and watched Little Miss Sunshine!

The next day we went to the Arts and Sciences museum.  The buildings are some of the coolest I've ever seen.  If we felt like we were living in the time of Carlos III this was like being rocketed into the world of the Jetsons.

Imitating art



There was an awesome aquarium there and we communed with our marine friends.

We went on a boat tour of some rice paddies (where the Paella magic starts).
And at night we got some more paella and walked around the city.  It was really beautiful.  And then we had another pj party and watched some shows in English!

On our last day in Valencia, we went to a modern museum and the BEACH!  It was good to get my toes back in the sand.  We ate more paella and left.

Here are some funny things from that trip:
-Michael Aronna, our program director, had a little puppy with him.  We were all trying to figure out its name when  Rachel tells us it is Ranch. Later, after talking about how weird Ranch is for a dog's name, we found out that his name was actually Hugo and not Ranch as we had suspected!  What an odd mix up.
-We played the dating game and its reverse to amuse ourselves in the long bus ride.  (The dating game is when one person asks typical dating show questions to the rest of the people who pretend to be someone else. ie When I asked Rachel who her role model was she said Big Ben (she was Flava Flav)
The opposite of the dating game is when the person next to you writes a name on a piece of paper and you hold it on your forehead.  You ask questions to the rest of the group to figure out who you are (I was grandmother willow, the talking tree from Pocahontas)

Anyway, YESTERDAY WAS MY 21ST BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!!! (as well as the halfway point of this semester)
It was a super awesome bday!  I went shopping at bought myself a necklace.  Then for dinner about 20 of us VWMers went out for tapas!  We ordered 18 tapas, this may be unheard of.  The food was so delicious.  I was also so glad that so many people came to wish me a great 21st.

Me dear friends brought me a cake which we all devoured in a savage fashion as well as Homage to Catalonia, a book by George Orwell, (this was not devoured).  Afterwards, a bunch of us went to an original language movie theater to see The Social Network.  This was an awesome birthday!!!

This weekend Rachel and I will be making the trek to Marrakech, Morocco, and her birthday is on Sunday!!
Hasta la Vista,
Hilary

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Amamos Paris

Bonjour!

We have just returned from a long weekend in PARIS!!!!  It was super fun and we want to go back immediately.  
 
Day 1: We Arrive!

After a lot of traveling we arrived on different flights.  We all met up (Rachel, Hilary, Greg and Felicia) at a hookah bar (where we ate delicious crepes!!).  Our hostel, D’Artagnan was interesting…  Rachel and Greg went first to check in, and the night guard showed Greg voyeuristic videos while Rachel dropped off her stuff.  He later called Hilary, rojo, which means Red/ Commi, but he was trying to say redhead.  Unfortunately he didn’t give us any sheets.  So, Hilary slept on an assortment of scarves to avoid the chunga bedding and Rachel and Felicia sucked it up and took it like champs!

Day 2: Wandering
We walked around the Champs Élysées and saw the Arc de Triomphe and various other famous sites.  We picnicked in the Luxembourg garden and then saw Notre Dame.  It was incredible!  Later we went out for pasta and met up with Greg’s Parisian friends.

Here we are looking triumphant!
In front of the Notre Dame looking like a JYA poster
On the Seine 
Day 3: Graves and Failed Louvre Trip
We pilgrimage to the graves Jim Morrison and Oscar Wilde!  The graveyard was gothic and a bit eerie.  We later went to the Angelina, an awesome restaurant famous for its hot chocolate.  Rachel ate an omelet and Hilary got quiche lorraine (and discovered that she LOVES quiche).  The hot chocolate was out of this world and the pastries for dessert were scrumptious! We then attempted to go to the Louvre but only got as far as Hammurabi’s Code before it closed.  We will go back to see the Mona Lisa!  For dinner we went to Greg’s fave authentic Paris bistro!  We ate duck confit, how French!  We went to a few bars  and returned to the comfortable D’Artagnan (luckily by this time we had scrounged up some sheets and bought some communal towels!)

