Sorry I have been neglectful of writing recently. Life and homework and tutoring kind of took over. I've got some entries in the works, but I haven't had time to get them ready and post them.
Anyway, I just wanted to let you all know that for the next week, I will be folicing around Europe with Kerry. We have just spent our first night of our adventure in Brussels. Today we will frolic around Brussels, and tonight we head to Luxembourg City. Then tomorrow night we head to Paris, where we will spend four days. I am super excited to get to see all these places. I don't know how much time or how much internet I will have while I am here, but I will try to at least journal, so that I can copy some of my first impressions up here when I get back.
Have a lovely day!
Friday, March 26, 2010
Friday, March 12, 2010
Muchas Cositas—Day 38, March 12, 2010
4Goodness, it’s been a long time since I’ve written. I’m sorry I’ve let so much time pass. I have a lot of things to talk about, so I’ll probably sort of just go through them in a haphazard way.
My “Continuation Period” classes began last week. I am taking "Women Writers of Spain" and "Spain and Immigration," as well as continuing my Lope, Dance, and Cultural Realities classes from before. My professor for Women Writers is Milagros Molina, or Mila. She’s really cute, and kind of has a northern accent. I’m really excited for this class. We are reading a lot of poetry, prose excerpts, novellas/short stories, and two novels. My professor for Immigration is Carmen Castilla—another Carmen, so she will be Prof. Castilla here. She is an anthropologist and a professor at the University of Granada. She is so passionate about anthropology, and she knows so much. I think this class is going to be really interesting. I mentioned before my observations on the beginnings of multiculturalism here, and that is going to be a big topic in the class.
I am tutoring some Spanish children in English, for which I am paid €8 an hour. They are Estefanía, who is ten, Tulio, nine, and María, seven. They are really sweet, but I wasn’t quite prepared for how difficult it could be to teach something as basic to me as my mother language. When I taught clarinet lessons, it was a little different, because clarinet was something I studied and practiced, whereas English I just sort of picked up as a toddler. It’s also hard because there are three of them, and only one of me, and especially now that they are opening up to me, they have a lot of energy. Tulio and Estefanía are in the same grade, and Estefanía is very competitive. I’ve been making them some word searches with vocabulary words, and whenever Tulio or María find a word before Estefanía does, she gets kind of grumpy. But when she finds a word first, she’ll go and circle it on María’s paper for her, and then María will get upset and sad. I don’t have a lot of experience with kids, so when they get all competitive and grumpy, I don’t really know how to handle it, except try to placate whomever is crying and then change the subject. I also have to balance what Estefanía and Tulio are doing, as they are in different classes but the same grade, and therefore have many similar lessons in their classes, but María is two grades below, so she is learning different things. So I have to think of different activities for them, and I have to figure out how to divide my attention between them. I think I am going to start giving them separate word searches or activities, so they don’t get so competitive. I also need to think of some more active games, so they can burn off some of their energy while they’re learning some new vocabulary.
Last Friday, Alicia and I visited el Museo de Bellas Artes (the Museum of Fine Art). That had a large and very nice collection of Renaissance and Baroque Spanish paintings, as well as some other European painters. We weren’t able to see the whole museum, though, so I’m not sure what other collections they have. This spring, they are hosting an exhibition of paintings by Bartolomé Murillo, a seviallano painter, who is quite dear to the hearts of los seviallanos. We kind of had to rush through the end of the exhibit to get home for lunch on time, but it was really nice. I really like the way he used light in his paintings.
I went to Gibraltar last Saturday. I am not going to write a lot about it, because it poured rain the entire time, and was kind of miserable. I am glad I went, as it’s a very geologically interesting place and I will probably not have another chance, but the rain made it rather cold and unpleasant. We did get to see a few of the famous Gibraltar monkeys, though. Apparently, they are everywhere, and they’re not too scared of people, and are really good at stealing people’s lunch. But that day most of the monkeys were hiding from the rain, so we only saw a couple.
It was really sad driving to Gibraltar and back (also to Algeciras to catch the boat to Morocco) because we passed fields and fields that were completely flooded. I saw in a newspaper that the Andalucían harvest has lost €130 million already to rain damage. All this flooding has been really hard on the farmers and people who make a living from the land. The sun has finally come out for four or so straight days, so hopefully the countryside will start to dry out soon, but it’s going to take some time for all that water to go away.
Last Sunday, Alicia, our friend Corey, and I attended a Protestant church in Triana. It was really small, but it had a sense of community that I felt was missing at the Cathedral and even a little bit at the smaller church we’ve gone to a few times. I feel like this lack of community is not uncommon in Europe. I noticed it in St. Giles Kirk in Edinburgh too. People just sort of went to service and left. But at this little church (also the church we went to in Glasgow), there seemed to be much more community. The congregation had studies and mission events during the week, and people lingered a bit to chat after service, although as it wasn’t so small it didn’t have a hall with coffee or anything like my church at home. It was definitely quite refreshing to go somewhere that did have that sort of community, because that’s one of the things I value and enjoy most about church.
This morning, as we now do not have class on Fridays, Kerry, Alicia, and I did some wandering and shopping. And today, finally, I had a churro. I don’t know why it has taken me this long to eat one, but finally I had a chance to sample churros with hot chocolate. And it was delicious. We were able to sit outside in the sun, and we had a big place heaped with little ring-shaped churros, and little cups of thick delicious chocolate. Sigh . . .
There were several other little things like that this week—little things that don’t make great stories, but are so fun to do—but I as they don’t make good stories, I won’t list them all here. We are going to a flamenco show tonight, so that should be exciting. I’ll let you know how it goes. All for now!
