The Misadventures of Michelina

Sidenote: Michelina was in Ghana with a group from her school before she met up with ISA in Granada

I don’t even know where to begin with this other than at the beginning, a whole two days after getting to Meknes.  So, it was our first Friday in Meknes and Michelina was out buying a phone when she started feeling really tired and faint.  I was at home because there was company over, and when she got home, she told me she had to go to sleep, and she did.  Over the next couple days she slept almost non-stop.  She would get up every now and then to try and eat, eat a few bites of food, then have to lie down because she was dizzy, and then fall asleep.  Our host mom and dad thought it was just from all the traveling and was totally normal because just about every American who comes here gets sick at some point.  My red flags started going off sooner, but I figured I was just being paranoid.  The extremity of her fatigue, back pain, and the fact that she told me, “I think this is the most water I ever drank in my life but I haven’t peed in three days” all made me very uncomfortable, but as I said, I thought I was just being paranoid.  I always forget how accurate my gut feelings can be... Anyway, by Tuesday morning our host parents decided she needed to go to the hospital to get some blood tests done.  They tested her for malaria, which came back negative.  She slept in the hospital for a couple of nights before they found out that she had Leptospirosis on Thursday (I think).  This is a bacteria that attacks your kidneys (explains the back pain and lack of urination) that I had already heard of because there was an outbreak of it in Nicaragua while I was in Costa Rica.  Now that she was being treated, she started to get better.  However, when I visited her on Friday, she looked worse than I had seen her since she got sick.  She told me that she had malaria, too.  She had spiked a fever that was higher than the bacteria should have caused, so the doctors decided to do the malaria test again since it can take a while to become active and detectable, and found that she had the most dangerous strain of malaria.  If left untreated once symptoms develop, it can be fatal in just a few days, so it is a good thing she was already in the hospital!  Since she had been taking anti-malaria drugs and no one else on her trip got sick at all, my theory is that she ate something contaminated with the bacteria, which then messed up her immune system and her body’s processing of the malaria pills, thereby giving the malaria a chance to thrive.  Other people in her group may have gotten bitten by a mosquito with the strain of malaria, but they didn’t get the bacteria so their pills should have been working fine.  Anyway, after that, it was just a long road to recovery, with her staying in the hospital another week after the malaria was detected, and then being kind of weak after she was released.  One little bright side to all of this was that the insurance we have with ISA covers travel expenses for one family member to visit if a student is hospitalized for more than 24 hours (or gets a felony), so her mom came to Meknes to visit for a week.

Because I fail at real blogging…

Well, I was hoping to write real blog entries about my time in Morocco so far, but since I am clearly failing at that I will just list some of the highlights for now.  Hopefully I will eventually get to write full entries for some of the bigger things.  I have been keeping up a list of things to blog about eventually, so for the most part I will just post that, but I will flesh it out a little bit to make it more interesting than just a list.  Since I just wrote it as I thought of things to write about, it does not follow the most logical order, but I think I am going to stick with it.  My last post ended with my arrival in Meknes, so I am very far behind.  I will pick up now with the short version of my life since this point, and yes, I am aware of how long the short version is.  And now that I wrote it all, I am going to take out three things and give them their own posts so I apologize if there is any discontinuity because I don’t have time to read through and fix stuff.  On to the update:

-My family: I already mentioned a little about Majda, my host mom, and Mamoun, my 10 y/o (about to be 11) host brother.  Also in the home are Mustafa, my host dad, Amin, another host brother, and Amina and Aziza, the two girls who live here and cook and clean for the family.  Mustafa is a surgeon and Majda is a nurse, so they are the unofficial ISA medical team.  If I get sick, I am in good hands!  Amin is Mustafa’s son from a previous marriage.  He is much older than Mamoun, is blind, and is a music teacher.  He will also be getting married in April (to Majda’s sister) and Michelina and I get to dress up for the wedding!  Amina and Aziza are both around the same age as Michelina and me and are a lot of fun, even though we can barely communicate with them.  It was weird for Michelina to get used to having them here, but my family in Costa Rica had Rosa, and the dynamic of it there was kind of bad while here it is great, so I am happy about that.  Life at home can be kind of crazy, but I love it!  Mamoun has endless energy and there are always people over for tea and/or dinner.

-Getting lost and finding my way: Michelina and I got lost a few times in our first couple of days here, and then I got lost a few more times on my own after she got sick (more on that in a bit).  The streets here are not all in a grid like we are used to, so we got turned around a lot.  It also didn’t help that the ISA director who showed us all how to get home from school is new and didn’t know where the homestay was!  By now, I think I have the hang of it, but I am still not always sure exactly which way is the quickest to get somewhere, but at least I (usually) know where I am.  Of course, this only applies to the little part of our neighborhood and small bit of two others in Meknes.  My neighborhood is called the Ville Nouvelle or Hamria.  It is the new part of the city.  In contrast is the Medina, which is the old city.  Every big city in Morocco seems to have a European style Ville Nouvelle and an old Moroccan style Medina.  Nowadays, Medinas are mostly filled with shops selling things ranging from artisanal items to produce to meat.  The streets turn and wind all over the place, so I only know how to properly navigate a few parts of ours.  The other neighborhood I kind of know is Zitoun, which is where my university is located.

