Part I: Holiday in Spain, Part II: Le Maghreb, Part III: Why aren't we in Marrakesh anymore?

Weeks 7 and 8 have been late because I have just been too overwhelmed with how much I have to say! February Break was easily the most fun trip I have ever been on, it was way overstimulating, and such a huge break from what my life here has been like up until then. My life in Bordeaux is VERY relaxed, lazy, nice, and quiet. My one responsibility is classes, and those haven't even been taking place for a few weeks now. And then I go on this crazy whirlwind trip to Spain and North Africa for a week and a half- talk about shaking things up!

The break has three parts because we went to Barcelona, Marrakesh, and then back to Barcelona. By the second trip to Barcelona we were pretty tired and not too active and also most of the pictures I lost were from that part of the trip- so Part III is actually pictures from Part I, if that makes any sense.

Part I: Holiday in Spain (February 19-22)

So Thursday I left with Moravia and Elita to take a train to Paris. From Paris we went to Beauvais, an hour outside Paris, because we got tricked by Ryanair into traveling from "Paris" (really Beauvais) to "Barcelona" (really Girona, an hour away from the real city). In any case, we finally got to Barcelona at 2 in the morning Friday morning, checked into the hostel, locked our bags up, and crashed.

We met up with Shahzadi on Friday and the 4 of us spent most of the rest of the vacation together. Barcelona weather was very nice and so sunny! I actually got sunburned and I think my body went into shock after being in the cloudy and cold Southwest France (yuck). We stopped by the beach with a picnic that we had picked up from the giant, gorgeous, and overstimulating market called the Boqueria. The beach was pretty, but very Santa Cruz... the water was freezing.

What else did we do? We had tapas, went to the Sagrada Familia, saw Gaudi's Park Guell (sorry, sp?), made a fun dinner in the hostel (well Shaz and Elita made it and Moravia and I ate it), and saw a carnavale parade. Many of these photos are courtesy of Elita:

Barcelona was pretty relaxing for me- it had none of the pressure that Paris had to see everything that I had been dreaming about for so long. This made it more relaxing, but also less fulfilling because I really couldn't appreciate a lot of the history and culture as much as I might have. Also, I had two Spanish speakers with me and I can't speak it at all so I was pretty dependent on the girls. This, by the way, has made me much more confident of my French abilities because I see what it means to actually not speak a language!

Part II: Le Maghreb (February 23-26)

Le Maghreb: my favorite kind of French word- the kind with no English equivalent. Well, we actually just call it North Africa, but I don't think that really catches the whole meaning. It's actually the area of Africa caught between the Sahara, the Mediterranean, and the Atlantic- so basically Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia.

Monday morning we made the trek back to Girona to catch our flight to Marrakesh. An hour and a half later, we were in the Marrakesh airport- and it was heaven at 75 degrees. After going back to our beautiful riad we went to get lunch in the square (couscous with raisins and chicken). We started talking about trips we had taken with our families when we were younger, and I started to think about my trip to Hawaii when I was 11 or 12. I remember getting off the plane and being struck by the humidity and by how good it smelled there- but nothing else. I'm not sure what 11 year old Julia was thinking, but I guess I was expecting a different world- I mean we were on a plane for something like 6 hours! But the world in Hawaii just wasn't that different from the world in California, apart from the astounding natural beauty. Everyone looked the same and spoke the same and dressed the same as we did (we even met people from my school and some of my mom's students there). The people all acted the same, the street signs were the same, and the food was nothing too different from what I've already had (except the massive amounts of pineapple which rocked!) I'm not complaining about Hawaii, seriously I'm not, but when I got to Morocco I felt like I actually did enter a different world. (Almost) everything was foreign- and it was great.
We didn't actually accomplish all that much when we were there- it isn't like a trip to Paris where you can say I went to Louvre, le Musée d'Orsay, the Latin Quarter, blah blah. I feel like a lot of my trip was just soaking up the area around me- the sights, sounds, smells, and tastes of a place so very different from what I'm used to. The shot above is from the terrace of a café where we sat to take a break after a long day of haggling for souvenirs and ignoring calls of "Mademoiselle! Excuse me! French? English? Fish and Chips?" or, for Elita, "Nee how! Konnichiwa! Chinoise? Japonaise?" Yeah... political correctedness is not a priority.

Isn't the square beautiful? It's called the Djemaa el Fna and those are the orange juice and tea stands that are there during the day. At night it looks like this:


There are snake charmers, little bands playing music, women selling henna, and kids selling little packets of tissues at the outer edges. Further in, where you see the light there, are the 50 or so food stands selling kababs, couscous, etc. mostly to tourists. There, at stand #22, is where I had some of the best food since I left the states. I had some kind of meat kabab- I think it was lamb but was not sure (aren't you proud of me, Dad?), a veggie kabab, olives, fresh bread, and some kind of spicy red pepper dipping sauce for it. And guess what? This is the biggest surprise of the whole trip, especially if you know me well: my stomach was fine. Like seriously fine. I've had way worse stomachaches eating at places in Berkeley. (House of Curries, anyone?)