My “Continuation Period” classes began last week. I am taking "Women Writers of Spain" and "Spain and Immigration," as well as continuing my Lope, Dance, and Cultural Realities classes from before. My professor for Women Writers is Milagros Molina, or Mila. She’s really cute, and kind of has a northern accent. I’m really excited for this class. We are reading a lot of poetry, prose excerpts, novellas/short stories, and two novels. My professor for Immigration is Carmen Castilla—another Carmen, so she will be Prof. Castilla here. She is an anthropologist and a professor at the University of Granada. She is so passionate about anthropology, and she knows so much. I think this class is going to be really interesting. I mentioned before my observations on the beginnings of multiculturalism here, and that is going to be a big topic in the class.
I am tutoring some Spanish children in English, for which I am paid €8 an hour. They are Estefanía, who is ten, Tulio, nine, and María, seven. They are really sweet, but I wasn’t quite prepared for how difficult it could be to teach something as basic to me as my mother language. When I taught clarinet lessons, it was a little different, because clarinet was something I studied and practiced, whereas English I just sort of picked up as a toddler. It’s also hard because there are three of them, and only one of me, and especially now that they are opening up to me, they have a lot of energy. Tulio and Estefanía are in the same grade, and Estefanía is very competitive. I’ve been making them some word searches with vocabulary words, and whenever Tulio or María find a word before Estefanía does, she gets kind of grumpy. But when she finds a word first, she’ll go and circle it on María’s paper for her, and then María will get upset and sad. I don’t have a lot of experience with kids, so when they get all competitive and grumpy, I don’t really know how to handle it, except try to placate whomever is crying and then change the subject. I also have to balance what Estefanía and Tulio are doing, as they are in different classes but the same grade, and therefore have many similar lessons in their classes, but María is two grades below, so she is learning different things. So I have to think of different activities for them, and I have to figure out how to divide my attention between them. I think I am going to start giving them separate word searches or activities, so they don’t get so competitive. I also need to think of some more active games, so they can burn off some of their energy while they’re learning some new vocabulary.
Last Friday, Alicia and I visited el Museo de Bellas Artes (the Museum of Fine Art). That had a large and very nice collection of Renaissance and Baroque Spanish paintings, as well as some other European painters. We weren’t able to see the whole museum, though, so I’m not sure what other collections they have. This spring, they are hosting an exhibition of paintings by Bartolomé Murillo, a seviallano painter, who is quite dear to the hearts of los seviallanos. We kind of had to rush through the end of the exhibit to get home for lunch on time, but it was really nice. I really like the way he used light in his paintings.
I went to Gibraltar last Saturday. I am not going to write a lot about it, because it poured rain the entire time, and was kind of miserable. I am glad I went, as it’s a very geologically interesting place and I will probably not have another chance, but the rain made it rather cold and unpleasant. We did get to see a few of the famous Gibraltar monkeys, though. Apparently, they are everywhere, and they’re not too scared of people, and are really good at stealing people’s lunch. But that day most of the monkeys were hiding from the rain, so we only saw a couple.
It was really sad driving to Gibraltar and back (also to Algeciras to catch the boat to Morocco) because we passed fields and fields that were completely flooded. I saw in a newspaper that the Andalucían harvest has lost €130 million already to rain damage. All this flooding has been really hard on the farmers and people who make a living from the land. The sun has finally come out for four or so straight days, so hopefully the countryside will start to dry out soon, but it’s going to take some time for all that water to go away.
Last Sunday, Alicia, our friend Corey, and I attended a Protestant church in Triana. It was really small, but it had a sense of community that I felt was missing at the Cathedral and even a little bit at the smaller church we’ve gone to a few times. I feel like this lack of community is not uncommon in Europe. I noticed it in St. Giles Kirk in Edinburgh too. People just sort of went to service and left. But at this little church (also the church we went to in Glasgow), there seemed to be much more community. The congregation had studies and mission events during the week, and people lingered a bit to chat after service, although as it wasn’t so small it didn’t have a hall with coffee or anything like my church at home. It was definitely quite refreshing to go somewhere that did have that sort of community, because that’s one of the things I value and enjoy most about church.
This morning, as we now do not have class on Fridays, Kerry, Alicia, and I did some wandering and shopping. And today, finally, I had a churro. I don’t know why it has taken me this long to eat one, but finally I had a chance to sample churros with hot chocolate. And it was delicious. We were able to sit outside in the sun, and we had a big place heaped with little ring-shaped churros, and little cups of thick delicious chocolate. Sigh . . .
There were several other little things like that this week—little things that don’t make great stories, but are so fun to do—but I as they don’t make good stories, I won’t list them all here. We are going to a flamenco show tonight, so that should be exciting. I’ll let you know how it goes. All for now!
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Asquerosos en las Calles—Day 30, March 4, 2010
Today was a good day, minus one moment of extreme awkwardness. I will start with that first, because it’s a good story, then go on to the good stuff.
I was walking through some of the little winding streets around the Cathedral today, by myself, just minding my own business, and this time not lost or staring at a map. As I was walking down the street, a man, in maybe his mid-thirties said hello (or, rather, “hola”) to me. I had already walked past him when I hear him speak, so just out of instinct, I turned my head back and said hola. I realized then he was still trying to engage me in conversation, so I turned around and walked a little closer t o hear what he was saying. Our conversation went a little something like this, except in Spanish.
Random Guy: Are you American?
Me, in my head: Dang it, am I that obvious? Now you’re going to try to sell me some stupid souvenir that I don’t want.
Me, out loud: Yes.
Random Guy: Are you going to the Cathedral?
