Morocco and My Last Week in Spain

(I don't actually expect anyone to read all of this. This blog has mostly been for myself, to document my experiences.)

So Thursday, July 21^st, I went to school and then waited until 4:30 for the rest of the girls to get out of class. Once they did, we (Allison, Jenny, Mallory, Bre, and I) headed to the metro to go to the Valencia airport to leave for Morocco! We were going to Marrakech for the sole reason that it was the only city Ryanair flew into. Our flight was at 7:10, and Maria had packed Bre and I some snacks for the trip. I was wearing cotton Capri-type pants because we had been told to cover our knees and shoulders. We didn’t have any problems getting to the airport or at the airport. We were pretty early, so we went to our gate and waited. Then, at some point, everyone waiting got up and ran to get in line. We didn’t know what was going on, or why everyone was running. Boarding hadn’t begun, so we just stayed sitting. Then we started thinking, there’s got to be a reason everyone’s running. So then, the gate for our plane got switched to a different one, so we decided we should probably run too, just in case. So we ran, and since the gate was closer to where we were sitting than to the original gate, we were toward the front of the line. I’m not sure when (maybe when we were boarding) but eventually we realized they don’t have assigned seats for Ryanair flights. It’s first-come, first-serve. How strange. So we ended up getting seats toward the front (Jenny and Allison sat together, and Bre, Mallory, and I sat together) which was lucky because we obviously got to get off first too. The flight was actually two hours, but since Morocco is an hour behind Spain, we landed at 8 something. We went through customs and security and all that, and then exchanged money. If I thought euros were confusing, this was way worse. For every euro, there’s a little more than 10 dirhams. So I ended up with a bunch of 100 dirham bills. So at that point, I was converting my money twice in my head: once to euros, and then again to dollars. So complicated. It did get easier though. We knew if we spent 10 dirhams, that was a little less than one euro. The coins were so confusing. In the U.S., we have bills for one dollar or higher, right? Anything less than a dollar is in coins. Easy. Well, in euros, you get 1 and 2 euro coins (which for me, feels like I’m spending less if it’s in coins) but they’re not very confusing because they are so clearly labeled and they are much bigger than the other coins. Well, for dirhams, they have 5 and 10 dirham coins. But they also have 5 and 10 dirham CENT coins (worth, I don’t know, nothing). Ha, that took me a while to get used to. The first time I tried to pay in coins, I stood there staring at the coins trying to figure out what the heck they meant. Lol. Anyways, once we had our money exchanged, we got maps and then went out to wait for the bus that went to the main square. It was almost dark by then, and about 10 cabs were lined up in front of the airport. When I say cab, I don’t mean cabs like in the U.S. or Europe. These cars were about-to-break-down junkers. We had been warned by our ISA director Manuel to pay upfront, because the cabs don’t have meters and the driver may try to make you pay a higher price than what you agreed to. We had also been told not to ask the price of something unless we were going to buy it, and to not take pictures of people (even if you’re really just taking a picture of the entire square or something) because they may demand you pay them. So, we went to the bus stop that was behind all the cabs, and this cab driver comes over to us and tried to get us to take his cab. He literally would not leave us alone. We’d say no to him 20 times and he’d leave, then come back a little while later. Since we waited at the bus stop for probably 45 minutes (the bus was late), he approached us at least 4 or 5 times. One time he even brought another guy to try to ask us, but we still said no. I don’t know if he thought we were stupid or something, but he’d say, “Oh, I take you for 100 dirham.” Then the next time, “Oh, I take you for 20 dirham each.” As if we couldn’t do that math…ha. So, when the bus finally did come, we were so relieved to get away from that creep. We tried to ask the bus driver if we were going to the square, but we couldn’t pronounce it and he didn’t seem too interested so we just got on and hoped. Lol. As for language, in Morocco, they speak Moroccan, French, and Arabic. Soooo, I wasn’t quite sure how we were gonna communicate with anyone. But, surprisingly, we found that most people spoke English enough to understand us. Some spoke Spanish too, so we could do that as well. I felt like we were breaking some kind of rule every time we spoke English though, after being in Spain for so long. So after we’d been on the bus a little while, Mallory approaches the bus driver with her map and asked if we were going to that square. She spoke Spanish to him, and I think for the most part he understood, and said yes, that’s where we were going. So on the bus, I’m noticing all these motorbikes passing us with little kids and babies on them. No helmets or anything either. I couldn’t believe it. When I first thought about what I would write in my blog about this trip, I planned on sugarcoating it, for my mom’s sake. Now that I’m back home safe and everything turned out okay, I’m just gonna write exactly what happened and exactly what I was thinking. So, the bus driver let us off, pointed in which direction to walk, and drove away. Then I think we went into shock. My mom read this about Morocco and sent it to me after I had already returned back to Spain…this mostly sums it up:

“For many travelers, Morocco might just be a short hop away by ferry or by one of the myriad budget airlines from Spain, but it’s a much further distance to travel culturally. The regular certainties of Europe are suddenly swept away by the arrival in full technicolour of Africa and Islam. It’s a complete sensory overload.”