-Classes, Moulay Ismail University, grande taxis: While here, I am taking Beginning Arabic 1 and 2, two content classes (Three Religions, Three Peoples, and Peace and Conflict Resolution), as well as a short 5 week course on the local Moroccan Arabic dialect of Darija.  They are all interesting and I am enjoying them, even though there are the occasional misunderstandings and bumps in adapting Moroccan teaching styles to work with American students.  The university itself is very nice.  It is a small campus, especially compared to UCSD, but there are always students around so I often run into people I know there.  Also, students here will go to the campus to hang out even when they don’t have class.  Students who have already graduated will even come hang out on campus with their friends.  Lastly, the options to get to school include walking, busing, petit taxis, or grande taxis.  The walk is about 45 minutes and is along a big road so the air is very dusty.  Since I already have some issues from my allergies which hit me as strong as they do at home, I don’t walk very often due to the dirt in the air.  I took the bus once with my friend, Nita, and a Moroccan student who we met at the taxi stand.  There were no taxis and we were late so we took the bus through all sorts of parts of Mkenes that we had never seen.  It takes a while a costs more than the grande taxi though, so I haven’t done it again since.  Petit taxis work like our taxis, except they only hold 3 people and will sometimes pick up other people so that they have 3, but only if you are all going in the same direction.  Now, grande taxis.  They are all big Mercedes Benz cars that, by our standards, hold 5 people.  Here, they hold 7: the driver and 6 passengers.  They work kind of like shuttles, so they taxis wait in certain places and you find one going the route you want.  I take the one from Hamria (the neighborhood I live in) to Zitoun (the neighborhood where the university is).  The taxi waits until 6 people are crammed in and then starts driving to its destination.  However, you can ask the driver to stop anywhere along the way, and if there is room, you can flag one down and get in along the way too.  They took some getting used to, but now I just think they are very useful.

-Tour of Meknes: We drove and walked around, but I forgot to charge my camera before it so I didn’t get to take any pictures.  We saw a gate in the medina (old part of the city), the old grainery, the mausoleum, and some great views of Meknes.  I don’t have much to say about it because as interesting as it was then, the rest of Meknes that I actually live in is more interesting to me now :)

-Sounds guys make at girls on the streets: AKA street harassment, but honestly, nothing said to me here is as bad as the stuff I hear at home.  The theory behind this is that all good Moroccan girls are at home at night, so if a guy wants to hit on her, he has to do it during the day and on the streets because the good girls will not be in the bars or clubs at night.  Basically, imagine how guys act in bars and clubs at night and put them on the street during all hours.  However, most of what they say here is a lot nicer and more complementary than what they say at home.  Mostly I just get welcomed to Morocco and told how beautiful I am in multiple languages, with them hoping I’ll respond to one.  The only thing here is how much more persistent some of them can be, and how much more often it happens.  Sometimes we get followed for blocks or by cars, and I can’t walk more than 10 feet out of my house without guys making calls or saying things, but I have practice blocking them out from when it happens at home.  What I find amusing is that the guys here use the same sound as the guys in Costa Rica to get female attention: Psssst, psssst, pssst!

-Jedi robes: So, there are these things called jellabas that people here wear a lot.  They come in all sorts of colors and patterns, and both men and women wear them.  I even bought a fleece one to wear in the house because electricity in expensive so they don’t really use any sort of heaters.  Not only are the fleece ones super comfortable and warm, but they look like Jedi robes.  Actually, they all look like Jedi robes, just some look like fancy ones.  I still find myself secretly smiling at all the Jedi walking around Morocco :)

-Couscous and shirtless belly dancing, talking about taking a belly dance class with Majda and watching “Whatever Lola Wants”: Most families in Morocco eat couscous every Friday for lunch, including the apartments where the other ISA students live.  However, and I don’t know why this is, my family here doesn’t eat it every week, and not always on Friday when we do.  I wrote this particular one down because it was the first time we had couscous and it was on a Saturday.  Another of Mustapha’s sons came with his family, including his daughter, Selma, who was about 3 years old.  We also had a mini-belly dance party that included a moment when Majda pulled off her sweater revealing nothing but her bra underneath.  Being in a Muslim country where people are covered wrist to neck to ankle in public, this was very surprising for us!  However, once she realized that people in other buildings would be able to see into our apartment she put her sweater back on.  We then talked about (or thought we talked about) taking a dance class with Majda, but it turns out she just meant dancing in the house and taking a lesson from her.  These are VERY fun, but dance classes here are not very structured so Heather, a girl in my program who belly dances at home, has been teaching some more technical classes for us too.  We also watched the movie, “Whatever Lola Wants” which was fun because it is Majda’s favorite movie and it is about an American girl who goes to Egypt and learns to belly dance.  It also features a song from a musical I have been in :)