Me, wanting to make it very clear that I was not a lost tourist and that I knew where I was going: No, no, I’m going to my school, I’m a student here.
Random Guy: Oh, are you here with a group?
Me: Yes, with el Centro Norteamericano.
Random Guy: Are you from New York, or Chicago?
Me: Haha, no, I’m from New Mexico. It’s in the southwest. The other side of the country.
Random Guy: But you are American, right.
Me: Yes, yes.
Random Guy: Well, you’re very beautiful.
Me, in my head, with the light turning on: Oh, right. Here, talking to men in the streets is basically a form of flirting with them. Dang it.
Me, out loud: Oh, um, thank you.
At this point, Random Guy said something that I didn’t quite understand, but I think it was something along these lines: Would you like to share a restaurant with me?
I, at this point, got smart, and rather than trying to verify whether or not he had actually just asked me out to dinner after a two minute conversation, put on a face of “Oh, I didn’t quite get what you just said, I don’t speak Spanish well,” and said I had to go back to school. The guy wasn’t pushy or anything, he just said “Hasta luego,” which means “see you later.” In my head I thought, no you most definitely will not see me later, and continued on my way to my school. I understand that within the culture of Spain, this wasn’t a creepy interchange. As I think I mentioned before, strangers here don’t really smile or interact very much, so often interaction between men and women who don’t know each other is a sign of romantic interest. European women know this, and therefore they know how to handle themselves; if they are not interested in someone, they say “no” and walk away; as I said, the guy wasn’t pushy when I said no. But to me, this seemed so odd and a little creepy. I have very little experience with dating, but it seems to me that in America people don’t generally ask people out after a two minute conversation in the street. I was proud of myself, though, that once I realized his intentions I knew how to handle myself and didn’t waver awkwardly in ways that, in Spanish culture, might imply a coquettish sort of pseudo-acceptance-but-desire-to-be-pursued-further.
So that was a weird moment. But the rest of the day was lovely. The sun was out today, and as my classes are currently scheduled, during the continuation period, I don’t have class until 5:10 in the evening on Thursdays, and that’s just my dance class. So this morning I wandered around, ran some errands, and enjoyed the sun.
This evening, Alicia and I went to an Indian restaurant. Carmen keeps serving us dishes that remind us of Indian food, but aren’t quite Indian food, and as consequence we have been craving curry. So we did some research, and we found a small little Indian restaurant by Plaza Nervión, the big shopping center in our barrio. It was really small, and there wasn’t a lot of people, but it was really good. We split some chicken curry, rice, and warm naan. It definitely wasn’t very spicy, but it was delicious.
So that’s the story of my good day. Not a particularly good story, but it was a very nice day. I need to tell you about my classes, and the children I’m tutoring in English, but I think for now I’m going to bed. ¡Buenas Noches!
I was walking through some of the little winding streets around the Cathedral today, by myself, just minding my own business, and this time not lost or staring at a map. As I was walking down the street, a man, in maybe his mid-thirties said hello (or, rather, “hola”) to me. I had already walked past him when I hear him speak, so just out of instinct, I turned my head back and said hola. I realized then he was still trying to engage me in conversation, so I turned around and walked a little closer t o hear what he was saying. Our conversation went a little something like this, except in Spanish.
Random Guy: Are you American?
Me, in my head: Dang it, am I that obvious? Now you’re going to try to sell me some stupid souvenir that I don’t want.
Me, out loud: Yes.
Random Guy: Are you going to the Cathedral?
Me, wanting to make it very clear that I was not a lost tourist and that I knew where I was going: No, no, I’m going to my school, I’m a student here.
Random Guy: Oh, are you here with a group?
Me: Yes, with el Centro Norteamericano.
Random Guy: Are you from New York, or Chicago?
Me: Haha, no, I’m from New Mexico. It’s in the southwest. The other side of the country.
Random Guy: But you are American, right.
Me: Yes, yes.
Random Guy: Well, you’re very beautiful.
Me, in my head, with the light turning on: Oh, right. Here, talking to men in the streets is basically a form of flirting with them. Dang it.
Me, out loud: Oh, um, thank you.
At this point, Random Guy said something that I didn’t quite understand, but I think it was something along these lines: Would you like to share a restaurant with me?
I, at this point, got smart, and rather than trying to verify whether or not he had actually just asked me out to dinner after a two minute conversation, put on a face of “Oh, I didn’t quite get what you just said, I don’t speak Spanish well,” and said I had to go back to school. The guy wasn’t pushy or anything, he just said “Hasta luego,” which means “see you later.” In my head I thought, no you most definitely will not see me later, and continued on my way to my school. I understand that within the culture of Spain, this wasn’t a creepy interchange. As I think I mentioned before, strangers here don’t really smile or interact very much, so often interaction between men and women who don’t know each other is a sign of romantic interest. European women know this, and therefore they know how to handle themselves; if they are not interested in someone, they say “no” and walk away; as I said, the guy wasn’t pushy when I said no. But to me, this seemed so odd and a little creepy. I have very little experience with dating, but it seems to me that in America people don’t generally ask people out after a two minute conversation in the street. I was proud of myself, though, that once I realized his intentions I knew how to handle myself and didn’t waver awkwardly in ways that, in Spanish culture, might imply a coquettish sort of pseudo-acceptance-but-desire-to-be-pursued-further.
So that was a weird moment. But the rest of the day was lovely. The sun was out today, and as my classes are currently scheduled, during the continuation period, I don’t have class until 5:10 in the evening on Thursdays, and that’s just my dance class. So this morning I wandered around, ran some errands, and enjoyed the sun.