Sensory overload all right. If I had a video of that first night in Marrakech, I think it would still terrify me. All that was going through my brain was, “Oh God” and “What did we get ourselves into?” I don’t think I can really describe what it was like. Going into this trip, we thought we were prepared for Morocco, but we weren’t by any means. We were a bunch of 21 year old girls, born and raised in the safest country on the planet, thrown into the most chaotic place I have ever seen in my life. I’m still not sure why Manuel or our host parents didn’t warn us a little more. I guess Mallory’s mom did. She kept telling her to be careful over and over but Mallory didn’t really understand why I guess. All Maria and Marcos told us was not to drink the water and to be careful with our purses. More like be careful with our lives! Also, Morocco is an Arabic country, and maybe I’m under-cultured for not knowing this, but I didn’t. So we had no idea where we were. Mallory had to have been the most level-headed because she had her map out and the vague, hand-drawn map to the hostel that was emailed to her. It was dark, and the streets were PACKED with people. All the men and women in the traditional Moroccan clothes everywhere, speaking whatever the heck they were speaking…it was pretty intimidating to say the least. And the cars. I don’t know what sort of government they have in Morocco, but I swear there were no rules in that country. Cars drove everywhere and would not hesitate to hit you if you got in their way. Those fricken motorbikes were on the streets, on the sidewalks, anywhere and everywhere, always blasting their horns and weaving in and out of people. I can’t even count how many times I almost got hit that weekend. We took to protecting each other, yanking each other’s arms and pulling each other out of the way so we didn’t get hit. On top of drawing attention to ourselves for simply being Americans, we had our bags with us for the weekend…just asking to be robbed. So the five of us are walking single-file through the crowds, avoiding cars, trying not to lose each other and yelling out each other’s names when we would start to get separated. It was absolute chaos. There were men calling out to us and talking at us and I was trying not to look as terrified as I felt. When you literally cannot understand a word that is being said around you, it’s very scary. We felt completely alone and completely alienated. In Spain, if we ever felt out of place or uncomfortable in public, we would speak Spanish to each other, because even though we obviously aren’t native speakers, at least we could kind of blend in more. But in Morocco, there was nothing we could do to blend. We ended up taking a somewhat random left to try to get to the main square. Luckily, we made it. Not that it was any better. The only difference was in the main square, there weren’t cars, but just as many motorbikes and twice as many people. There were also little tents in the square with things to buy and we quickly found out that if you even glanced at the tent, you would be followed for a good hundred feet or so by someone trying to sell you crap. Everyone was just so pushy and aggressive. There was also smoke everywhere. The smoke contributed to the freaky atmosphere (we discovered later the smoke was from some of the tents that were cooking food) and we just wanted to get to our hostel as fast as possible. I don’t know how, but somehow we found the street (a “main” street, cobblestone and probably ten feet across) that our hostel was off of. We were walking fast, still getting hollered at, and then all of a sudden, we turn off the sketchy road into this pitch black, super sketchy alley. I was thinking, “Why are we going down this thing??” when all of a sudden, we find our hostel, first hole on the right. And at that point I’m thinking, “Oh. My. Gosh. You’ve got to be kidding.” So, we duck (literally) down into the hostel, where there’s a group of people sitting in the common room talking and smoking. I was nauseous from fear by that point. This was my first experience in a hostel, and basically what a hostel is is a building with community rooms (we were staying in an 8 bed girls only room) and bathrooms and a kitchen and that’s about it. Ours was 8 euros a night each (we had thought it would be a good idea to pick the one that was only a minute’s walk from the main square…not a good idea when you feel like you’re going to die in the main square). I had seen pictures and it had looked nice…pictures can be deceiving I guess. Okay, maybe I’m not being completely fair to the hostel. It was clean enough. Our beds were rock hard and our pillows were about 10 pounds of mysterious lumps, but we had clean sheets and a clean towel and lockers to lock our things up in. There were plenty of bathroom stalls and about five showers that again, were clean enough. The water was hot and the breakfast was very good and they had a computer with internet for us to use. So really, it wasn’t that bad. The first thing I asked the hostel man (who spoke English) was if he locks the doors at night. He said yes, at midnight, and then “Whyyy?” I said, “Oh, just making sure.” And he said, “It’s safe, I’m here all the time.” Which really wasn’t that reassuring, but I dropped it.  So Mallory, Bre, and I were all in one room and Jenny and Allison were in the room next to ours. On our room, there were four bunkbeds with just enough room to walk between them all. So we unpacked, went back into the alley to buy some bottled water from a vendor, then went back to the hostel and didn’t leave again. After that first night, we didn’t go out past dark again. We’d go grab dinner at dusk, but then get our butts back to our hostel before it got crazy.