-Wedding, seeing the Riad in the Medina: So as I already mentioned, my host brother, Amin, will be getting married in April!  Today, Michelina and I bought takshidas (hope I remembered that right) for the wedding!  I don’t really know how to describe them right now, so you’ll just have to wait for pictures.  On my first Saturday here, the family went to see the Riad in the Medina where the wedding (or at least part of it because it didn’t seem big enough for a wedding) will be and I went with them.  A Riad is a traditional style Moroccan house.  They are very plain on the outside because in Islam you are not supposed to show signs of wealth.  This means that most of the buildings in the Medina all look the same on the outside, but then the insides can be amazingly beautiful and used as guest houses or event spaces like the one we saw.

-Squatty Potties and Bum Guns: This topic may one day get its own entry, but for now this will have to do.  If you don’t want to read a small description of my toilet adventures here, skip to the next part.  So I knew coming here that a lot of places outside of the big cities have squatty potties instead of “Western” style toilets, AKA a porcelain hole in the ground with grooved places for your feet.  Without going into details, I will just say that I am getting pretty good at using them and actually prefer them to disgustingly dirty public bathrooms with Western toilets.  Turns out squatting is a lot easier than trying to hover over a dirty toilet seat!  However, I did not expect to see a hose next to the toilet in my homestay and not a square of toilet paper to be seen.  Majda showed us a very basic charade so that we knew what it was for, but we were still bewildered and nervous.  The solution to this is not as interesting as with the squatters: we just buy toilet paper.  However, we did use the hose the first night until we bought toilet paper, but no, I did not use it to the point of not being able to use my left hand for eating.  Which, by the way, is only a loose rule here in the cities and only applies to the hand that reaches into the communal dish.  Tearing bread and actually putting food in your mouth with either hand seems to be fine, at least in my house.

-Meals: Mealtime here is usually a very communal activity.  Sometimes we all get our own plate of food to eat off of, but more often do not.  For big meals when there are guests over, we start with mint tea or juice, and cookies.  This is also what we have when guests come over who are not staying to eat a meal.  After pre-dinner tea time is over, we move to the table and start with some salads and appetizer dip things.  Khobs (bread) is central to most meals as it is often the main eating utensil.  Salads are eaten with forks, but the other things are best eaten by scooping some up with a small piece of khobs.  Using the index and middle finger to support the bread, you use your thumb to assist in the scooping process and make sure the food stays there until you get it to your mouth.  After these are done, a large dish is brought out with the main course.  Some people serve themselves a portion from the dish onto their plate, but others, like Majda, usually just eat off of the dish with a fork or their hands, both with and without some khobs.  Sometimes it is like a feeding frenzy, but it is always a mini-adventure!  After this comes dessert, which is usually fresh fruit.  We used to have mostly oranges and bananas, but now we have started having more strawberries, and they are all delicious!  At smaller meals, this is all just downsized a little, but there are usually the same number of courses involved.

-Communication via French, Arabic, Darija, English, Spanish, Italian, Charades: This started out with more charades than language, but with the help of Arabic and Darija classes plus some French tutoring at ISA and just picking up bits of language around the house, I am getting better at communicating with a nice variation of languages!  Since I speak Spanish and Michelina speaks Italian, and both are similar to French and spoken by some people in Morocco, we are getting pretty adept at communicating with the people here.  However, it is always an adventure, especially when trying to haggle in the Medina...

-Linguistics seems to be helping with the language stuff sometimes, especially with pronunciation since I am used to making sounds I don’t know.  After some more time in Arabic class, this is confirmed.  Or I just have a knack for languages.  Apparently I set the record grade for the Arabic 1 midterm.  Maybe I have a knack for languages that was then boosted by my study of linguistics?

-So cold I am wearing 3 pairs of pants right now.  Update now that I am writing this: It is not that cold anymore.  Once upon a time I wore 3 pairs of pants at night to keep warm while doing homework because they don’t use heaters in my house, unless company is over.  Then I bought a fleece jellaba in Meknes’ color, olive green, that kept me nice and cozy.  Now, it is getting to be springtime and is much warmer than it was before.  Every now and then I still break out my fleecy, but for the most part, normal amounts of clothing are fine.

-Love it here  Pretty self-explanatory :)

-On that note, kitchen dance party with Amina and Aziza after dinner was super fun

-Oh and that whole roommate sick with leptospirosis and malaria thing, mom visiting, etc.  This has its own post now.