This evening, Alicia and I went to an Indian restaurant. Carmen keeps serving us dishes that remind us of Indian food, but aren’t quite Indian food, and as consequence we have been craving curry. So we did some research, and we found a small little Indian restaurant by Plaza Nervión, the big shopping center in our barrio. It was really small, and there wasn’t a lot of people, but it was really good. We split some chicken curry, rice, and warm naan. It definitely wasn’t very spicy, but it was delicious.
So that’s the story of my good day. Not a particularly good story, but it was a very nice day. I need to tell you about my classes, and the children I’m tutoring in English, but I think for now I’m going to bed. ¡Buenas Noches!
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Marruecos—Day 28, March 2, 2010
(Note: Sorry it’s taken so long to get this posted. I started it a while ago, but kept putting off finishing it. And sorry for how long it is.)
As I had previously mentioned, I went to Morocco (or, in Spanish, Marruecos) this weekend, arriving back in Sevilla yesterday around six. My review of the trip is going to be somewhat mixed. Morocco the country was beautiful, but the group we went with, We Love Spain, was extremely touristy, in sort of the negative, “let’s just see a caricature of the culture and not the culture itself” sort of way. I knew before going that it probably would be based on the itinerary and the group’s website and such, but I really wanted to be able to see Morocco on one of my three-day weekends, and all the other tours I knew of were 5 or 6 days, so I went ahead with it. And I’m really glad I did, because I learned so much even from my short time there. However, I do have a few complaints that colored my experience a bit.
I will start with said complaints. First off, the group was too big. The weekend I went was the weekend of el Día de Andalucía, so all the schools had a holiday that Monday, meaning a lot of people wanted to travel, so the group was huge. They really should have had a cut off on people, even if that meant that I wouldn’t have been able to go, because the hugeness of the group just made us so conspicuous. Moreover, many of the things we did, and the attitudes of a lot of people in the group, were extremely touristy. We went to extremely touristy restaurants with “authentic” dancing and “authentic” food, in which there was not a single native Moroccan eating. I say authentic in quotation marks, not because I think the performances or the food were not authentic, but because I object to the attitude that what is “authentic” about a country is only some sort of caricature of its folk history. Many countries and regions within countries, like Spain and Andalucía, or the U.S., and states within the U.S., have folk culture that they highly value and try to keep alive, but I object to the attitude that this folk culture is the only thing “authentic” about a country. And I don’t need to go to ritzy, touristy restaurants to eat “authentic” Moroccan food—whatever they cook in Morocco is authentically Moroccan. I also highly doubt that the average Moroccan sits in an elegant, highly decorated hall with dancers for most of their meals. And the attitudes of some of the people in our group were, I felt, a bit clueless. We were going to a Muslim country, and yet there were girls wearing extremely tight leggings instead of actual pants and low-cut shirts. Not that I necessarily agree with Muslim ideals of female modesty, but when one is travelling to a country with such standards of modesty, one ought to consider the way one dresses a little more, so as not to draw unwanted attention and as not to display an attitude of insensitivity. Moreover, Muslims do not drink alcohol, and yet there was alcohol available to drink in the hotels and the club that was on the itinerary. It just seemed so odd to me that as visitors in a Muslim country, our group would seek out entertainment activities that were prohibited by the prevailing religion of the country. Add to that, I had a cold that weekend, so that also made me a little grumpy.
That said, Morocco was a fascinating places, and it was a very interesting trip. I often think I am culturally savvy, and that I know a lot about lots of different places, and then I go to said places and realize that I know nothing. I was very surprised by how green Morocco was. Our tour guide explained to us that Morocco is divided into northern and southern halves by a large mountain range (I think he called them the Rift Mountains), and while south of the mountains is the desert, north of it is very green, as I saw. I blush to admit that the image I probably had in my head was of some desert with dusty adobe-like buildings and men with turbans with cloths across their faces to keep the sand out of their lungs. So being able to go to Morocco and learn the error of this impression was definitely worth the €180 it cost.
Anyway, enough prefacing, and onward to actual description. We left Sevilla on Saturday morning. After a two-hour bus ride and a 45-minute ferry, we arrived in Ceuta, which is a Spanish town on the coast of North Africa. We had a quick tour of this town before crossing the border into Morocco. While crossing the border, I had my first glimpse of the way in which at least some, if not many, Moroccan men perceive American women. There were a couple blonde girls wearing, as I said above, very tight leggings and low-cut shirts, and as the Moroccan police officer checking our passports looked over theirs, he made some flirtatious small talk. When he looked at Alicia’s and my passports next, he gave us a quick “ok” and moved on. We were quite grateful that our brown hair and more unremarkable clothing made us appear less exotic and less flirt-worthy, but it was not the only time I observed behaviors that seemed to imply an belief that American girls are easy. It was definitely worse for blondes—I saw once, while we were walking through the streets of Chefchaoen, a guy put his face right up next to a blonde girl’s face, who was just minding her own business, and say something. Not all Moroccan women wore veils, and some even wore pants, but there just seemed to be a fairly prevalent assumption that American girls are an object of flirtation.
I digress. We spent that night in Tetuan. We had some free time when we arrived at the hotel, but it was raining a fair bit, and it was dark, and we were all tired, so after checking into our rooms Alicia and I showered, ate dinner with the group in the hotel restaurant, and went to bed early. When we arrived at the hotel, we were given cups of a tea, which is apparently sort of a traditional tea to serve to guests, in hotels, homes, or other functions with lots of people. It’s sweetened green tea with mint. We had this several different places—both our hotels and the two restaurants we went to. I liked it, although in one hotel it was sweeter and more minty than the others, and I felt like I was drinking heated mouthwash.