Every morning we woke up to this breakfast, for 2 euros (22 dirhams):


Oh my gosh- fresh bread, butter, jam, freshly squeezed orange juice, and tea. The middle of the building was like a courtyard with the roof able to be open or closed. So we ate our wonderful breakfast with the sun shining down on us and the little birds singing from the roof and sometimes even flying down to hop around by our feet as we ate. Such a nice way to start the morning, and such a contrast to the rest of our day spent in dusty, kind of stinky, kind of stressful, but very fun streets and souks of Marrakesh.

We went to a hammam, a traditional Moroccan bath, with some of the very, very kind and welcoming women who worked at our riad and who soon became our friends. The story of our trip to the hammam is just too epic for my little blog and so you will have to hear it some other time, but it was a very mind-opening, puritanical tendency-erasing experience. And afterwards we were hungry because we were there for 3 hours! So Khadija and Rachida showed us how to make a tagine. This is it before it was cooked. I guess after it was cooked we were too busy eating to take pictures of it- it tasted as good as it looks:


When the ladies were making the tagine I suddenly became very verklempt. I say that, but I'm not joking- I almost started crying. They were cutting carrots, and Khadija gave me a piece of carrot to eat while they were working- so much like my mom and my grandma. I love my host mom and my host family- but I still haven't felt like they are like my family- probably because they have very little in common with my very affectionate, very emotional, very into food, kind of loud, Italian-American family (sorry about the stereotypical caricature, but it's true!) I know I'm a mushball, but whatever- I was verklempt.

A bit about safety, since it's something everyone is worried about. Everyone I know thinks I'm crazy when it comes to safety. My mom thinks I'm foolishly trusting and my friends think I'm foolishly worried. Anyway, we had no men with us but the four of us stayed together the entire time. That advice about having men with you when you travel to Morocco... I'm not sure how important that is in a city like Marrakesh. We were very careful to stay in populated areas, were not out late at night, and had really researched the place where we stayed. Maybe if we hadn't been so careful we might have felt more of a threat- maybe if we had stayed longer. But speaking French was very helpful, as was having so many of us. My fear for the most part was of being ripped off, which I probably was a few times. But I was never really genuinely afraid for my safety at any time.

I was so sad to leave Marrakesh- actually from the first day we got there I was dreading having to leave in only a few short days. It was not enough time at all- we didn't go to the desert and we didn't ride camels, which was actually ok for me, but I would have just liked to stay there longer. But on Friday morning we left to go back to Barcelona...

Part III: Why aren't we in Marrakesh anymore? (February 27-March 2)

We got back to Barcelona and stayed in the same hostel as before because it was super clean and had free breakfast. Shahzadi went to Madrid for the second weekend (which I wish we had done too, kinda) so it was just the three of us. Barcelona is beautiful, but it really is a bit of a letdown after Marrakesh.

These guys were playing a Spanish version of bocce up near the Olympic stadium, a beautiful spot looking over all of Barcelona. They were pretty funny and really reminded me of playing at Campo di Bocce in LG- they had their measuring tape and would every once in awhile get into a little amiable shouting match about something or other. Don't worry- I didn't get verklempt- but it did remind me of home.



I stupidly got a 6:50AM flight out of Girona to Paris on Monday morning, while my friends bought one for 11:50AM. This meant that I had to get up at 3AM to take the metro to the bus station where I could take the hour long bus to Girona from Barcelona (remember? an hour away from the actual city) I forgot that the metro was closed at 3AM (of course! idiot) and tried to walk to the bus station from the hostel but quickly got lost. Now it's 3:30 and my bus leaves at 3:45. I get a taxi and the guy tells me something in Spanish like "You only had to go back one block and turn left and you'd be there. Yeah, really complicated." I was just like whatever, no hablo espagnol, but he was like "Si, muy complicado, muy complicado" the whole time! Mean, sarcastic old man. Anyway, I missed my bus, and had to wait until 5:15 for the next one. Luckily, I made friends with some very cool and sweet girls from NYU who are studying in Paris and we hung out at the bus station and at the airport where we had to wait until 11:50 after paying 75 euros for missing a flight by 10 minutes.

I met up with Elita and Moravia again, and we got on our flight ok, but when we got to Paris we had missed our trains. For the girls it was ok since their train was a later one than mine, but since my flight was earlier, my train was earlier too, and I missed it by about an hour and fifteen minutes. If you miss a train by more than an hour you need to buy a ticket for a new one. If you buy a ticket at 5PM on a weekday the day of your trip it costs 45 euros. At this point I may have broken down a little. I eventually got home to Bordeaux around 10PM, tired and with a migraine- that was one of the worst days ever. But I did make new friends!

Other than that last day, the trip was a dream- it was even worth that last day of hellishness. And when I got home I had a nice dinner waiting for me and a hug from my host mom. When I got back to school, we learned that the grève has gotten even more intense and that the school may be blocked soon. The History department was blocked (ie, tables blocking the doors so that no one could enter) on Thursday and the rest of the school may be shut down this week- possibly for weeks to come. The French folks are all very nice about it. They shrug apologetically and say "Bienvenue en France." What can you do? I'm told I'll still get my credits and my grades so all I can do is try to go to class and when it's cancelled go drink coffee in the cafeteria. Life is hard.

Another update is coming soon. Love and bisous à tout le monde.