-I LOVE THE HAMMAM: This has its own post, too.

-Poetry Slam, Roxy: There was a poetry slam for Women’s Day at my university here because slam poet Roxy Azari is doing a Watson scholarship year of poetry workshops around the world.  It was absolutely AMAZING.  A lot of it was in English so we could understand it.  The girls spoke about veiling (both wearing one and not wearing one), body image (“I love you body!”) and men (“I DON’T need a man!”) among other things.  After the show, we talked to Roxy, who actually picked us out of the crowd as the Americans.

-The mysterious buzzing noise:  There is a weird buzzing noise that seems to come from somewhere by the dining table, but we are not sure where and have no idea what causes it.

-I am studying abroad in Morocco and the most frustrating parts of my life have to do with Americans: I know it is cold, but please stop complaining about your heaters not working and just wear more clothes in your apartment.  We do not use heaters in our apartment and we have been managing just fine.  Electricity is expensive here so maybe this is a good time to try to ditch some of those American habits of consumption.

-Volunteer day: One of my professors partnered with ISA to plan this volunteer day.  It was very last minute so we only had a couple days to figure out what we were doing.  The basic plan was to donate goods to some Amazigh villages near Meknes, so we pooled money to buy food products and collected clothing and other goods from our group and the people we know here.  We also partnered with some Moroccan girls (who happened to be mostly girls from the poetry slam) which made it a lot more fun!  Michelina and I also invited our host brother, Mamoun, to come so that he could see how some other people live.  When the day came, we loaded the bus with flour, sugar, tea, and rice, as well as bags and bags of other items to donate and some balls and coloring supplies we bought the day before.  Daniel forgot the ISA camera so I became the official ISA photographer of the day.  We drove to the first village with plenty of dancing and craziness on the bus.  First we had tea and some snacks in one of the homes, and then we started distributing the goods and play with the kids.  I was taking pictures the whole time so I was not that involved with the process, but I have two albums of pictures on Facebook!  Unfortunately, though expected, some fighting broke out among the mothers trying to get goods for their families and we had to leave in a hurry.  We stopped at a couple other villages before stopping for a barbeque lunch.  After much more dancing, both after lunch and then again on the bus, we got back to Meknes.

-Why am I so much more homesick here when I actually feel much more at home than I did in Costa Rica?  Second program?  More exciting stuff happening with Isaac?  Regardless, I am having an amazing time so a little homesickness is easy to get over with a nice Skype session with my family :)

Marhaba

“Marhaba” means “welcome” in Arabic, so you can probably guess that this post is about my first experiences in Morocco.

Jennifer guarding our stuff in the terminal :)

After 5 days in Granada, it was time to head to Morocco!  We loaded the bus and started the drive to Algeciras, the southern Spanish port where we would get on a ferry to Tangier, Morocco.  In case this was the last time I would see them, I bought a thing of Paprika (red pepper) flavored Pringles at the stop we made.  I now know that they have these in Morocco too.  If you ever see them, try them.  They are quite yummy.  Moving on, we arrived at Algeciras, unloaded all of our things, and proceeded to the terminal.  Some form-filling, passport-stamping, and luggage-dragging later (both on the way to and on the boat), we found ourselves seated on the ferry and on our way.  You should have seen us when we realized that the land we could see in front of us was Africa, was Morocco.

Africa

Travel tip about crossing the Strait of Gibraltar: Since the water seemed calm, I decided to try it out without taking anything for seasickness and lucked out.  I got a little dizzy inside, but if I stayed outside on the deck, I was fine.  However, I have heard that conditions can be bad to the point of turning the smooth one hour ride into a miserable four hours, so if you get seasick, you might want to have something ready in case the conditions are not in your favor.

Anyway, when we got to the other side, we passed through more customs, noticing the picture of the king in the port and the women working there with hijaabs (veil/head covering) that matched their uniforms, while trying to semi-contain our excitement at finally being in Morocco.  We loaded our new bus as the call to prayer rang out, and found ourselves in a bus with green shag carpet and psychedelic patterns on the ceiling.  Turns out that is the ISA Morocco bus and we use it whenever we travel.  Possible names we discussed: the Love Bus, the Magic Carpet, the Magic School Bus.  About half an hour later we arrived in the actual city of Tangier, which is not in the same place as the port.  We dropped our stuff off in the hotel, stopped at ATMs and currency exchange stores, walked around a little, and then had less than an hour to get dinner before our academic orientation back at the hotel.