The next morning began with a short bus tour of Tetuan, which became a bus ride to the town of Chefchaoen. Our Moroccan guide for the trip was named Larby (or something like that, I am probably spelling it wrong), and I really enjoyed listening to everything he told us. As we were driving through Tetuan, there were Moroccan flags everywhere (a red background with a green five-pointed star, representing the five pillars of Islam). Larby explained that was because the king had just been there, as we had come shortly after one of their big religious holidays, celebrating the birth of the prophet Mohammed. During this holiday, the king has to travel to the city of Rabat, hence why he had journeyed through Tetuan. Larby also told us how this king had studied abroad (he didn’t say where, but I imagine somewhere in Europe), and because of these influences, the current queen of Morocco is the first queen that has ever been known to the public. Usually the weddings are private, and while the public knows the names of the children, the name and face of the queen are withheld from public knowledge. But the current king had a public wedding, and the queen has something of a celebrity status. I think it’s really interesting to observe this change, and reflect on what its implications might be in the coming years.
Chefchaoen was a smaller town than Tetuan, situated in the mountains. We walked for a while through the old city center with local guides. Our guide (I don’t know his name) was so interesting. He was a somewhat elderly man, but certainly not frail. He knew so much about the history of Morocco and Chefchaoen, and he spoke five or six languages. Actually, something else I didn’t know, almost all Moroccans speak at least three languages. They grow up speaking Arabic, or rather a dialect of Arabic, with regionally specific vocabulary. But they also know classic Arabic, the Arabic of the Quran, and they can speak this to people from other Arabic-speaking countries. Then when they are nine or so years old, they learn French in school, because that is the official language of administration of Morocco. About high school age, they learn a third language, choosing between English, Spanish, or German. Most of the people in the area where we were chose Spanish, as we were in the northern part, close to Spain; as such, it was more effective to talk to people in the streets in Spanish than in English.
The streets of Chefchaoen were beautiful. I believe the part we walked around was kind of what might be termed “Old Town,” but there were definitely a lot of residences there, and while there were also some more souvenir-y type shops, there were also the sorts of stores that one visits to carry out one’s daily business. In this area, all the walls and the bricks on the ground were painted a pale blue. Our guide explained that this wasn’t the original color. Originally, everything was painted white, symbolizing peace, or green, symbolizing the body of Muslim believers. The blue color was brought in from the Moors who had conquered Spain and had been living in Granada. Blue symbolizes divinity in Islam, but also it was a color well suited to temperature regulation, as it held heat in the winter and reflected heat away in the summer.
After a tour of the center of Chefchaoen, there was some free time to browse the market place, where such items as jewelry, scarves, pottery, and food were for sale. I wasn’t really in the mood to buy much, as the aforementioned super-touristyness of the group was bothering me a bit, and because bargaining is an accepted part of Moroccan culture, and I really do not like bargaining. It stresses me out a lot. I would much rather just have the shopkeeper or vendor tell me a price, and then pay that price. I did however buy some little pastries to snack on, which were quite good.
We returned to Tetuan for lunch, where we went to probably the single most touristy restaurant in the entire city. As I said above, there was a performance of different types of dance while we ate, and a henna artist doing tattoos for €3, and not a Moroccan face among the diners, except tour guides. I was somewhat unimpressed with the dancing, especially with the belly dancer. I have seen much better belly dancers in the U.S., women who exhibited amazing control over their muscles, who were quite sensual, but not exactly provocative. Despite being scantily clad, these dancers’ motions weren’t supposed to be arousing; rather, they demonstrated an amazing degree of control and self-assertion. This “belly” dancer just sort of pranced around a bit in a flowy skirt and bikini-type top. I might be inclined to think that maybe that is Moroccan belly dancing, and that what I have seen as belly dancing comes from different regions, but the belly dancer in the Morocco pavilion in Epcot belonged more to the first class of belly dancers I described. Many of you are probably thinking, “Really, Christy, did you really just compare Morocco with Walt Disney World?” But the king of Morocco himself oversaw the design of the Morocco pavilion, because he wanted to be sure Disney got it right, so I feel inclined to believe that the belly dancing there is more what one might call “authentic,” whatever that means, and what we saw was just a half-clothed woman to appease tourists with fat wallets. I’m having a little trouble explaining what it was that bothered me so much, but I guess it seemed that the dancing in this restaurant wasn’t art, and the performers weren’t artists. They didn’t seem to have an artistic connection to their work, it was just a job to solicit money from the rich tourists. Aside from all this complaining, though, the food was quite good. I especially enjoyed some chicken they gave us with a spicy sauce, which might have had some lemon in it. For desert, they gave us that minty tea and some pastries with dates and coated with powdered sugar.
After lunch, we toured a bit around the center of Tetuan. Again, our group was just too huge, and walking in this giant group of at least thirty Americans through these tiny little streets was a little uncomfortable. We were an absolute magnet to vendors displaying random assortments of jewelry and handbags and whatnot, although I guess that would have been true of a small group as well. But it was quite interesting to walk through the market and see what was for sale. This was definitely the sort of market where the average person would go to do their day-to-day shopping, although, of course, there were here and there the requisite souvenir-y type shop; it is what one might call downtown, so any tourists to the city would surely go there. But you would see vendors with blankets full of underwear, or remote controls, or movies. We passed several shops that made the traditional gown that women wear when they go out. It’s an ankle length gown with long sleeves, and it comes in many different colors. Women also wear a gown similar to this for their wedding, with the addition of a gold belt. These belts run $15,000 to $16,000, so most women just rent them. We passed a couple shops selling/renting these belts, and they were very beautiful and ornate.