The next morning was our day trip we had booked. Only Bre, Mallory and I were going, because Jenny and Allison had booked a different one. While Jenny and Allison were headed to the Sahara for an overnight camel trek (I would have loved to do this if it had been less expensive), we were going into the Ourika Valley of the Atlas Mountains, a little ways outside of Marrakech. We were supposed to be at the office of Moroccan Views at 9, but we left pretty early to make sure we could find it. We stopped to get breakfast at the little store (when I say store, I mean hole in the wall with things you can buy). The man only spoke French, so all we could do was point. We ended up getting these little packaged mini muffins that were surprisingly very good and only cost us 4 dirhams (40 cents) for two packages that filled us up. So after we got to the Moroccan Views at a little after 8, and found it was closed, we walked back to the main square and decided to walk around a little bit to kill time. There wasn’t a ton to see…there was a tower that we took a few pictures of and then sat down and watched a Moroccan woman feeding the birds. There was a park behind the tower, so we decided to walk that way. Right before the park, we saw 6 or so stray cats sitting on this patio thing just looking at us. It made me sad. L I hope the bird lady feeds them too. So we kept walking, and the park was on our right and all of a sudden, I saw this man, decked out in his Moroccan clothes, leaning against a tree in the park with his "thing" out. So I quickly look down, start mumbling “turn around, turn around” then Bre and Mallory look up, see, and we all turn around and walk as fast as we can back to the main square. We were obviously all so disgusted and disturbed, and it was even more unsettling that he was standing there doing that in the robe thing and turban. It just seemed so…I don’t know…visually contradictory to me. Disgusting. So after that incident, we didn’t stray from the square. Once 9 rolled around, we went back to the store. We tentatively walked up the stairs and a lady greeted us in English. We paid, and then waited in the waiting room for the guy to come pick us up. A guy came up, probably in his late twenties, and told us his name was Youssef and he was gonna be our guide. He said to follow him, so we went down the stairs and got in a white van. It was just the three of us. He got in the front in the passenger’s side and another guy got in the driver’s side. That’s about when I started worrying. Youssef started talking to us and Mallory asked if it was just us. He said, “Yes, there were three more, but they cancelled a couple days ago.” I thought, greaaaaat. Then he tells us we have to pay more now and Mallory got all worried and I said, “good joke!” and he started laughing and turned back around. Then we started driving and Mallory asked if he was kidding and I said I thought so. Haha. So we’re driving in this van and there’s 2:3 ratio of men to girls and then I started going into full-on panic mode. Of course everyone has seen the movie Taken, and we had referenced it a few times while in Spain, but at that point, I was actually thinking we were about to be kidnapped. I asked Mallory if the van had been marked that we got in and she said she didn’t know. And then we were both freaking out. Bre, on the other hand, was in the seat on the other side of me sleeping. Lol. So then I start thinking, do I have a weapon on me? (Answer: of course not, you can’t take weapons on planes.) Then, okay, how will they find us? (Answer: I gave my mom the address and name of our hostel and of this Moroccan Views company. At the very least, someone should be able to track down the store we just paid in.) I whisper all this to Mallory. I don’t know how comforted we were by this, but we just kept our fingers crossed. So Youssef starts talking to us about history of Marrakech and all that and I didn’t hear a word of it. We eventually reached mountains, and that was a little comforting because it at least seemed like we were going where we were supposed to be going. And then we stopped in front of this little village in the mountains. This was what our first stop was supposed to be, so I started relaxing a little. The views were absolutely gorgeous. I can’t say enough on how beautiful the Ourika Valley is. This village was called a Berber village and we had to walk up steep pathways (cars don’t go up there) to this woman’s house. The houses were all made of clay and were a light organgey-brown color (the color of pottery). Youssef showed us the clay stove outside of her house and the room that all the houses have where the women do pottery. We took some beautiful pictures looking at the mountains (I asked if it was okay to take pictures and he said we could take as many as we want, and of the family too). So we walked through her outdoor roofless rooms (kind of like patios or decks). Then we walked through a room that had two large cows in it that they use for the milk to make butter. We entered the Berber lady’s actual house, met her (she shook our hands), and since she only spoke Berber, we just kind of stood there awkwardly, wanting to say it was nice to meet her, but being unable to. Youssef explained that fourteen people (kids included) live in the house and they all contribute to running it. He showed us the clay instruments used to make butter and couscous. There was a little boy, maybe three years old, walking around and he came and stood by me and put his hand on my leg. I waved at him, because I obviously couldn’t say hi. He was too cute. So then Youssef took us to a room with seats and windows (square holes in the clay) overlooking the mountains. It was so beautiful. There was a nice breeze coming through the windows and the view was breathtaking. We sat down on the cushioned benches in front of a little wooden table and the Berber lady came in with trays of tea ware, a teapot of water, two kinds of mint leaves, green tea, and a foot-tall cylinder of sugar. She made the mint tea (a traditional drink in Morocco) right in front of us while Youssef translated, telling us what she was doing and why. It’s a pretty drawn out process. She goes through the