We wandered around looking for Melwi, something that Daniel’s girlfriend, Cristina, recommended and that I have been eating most days for breakfast now, but could not find them at a place that would be fast enough.  I was with Don and Nita, two other students from my program, and we saw some others eating in a pizza and shawarma place that was so small it barely had standing room.  The other girls finished eating so we swapped in to where they had been standing and ordered food using a mixture of various languages and pointing at the menu, but still had hardly any room to eat.  The man behind the counter directed us to go upstairs.  We saw a tiny, winding, spiral staircase in the back that was practically a ladder and climbed up it to find ourselves in another small, full, low-ceilinged room.  Since all the tables were taken and we had more room to stand up there, we started eating standing up.  It was then that a woman holding a baby pulled the extra chair next to her out from behind the table and gave it to us before gesturing to others to do the same.  Less than a minute later, we found ourselves with chairs, sitting in a small circle in the middle of the room.  A family next to us then moved their stuff from the two tables it was on to one and gave us the other table.  When the worker came up to bring someone their pizza, we expected him to be upset or at least annoyed, but he didn’t even react.  All we could do was grin uncontrollably as we ate, and say “shukran” (thank you in Arabic) repeatedly to everyone in the room.  I could not have asked for or even imagined a nicer welcome to Morocco :)

Banana-Nutella crepe and Moroccan mint tea

But the welcome was not over since that was just our first night in Morocco and we weren’t even in our soon-to-be hometown of Meknes.  That night I went to a café with a group of people and got a banana and Nutella crepe and mint tea, the Moroccan specialty!  There was a slight peanut allergy glitch, but it was an otherwise good night.  Before leaving Tangier the next day, we had a walking tour of the city.  We learned that every traditional Arab neighborhood has 5 things: a mosque, a school, a well, a public bakery, and a hammam, a traditional public bathing place.  Religion, education, water, food, and hygiene.  What more do you need?  We wandered through the medina, or old city, and then came to the meat and fish market.  I had prepared myself for the sight of dead animals still mostly whole, but I had not prepared for the smell.  Let’s just say I was grateful for all the practice I got not breathing through my nose during scuba certification.  After some more shawarma for lunch, we loaded back onto the bus to head to Meknes!

ISA Meknes group in Tangier

I don’t know about you, but when I thought about going to Africa and Morocco, I did not imagine rolling green hillsides.  Well that’s what we drove through on our way from Tangier to Meknes.  It was beautiful, especially when the sun set right before we got there.  And then we were in Meknes, the bus pulling up next to one of the apartment buildings and Michelina and I pressing our noses up against the window of the bus to see our host mom and little brother waiting outside.  We got out, all smiles, and met our host mom, Majda, and Mamoun, our host brother who is ten years old but will be turning eleven the day before I turn twenty-two.  Before we knew it, they took us to the car to load up our stuff and drive what turned out to only be a couple blocks to our new home for the next three and a half months.

Sunset in Morocco

Time to start catching up...in Spain

So I have now been in Morocco for three and a half weeks.  Due to some unexpected complications, I am just now going to start getting settled into some semblance of normal life, but I’ll get into that later.  The last time I updated my blog I was on the train from Madrid to Granada to meet my ISA Morocco group.  As you can probably imagine, a lot has happened since then.  This update has been haunting me for a month so hopefully the Spain update will be the start of a long game of catching up to the present.  Since I am just trying to spit out stories, they might be a little messy and for that I am sorry.  Now, on to this update I keep talking about...

My journey to Granada was pretty uneventful actually.  I got to the train station, caught a taxi, and got dropped off a block from the hotel because of the construction being done on our hotel’s street.  Checked in no problem and was directed to my room where I would be rooming with my future roommate, Michelina.  However, she was not there yet.  Some people had arrived already so the front desk gave me a list of the rooms we were in, but I wanted to shower so I just headed for my room to relax a little.  However, as I was about to get ready to shower, there was a knock on my door.  The man there didn’t seem to understand that I knew Spanish so he kept trying to tell me in his very broken English something about having to change rooms, but then he randomly left.  I went down to the front desk and asked what was going on (in Spanish) and was told that I had to switch to a bigger room because they were adding a person.  After moving, I waited a little to see if anyone was getting there soon to try to avoid anyone arriving while I was in the shower.  I watched BBC a bit to find out what was going on in Egypt, but eventually decided to go ahead and shower.  Of course, while I was in the shower the other girl, Meredith, arrived.

After I got dressed, we decided to use the list the front desk had given me to try to find some other students in our program.  We ended up finding people in a few more rooms and ended up hanging out talking with maybe half of the group in one of the rooms before going downstairs to stop in our room on the way to our first ISA meeting.  Already, the group seemed to get along really well, and so far that feeling has held up (knock on wood).  When Meredith and I stopped in our room, we found Michelina there!  Unfortunately, the airline had lost her luggage somewhere on the way from Ghana where she had been traveling with a group from her school for a few weeks.  It took a few days for her suitcase to be delivered to our hotel, but it got there.  Too bad that wasn’t the end of her bad luck with Ghana, but more on that later.