It was also interesting to notice how few women were out. Not that there were no women, but distinctly fewer than men. A lot of the women wore those gowns I mentioned, and veils on their head, but not all. Some wore the gowns, but no veil, and some wore veils, but more “Western” looking pants, blouses, and boots.
We then hopped back on the bus to Tangiers. We dined at, again, the single most touristy restaurant in all the whole city, also complete with dancers, and this time with the addition of men riding horses wielding swords. But the food was also quite good, and being quite tired I was happy to eat. Later that night, beginning at 1 a.m., the group went to the club I mentioned earlier, but I opted not to go. Mostly because I was, as I mentioned, sick with a cold, and by that time feeling tired and kind of lousy, but also because it just struck me as such an odd activity. In Spain, going to clubs and discotecas is not odd, because that is what Spaniards like to do (although I have yet to do so myself). But in Morocco, where no one drinks alcohol, and it’s extremely improper for women and men to dance together in such ways, and where the only clubs are the ones built at hotels for use by tourists, it just wasn’t something I wanted to do. I went to Morocco to see Morocco, to get an idea of what life is like there, however small that idea may be, and I certainly would not achieve that idea by participating in activities that no Moroccan does, in a secluded environment full of only American tourists. Anyway, I took some Sudafed and went to sleep.
The next morning, we went first to ride camels—again, silly and touristy, but I suppose I can now check “riding camels” off my to-do list. It was sort of just a two-minute circle around an expanse of dirt. Camels don’t even live in that part of Morocco; they live in the desert in the south. But it was fun, and I never object to getting to pet/interact with animals, so whatever. After the camels, we went to the Pillars of Hercules, where the Mediterranean Sea and Atlantic Ocean meet. There were some cool caves we went in, which looked out onto the ocean. The geology of the site was really interesting, and the sea was beautiful (yeah, I’m a desert child, so water is fascinating). We didn’t have much time there, and left after about twenty minutes to catch our ferry back to Spain.
So conclusions. I would have liked a smaller group. With the group the size it was, walking through the tiny winding streets of Tetuan and Chefchaoen I often felt quite uncomfortably conspicuous. And this definitely wasn’t my ideal tour group. It seemed that the focus of the group and the focus of many of the people with whom I was travelling was to party and shop. I can party or shop anywhere—if I’m going to travel to a distant land, especially for so little time, I want to do things, see things, eat things, learn things that I can only do, see, eat, learn there. There’s a group that CC-CS works with, in which you live with a Moroccan family for a couple days, so you really get to see how the average Moroccan family lives. But all those trips were four or five days, and I wanted a three-day trip, so I could do it in a weekend and not miss class. But despite all that, I am very glad I went. I don’t know when I will get another chance to go Morocco. There is no better way to learn about a culture than to visit it, and I learned a lot about Morocco even in the short time I was there. Even despite the touristy nature of the trip, I was able to acquaint myself a bit with the character of Morocco. So I am definitely glad I went, and I did enjoy my time there a lot, despite all the complaining I seem to be doing in the blog.
This was long. I will stop rambling now. Kudos if you have made it this far. Goodnight!
As I had previously mentioned, I went to Morocco (or, in Spanish, Marruecos) this weekend, arriving back in Sevilla yesterday around six. My review of the trip is going to be somewhat mixed. Morocco the country was beautiful, but the group we went with, We Love Spain, was extremely touristy, in sort of the negative, “let’s just see a caricature of the culture and not the culture itself” sort of way. I knew before going that it probably would be based on the itinerary and the group’s website and such, but I really wanted to be able to see Morocco on one of my three-day weekends, and all the other tours I knew of were 5 or 6 days, so I went ahead with it. And I’m really glad I did, because I learned so much even from my short time there. However, I do have a few complaints that colored my experience a bit.
I will start with said complaints. First off, the group was too big. The weekend I went was the weekend of el Día de Andalucía, so all the schools had a holiday that Monday, meaning a lot of people wanted to travel, so the group was huge. They really should have had a cut off on people, even if that meant that I wouldn’t have been able to go, because the hugeness of the group just made us so conspicuous. Moreover, many of the things we did, and the attitudes of a lot of people in the group, were extremely touristy. We went to extremely touristy restaurants with “authentic” dancing and “authentic” food, in which there was not a single native Moroccan eating. I say authentic in quotation marks, not because I think the performances or the food were not authentic, but because I object to the attitude that what is “authentic” about a country is only some sort of caricature of its folk history. Many countries and regions within countries, like Spain and Andalucía, or the U.S., and states within the U.S., have folk culture that they highly value and try to keep alive, but I object to the attitude that this folk culture is the only thing “authentic” about a country. And I don’t need to go to ritzy, touristy restaurants to eat “authentic” Moroccan food—whatever they cook in Morocco is authentically Moroccan. I also highly doubt that the average Moroccan sits in an elegant, highly decorated hall with dancers for most of their meals. And the attitudes of some of the people in our group were, I felt, a bit clueless. We were going to a Muslim country, and yet there were girls wearing extremely tight leggings instead of actual pants and low-cut shirts. Not that I necessarily agree with Muslim ideals of female modesty, but when one is travelling to a country with such standards of modesty, one ought to consider the way one dresses a little more, so as not to draw unwanted attention and as not to display an attitude of insensitivity. Moreover, Muslims do not drink alcohol, and yet there was alcohol available to drink in the hotels and the club that was on the itinerary. It just seemed so odd to me that as visitors in a Muslim country, our group would seek out entertainment activities that were prohibited by the prevailing religion of the country. Add to that, I had a cold that weekend, so that also made me a little grumpy.