Jim Morrison's Grave 
Oscar Wilde's well-loved Grave (For some reason everyone kissed it)

Day 4: Versailles
On Sunday we made the trek to Versailles, a spectacular palace outside of Paris.  We picnicked on the lawn after getting in for free!  (this was not totally legal)  Anyway, we played the dating game, a new and favorite game of ours!  We watched the musical fountain show; it was awesome!  We walked around the palace which has more than two thousand rooms!  (we did not explore all of them)  It was decadent and sumptuous!  There was a very odd art installation of sculptures by Murakami which features Anime characters and bright colors.  It was kitschy and gauche.  Oh well!  Later that night, we saw the Eiffel Tower, which emitted a sparkly light show at times.  We got Indian food for dinner and sat in yet another café drinking wine (this is a very French thing to do).  And then.  We had. THE BEST SUBWAY RIDE EVER!  Felicia was singing La Bomba some Brazilian friends joined in, as did the rest of the train!  We then sang a medley of New York, New York, What a Wonderful World, Billie Jean, You Can’t Touch This, and Quit Playing Games with my Heart.  After our Brazilian friends left another crazy guy took their place.  He assured us he was from Philly and proved it with a (possibly fake) passport.  He then loudly commented about the silent Asian lady sitting behind us saying, “I can’t read her.  Taiwanese, Chinese, Japanese,  Indonesian….THEY DON’T RESPOND!”  We quickly left.  At the hostel we watched some man sing and play a Hello Kitty guitar.  All in all, a very random yet fun day.
In front of the Versailles Gardens
 An example of the gaudy Murakami sculptures
So FRENCH!

Day 5: Back to Reality
After an adventurous trip to the airport, Hilary was patted down AGAIN!  She is a sketchy traveler!  We returned safe and sound to Madrid and are now on our way to a birthday lunch!

Hasta la Vista,
Raquel y Hilary

Sunday, October 3, 2010

"Si luchas, puedes perder. Si no luchas, estás perdido." Huelga General! And Segovia! And more!

This past Wednesday was the Huelga General (General Strike!) of Spain:


(flyer)

This was pretty exciting for us because it meant that we got the day off from school. Our hour-long commute would be too difficult because the trains were running on minimum service (the train workers were on strike), so classes were pretty much optional, meaning the Spanish students considered it an excuse for a day off. I still do not completely understand the concept of a huelga general because it would not happen in the US. Basically, Spain is pissed off because of the economic crisis (pronounced like "creesees" in Spanish) and is mostly blaming the president, Zapatero, who belongs to the liberal party (PSOE- Partida Socialista Obrero Español, or the Spanish Socialist Workers Party). Anyone who wanted to could strike for better wages and working conditions. It seemed like it was organized by the Spanish Communist Party, which is much less taboo here than in the US, but I also heard that some faction of the government helped organize it, which I really don't understand. The strikers were all people who are more liberal than Zapatero's party, and surprisingly represented all ages of the population. The people who are more conservative than Zapatero (i.e. my host family) are very against the strike. My host mom kept referring to it as the embarassment of Spain, and my host sister went to work as usual and said that everyone was in her office and the strike was not a big deal. I was very interested by the whole thing, and of course went downtown to check it out.
marchers on the Paseo del Prado

There were THOUSANDS of people there and it was like a giant parade with lots of chanting and angry political signs. The marchers gathered on the Paseo del Prado around 6 and started marching to Sol, a plaza in the center of Madrid. My friend Hannah joined me to watch by the Prado, and we took the subway to Sol to see what was going on. There was a big stage set up and people were singing, but we had to leave to be home for dinner (strict señoras) so we missed speeches, although we most likely would not have been able to understand them anyway. In Madrid everything was very peaceful, but a lot of violence went down in other cities, like Barcelona, where the protesters started fires for some reason. Not so good. I was really glad I went though because it was very cool to see and a lot of fun.

There was a huelga band:


Many communist flags:


And even a guy dressed up as a mailbox:
(The significance of this was completely lost on me.)

All in all, the strike does not seem to have accomplished anything. Zapatero (and most of the Spanish population) seems to have ignored it. All it left behind was a LOT of litter. All over the city.


Before the demonstration, Hilary and I went to lunch at a vegetarian restaurant with our muy guay monitor/amigo Helios and a bunch of our other friends. It was delicious and we were very relieved to finally get some vegetables. They also had amazing desserts.

This past Friday, Hilary, our friend Felicia, and I went on a day trip to Segovia. It was BEAUTIFUL. Segovia is famous for three things:

1. Roman Aqueducts:


2. Cathedral:


3. Castle:

All three were incredible, but the castle was definitely my favorite. We went on a self-guided tour of it. Amazing. Each room was gorgeous, and even the ceilings were ridiculously ornate. Here is an example:


For 2 euros more, we got to climb the castle tower! Of course we could not pass this up, considering all the practice we had climbing towers in Santiago. To get to this tower, we went up a spiral staircase with 152 steps. 

 views from the top


Next weekend, we're heading to Paris to visit Greg! So exciting!


Hasta la vista,
Raquel

P.S. IZZY Argentina came to visit Madrid! There is a big trade expo set up in the Plaza Mayor (by our favorite superhero Fat Spiderman):