June 6, 7, 8

Salaam from Africa! The past two days have been such a blur, I can't believe it. I flew from Raleigh to New York at 4 pm on Saturday, and then flew overnight from JFK to Paris. After that very long flight I jumped right on another plane from Paris right to Rabat, Morocco (or Maroc as they say in French.) I was nervous at first because I am not advanced in Arabic and everyone here assumes I speak French because I am white, so I have to give a lot of confused looks and I feel very typically American. After going through customs and being questioned about the swine flu by some government doctors, I found the driver with the CIEE sign and headed to the hotel.

Rabat is beautiful! The plane ride got me all excited because we flew over the most beautiful river called the Bou Regreg (you know how I love rivers :)) and all of the varying brown and yellow patches of land juxtaposed to it were amazing. Rabat is located right on one side of the river, opposite a residential city called Sale. The hotel I am staying at last night and tonight is right in the middle of downtown and is very cute (I am sitting on the terrace right now with some apartments overhead and people chatting in Arabic and French in the restaurant below.)

After we arrived at the hotel and met our program director, Madiha, we all met up for dinner at the hotel. After dinner, the three of us students walked downtown and through the medina (center market). The medina was crazy! There were people shouting prices everywhere with everything from meat and fruit to cheap soccer cleats (NICE) and random plastic toys and rugs. It was very overwhelming and awesome at the same time. More about the market later…

The second day was all full of touristy activities. We first went to Chellah, which is an ancient ground that dates back to the 12^th century. It was really cool to see Roman ruins right next to Arab and Berber ones. We had a hilarious tour guide named Fatima who told us all about the history of the two cultures. There was a beautiful view from there of the city next door, Sale. We also went to the Hassan Tower, which is a famous landmark. The Hassan tower is an unfinished minaret built by a sultan in 1200, who tried to build the largest mosque in the Arab world. It was under construction when the sultan died, and so building stopped halfway through. Right next to the Hassan tower is the Mausoleum of Mohammad V, which is very cool.

Next we went to the King’s Palace, which was beautiful but of course we could not go inside. We actually needed clearance to get into the walls of the palace alone! There are guards everywhere dressed in intricate clothing. My favorite part of this tourist trip was definitely the local Kasbah. The Kasbah was built inside an old fortress, so there are beautiful clay walls and gates surrounding the outside. Inside the Kasbah is a very urban and hip neighborhood where all artists and rich retired people live. Of course my camera died right before then, but we should go back. The walls are half ocean blue and half white, with a very Greek feel to it. Lots of beautifully decorated doors and mosaics are all over the hallways of the Kasbah.

At night, we went to a very cool, very hidden Moroccan restaurant inside the medina. The medina, like the Kasbah, has lots of twisted alleyways with many unlabeled doors. I have no idea how people can tell which doors are houses or mosques or restaurants or shops, they all look the same to me! The restaurant was amazing, and the food was even better. I met my Arabic teacher at dinner. She is a very sweet Moroccan lady who speaks Arabic and French, but no English. Tomorrow I will meet my family! I will write about that later…