Hi everyone! I have been so bad at updating this blog. I apologize to all those that are following my trip. I updated last after a busy weekend of traveling to Casablanca, Tetouan, and Tangier. Two days after being home from that trip, all WPI students and faculty took a five day desert trip! It was a lot of driving but it was a lot of fun. We did a whole tour of the southern part of Morocco and stopped for one night in our primary destination: the Sahara desert. But I’ll get to that.

Our first day was quite a bit of driving. We stopped once around Azrou to see the monkey mountain! Herds of monkeys live in this part of the country and they’ve become a big tourist attraction.

We continued driving, on a giant tour bus, to Zaida where our hotel was. Our hotel was on an area of land that had nature walks and pretty sights, so we did an easy hike around the property. Dinner was at the hotel and it was a quiet day!

The next day, we headed towards the Sahara desert. We stopped in the morning to walk through an oasis that people had built a village on. It was very pretty! Our afternoon stop was an area that looked a lot like the Grand Canyon, but not as big. It was beautiful and my group took a picture there!

We continued on to Merzouga, where we would be leaving our bags and riding into the desert on camels! It was so exciting. We had to pack a single backpack that we could wear while riding the camel and then we all got into groups for the camels. One of the advisor’s children were with us on this trip and I got to ride my camel with her son! He is 7 years old and super adorable. We named our camel Kevin. It was a crazy cool experience to ride camels! They are really interesting creatures and were a lot of fun to pet and interact with.

We rode the camels for about a half hour into the desert. As the sun started to set, we stopped and climbed up the dunes to watch the sunset. We all had so much fun! Some people were rolling down the dunes, some were running (me because I did not want sand everywhere). It was such a cool experience that we didn’t want to miss any parts of it!

After the sun had set, we got back on the camels and rode about another half hour to our camp. It was set up very minimally, with single beds and tents. Luckily we had lots of blankets because it got really cold at night!! We stayed up late to look at the stars because it was absolutely unbelievable. I could see the Milky Way and all the stars and I even saw a few shooting stars!! It was crazy and so beautiful. I slept very good that night. We woke up the next morning very early to hear the sunrise call to prayer, since we were close enough to civilization to hear it. It was magical! Then we got on our camels and rode out to watch the sunrise on the dunes.

We finished our ride back to civilization, gathered our stuff, and headed out for a very long day on the road. I believe we drove about 7 or 8 hours that day. It was a long day. We stopped briefly for lunch and a walk through a gorge and arrived at our hotel in Quarzazate at around 8pm.

The next morning, we had a tour of the Quarzazate kasbah. Quarzazate is famous for being kind of like the Hollywood/Bollywood of Morocco. A lot of movies that are filmed in the ‘Middle East’ or in deserts are filmed in Quarzazate. We drove past film studios and movie sets, which was wicked cool! I thought it was so awesome to see giant movie sets out in the distance. I wish we had gotten the chance to explore them a bit but it was still interesting to see. After that, we drove to Ait-Ben-Haddou, a famous old city that was a stop on a caravan route a long time ago. Now, it is a huge tourist attraction and was used to film Gladiator and Game of Thrones!

After this, we drove to Marrakech for the night. We got to the hotel fairly late, so we didn’t do much. The next morning, though, we got up and had a tour of the Marrakech Medina. We had a chance to explore the big main square, which was hectic but very interesting. They had snake charmers, monkeys, and so many people trying to sell you things. We went for lunch at a restaurant where they hire women from underprivileged areas, teach them to cook, and then employ them at the restaurant. It was incredible food! After lunch, we headed home to Rabat. It was about a 4 hour drive and I played cards most of the time with my friends.

We all got back around 7pm on Sunday night and pretty much crashed. It was a very long week and a lot of time was spent on the bus. Monday and Tuesday were pretty quiet in Rabat. I had class, meetings, and just did work. Wednesday and Thursday, me and two others went to Fes to do some field work for our projects. The main focus of my research paper is a psychiatric hospital in Fes, so I spent two days there doing interviews and observations. It was very productive and I learned a lot of information that really helped my project. We came home to Rabat on Thursday night.