That said, Morocco was a fascinating places, and it was a very interesting trip. I often think I am culturally savvy, and that I know a lot about lots of different places, and then I go to said places and realize that I know nothing. I was very surprised by how green Morocco was. Our tour guide explained to us that Morocco is divided into northern and southern halves by a large mountain range (I think he called them the Rift Mountains), and while south of the mountains is the desert, north of it is very green, as I saw. I blush to admit that the image I probably had in my head was of some desert with dusty adobe-like buildings and men with turbans with cloths across their faces to keep the sand out of their lungs. So being able to go to Morocco and learn the error of this impression was definitely worth the €180 it cost.
Anyway, enough prefacing, and onward to actual description. We left Sevilla on Saturday morning. After a two-hour bus ride and a 45-minute ferry, we arrived in Ceuta, which is a Spanish town on the coast of North Africa. We had a quick tour of this town before crossing the border into Morocco. While crossing the border, I had my first glimpse of the way in which at least some, if not many, Moroccan men perceive American women. There were a couple blonde girls wearing, as I said above, very tight leggings and low-cut shirts, and as the Moroccan police officer checking our passports looked over theirs, he made some flirtatious small talk. When he looked at Alicia’s and my passports next, he gave us a quick “ok” and moved on. We were quite grateful that our brown hair and more unremarkable clothing made us appear less exotic and less flirt-worthy, but it was not the only time I observed behaviors that seemed to imply an belief that American girls are easy. It was definitely worse for blondes—I saw once, while we were walking through the streets of Chefchaoen, a guy put his face right up next to a blonde girl’s face, who was just minding her own business, and say something. Not all Moroccan women wore veils, and some even wore pants, but there just seemed to be a fairly prevalent assumption that American girls are an object of flirtation.
I digress. We spent that night in Tetuan. We had some free time when we arrived at the hotel, but it was raining a fair bit, and it was dark, and we were all tired, so after checking into our rooms Alicia and I showered, ate dinner with the group in the hotel restaurant, and went to bed early. When we arrived at the hotel, we were given cups of a tea, which is apparently sort of a traditional tea to serve to guests, in hotels, homes, or other functions with lots of people. It’s sweetened green tea with mint. We had this several different places—both our hotels and the two restaurants we went to. I liked it, although in one hotel it was sweeter and more minty than the others, and I felt like I was drinking heated mouthwash.
The next morning began with a short bus tour of Tetuan, which became a bus ride to the town of Chefchaoen. Our Moroccan guide for the trip was named Larby (or something like that, I am probably spelling it wrong), and I really enjoyed listening to everything he told us. As we were driving through Tetuan, there were Moroccan flags everywhere (a red background with a green five-pointed star, representing the five pillars of Islam). Larby explained that was because the king had just been there, as we had come shortly after one of their big religious holidays, celebrating the birth of the prophet Mohammed. During this holiday, the king has to travel to the city of Rabat, hence why he had journeyed through Tetuan. Larby also told us how this king had studied abroad (he didn’t say where, but I imagine somewhere in Europe), and because of these influences, the current queen of Morocco is the first queen that has ever been known to the public. Usually the weddings are private, and while the public knows the names of the children, the name and face of the queen are withheld from public knowledge. But the current king had a public wedding, and the queen has something of a celebrity status. I think it’s really interesting to observe this change, and reflect on what its implications might be in the coming years.
Chefchaoen was a smaller town than Tetuan, situated in the mountains. We walked for a while through the old city center with local guides. Our guide (I don’t know his name) was so interesting. He was a somewhat elderly man, but certainly not frail. He knew so much about the history of Morocco and Chefchaoen, and he spoke five or six languages. Actually, something else I didn’t know, almost all Moroccans speak at least three languages. They grow up speaking Arabic, or rather a dialect of Arabic, with regionally specific vocabulary. But they also know classic Arabic, the Arabic of the Quran, and they can speak this to people from other Arabic-speaking countries. Then when they are nine or so years old, they learn French in school, because that is the official language of administration of Morocco. About high school age, they learn a third language, choosing between English, Spanish, or German. Most of the people in the area where we were chose Spanish, as we were in the northern part, close to Spain; as such, it was more effective to talk to people in the streets in Spanish than in English.
The streets of Chefchaoen were beautiful. I believe the part we walked around was kind of what might be termed “Old Town,” but there were definitely a lot of residences there, and while there were also some more souvenir-y type shops, there were also the sorts of stores that one visits to carry out one’s daily business. In this area, all the walls and the bricks on the ground were painted a pale blue. Our guide explained that this wasn’t the original color. Originally, everything was painted white, symbolizing peace, or green, symbolizing the body of Muslim believers. The blue color was brought in from the Moors who had conquered Spain and had been living in Granada. Blue symbolizes divinity in Islam, but also it was a color well suited to temperature regulation, as it held heat in the winter and reflected heat away in the summer.
After a tour of the center of Chefchaoen, there was some free time to browse the market place, where such items as jewelry, scarves, pottery, and food were for sale. I wasn’t really in the mood to buy much, as the aforementioned super-touristyness of the group was bothering me a bit, and because bargaining is an accepted part of Moroccan culture, and I really do not like bargaining. It stresses me out a lot. I would much rather just have the shopkeeper or vendor tell me a price, and then pay that price. I did however buy some little pastries to snack on, which were quite good.