We had ISA meetings almost every day about Granada, as well as about Morocco and the culture and just some general information about our lives for the next few months.  We met Daniel, our Resident Director, Laura, the ISA Assistant Director of European Operations who is based in Granada and stayed in Meknes with us for the first three weeks, her husband, Manolo, and Mohammed, the Resident Director of the new ISA program in Jordan.  Let me just start out by saying that they (and everyone I have met so far) are all awesome and amazing people.  Daniel studied abroad with ISA in Granada while he was in school while Laura was Resident Director there and then started working with ISA in Granada.  He worked there for 7 years, I believe, before helping start up the program in Meknes, which is now in its third year.  At the rate I am going with studying abroad with ISA, I will probably ask him more about all this at some point since working with ISA seems a probable part of my future.  Plus I now know Laura, who told me if I ever need a job, to send in my resume :) Laura is traveling around right now, visiting ISA programs to basically do some quality control, and she said that this program is definitely doing well since the students seem more enthusiastic than at many other sites.  It was also fun to learn that she helped set up the program in Buenos Aires that I did almost two years ago, and knows most of the people who work there.  Then there is Mohammed, a Jordanian-Palestinian who got his Ph.D. in Arizona and teaches at refugee camps.  Given that, it may not come as a surprise that I, along with a lot of other students in the group, had a lot of good conversations with him about life and teaching and politics and culture.  He also told me that he is trying to get the ISA volunteer branch, ELAP, set up in Jordan which means I might be able to do some stuff there sometime, even after I am done with school.  However, I did ask Laura and she said that I do not have to be a current student to participate in ISA study abroad programs so Morocco may not be the end of them for me just yet :)

As usual with study abroad programs, there are a lot of students here who are majoring in some form of international studies/relations and we are from all over the US.  One of the things you don’t think about when studying abroad is how many people you’ll meet from all over your home country.  Anyway, we all have been getting along very well and so we had a lot of fun in Granada.  We spent most nights out getting drinks and tapas, and had tours 2 of the days.  Now let me explain tapas: Granada has this thing going where you can go to a bar and order a drink, and it comes with free tapas, or some sort of small plate of food/snack.  I believe just about all of Spain does the tapas thing, but I have heard that Granada is the only place that gives them to you for free with your drink, and the drink can be anything ranging from bottled water (because free food with free tap water would be too cool) to soda to alcoholic beverages.  On a different note related to food, Michelina and Meredith discovered this place with these small donuts that reminded me of Trish’s Mini-Donuts at Pier 39 in San Francisco, but these ones were covered in chocolate syrup :)

"La Media Luna"

During the days, we had a couple tours and went adventuring.  On our first day, we toured Granada and the neighborhood Albaicin, which is the traditional Moorish neighborhood.  One of the most amusing parts of this tour to me was this one door that was very Moorish in deisgn and had what appeared to be Arabic script over it, but as I looked closer I noticed it actually just said “La Media Luna” (“the half moon” in Spanish) but written so that it looked like Arabic.  Oh and to backtrack slightly, my alarm clock on my phone plays the introduction to “Circle of Life” so Michelina had started calling me Rafiki because it means “friend” in Swahili and in Arabic.  Back to the tour: we were walking and she points up to this balcony where I see a stuffed Rafiki sitting.  That is when we decided the nickname was permanent.  Anyway, we got our first little taste of Moorish architecture and the Arabic language, and made it up to this church square that had an amazing view of the Alhambra.

Alhambra from the church square

The next day’s activity was a tour of the Alhambra, an old Moorish palace and probably the largest example of Islamic architecture in Spain.  You know, Christians built great churches and cathedrals, but I think the Moors win as my favorite castle architects.  When the Moorish reign ended and Spain was ruled by Christians, they built more in the Alhambra and it just does not compare to the original Islamic architecture.  Mosaics, woodcarvings, and bright colors definitely win over big, gray stones :)

By the way, my pictures on Facebook probably say a lot more about the Alhambra than I can write here since my memory for history that I hear is horrible.

Anyway, the next day, Kyle, Meredith, Mike, and I decided to go explore the hills where the cave-people live.  Now let me explain: there are these cave-homes in the hills of Granada and people can just go find an empty one and move in.  As you might be able to guess, they are known as being the hippies of Granada and they have their own little community up in the hills, but come down to the city to get food and other supplies to bring back up in backpacks.  I thought they sounded cool, so I asked about going to see them and had some friends who wanted to go, too, so we traipsed up the hill to explore.  We were told to be careful about the stuff we had with us because it was not the biggest tourist area, and the people there may not be too fond of us being there so we had to be respectful (not that we were planning on being rude, but ok).