On Friday, I had a quiet morning and did a few things for work. In the afternoon, I went to lunch with my advisor, her husband, and her husband’s parents (who are Moroccan), along with a few other students. It was interesting and fun to meet my advisor’s family. I have gotten so close with her (my group jokes that she is our Moroccan mom) and it was nice that we got to know her family a bit better. After lunch, me and Meghan took a train to Meknes. From there, we got a grand taxi to Azrou, a small town in the mountains. Early in the term, we had a visit from a WPI grad who is now working in the Peace Corps in Azrou. He told all of us we were welcome to visit anytime and Meghan and I took him up on that. We got tired of the cities and the busyness and wanted to get away from it. We arrived in Azrou at like 9pm and went to our Airbnb to rest up for Saturday.

On Saturday morning, we got up and grabbed breakfast at a super cute (and cheap) place on the way to where we met Matt (peace corps guy). Matt leads a hiking group here so he wanted to take us on a hike for the weekend. We met up with him and he showed us around town a little bit before we headed up the mountain! We hiked to an abandoned monastery which was absolutely gorgeous but slightly creepy.

The hike lasted a little longer than 3 hours, which was perfect. It was great to be in the fresh air and exercising! After we came back into town, we went to lunch with Matt and ended up hanging out with him for a few more hours. He is a really interesting person and we had a lot of fun with him! Meghan and I got pretty tired in the late afternoon so we headed back to the Airbnb to relax… and ended up staying in for the rest of the night. it was very relaxing and very needed! At like 10:30pm-ish, I logged on to watch Dan and Cam play in the AA North finals!! they won!!!!!!!! I was so excited and so glad I got to watch.

The next morning, Meghan and I got up and took a taxi ride to Ifrane, a city 15 minutes from Azrou. It is weird. Ifrane is basically like Europe and it was the weirdest sensation to be there. I don’t think we would have appreciated how strange it was if we had gone to Ifrane earlier in the term, but we understood now. It was a really interesting experience though. We walked around and did some homework while there before heading back to Rabat later in the evening!

This week has been fairly quiet for me. I went to Fes for the last time on Wednesday to do a few more interviews with the social worker and some patients. Now it is late Friday afternoon, and I am just finishing some gelato. It has been an emotional week for our Morocco group for a couple reasons so I am really looking forward to the weekend and a break. I don’t have anything going on this weekend and not much next week either. I will be watching the state game Saturday night though (actually 3am for me on Sunday morning but it’s the Eddies)!!! It is crazy – one more week before the term ends!!! I can’t believe how fast it has gone. I will post once more before I leave this wonderful country so stay tuned.

B’slama!

Hi everyone! It has been a while since I posted on here. Life has certainly become busy here. My last post was an update about our trip to Fes. Since then, there has been two weekends of fun and travel. The weekend right after Fes, 1/31 – 2/2, was eventful! We decided to stay in Rabat since we were tired after a few weekends of travel in a row. On Friday, a few people in my group had interviews to do so we had a quiet day finishing up work from the week. Saturday was the fun day: 5 of the girls in my group along with our Darija teacher (a Moroccan woman) went to the hammam. A hammam is basically a group bathhouse, but in Morocco it is a social center for women and men to gather (separately of course!). The 6 of us got heavily scrubbed down by one of the women who worked there. So much dead skin came off and we got a mini massage as well! It was a very interesting experience, but one I thoroughly enjoyed. We all took this picture after!

After the hammam, we ate lunch and relaxed for a little bit before going to the beach – we went surfing!! One of the surf schools gave 6 of us lessons on the Rabat Beach and we actually did really well. I discovered that surfing is one of those things that you think is going to be a lot harder than it is. I got up on the second or third try! It was a ton of fun and we stayed out there for almost 2 hours. Most of us were able to stand up but we all had a great time.

After surfing, we were starving. The only logical food after swimming and strenuous exercise is pizza. Lucky for us, there’s a place just around the corner from our dorm that serves pizza by the meter. We were so hungry, 7 of us ate 1.5 meters of pizza in 20 minutes flat. It was awesome.

That was a great day. The rest of the weekend was uneventful, which was nice. We needed some relaxing time!

The next week was filled with work. I got a lot done and shifted my project to be a bit more focused. I now have a good plan for the rest of it!