whole process, pours the tea into the cups once and then dumps them back into the teapot and pours them again. She served us the cups of hot tea, and it was extremely sweet, but very good. She then brought us out freshly made bread and homemade honey, butter, and oil. The bread was delicious. She makes it as a large, flat, inch-thick circle: crispy on the outside and soft and warm on the inside. It was the best bread I’ve ever had. So she just ripped us off huge hunks (there was enough bread there for probably 10 people) and then Youssef came back later and ripped more off for us and told us not to be shy. I was definitely partial to the honey…eating it on the bread tasted more like desert than anything else. The butter was different, but not bad. The oil was fine I guess, but I don’t really like eating oil like that, so I only tried it once or twice. The Berber lady brought us more tea…I think I ended up drinking three cups of it because I wasn’t sure how to tell her I didn’t need any more. Lol. It was really nice though. It wasn’t necessary, but Youseff and the Berber lady left while we ate, as if it would have been rude to stay there, and only come back to make sure we ate and drank more. So we were just up in that beautiful room by ourselves, eating bread and drinking tea. We ate until we couldn’t eat any more. Altogether, we probably spent an hour and a half at the Berber house. It was very cool to experience that and see their way of life. Obviously very different from what we’re used to. We asked Youssef to teach us how to say “thank you” in Berber so we could thank the lady for having us. He told us it was “shucron.” (I’m sure that’s not at all how it is spelled.) So when we were saying goodbye, we told her shucron and she replied with something we obviously didn’t understand, but she seemed pleased at our effort to communicate with her. So we got back in the van, feeling much more comfortable with Youssef and the driver, and traveled further into the mountains. It was just so cool. On these dirt roads, we would pass little tents to buy things. Mostly, there was a lot of pottery tents. Tonssss of pottery. We also passed a shop for buying things (chairs, statues, etc.) made of sticks. It’s a completely different world in the mountains. There were cars, but donkeys were the norm. There were other little villages, and it was just so pretty through there. Youssef also gave us Berber names that he called us the rest of the day. Mine was “Aysha.” Then we pulled off the road to a dirt lot with CAMELS! We were so excited. We climbed out of the van, and Youssef led us over to the camels that we would be riding through the mountains. There were probably around 10 there, but three were tied together for the three of us. They had thick pads on their backs (kind of like you’d put on a horse) and handles for us to hold onto. A man put a step ladder under each of our camels and helped us up. It was SO cool. It was completely comfortable and the camels were calm and sweet. So then this little boy, probably 8, starts leading the camels through the trail in the mountains. His little brother also went along (maybe learning how?) who was probably 5. They were adorable. So they led our train of camels through the mountains and at one point, the older one stopped, handed the front camel to his brother, and ran over to me saying, “Picture? Picture?” gesturing to my camera. He was so excited, and obviouslyyyy I wanted a picture, but the general rule in Europe (and that applies to Morocco too, I’m sure) is you don’t hand your camera to strangers. But I said yes, please, and handed it down to him, then mumbled through my smile, “Pleeeease don’t run away with ittttt.” He did run, but only to get far enough away to take pictures of the three of us on our camels. He was so stinkin cute. He snapped probably five to ten pictures of us, switching angles and places as the little one kept leading our camels. His enthusiasm was so sweet. You could just tell he loved taking pictures. So then he gave it back to me, I said shucron, he smiled, and then ran over to Mallory and Bre saying, “Picture? Picture?” Our camel ride was only about 20 minutes, so we turned around after a short while. Mallory was asking if we should give him a little tip for taking pictures for us, and since my money was the most accessible, I said I would. So I called him over, and what I had planned to do was give him 10 dirhams, because really, one euro for me is nothing compared to what it is for him. So I’m trying to figure out what these coins in my wallet are (this is only the second time I’ve looked at them) and I’m trying to convert it to euros so I give him as much as I want to. So then I find a 5 dirham piece and go to hand it to him, and then tell him to wait because I wanted to find something bigger. So then I’m looking and for some reason, I end up handing him a 1 dirham coin…somehow thinking that was bigger. So he takes it and hands it to the little one who zips it up in his pants pocket. Then we’re almost back to the road where all the adults are and I’m thinking, Shoot, I just gave him the equivalent of ten cents. So I’m telling Mallory, who’s behind me, and she says that it’s probably not a good idea to be giving them money in front of the men. So then I literally felt terrible the rest of the day. I don’t know how many times I said to the girls, “Dang, I really wish I would’ve given him more.” And not only that, I had started to hand him a 5 dirham, and then switched to 1 because I was so confused by their stupid coins! So he was probably a little disappointed I changed my mind. Sigh. It still makes me feel bad. And maybe 1 dirham is a lot for him, but still, I would have loved to give him 10. So anyways, Youssef asked if we enjoyed it and we climbed down the ladder, said goodbye and thank you to the boys and our camels, and headed back to the van. We headed further into the mountains. Youssef ended up being a really great guide. His English was excellent, and he loved to tell us jokes (How do you get a camel in the fridge in three movements? Open the door, put the camel in, shut the door.) and say funny rhymes like “Foshizzle mynizzle” (which he always followed with “Fasheezie myneezie”) and “Good in the hood.” We just always giggled at him and said to each other, “Were does he get this stuff?” He also took to calling us his three wives. Jokingly of course, but not all that funny, Youssef. Thennn, he told us the next place we were going, he was going to sell us as wives and we would be taken to Algeria. Again, joking, but definitely not funny that time because it had been a legit fear of mine about 2 hours before. Haha. But the next place we stopped was to use the bathroom at the restaurant we would be eating lunch at in a couple hours. After we used the bathroom, we got back in the van and headed into the Valley to go on a two-hour hike. So basically, our hike was more like rock climbing. It was absolutely beautiful there in the mountains though. The river ran through them and at the base of the mountains, there were a lot of straw-like restaurants with seating in the shallow parts of the river which I thought was really cool. They also had some camels where we started our hike. I guess you could maybe ride the camels through the river? They definitely couldn’t climb the mountains, so I don’t know what else they’d be for. There were lots of Moroccans washing things in the river or getting water. Also, there were a lot of really sketchy bridges crossing the river from mountain to mountain. As in, made out of sticks. But they apparently didn’t have too many problems, because people used them. And so, we began our hike. It was quite the hike too. We’d be crossing rivers (it was only about a foot deep) on little stepping stones and climbing up these large, unstable rocks. Multiple times, Youssef (who was leading) would grab our hands to help us across or up. So we’d scale the side of the mountain, get up to an area of level ground, and lo and behold, there’d be a little straw-roof shop to buy jewelry or pottery at. It was so strange. Through the whole mountain on the way up to the waterfall, there was like a little town scattered through the rocks. It was like someone just dropped a little hut or a little seating area in the middle of a mountain. But there were tons of people climbing up there. And not just adults, little Moroccan children too. And mothers carrying babies. One cool thing was that the shop owners would use the waterfall to keep their drinks cold. Like if there was a little area where water traveled down the rocks, that’s where they’d put their drinks to keep them cold. Or they’d have a little natural pool of water from the waterfall and they’d have oranges floating in it that you could buy. It was very creative. In one part of the mountain, they had built like a little wooden canal to carry the water from the waterfall down to wherever they needed it. While we were crossing one river, we saw an old man slip of a rock and fall into the water. These climbs are by no means safe, and the river was obviously running down the mountain. A man close buy lunged at the old man so he wouldn’t get swept down the mountain and helped him up and across. It was pretty nerve-racking at times, but Youssef was a pro at the climb and helped us at all the really dangerous places. So once we finally made it up the mountain to the main waterfall, it was absolutely gorgeous. We waded in the pool at the base of the waterfall, which was freeeeezing, and Youssef gave us a half hour to just hang out. There were a lot of other people up there, again, lots of kids, and I just kept wondering how they made it up that high. So after we’d hung out up there for a while, we started the trek back down. If possible, it was actually more difficult going down. There was quite a bit of sitting on rocks and then jumping involved. It’s not like we were just walking down a dirt path or something. It was the kind of climbing where you have to wedge yourself between boulders and swing your feet to the next area of ground. We’re working our way down, going very slow, loosing our footing on gravel but trying not to fall, when I turn around and Mallory is holding the arm of a little Moroccan boy who can’t be any older than 5. He’s trying to pass her, so I take his arm and help him in front of me, then hold onto him as he tries to get down a rock. He had to have been terrified. We were having trouble, and we’re adults. So then Youssef turns around, sees me helping this boy, and picks him up and puts him in front of him. He calls out to the lady in front of him in Moroccan and asks if it’s her child. She says yes and then turns around and keeps climbing down the mountain. I could not believe my eyes. Youssef turns around, pissed, and tells me it’s her son but she’s not concerned about him. He was five years old and scaling a mountain by himself. It made me pretty mad. I just literally could not believe it. I would never take my child up there in the first place, but to then leave it to make its way down by itself…not a chance! So then we get to this huge rock, and we kind of have to slide down bit by bit, so I’m crouching down to sit on my butt when my foot slips and I start falling. It was one of those slow-motion moments because I was fumbling around trying to catch myself. I reached back behind me, where luckily Bre was crouching, and grabbed her knee to steady myself. Then I think I probably swore. I literally thought I was gonna die. If I would’ve fallen off, it would’ve been a ten to fifteen foot fall onto more rocks. Thank God I didn’t. So anways, we finally made it back down to safe land and worked our way back to the van. Our next stop was lunch, so at that point, we started heading back in the direction of Marrakech. The restaurant was amazing. We walked through the restaurant and out onto a deck overlooking the mountains and Youssef showed us our table. I thought he was going to eat with us, we wouldn’t have minded, but again, he left. The waiter came, explained that our meal was all paid for, but if we wanted to order drinks other than water, they’d be extra. We were fine with water. So then we sat there drinking water and looking at the mountains and it was just beautiful. Our first course that the waiter brought was about six circular loaves of that amazing bread and a bowl each of diced tomatoes and cucumbers with