I've Been to Africa.

This weekend I headed over to another continent for a couple of days. No big deal. I can now officially say that I have been to Africa!

Shelly and I and two other girls from our program, Caitlin and Taylor, found a flyer for an organization that takes weekend excursions to Morocco in our school and decided to give it a try. We were a little worried going into it about the credibility of the program and what the weekend would be like, but I don’t think it could have gone any better!

On Friday, Shelly and I left class an hour early (such rebels!) so that we could make sure we had everything together and were ready to meet the group at 3.  They picked us up in Malaga, just down the street from where we live. Fabulous and convenient. We then headed to Algeciras (about an hour away) to catch the ferry that would take us across the Mediterranean to Morocco!

After a bumpy ferry ride, we docked in the Spanish city, Ceuta, boarded another bus and headed to the Moroccan border. We sat at the border forever because there were a million (or 10) other tour buses waiting to get through also. The guy in charge of our tours took our passports when we boarded the ferry so that he would be able to get them all stamped at the same time when we crossed the border. I was a little skeptical of this because I had just met the guy and felt much more comfortable hanging onto my own passport, but I went with it. Then, while we were sitting at the border, he came back on the bus and told us we had a problem. Immediately my mind went to the fact that we were sitting at this strange border crossing while I did not have my passport. Luckily, this wasn’t the problem. He told us our guide only spoke Arabic and Swahili and then introduced a guy who began talking to us in what I assume was Arabic while we all just stared at him dumbfounded. It didn’t take long for us to figure out that this was a joke and our guide actually spoke quite a few languages including Spanish and English. Silly joke with terrible timing! Finally we made it through the border and headed to our hotel in Tetuan.

Saturday morning we headed into the main city center of Tetuan. Our guide, Abdul, who told us we could call him Michael Abdul Douglas (another joke I didn’t understand) led us through Tetuan’s medina. This is the oldest part of the city where there are markets, houses, restaurants, and mosques. In the market, they sold everything from fruits and vegetables, to live chickens, to raw meat, to handicrafts. It was dirty and smelly, but definitely interesting to see. Michael Abdul Douglas was an awesome guide and was very successful at giving us a glimpse into the everyday life and culture of the city.

In addition to the marketplace, we also got to see one of the mosques in this medina. We couldn’t go inside because it is a sacred place and you must wash certain parts of your body certain ways and remove your shoes and be Muslim. But we did get to look in through the doorway and appreciate the decorative architecture of the doorway!

After eating lunch in a very unique restaurant, we boarded the bus and headed to the city of Tanger. There, we did a driving panoramic tour of the city with stops to ride camals (in a circle around a parking lot)!

And see the point where the Mediterranean Sea and Atlantic Ocean meet. I wanted this to be a much more prominent sight, but instead it just looked like a bunch of water. Still a sight I never thought I would see!

On Sunday, we headed to the city of Chef Chouen. This city was my favorite of the three we got to see. All of the buildings here were painted blue and white and it was just gorgeous.

We found out in order to keep the colors this way they must repaint five times a year! Can you even imagine? Sounds like a waste of time, energy, and resources, but it looks amazing!

We saw women washing clothes in the river. This is something I can’t even imagine because I don’t even like doing my laundry with a washer and dryer!

And we saw children trying to sell goods in the street. This is heartbreaking to me. They are learning at such a young age to follow tourists around and beg for money and they are forced to experience too much at a young age.

We had time to shop in the marketplace there and found a lot of amazing things for sale! It was fun to explore the different shops.

After lunch, we had a 2 hour bus ride back to Ceuta to wait 1 hour to board a ferry that took 1 hour to get back to mainland Spain and then a 1 ½ hour bus ride back to Malaga. Needless to say, it was a lot of traveling for one weekend, but worth it and we saw a lot!

Taylor, Abdel (the coordinator of the trip), Shelly, Caitlin, and I in Chef Chouen.