This past weekend was lots of traveling. We took the train to Casablanca on Thursday night and checked into our Airbnb. It was really nice – 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a huge kitchen, and a really nice living room. Seven of us slept very comfortably. On Friday (2/7), we went to the Hassan II Mosque. This is the biggest mosque in Africa and one of the most stunning things I have ever seen. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to go inside but even just seeing the outside was amazing. After a lunch in the Medina (couscous of course), we went to Rick’s Cafe. Play it again, Sam, anyone? It was so cool to see! Our next stop was the Morocco Mall. This is the second largest mall in Africa. Friday was a day for big things! It was interesting but a lot of the stores were very expensive so there wasn’t much to do besides walk around. It was a truly awesome day that ended with some poorly made Mac and cheese. It made for a good story, though!

We woke up early Saturday morning to travel to Tangier, up north. This was about a 2 hour train ride that I slept the whole time for! At this point, the group split up. Some went back to Chefchaouen, some stayed in Tangier, and me and 3 others got on a bus to Tetouan. Tetouan is a city between Tangier and Chefchaouen that is not very touristy – it is more of a place that Moroccans go on vacation, rather than somewhere tourists go. It was awesome to visit a place like this and get a more authentic Moroccan experience. We checked into our hotel and our host was incredibly friendly. He loved helping us find places to eat and things to do. Our main reason for being here, though, was the Flower Cafe. The Flower Cafe is a brand-new women-only cafe. It is the only one of its kind in Morocco and it is a huge deal! Cafe culture in Morocco is very male dominated, so this was a big step for women. One of the girls in my group is studying cafe culture in Morocco, so she really wanted to go to this cafe. It was tastefully decorated in LOTS of pink and flowers. It was so pretty and so fun to be surrounded by women for a few hours. We experienced the cafe for a bit before heading back into the city and wandering for a few hours. The rest of the night was just getting dinner and resting.

Sunday morning, the 4 of us in Tetouan got up and went to Tangier for the day! We first went to Cafe Baba, known for famous poets and actors visiting to smoke weed and drink tea (we only drank the tea). My group then wandered around the Medina of Tangier for several hours, doing some shopping and sightseeing. After lunch, we decided to head to the Caves of Hercules, just outside the city. We walked along the beach and enjoyed the views for a few hours before the rest of our group joined us. The 7 of us then watched the sunset from the caves. It was so beautiful! After the sun had set, we headed back to Tangier and got on our train to Rabat.

Now, here I am! Wednesday morning, all WPI is leaving for a 5 day trip across the south of Morocco. We are making a lot of stops, but the biggest being an overnight in the Sahara Desert! I am so excited! I’ll try to update more often. I get overwhelmingly busy sometimes, but honestly I would rather be busy than not. It keeps me from missing home too much! Anyway, I will post soon. Layla saida kulwahed!

Ssalam kulwahed (hi everyone) –

This was quite the weekend. We traveled to Fes, the spiritual capital of Morocco, last Friday morning and arrived in the early afternoon. This trip was all 34 WPI students, the 3 WPI advisors, and several staff members from the organization that helps us while we’re here. We were quite the group! After a lunch of couscous (Friday!!!), we all went on a big group tour through the old Medina of the city. The locals gave us some strange looks since we were a group of 41, but we made it work! We then went to two ruined towers on top of a mountain to watch the sun set over the city.

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Our next morning continued the group tour. We saw many sights in the Fes Medina, including the oldest university in the world that was founded by a woman, and I bought lots of souvenirs! My friends and I took a break for lunch on a rooftop cafe with delicious homemade food. We met back up with the group to finish the tour in the afternoon. Around 4pm, we all went back to the hotel to relax after a very tiring day. We ventured into the modern part of the city later in the evening and got gelato with a Moroccan friend that lives in Fes! All in all, a good day.

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On Sunday morning, the other humanities students and I met with our advisor’s mentor who teaches at the university in Fes. He helped her get her job at WPI! He has a lot of knowledge about Moroccan culture, so it was interesting to listen to him. We went back to the Medina quickly for some last minute souvenirs before getting on the bus back to Rabat. We arrived back Sunday evening, and it was a quiet night from there.

In terms of school work, I’ve been busy! For my project, I visited two public hospitals in Rabat last week and I plan on going back to one of them this week. My goal is to talk to a couple of nurses if possible, but I may need a translator. We’ll see how it goes! I am also hoping to get in touch with some medical students here in Rabat to ask them about their experience with the public health system. For my other classes, I’ve been studying and practicing Darija every day. It is a super fun language to learn! Very confusing, since it isn’t a codified language, but interesting. My third class is Moroccan film. We have been watching movies made by Moroccan women and analyzing them, which is interesting. School is busy, but going very well!