spices. I’m not a tomato fan, at all (as in I never eat them), but I was surprised by how appealing it looked. The only problem was that Manuel told us to not eat any fresh vegetables or fruit. We contemplated not eating it, but it looked so good, and we felt bad not touching the food, so we decided we’d eat only a little. So we opened up our bread, put the tomatoes on it, and ate it. And I actually enjoyed it! It was really good. So our plan of only eating a little turned into eating most of our bowls. Haha. That probably could have been enough food for lunch, but then he brought our main course. He brought three large bowls of food, one couscous with veggies, one potroast, and one yellow (mustard maybe?) chicken dish with French fries. So we filled our plates and ate and it was all very good. I’d never had couscous before and it was a very strange texture, but I liked it a lot. After we ate that, he brought a large bowl of oranges and sliced melon. Again, we considered not eating it, but figured it’d be okay since the peels protected the fruit from whatever we were supposed to be avoiding (water we thought). So we ate a little bit, not too much. Youssef came back (we had been eating for probably an hour or so) and said whenever we were ready, we could go. We got up to leave, but the waiter brought us mint tea, so we sat back down and drank our tea. Again, very sweet. After that, we got back up and started walking toward the door and our waiter stopped us again. We were absolutely stuffed by that point and really didn’t want anything else, but he brought out a basket and offered us a cookie for dessert. So we took a cookie, ate it, and thanked him very much. Then we hurried back into the restaurant and out the door before he could offer us anything else. Our meal was excellent though and the restaurant location was perfect and it was just awesome. So after that, we drove some more, and Youssef told us he had one more stop for us. I had asked him earlier what the best way to shop in the souks was, and he said to go around, ask prices (he said don’t be afraid to ask) and then walk away and then you’ll get a real price. He said to just go around the first time, don’t buy anything, just get a feel for how much things cost. Then go back and buy. So at our last stop, he told us he just wanted us to see this place and not to feel like we had to buy anything. So he stops at this little village of huts and we walk up there and a lady greets us and starts telling us about these Argan nuts that they use to make oils to eat and also oils for your skin. There were two old Moroccan ladies sitting on the ground, surrounded by bowls of these nuts, cracking the shells and grinding them in this little contraption, extracting the oils. The lady explained what they were doing and then asked if we would like a picture with them. We said of course, and when I sat down between the two, the one started tapping my knee. I looked down, and she was handing me her rock and a nut and gesturing to the bigger rock she uses to crack the nuts over. So I thanked her and the lady got a picture of me with the women and I’m pretending to be cracking open the nut. Haha. It was cute. So then the lady leads us over to a different tent with benches and a table full of different oils and lotions and lipbalms all made from the nuts. She goes through every one of them with us and puts them all on our hands and makes us smell them and she tells us exactly what is in each one that makes them do different things. It was pretty cool, until I started realizing she was gonna want us to buy this stuff. So, sure enough, after her whole presentation, she leads us to a different tent with shelves and shelves of all her stuff. She tried to hand us little baskets and tell us to shop, but we just kept telling her we really don’t need anything. She was not too happy with us and it was pretty awkward. Eventually we escaped and found Youssef again and he laughed at our expressions and asked if we were ready to go and we climbed back in the van. As we were pulling away, there were two little boys on donkeys and I took a picture of them and the one little boy was yelling “NO PHOTO!” but I had already taken it. So in my picture, he’s just yelling his little head off at me. Lol. Sorry! So that was the end of our trip and Youssef and the driver dropped us off at the main square around 5:30. We thanked him for everything. It was such an amazing experience (once we got over the fear of being taken) and I could not have loved our day trip any more. Ourika Valley was nothing like the city of Marrakech. We were so glad we got to do that and experience a beautiful part of Morocco. Our experience would have been much different if we had spent the whole weekend in Marrakech. We went back to the hostel, napped a bit, chatted with a couple of the other girls in our hostel (one from California, one from Austria), and then went out to the stand we had gotten breakfast at and got some junk food for dinner (crackers, muffins, water). That night, we showered and went to bed early. The next morning, we got up, had breakfast (bread and different toppings with fresh-squeezed orange juice) and ventured out to the souks. On the way, we stopped and looked around the square a bit. The souks is a huge area in the center of Marrakech that is just hundreds of little shops. You feel like you’re going “into” them because you enter and then on both sides, you’re surrounded by these shops. There’s also an awning stretching over all the shops, so you’re somewhat enclosed. You can go any way you want once you enter, and we decided to keep a pretty straight path so that we could find our way out. You could probably be lost in there for hours. We had been a little nervous to go to the souks because we were afraid people would hassle the crap out of us. But it was much better than we had expected. In the square, the shop people can follow you down the streets. In the souks, they don’t do that because they don’t leave their shops. There are sooo many kinds of shops: clothing, jewelry, wood shops, instruments, decorations, food, pottery, anything you can think of. The three of us were looking for pretty specific items, so we spent