Loving life

sorry for not posting for muchisimo tiempo. im currently in alicante and about to head to the beach. having a great time. just spent 2 weeks in northern spain surfing. will blog later, la playa is calling mi nombre.

TTTT

The funky cold Medina

We took three different taxis to the medina. Marisa and I luckily got paired with Mustafa and he shared the history of Fez on our ten minute ride. When we arrived to one the medina’s gates, Mustafa gave us some background on the largest urban zone without cars. We saw some African’s singing and dancing in the street, and Mustafa told us they started dancing when they got freed from slavery, and havent stopped since. Mustafa was straight faced.

Taxi ride to the medina


At the gates


Mustafa then took us through the narrow streets of the medina. We saw all kinds of products being sold. From spices to sheeps heads. The most amazing thing about the medina is that its actually still functioning as it did in the 9th century. I feel like some other places I’ve been to are functioning solely for tourists, but this definitely wasn’t the case. I saw people tanning leather, making fabric, shucking vegetables, and making pottery the same way they had been doing for centuries. Mustafa took us to some great shops that we would of never found on our own. While in the leather shop, I was very tempted to buy a camel leather briefcase for 400 djarum, but decided against it.

Leather pools



We visited the oldest university in the world, from before Christ. We ate a great lunch of shwarma (sp?) a very spiced meat and cous cous. It was amazing. We sat on this huge pillows and enjoyed our meal in peace away from the noisy medina. After lunch, we wandered about the medina for awhile. I was invited into a leather shop by a man with one arm. He told me he was selling his shop to study plants. He wanted to make a potion to make a mans penis bigger. He continued to tell me two very dirty jokes and I thanked him for his time and left. For an after lunch snack, I got a garbanzo bean sandwich for 50 cents from a little boy. It was tasty. We went to a fabric shop and got dressed up in some authentic outfits and after, we visited the local “doctor” He had hundreds of vials and jars filled with potions, spices, dyes and who knows what else. He sat us down and had us sniff some stuff to clear our heads. He then introduced his different potions and spices. I bought a bunch of saffron for my mom. It was very cheap compared to America. I got 5 grams of the spice for around 20 euro.

Sheep heads for sale


We took a big Scooby doo style taxi to a local supermarket that sold beer in the very back. We picked up some local beer made in Casablanca. When we got back to the hotel, our waiter from the night before delivered hash to our room. We spent the night on our balcony drinking beer and smoking Moroccan hash. We got dinner down the street and after, me and the two other guys wanted to check out the nightlife. We went to the hotel next door to its bar. We walked in to the dark, smoke-filled room completely underdressed. There was an older crowd of Moroccan men dressed very nicely and enjoying listening to a Moroccan woman sing Arabic songs, going from table to table while a keyboardist accompanied her. There were a couple prostitutes at the bar which were not bad looking. We sat on a huge leather couch and ordered a beer. The prostitutes were eyeing us and the whole time we were just hoping that the woman singer would not come over to our table. We finished our beer, decided we didn’t really fit into the scene there and walked home. We all slept well last night, with a trip to the atlas mountains on our agenda for the next day.

Saturday Shwackage

Morocco Teaser

Heres a little on Morocco. Sorry for not updating in a long while but I've been traveling too much to write. Just starting to sit down and reflect. Here's a little something...but I have much more.