A lot of us here in Morocco have started missing American foods! I especially have missed homemade foods like chicken pot pie and Mac and cheese. Not that the food here isn’t fabulous, but I am missing home foods! Other than that, I have not been homesick at all. It’s too much fun here!

We don’t have a plan for this weekend yet, but I’m sure it will be something fun! Our tentative plan is to go to Casablanca for one day and then surf in Rabat on another day. B’slama!

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What a weekend. It has been so busy that I haven’t had time to update since I got back from our first travel weekend! I traveled with the 8 humanities students from WPI, but the juniors that are here for their projects also were in Chefchaouen for the weekend. The 8 of us left on Thursday 1/16 for Tangier. We took the train there, dropped our stuff off at our GORGEOUS AirBnB, and then headed into town for dinner. My advisor had recommended a fancy place to us and we decided to go. We had a 5 course meal for $20 USD. It was incredible food and the staff was so friendly – it was a great way to start the weekend. We woke up the next morning and realized that the only bus to Chefchaouen that wasn’t sold out was at 12pm. This was disappointing since we couldn’t spend as much time as we wanted in Tangier. So, we went to Cafe Hofa, a famous cafe in Tangier that overlooks the Strait of Gibraltar. I spent my morning looking at the ocean and Spain while doing work for classes! Even though we had limited time, it was well spent. At noon, we got on the bus to Chefchaouen, which took about 2.5 hours. When we arrived, we were confused – we couldn’t see any blue that the city was supposedly named for. The taxi dropped us off outside of the Medina (the old part of the city) and then we realized the reason for its name! All of the buildings in the Medina are blue on the lower half. It is stunning! We were starving when we arrived, so we got a recommendation from our AirBnB host and headed to eat. Luckily for us, it was couscous Friday! In Morocco, couscous is only served on Fridays and so we took full advantage. It was delicious! By this time, it was about 6 and so a group of us set off to get snacks and desserts while the others went back to the AirBnB. The rest of the night was spent eating, laughing, and playing Cards Against Humanity.

Saturday morning came beautiful and sunny in Chefchaouen. We had a late breakfast at a cafe in the center square of the Medina. The food was incredible – Harsha (traditional Moroccan bread/crepe-like product) with fresh goat cheese, butter, orange marmalade, and honey. It was so good that we ended up going back on Sunday morning as well! For the next few hours, we wandered around the Medina. It is old, with windy and hilly cobbled streets. Vendors are everywhere, selling everything from touristy magnets to colorful handmade djellabas (traditional Moroccan clothing). I stopped and haggled with store owners over paintings, djellabas, or anything that caught my eye. I ended up buying a small painting of Chefchaouen for myself as well as some presents for others. After a few hours of walking, my group of 8 met back up to eat. We ate quickly, since our next stop was the top of a mountain overlooking the city! There is a Spanish mosque that is a big attraction for everyone, especially at sunrise or sunset. You can watch the sun as it moves over the city and behind the mountains, while truly being able to see the blue glow from Chef. The view was unbelievable!! While walking down the mountain, after the sun had set, we met 3 Moroccan photographers that were taking pictures of the city at night. We talked with them for a while, both in English and Darija. One guy, who spoke great English, was shocked I only spoke one language. I had to explain that I was American 🙂 After we went our separate ways, my friends and I headed back to the AirBnB for snacks, Moroccan tea, and games! It was such a fun time.

Our final day in Chefchaouen was on Sunday. We got breakfast at the same place as the day before and then wanted to have a relaxing day. Some of my group went off to buy more things, while 3 other girls and I found a rooftop cafe to do some classwork and chat (safe to say, not much work was done). Our bus back to Tangier left at 3:30 so we all met back up to take taxis to the bus station. While trying to catch a cab, my friend Abby and I met an American man from California who is in the Navy. He is stationed in Italy and had a long weekend, so decided to come see Morocco! I love meeting people while traveling, so it was fun to talk to him for a little while. When we got back to Tangier, we were all starving and decided to get Moroccan McDonald’s from the train station. It was different than American McDonald’s in terms of the food they offered. Not very traditionally “Moroccan”, but a fun adventure. The train ride back to Rabat was uneventful and I had a quiet night when we returned.