a lot of time in the same kind of shops. It was a blast. The souks were all about bargaining, and I was actually very good at it. It was really funny though. All the shop people played the language game. They never knew what to speak to us. They’d start out with French, then go to Spanish, then go to English. Sometimes in a different order. I was very surprised at how many people spoke English though. I don’t think we were ever in a situation in the souks where we had to speak Spanish. Everyone knew the basics of every language, which I was very impressed with. Then some would try to guess which country we were from: “England? Australia?” One time, while we were passing, someone even asked us if we were Japanese. That one got us giggling. Do we look Japanese?? Lol. Or sometimes we’d walk into a souk, start looking around, and the owner would look at us for a while before asking tentatively, “English?” And we’d say yes and they would look so pleased. Haha. In the beginning, I was all business. I was about getting what I wanted for how much I wanted and I didn’t care if I came off as rude. Lol. And it worked. I got three main things from Morocco and I got them all for the price I wanted. It generally went like this: I’d ask how much something cost, they’d say a ridiculous price, I’d say “no way” and start to walk away. (At that point, one man says to me, “This is not like your country. We bargain here.” Lol.) They’d stop me, ask me what my price is, I’d name it. They’d act like I was crazy, I’d say okay and start to walk away again, they would tell me to wait. They’d give me a price well above what I was willing to pay, I’d say no, wouldn’t budge at all. They wouldn’t give in, I’d start to walk away, they’d say, “okay, okay” and call me back. I’d walk back, they’d tell me a price 10 dirhams above what I wanted (in reality, 10 dirhams isn’t a huge deal, but it’s just the principle of it), I’d tell them no, I wanted it for my price and then I’d start to walk away again. Once I was just about out of ear shot, they’d yell “OKAY! OKAY!” and I’d go back and there you have it, I’d get my price. J So the first few guys, I told them to write down the price they were agreeing to (Manuel advised this) and they didn’t like doing it, but they did, and I got my gifts and I was happy. After that, I found that they were pretty trustworthy as far as sticking to their word went, but I tried to give exact change anyways so I couldn’t get screwed. It was easy for me because I was fully capable of being a jerk about getting my way, but Mallory on the other hand, struggled a bit. She’s just so nice. Lol. She’d say, “I just don’t have the personality for this.” Hahah. And she didn’t. She’d say something like, “Can I have this for 50 dirhams?” And of course, the answer was no. But she got better and she ended up getting a gorgeous leather purse for around 10 euro, so good for her! On the other hand, after we told one man we were from the U.S., he said to us, “You from America. You have lot of money.” We didn’t do that again. Lol. So the next guy who asked us (we had been speaking English the whole time), Mallory says, “We’re from Spain.” And he replied, “Oh! Espana! You speak English too!!” Mallory says, “Si, ambos.” (“Both.”) Hahahah. Mallory bought something from a shop and we had been chatting with the guy while she shopped. He was probably in his mid-twenties and his English was excellent. He told us he was from a Berber village in the Ourika Valley and we told him we had just been there yesterday and how beautiful it was! Mallory was trying to convince him she only had 130 dirhams, so she’s pulling out her wallet and showing him that that’s literally all she has. I was sitting there giggling at her and he told me he liked me because I am smiley. Lol. So once she got her things (for 130 dirham, because it was all she had), we said goodbye and left. Later, I decided I wanted to buy something that he had in that store, so we went back. As soon as he saw me, he goes, “Oh! You come back!” And I said yes, that I wanted to buy that thing he had (I am being vague because I know the person that that gift was for will probably read this). So he’s showing me a bunch of different kinds and I told him how much I was willing to spend and it was all I had left. I liked the guy, so I told him that I don’t want to waste his time, so if he can’t help me for that price, to let me know and I’d leave. He said he’d see what he could find for me. So he showed me one that I realllllly liked, but it was one of the more expensive ones and I didn’t have near enough money for it. So I asked what he had that was cheaper, and long story short, he finally said I could have the one I liked because, “You are friend. For you, I will do it.” So I thanked him and handed him my money, and I ended up giving him 5 dirhams less than we had agreed on because the number had rubbed off on my 5 coin and I had thought it was a 10 coin (he had to get a 5 and 10 out to show me the difference). I apologized and told him I really thought it was a 10, and could I still have it for the 5 dirhams less? He replied, “You are friend.” So he gave it to me for even less. He was so nice. So I paid him and he goes, “Now something for me.” And I said, “I’m sorry, I literally have no more money.” And he goes, “No, this is for me.” And he Spanish kissed my cheeks. Lol. I laughed, thanked him again, and we left. I was also trying to buy a little woven bracelet and I found one I liked and asked the guy how much it cost. He said 20 dirhams, I asked if he’d take 15 (I had learned by this point that most of the small things the vendors weren’t willing to bargain on) and he said no. So I said okay and started walking away and he goes, “Okay, 10.” I turned around and repeated it, he said yes, and I said okay. Lol. I think he just didn’t understand English enough and got confused and then gave me the bracelet for 5 less than I had asked. Then at a different vendor, I was trying to buy something and I had already tried haggling with this guy earlier and hadn’t had much luck, but wanted the thing anyways, so I had gone back. I asked him how much it cost, and this was how the conversation went:

Me: How much are these?
