Trips, trips and more trips

Hello, Salaam, Bonjour, Hola, hoi!

Today marks the end of my first two months in Morocco and I am not sure how I feel about that. On the one hand, it does feel like the past two months flew by. On the other, it also feels like I still have a lot of time ahead of me.

I think this has to do with the fact that a lot of people already came by and the past few weeks I’ve been so crazily busy that it seems like more time should have passed than it actually has. I mean, it’s been less than three weeks since my boyfriend was here but it already feels like months have passed since he was here. Also, while in the US I never really thought about going back home until the last two weeks, I think about it a lot here. The circumstances are so different than they were last time and I am not saying I’m homesick, but somehow my mind is more on the Netherlands than it was the last time around. However, I am still loving it here and so much has happened that I don’t know if I can make a decent blog out of this, but let’s see how far we get.

First, Red came by to see me a few weeks ago and we had the best time while he was here. It was really nice to have somebody from back home and he was the first person from the Netherlands to visit me since I’m here so I really liked it. I enjoyed showing him Rabat and I took him to all the places that I’ve come to love. It’s so nice to show people around and to teach them what you’ve learned and show how you’ve adapter yourself. I was planning on impressing him with my French and (meager) knowledge of Dharija, but of course he already speaks Arabic (albeit a different dialect) so he managed better than I do after all the time I’ve been here. I imagine people must have thought it was actually him who lived here and I was the girlfriend visiting him. But I didn’t mind. I really liked seeing how he just managed so well here.
We did a lot of things in Rabat but our biggest trip was the one to Fes. I’d already been there of course, but I really love the medina and I figured he would, too. A lot of funny stories could be told about this trip and about the few days that he was here, but I’ll spare you all the details because if I don’t, this blog would be about 15 pages long.
However, one thing worth mentioning was this funny/inspiring conversation we had on the train back. We took the last train from Fes to Rabat and we were sitting in this train cart with one other guy who was sitting across from Red. However, at some point, he stood up and decided to sit straight across from Red and I noticed him staring at him quite intensely but I didn’t really think too much of this. Until he said to Red: “You look like a rockstar” with these huge eyes. I started laughing but Red simply replied with “oh, haha, really?” to which the guy said: “Are you a rockstar?!” after which I completely lost it. For some reason this guy seemed to be completely mesmerized by Red and he just wouldn’t stop talking to him. I’ve seen this kind of behavior with guys here directed towards girls but never to other guys. He was really nice though and trying to speak English as much as he could. At some point, I asked him if he had been to the Netherlands and he gave me an answer that is still a topic on my mind: “No, I don’t have the passport to leave this country”. What started as a funny conversation turned out to be a more serious one.
I still think about this a lot just because for me it’s always been a given that I can just travel where I want to go, when I want to. Sure, I can’t just live anywhere on earth and I don’t always have the money but in theory I can always travel. I was aware of the fact of course that many people don’t have the financial means to travel but I never thought about how these types of restrictions also are pretty prevalent in many countries. It really does not seem fair and I have been reminding myself of how lucky I am that I have the chance to see the world.