Since then, I have been doing lots of work and having classes! I did get to explore the Rabat Medina a little bit, which was a lot of fun. I got a donut and two traditional Moroccan sandwiches (hard to explain) for the equivalent of 60 cents. We all decided we’d be doing our grocery shopping there from now on! Now, it is Wednesday evening and my group is planning our dinner for the night. We are leaving Friday morning to go to Fes, the “spiritual capital” of Morocco. We will be going with all 34 WPI students and our 3 advisors. I am very excited! I will post another update at some point next week after I return. I hope everyone is enjoying my blog! I am definitely enjoying sharing with you all and reflecting on my travels and experiences. Layla saida (goodnight)!

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Ssalam, everyone! This has been a crazy week here in Rabat. Monday (1/13) was spent getting a crash course in Darija, the primary language here. I have learned so much of the language already and it is so fun to practice! We like to speak with our cab drivers, dorm staff, and anyone else that will talk to us in Darija. Moroccans love seeing us make an effort to speak their language and they get very excited when we do, which makes it even more fun. On Monday evening, three of us walked down to the coast to see the sunset. We walked through a poorer part of town, which was interesting to see since we live in an affluent neighborhood. The sunset was stunning. I don’t have the words to describe the beauty. It was magical, to say the least. What a way to end the day!

Tuesday brought real life – we realized we would actually have to do work while in Morocco, and a lot of it (unfortunately). The humanities students have Darija 3 days a week, so we had this class. Afterwards, we went through the syllabi of the other two classes we will be taking while here. One is the inquiry seminar, the project I am researching on public health. The other class is a film study, focusing on Moroccan made films. They will be a lot of work each week, but the work is interesting and we are in Morocco!!!

Wednesday evening, after a day of classes and work, the humanities students went to Rabat Beach to watch the sunset. We walked out along a stone pier, with 15ft waves crashing over it. Getting our feet soaked was completely worth it. It was another amazing sunset from the other side of the Atlantic. After the sun went down, we walked along the water and found a restaurant (with an accidental stop in the Medina). We talked and ate for almost two hours before heading back to the dorm for the night.

It is now Thursday morning, 1/16. My group and I are heading to Tangier this afternoon on the bullet train and then will be traveling from there to Chefchaouen tomorrow. I am so excited for more adventure! I’ll post again after my weekend. B’slama!

Hi everyone! I am in Morocco! I landed yesterday at 1pm in Moroccan time (6 hours ahead of New England). I am with 34 WPI students total, 25 on IQP (junior year project) and 9 doing their humanities project, which is what I am doing. We are living in a dorm in a wealthy area of town. We moved into our dorm (I share a room with 1 person) and then headed to dinner, featured in the 5th picture. Moroccans eat dinner late at night, usually around 9 or 10pm. We ate a bit earlier because we all were exhausted from our flights, so we got home at about 9pm. Today, January 12th, was orientation and tour day! We began the day with an orientation about Moroccan culture, food, and safety/security. Lunch was couscous, vegetables, and chicken with Moroccan cookies and tea for dessert. We ate in a family’s home in a traditional guest sitting room. Following lunch, we went on a tour around Rabat. Our first stop was a walled part of the city with beautiful views (the first, third, and fourth pictures). The second stop on the tour was the King’s work palace, different from the palace he lives in, and it was very interesting to see the different guards in place around the palace. There were guards from the Navy, Army, and Air Force protecting the palace. Our final stop on the tour was the mausoleum where King Mohammed V and King Hassan II are buried, as well as Mohammed’s other son. Hassan II is the current king’s father, and Mohammed V is the king’s grandfather. Outside of this mausoleum is an unfinished mosque, where the roof was never put on. It is filled with columns (like the one I am standing on), and at the opposite end from the mausoleum is Hassan Tower, which is what I am “leaning on” in the picture. Our group came back to the dorm around 6pm and were set free for the rest of the night. The rest of the students doing their humanities projects in Morocco and I went shopping at Marjane (the Walmart equivalent) for some essentials before setting off for dinner. We walked around our neighborhood and explored for a bit before deciding on a restaurant. I ate a full meal of meat, bread, and avocado juice (surprisingly delicious) for $6 American dollars! I am now safely in my dorm, tucked in for the night. B’slama (goodbye) everyone! I’ll update again soon.