We returned to Tetuan for lunch, where we went to probably the single most touristy restaurant in the entire city. As I said above, there was a performance of different types of dance while we ate, and a henna artist doing tattoos for €3, and not a Moroccan face among the diners, except tour guides. I was somewhat unimpressed with the dancing, especially with the belly dancer. I have seen much better belly dancers in the U.S., women who exhibited amazing control over their muscles, who were quite sensual, but not exactly provocative. Despite being scantily clad, these dancers’ motions weren’t supposed to be arousing; rather, they demonstrated an amazing degree of control and self-assertion. This “belly” dancer just sort of pranced around a bit in a flowy skirt and bikini-type top. I might be inclined to think that maybe that is Moroccan belly dancing, and that what I have seen as belly dancing comes from different regions, but the belly dancer in the Morocco pavilion in Epcot belonged more to the first class of belly dancers I described. Many of you are probably thinking, “Really, Christy, did you really just compare Morocco with Walt Disney World?” But the king of Morocco himself oversaw the design of the Morocco pavilion, because he wanted to be sure Disney got it right, so I feel inclined to believe that the belly dancing there is more what one might call “authentic,” whatever that means, and what we saw was just a half-clothed woman to appease tourists with fat wallets. I’m having a little trouble explaining what it was that bothered me so much, but I guess it seemed that the dancing in this restaurant wasn’t art, and the performers weren’t artists. They didn’t seem to have an artistic connection to their work, it was just a job to solicit money from the rich tourists. Aside from all this complaining, though, the food was quite good. I especially enjoyed some chicken they gave us with a spicy sauce, which might have had some lemon in it. For desert, they gave us that minty tea and some pastries with dates and coated with powdered sugar.
After lunch, we toured a bit around the center of Tetuan. Again, our group was just too huge, and walking in this giant group of at least thirty Americans through these tiny little streets was a little uncomfortable. We were an absolute magnet to vendors displaying random assortments of jewelry and handbags and whatnot, although I guess that would have been true of a small group as well. But it was quite interesting to walk through the market and see what was for sale. This was definitely the sort of market where the average person would go to do their day-to-day shopping, although, of course, there were here and there the requisite souvenir-y type shop; it is what one might call downtown, so any tourists to the city would surely go there. But you would see vendors with blankets full of underwear, or remote controls, or movies. We passed several shops that made the traditional gown that women wear when they go out. It’s an ankle length gown with long sleeves, and it comes in many different colors. Women also wear a gown similar to this for their wedding, with the addition of a gold belt. These belts run $15,000 to $16,000, so most women just rent them. We passed a couple shops selling/renting these belts, and they were very beautiful and ornate.
It was also interesting to notice how few women were out. Not that there were no women, but distinctly fewer than men. A lot of the women wore those gowns I mentioned, and veils on their head, but not all. Some wore the gowns, but no veil, and some wore veils, but more “Western” looking pants, blouses, and boots.
We then hopped back on the bus to Tangiers. We dined at, again, the single most touristy restaurant in all the whole city, also complete with dancers, and this time with the addition of men riding horses wielding swords. But the food was also quite good, and being quite tired I was happy to eat. Later that night, beginning at 1 a.m., the group went to the club I mentioned earlier, but I opted not to go. Mostly because I was, as I mentioned, sick with a cold, and by that time feeling tired and kind of lousy, but also because it just struck me as such an odd activity. In Spain, going to clubs and discotecas is not odd, because that is what Spaniards like to do (although I have yet to do so myself). But in Morocco, where no one drinks alcohol, and it’s extremely improper for women and men to dance together in such ways, and where the only clubs are the ones built at hotels for use by tourists, it just wasn’t something I wanted to do. I went to Morocco to see Morocco, to get an idea of what life is like there, however small that idea may be, and I certainly would not achieve that idea by participating in activities that no Moroccan does, in a secluded environment full of only American tourists. Anyway, I took some Sudafed and went to sleep.
The next morning, we went first to ride camels—again, silly and touristy, but I suppose I can now check “riding camels” off my to-do list. It was sort of just a two-minute circle around an expanse of dirt. Camels don’t even live in that part of Morocco; they live in the desert in the south. But it was fun, and I never object to getting to pet/interact with animals, so whatever. After the camels, we went to the Pillars of Hercules, where the Mediterranean Sea and Atlantic Ocean meet. There were some cool caves we went in, which looked out onto the ocean. The geology of the site was really interesting, and the sea was beautiful (yeah, I’m a desert child, so water is fascinating). We didn’t have much time there, and left after about twenty minutes to catch our ferry back to Spain.
So conclusions. I would have liked a smaller group. With the group the size it was, walking through the tiny winding streets of Tetuan and Chefchaoen I often felt quite uncomfortably conspicuous. And this definitely wasn’t my ideal tour group. It seemed that the focus of the group and the focus of many of the people with whom I was travelling was to party and shop. I can party or shop anywhere—if I’m going to travel to a distant land, especially for so little time, I want to do things, see things, eat things, learn things that I can only do, see, eat, learn there. There’s a group that CC-CS works with, in which you live with a Moroccan family for a couple days, so you really get to see how the average Moroccan family lives. But all those trips were four or five days, and I wanted a three-day trip, so I could do it in a weekend and not miss class. But despite all that, I am very glad I went. I don’t know when I will get another chance to go Morocco. There is no better way to learn about a culture than to visit it, and I learned a lot about Morocco even in the short time I was there. Even despite the touristy nature of the trip, I was able to acquaint myself a bit with the character of Morocco. So I am definitely glad I went, and I did enjoy my time there a lot, despite all the complaining I seem to be doing in the blog.
This was long. I will stop rambling now. Kudos if you have made it this far. Goodnight!
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