Hillside where the caves are

Stairs down to Granada

We wandered up through the Albaicin, tentatively following a map to keep track of where we were and where we wanted to be while trying not to stand out too much as tourists, before we got to the place where we had been told to go up the stairs.  The only place we could see stairs went up along/behind a house, so we decided to try them since there was no “do not pass” sign or anything, figuring if anyone yelled at us, we would know that they were the wrong stairs.  Turns out they were the right stairs and took us up to a church on the top of the hill.  We saw some cool graffiti on the way, and then proceeded around the back of the church as instructed to find the caves.  We ended up spending most of our time just wandering around the hills, enjoying the amazing view into the mountains and over the city, but did find a few caves.  The first one we found was one we were on top of.  They remind me of hobbit holes from the way the doors are just sitting in the hillsides, and chimneys sit poking out of the ground.  We saw this one front yard that was elaborately decorated with recycled materials and had a sign about hours, so I went to ask the man working on the roof what the place was.  From what he said to me before he just ignored me, I think it was both his home and a church.  I don’t know if it is because we were clearly not from there (even though I was speaking Spanish) or if he was just busy fixing something and didn’t feel like talking, but he did not seem to want to talk to me so I left.  More willing to talk were two girls sitting on a bench overlooking the hills and the city of Granada.  They did not live in the caves, but one of them lives in Granada for 6 months out of the year.  They were very nice, told me I had to go to Chefchaouan while in Morocco, and gave me some good Spanish practice.  I told them that it was really easy for me to understand them, and they told me that since they were from Catalunia, they learned Spanish as a second language after Catalan.  Since we had made plans to meet up with Michelina for lunch, we started our descent and got yelled at by someone for going the wrong way, but quickly corrected our path and made it down safely.  We even managed not to get too lost on the way.

Enjoying the view

Hobbit hole :)

Fun Facts:

-The “Al” in “Alhambra” means “the” in Arabic, so calling it “the Alhambra” is actually redundant, just like the Rio Grande River

Granada

 -Granada means “pomegranate” in Spanish and there are pomegranates hidden (and not so hidden) all over Granada

Moving

 -Furniture, such as bookshelves, are moved into these tall, narrow houses via ropes and pulleys on the outside of the building, while tourists stand in the street and watch

El Ejército de Salvación

I am definitely using this train ride to play catch-up with my blogging!  At home I was too busy relaxing and getting ready, and the other train rides were spent napping a lot.  Now, I feel decently rested and keep thinking of those posts I never wrote so I will write them!  Unfortunately, I do not have wifi on this train so I will have to remember to post them after I get to the hotel in Granada.

In addition to the study abroad program I did with ISA, I did their ELAP volunteer program.  This consisted of some extra application pieces, such as my resume in Spanish and a Spanish phone interview, as well as an extra fee.  To participate in this program, you must already speak decent Spanish (I forget what level) because you work with Spanish speakers.  I chose to work at the Ejército de Salvación, or Salvation Army, in the daycare center.  I should mention, in case it isn’t clear, that this daycare center was for underprivileged families and was lacking in resources.  They do very well with what they have, but they clearly could use more.  Since I was only taking one 4-week Spanish class, I started working the week after the class was over.  As it turned out, my friend Jaclyn who had been in my Spanish class was also volunteering there at the same time.  Jaclyn, if I miss any highlights or kids please feel free to comment!

I want this posted because I want some record of the kids and people there, as well as some highlights from my time there.  I don’t think we ever had all of the kids there on the same day, so I do not know the exact number of them and therefore might forget some now and have to come back to add them later.  If any of them ever see this (doubt it since I was working with the 2-3 year olds), please don’t be offended, I love you all!

Mary: The main teacher in the classroom that Jaclyn and I chose to work in.  We liked her and so we got very worried the second week when she wasn’t there, but then she came back :)

That other teacher with the curly hair: Jaclyn, if you remember names, please let me know!  She was around sometimes and was also very nice.

Nina: A girl form Germany who was also in Costa Rica studying and volunteering.

Rifka and Janina: Two other girls from Germany who were only there for a week or two.

Isabelle: A girl from Switzerland who was there for a week, and then I ran into her on the bus back from Panama.

The fix it/cleaning guy: He was always there and helped out with the kids sometimes, but mostly he was around fixing and cleaning stuff.  However, when he did come by the classroom, the kids all loved him.  And he was Joseph in the Christmas show.

That boy with the glasses who wasn’t in our class: He may have been my favorite in the Christmas show, two left feet and all.  Jaclyn, you know who I’m talking about :)

Zayra: I think she was technically our boss, but I didn’t interact much with her.

And now for the kids from our class!  Well, and the older Jeaustin since he was in time-outs in our class maybe half the time we were there.  Actually, that’s enough for me to remember him by so I just have all the others.  Oh boy, let’s see if I can remember the Jeaustins/Jhostin right…

Aaron: Definitely the best behaved of the group.  However, the teacher had a knack of looking at him in the few moments when he was not behaving and so he would get in trouble as much as the rest of them.  He was also the only one who could color inside the lines and had some sort of fear of the play place we went to one day.  It had a structure like the ones at McDonalds, but he refused to go inside and got really quiet when he even had to take his shoes off.  Once I told him he could put his shoes back on and play outside of the structure, he was fine.