I decided to take a week off school for my spring break to travel for 2 weeks. Mostly because I wanted to have enough time in Morocco and Italy, but also because flying on Wednesdays is mucho barato (cheap). I talked to my teacher Sara about missing so much class and she said I’ll lose 10 percent of my grade in the course, but I felt it was worth it. She also told me I’ll learn more traveling than in the classroom. She told me I’ll have a test the day after I get back and to have fun. I left Wednesday morning on the 24th of March to fly to Alicante to meet up with Marisa and the morocco crew. When I was descending, my sinuses and ears started killing me. I arrived congested and in pain. Luckily, there was a farmacia in the airport, and they gave me some decongestants. I waited in the airport all afternoon for the Alicanteans to meet up with me because our flight was around 4. I slept in the airport, on my backpack, and started an epic journey. The crew met me at the airport and we checked in to Ryanair. I foolishly checked my backpack. We passed through security and I met the people I would be spending the next 4 days and 3 nights with in Arabia. Their were 8 of us, 3 guys and 5 girls. They all are from different parts of the U.S. and are all studying with Marisa in Alicante. We had a beer at the airport to calm the nerves and boarded the plane.
The flight was uneventful except for the landing. After we touched down, the passengers erupted in a loud and raucous round of applause. It made me feel like soft landings were unusual in Africa. As I walked off the plane and looked at the sign for Fez airport, with its foreign scribble of Arabic, it hit me, I was in Africa. We passed through the long lines of customs and were rewarded with new Moroccan stamp on our passports. We changed our money from Euro to Djarums and the exchange rate was excellent. We got about 11 djarums for every Euro and walked out of the airport with thousands of this new currency. Immediately, the Moroccan cab drivers were all over us, offering us rides in their 70’s Mercedes. With the help of an American studying in Fez, we found a couple of drivers to take us to our hotel. I was reminded of Mexico driving into Fez, except that the radio was blasting French and Arabic music. Marisa impressed me with her French once again. She doesn’t like to admit it, but she’s really good. She was holding a decent conversation with the taxi driver who took us to our hotel. The cab was extremely cheap, we each payed about 2 dollars. We checked in the hotel and made plans to meet down at the lobby bar for a drink.
Morocco, being a muslim country, is not a place to go if your looking to party. We sat at the bar and ordered avocado juice and the waiter promised it would make our genitals stronger. That was a common theme for the trip, many people try to sell us substances to make us more vital. The avocado juice was warm but tasty. We then walked to find something to eat. The streets of Fez were chaotic and foreign to us, so we didn’t stray far from the hotel the first night. We ate a huge dinner of pizza and pasta, which probably wasn’t the best choice. We sat outside and the whole time a stray cat was pawing at my feet and a little boy was begging on the other side. After dinner, we walked around the block and headed to bed, exhausted from the day of traveling. The hotel concierge asked us if we wanted to set up a tour guide to take us to the medina. The thought of navigating the narrow streets of the medina was mind-boggling, so we told the concierge we’d love a tour guide. We woke up and had a great free breakfast on the rooftop of our hotel overlooking fez. We waited in the lobby for our tour guide and he showed up looking sharp in a cotton suite. He sat down with us, and introduced himself as Mustafa. He was in his 30’s and talked exactly like Borat...more coming tomorrow

Va a Prado Hoy

Went to the Prado Museum with my art class today. Saw Valasquez and Goya. Goya is my favorite. Heres a quick sketch I did of Saturn Devouring his Son. He painted this, and a bunch of other dark works on his walls when he lived in Madrid after going deaf, becoming a widow, and suffering a mental breakdown. Can you imagine his house with huge creepy paintings on the walls?

Goya's Saturno


My quick Sketch

Beautiful day at Retiro

I haven’t been frequenting my local bar as much, because of traveling and studying but I went in there 2 days ago and mi amigo chino said Mucho Tiempo! Made me feel like a regular. Now I’m back in there often. Today he let me sample the beers on tap and some of his favorite alcohol. I got a 90 percent on my second course in Spanish, but since I’ve been absent a bunch I earned a B. Defintely worth it. I got a job as a club promotor after emailing a bunch of people. I work Club Orange on Wednesday and Club Joy on Friday. If I get 15 people in the door on my guestlist, I get 25 euro. If I get 10 more that’s another 20 euro. Easy gig. Joy was a bust on Friday though, we all went but there wasn’t even a line for the guestlist. I got in for free with 4 drinks though, so I had a good night. I stayed out until 730 a.m. On Sunday, the weather was warm and I went out to Retiro to lounge along the lake. It was epic. I wore board shorts and got some sun. People were selling cervezas frio, y marijuana caliente.

Impressionist Exhibit at the Mapfre

That week, I recovered from traveling and got caught up in my studies. I had a test the next Friday. We got a new tv for the house. The last one was had bunny ears and didn’t work. I’m glad we got a new one because it will make my Spanish better. Our landlord couple delivered it, and the mujer told me my Spanish has gotten much better since the last time we had talked. That made my day. I went to an awesome impressionist museum that same day at the Mapfre. I saw works by Claude Monet, Degas, Tissot, Manet, Cezanne, Renoir, Henry Regnault, Pissarro and a bunch of others. I was inspired to draw Theodule Ribot’s “San Sebastian Martir” because of the darkness to it, and because I had just visited San Sebastian. It turned out to be my favorite drawing I’ve ever done. The impressionist exzhibit was one of the most impressive collections of art I’ve ever seen, and there was about an hour line out the door, but I heard it gets up to 2 hours long at some times.

Theodule Ribot's San Sebastian Martir


Taylor Lobdell's San Sebastian Martir