Inside the mosque.

 

The inside of the mosque was enormous. If Morocco does one thing right, they have epic doorways down pat. There was also fantastic woodwork, mosaics, domes, chandeliers and the massive ceiling was on a hydraulics system so that it can open for nice days.*

*every day seems to be a nice day but it the roof wasn't open when we visited.

I love being a tourist.

 

Props to Chloe for her patience and photography skills.
This is the massive mosque in Casablanca.

We're in the middle of the rainy season.

We are, technically, in the middle of Morocco's rainy season but I think that just means that it gets a little cloudier than usual. The weather here is still phenomenal.

Saturday morning, 15 of us volunteers took the train to Casablanca which is an hour to the south of Rabat. Although it is Morocco's largest city (4 mil.) we figured that we would see everything we wanted to see in a day trip. We had a tour of the Hassane II Mosque. It is an incredibly huge mosque that is on a piece of land that juts out into the ocean. Its surrounded by a massive white courtyard and looks super majestic from far away. It reminds me of a building from the Lord of the Rings. It was cool to go inside because it is one of two mosques in Morocco that non-Muslims are allowed into.

We had lunch at Rick's Cafe which is the setting for Casablanca. Its a complete tourist trap but we thought it would be fun anyways. Being built years after the movie was made, Rick's is an upscale restaurant with memorabilia all over the place and a large screen on the second floor where the movie plays all day. In addition to their tasty burgers they serve Obama Family Chili Con Carne.

Those were the two landmarks that we wanted to see in Casablanca. I managed to go with a couple of my friends to a shopping center that isn't located inside of a souk and I was able to stock up on warm clothes as I prepare for my trek through Europe in December.

Saturday night, Lyall (my roommate) and I just relaxed and watched Office Space. We have started having movie nights because DVDs are $0.50 in the medina. (let me know if you have any requests because a lot of the movies are in English) (video games are really cheap too-- they have FIFA '10 for the XBOX 360 -(Julien))

Sunday morning I woke up earlier than usual and went with three others to a nondenominational service at the Rabat Internation Chuch. The English speaking service was very interesting but the sermon was less than inspirational. It was nice to sing some familiar songs though.
After church, we took a 30 minute taxi to Skhirat Beach. Its amazing to be able to go swimming and work on my tan a week before Halloween.
Speaking of Halloween, they don't celebrate it here. Unfortunately.
We are trying to think of a good alternative.

You can take the boy out of America but you can't take the America out of the boy.

11 of us Projects Abroad volunteers departed for Fez at 5 o'clock Saturday morning. Some of the people wanted to save money instead of paying for a hotel Friday night. The trains to Fez are quick and air-conditioned. Our means of transportation were the exact opposite of our destination where the days are slow and hot.
Our first mission, after reaching the hotel which was directly inside the main gate to the medina, was to find breakfast. That took about an hour of walking deep down into the maze of alleys until a man convinced us that he could fetch us a decent breakfast. We were quite wary of this claim but were genuinely surprised when he managed to wrangle up 11 pain au chocolate and hot tea, coffee, chocolate and fresh grape juice.
After breakfast, we continued our wandering and went down one of the few streets in the world where you can find a camel's head and a shark's head for sale within 20 feet of each other. We walked until we got lost which, according to Lonely Planet, is a must-do in Fez.
We saw some fantastic souks as well. In addition to the famous jewlery and spice souks we saw the lesser known hungry cat souk and the disney channel souk.

We went to the Madersa (a very old school for Islamic studies) which some people say is the most beautiful building in Morocco. It is magnificent.
We saw a mosque that is one of the largest in North Africa. It can hold over 20,000 people. That was an amazing place because the entire outside has smaller buildings leeching onto it so its difficult to actually see how big the entire thing is.
The most interesting place we saw was a massive tannery. This is the step in the leather making process where the hides (cow, goat, camel...) are dyed with all natural colors. They use materials such as indigo and saffron which is extremely cheap and easy to find. We walked up to an observation deck where I felt amazed and terrible at the same time. Down below dozens of men were dunking the various animal skins into massive pools that were filled with the various dyes. I felt bad because I felt like I was observing a sweat shop of sorts and that the men below were working for very little money while I was up in a room surrounded by purses and coats that were priced for many times more than the cost of production.
Regardless, it was a fascinating place and I will never forget it.

On Sunday, we started off with some more aimless wandering and then set off the find the Mellah (the old Jewish quarter)
We found a Jewish cemetery where Lyall and I had a nice nap on some benches under the trees.
Craving some non-Moroccan food we went to a funny Restaurant called Mezzanine (Fooding & Clubbing) for lunch. 8 out of 11 people ordered hamburgers. They were fantastic.
Then we had a proper sprint to catch our train. I was hoping to have at least one of those during my travels. I'm glad that I got it out of the way.