Jeaustin: He may have been one of the cutest kids there, but he was definitely a crybaby and a troublemaker.  If he was crying, it was most likely that he took a toy from someone and then they took it back, which is when he would start crying.  There was a day when he was telling me something and when one of the other kids came up to me, he put his arms around me and yelled, “ Es mio, es mio!” (she’s mine, she’s mine, though not quite correct since I am a girl and it should be mia).

Jhostin: Another cute crybaby who most likely started the trouble that led to his tears.  He was also a wildchild, both in looks and actions.  He had long hair and resembled a young Tarzan, and seemed to have trouble understanding how to share.

Jeaustin and Brittany: Siblings, and the sister helps me remember which Jeaustin I mean here.  So I don’t know why, but all the Jeaustins and Jhostin were the most difficult of the kids.  They all grabbed toys and cried when they didn’t get their way more than most of the other kids, but of course, that is only a little surprising since all little boys can be expected to do that.  However, this Jeaustin always had this smile on his face that showed he knew when he was doing something he shouldn’t have been doing.  Brittany did it too.  I remember a day when Brittany and some of the other girls all wanted to play with my hair.  They were actually pretty gentle so it turned out to be an easy way to entertain them while I could still play with other kids.

Aisha: Aisha must have been in the middle of potty training because she was one of the few kids in my class not in diapers but she was wet a lot.  One day we had to roll up the carpet because she peed on it, but no one really knew what to do with it so we just left it in a corner to dry.  I don’t know if we would have done something different if this had been a daycare center that actually had the money and resources it needed, but hey it was the best we could do.  Aisha was one of those kids who is fine with whatever she is doing, but then when someone else starts doing something new, she wants to do it too.  Oh, and she always had the cutest gloves.

Kiani: At first I thought Kiani must be one of the youngest ones because of how little she talked, but then I realized she actually knew what was going on a lot of the time, even if she decided to act in a way that went against it.  Yes, Kiani was a sneaky one, but she was adorable when it was dancing time!  She was sitting in one of the eating tables once (with straps so they were for time outs too) and was sit-dancing and singing so cutely I wish I’d had my camera that day!  Yet for some reason she didn’t do too well at the Christmas show.  I think once she saw her mom, that was it.  She went up for one dance and just stood there crying, head turned up and all.  At least she’s cute, though that might not be saying much since they all were :)

Isabella: Now she had to have been the youngest one we had.  She barely talked at all and always had a sock-blankie with her, usually in her mouth.

Steven: Oh Steven had this laugh that I could not get over yet could not get a video of!  It was this like almost evil sounding chuckle, but it sounded more like just some old fat guy laughing.  Gah I can’t describe it!  I hope I always remember that laugh because it is funny enough that I almost started laughing on the train when I thought of it.

Dennis: He makes me wonder where the stereotype of Asians putting up peace signs in pictures came from because here was a little Asian boy from Costa Rica who threw up a peace sign in one of my pictures.  He was a sweet kid, but very set on having things a certain way and not changing them.  When he got mad he would hit the floor or table right in front of the person he was mad at and made this mean face at them.  There was also this one time when he was crying and the teacher was telling him to stop and he was definitely trying, but the cries kept getting out and I was nervous he was going to choke on the effort to hold them in!  And now I don’t want to end this on the angry/sad note so just reminding myself how cute he was when he was happy :)

Saray: She was one of the quieter, well-behaved ones and was only there about half the time so I actually can’t think of any stories about her, but she was also a cutie.  Oh, I do remember her when we went to the play place after the piñata and she had a red lollipop that turned her mouth all red.  Which reminds me of Aisha and her yellow lollipop and mouth.  That was a fun day…

Dixian and Ethan: They were also not particularly badly behaved and only there about half the time so I don’t have many stories about them.  Ethan didn’t seem to like getting his picture taken at the Christmas show so I have a picture of him with his gloved hands over his face.

Victoria: A very pretty girl who often liked to play with the cars with the boys, but still was a part of the hair-playing day.

Kensley: I can’t forget Kensley!  He was my little buddy.  On the first day, the teacher told us that he was slightly autistic, but I think he might be a little more than just slightly autistic.  Anyway, he took a liking to me and clung to me most of the day.  I learned that he was fine when things were constant, but once they changed he would freak out until he got used to the new situation.  Some days he loved puzzles, others he didn’t want to touch them but would guide my hands to the pieces and where they went.  I just hope that the center and his family have the resources to support him in school over the years because he needs a little more help than the other kids.