The day after Red left, my parents and my sister came. They stayed for over a week and it was also really nice to see them here. Luckily, I could at least impress them with my French and my Dharija. I showed them Rabat as well but we also decided to take another trip because a week of just Rabat is kind of an overkill.
We decided to go to Marrakech for the weekend and this was an experience in itself. I’d rented an apartment we had found online and that looked pretty good. I’d indicated our expected arrival time (15:00) and all was well, until I saw I had three missed phone calls half way through our drive. It turned out to be the lady who rented us the apartment. I called her back but she only spoke French and even though I am getting used to speaking French on the phone, it can really be a problem when the connection is bad. She kept asking me what time we were planning to arrive and I informed her, again it would be 15:00. From what she asked me, I thought she wanted me to call her when we were half an hour away from Marrakech to let her know when we would exactly be at the apartment. However, when I called her again, she kept asking something about Casablanca that I couldn’t understand so I just told her that we would meet her at the apartment.
I guess she misunderstood because the moment we entered the crowded part of Marrakech, the lady decided to call me three times per minute, making it impossible to use my navigation on my phone and completely this completely stressed me out. At some point I picked up and she was, again asking where we were and in my stressed out mindset, I told her she had to stop calling us because we were in the middle of Marrakech surrounded by tons of people and we needed the navigation. When we did, eventually, find the apartment, all was okay but I don’t think I’ve often been this stressed.
Eventually, the lady met us at the apartment, which was really nice and we were next to the famous Djemaa el Fnaa square. She had actually bought us fruit and explained she'd only tried to help us find the apartment but I explained to her that I had misunderstood her but all was fine.
Altogether, I want to say that Marrakech is very different from Rabat. Of course, when I came to Rabat the first week I was so overwhelmed by the people talking to me on the streets and shop owners asking me to look at their shops but now I realize, Rabat is an oasis of tranquility and peace compared to Marrakech. It is so crowded there all the time and everybody on the street talks to you. It’s not just one person every few minutes but it’s everybody that you even remotely look in the direction of that jumps on you and just refuses to let you go. However, what annoyed me most is that people actually touched me. This has, so far, not happened to me in Rabat but in Morocco this was definitely a thing. It happened once that I was walking and this guy just grabbed my scarf and said: “Beautiful scarf” to which I swatted his hand away and said: “Don’t touch me”. His response? “Bitch!” So no, I cannot say that I really am extremely charmed by the people in Marrakech because I have also been called several –arguably worse- things there. Another thing I was called a lot was either “Fatima” (okay?) or “Shakira” (also not quite how I would describe myself).
Nevertheless, seeing Marrakech was nice and I had a lot of fun discovering the medina, the square and several palaces while there with my parents. It was also a good experience for me to see Rabat in perspective. After Marrakech, I still had a few days with my parents but I had to work so I mainly saw them in the evenings. The last night, we ate at the Dhow (a boat restaurant in Rabat), which is something I can really recommend for anybody coming here because their desserts are simply delicious!

After my parents left, Easter break came (as you are probably aware). The downside of living in an Islamic country is that Easter is not a thing. The upside of being an intern at an Embassy is that I did get Friday and Monday off, so that left me time to go on a trip to Chefchaouen.
Originally, I’d intended to go on a desert trip with Cornelia but because her family came here, we postponed that. After that, I intended to go to the Netherlands but since my parents had just visited me, I figured I’d be better off doing that later on. So, Chefchaouen it was. I’d heard so many people talk about this ‘blue city’ that I just had to go and see it myself.
I went there with three other people and we arrived in the evening. At first, all we saw was mountains but at some point, the bus took a turn and about 1.000 lights became visible from behind the mountain. It was breathtaking and like something out of a fairy tale. Of course, it was hard to distinguish whether the buildings were actually blue, but this was confirmed the next day.
I’m not going to say the entire city is blue because there are plenty of houses that aren’t, but it cannot be denied that blue is certainly the theme of this gorgeous city. We ended up spending the day walking around the medina as well as outside of the city, where you can climb mountains. Because we effectively only had one day, there was no opportunity to actually go there, but the next time I go, I’ll take three or four days to actually enjoy the nature.
Something else that was quite interesting about this city is that, because it’s close to Spain, the language spoken there is – you guessed it – Spanish. By this point I was just kind of fed up speaking all these languages because between the group we spoke English and we were still so set on speaking French and Dharija that for me switching to Spanish was one bridge too far.
The bus back left at 07:00 AM (I don't know why, I would never have chosen it, but there's one bus a day so...) but of course summertime started, so we woke up at 05:30 but in reality it was still 04:30 so yeah, not ideal. However, I was able to sleep on the bus but I was pretty dead for the rest of sunday.

Anyway, as is clear, a lot has happened over the past weeks and now I am readjusting to just being at work and not having friends and family around.

I hope you are all well and I hope you enjoyed your Easter break.

xxxx Demi