Now, I am to start another week of work at the good ol' TOP MARKE CENTRE.

I hope all is well in B-More although I know Sunday was a rough day on account of the Ravens' woes.

My weekend in Fez.

 

-The Madersa
-The Tanneries
-Another bizarre cat
-Sunsets on the train
-Strange menus
-Goat

After another satisfying week...

We are going to be leaving for a weekend jaunt to Fez at 5:00AM tomorrow. There are 13 of us volunteers going so it will probably be hectic when we get to the hotel and when we are trying to decide to do anything.

Before I forget, yesterday as my roommates and I came downstairs for dinner I was surprised to see basketball on the TV, although it is fairly popular. As I took a closer look, I realized that the two teams that were playing were Washington St. and UCLA. I found it fascinating how such a relatively obscure game found its way to Morocco. UCLA won by 8.

The undistputed hat champions of the world.

 

A new take on the classic fez and Von Dutch styles.

Vent

I crave bacon.

I deleted my iPod, not on purpose. The internet here is very slow which makes downloading illegal music difficult.

On the bright side, we have a volunteer gathering tomorrow. I am in charge of making games for the group. Also, there is a prize for the person with the best hat. I have all afternoon tomorrow to cook something up.
As I write this, it sounds like the Projects Abroad personnel are catering to an 8 year-old's birthday party.
I do not mind though because the snacks at these gatherings are stellar.

The view from our roof.

 

Strange cats live here.

 

Yea, I live here.

 

C D B. D B S A BZ B.

I have indeed been a busy bee this weekend. I am working morning and evening shifts at my school during the week. That is exciting because I get to see the street that my school is on as it transforms from a normal thruway into a bustling market when it gets dark outside. We also had a pizza party today in my honor.(I told, my boss, Hassan that I liked pizza so he found it necessary to have a pizza party.) The pizza had everything on it and was quite delicious. E-mail me for details.

This evening, I went straight from work to a cafe where the volunteers were treated to an in depth presentation on the Prophet Muhammad. It was given by a student who has been studying English with some of the other volunteers. It was really interesting. Apparently, Jesus is an important figure in Islam and his birthday is a holiday but not as huge as Christmas.

This weekend is going to be purely for relaxation. I will try to take some pictures of the sunset as I lay out on the beach.

This is where we did not stay.

 

Quenching my thirst

 

A turtle friend in the gardens. We saved him as he tried to cross the pedestrian path.

 

No money, no honey!

I enjoyed a great weekend in Marrakesh. There is a huge contrast with Rabat. Marrakesh definitely caters to tourists but that does not mean that everybody has sold out. Although we did pay a visit to the Yves St. Laurent garden which was actually quite exceptional. In addition to the garden, we ate a lot. Well, it was extremely hot so we made many stops for freshly squeezed orange juice which is available at most stalls and restaurants. Whenever we stopped to quench our thirst, we couldn't resist the urge to get some more of the delicious Moroccan food. Also, many of the restaus treat tourists very well and we ended up being led to special dining rooms on more than one occasion.

On Saturday night, we planned to go to a mid-range restaurant that is recommended by our Lonely Planet guide books. We got there and it was an incredibly swanky place with a heavy fire vs. water theme. I think that getting a good review in Lonely Planet got to the owner's head because the prices were sky high. We planned and perfectly executed a sneaky escape before they could put bread on the table. Although it was slightly embarrassing, it was better than having to pay an absurd amount for decent looking Moroccan-Thai fusion.
The rest of our meals were filled with good times, black-market wine and low prices.

On Friday night we stayed at a beautiful and cheap hotel in the middle of the medina's hotel quarter which is just an alley with a dozen or so tourist havens. It was very cheap but had an insanely comfortable bed.
The next night, we splurged a little bit and opted for a nicer Riad around the corner. The three boys on the trip slept in a room in which everything was purple and glittery. As bad as that sounds, I found it to be quite tasteful. Also, that hotel had the best complimentary breakfast that I have ever had. There were abundant fried eggs, perfectly textured pain a chocolate, and fresh freshly squeezed orange juice. In addition, it was served on the roof which had a good view of the Atlas Mountains way off in the distance.

Now, I am back at home and ready for the work week. In addition to Lyall and Ronan we got a new roommate. He is a Belgian man who is significantly older than all of us. He definitely adds a change of pace to the house but it will be interesting to see how it works out. He has a grandchild the age of the baby in our house.

In other news, come on Mark Clayton!

The central square in Marrakech

 

Happy Campers

 

you decide..

 

More art

 

One of the murals in Assila

 

Behind the scenes at the photo shoot

 

Glamour shots at the beach.

 

The massive waterfall in the rain