Guy: 15.
Me: You said 10 earlier.
Guy: Okay, 10.
Me: 15 for two?
Guy: 15 for one.
Me: No, 10 for one.
Guy: Okay, 10 for one.
Me: 15 for two?
Guy: 20 for 2.
Me: That’s the same as 10 for one.
Guy: 30 for two.
Me: No, 10 for one.
Guy: 15 for one.
Me: Fine, 20 for two.
Guy: Okay, twenty for two.
Me: Okay.
(I get out my money)
Me: 20 for two.
Guy: 25 for two.
Me: Look, they’re selling them for 10 down there. I’ll leave right now.
Guy: Okay, 20.
Me: Okay. (Pays). Thanks.
(Walking away…)
Me: That little turd.

Everyone in the shops were very nice. There was only one man that told Mallory to only ask the price if she wanted to buy it. We left that store and never went back. At some point during the day, we had taken a break to get lunch. We had walked around all the outdoor restaurants and looked at the menus. It was crazy cheap. The funny thing was, we’d be looking and say, “30 dirham…that’s too much,” when we’d been spending the equivalent of minimum 50 dirham for a lunch in Spain. But we found a restaurant we thought looked good. I ordered a cheese Panini with fries for only 10 dirham. What a steal! And it was very good too. So that night, after we had finished shopping, we went back to the hostel and rested. Then Jenny and Allison got back! We exchanged stories (they loved the desert) and then they went out shopping and we agreed to meet for dinner. We ended up going back to the same place we had had lunch and I ate for 10 dirhams again. We then got breakfast (muffins) for the morning because we had to get up at 5am to take a taxi to the airport. We packed up our stuff and again, went to bed early. In the morning, Bre, Mallory and I were at the main square by 5:30am. Jenny and Allison had a flight into Barcelona, while ours was into Madrid, so we weren’t together. We hurried to the square because it was still dark out and almost as scary as it was at night time. There were cabs waiting, and we had decided beforehand that we weren’t going to spend any more than 20 dirhams a piece. The first cab driver that approached us, we told him we were going to the airport for 20 a piece and he said okay. We started walking toward his cab when we saw there was another man in the front seat. We didn’t like it and told the cab driver we weren’t riding in his cab with another man in the front. He said okay and stopped us from leaving, and got the guy another cab. Kinda weird. I told him we were paying him upfront and he said it was fine, so we did and then we waited. It was pretty nerve-racking because you don’t realize how much trust you put in other people (like a cab driver, for example) until you’re in a situation like that. I just kept praying, Please let us get to the airport and back into Spain safely. Thankfully, he took us to the airport and everything was fine. So in the airport, we were through security and were waiting, and I needed to use the bathroom. So I walked to the bathrooms and there was a worker standing outside of it. I had heard that in some countries you have to pay to use the restroom, so I kind of hesitated but he gestured for me to go ahead, so I did. On my way out, I was walking right past him when he spoke to me. I stopped, and he held out the money in his hand, and I asked “How much?” like four times and he just kept saying yes. So I held up my finger and said I’d be back because I didn’t have any money on me. It was only 20 cents, so like 2 euro cents, no big deal, but it was kind of funny. So I got the money and paid him. Haha. Then we had some dirhams left and wanted to buy some water and snacks. We asked the man at the counter how much for the water and he said 2. We said, “Two dirhams?” and he repeated two, so we grabbed a water and Bre got some cereal and tried to pay. Well, what he really meant to say was “TWENTY” and not “TWO” so when she didn’t have enough money, he got all pissed because she had touched it and couldn’t buy it. Like realllllly pissed. So she told him she didn’t want the cereal and he got angry and she got angry back because he had told us the wrong prices and he threw the cereal and then he made her put the water back and buy the cereal that he had just thrown. So while this is happening, I’m sneaking back over to the cooler and putting my water back and then I bought some Mentos instead. It was so strange. So then we got on our flight, glad to be leaving Morocco but also glad we went. It was a very unique experience. When we were deciding where to go for our last weekend, we wanted to go somewhere we knew we’d probably never go any other time in our lives. Someday when I’m married, I’ll hopefully travel back to Europe and go to France and Italy and Greece and all those countries, but Morocco is someplace I probably would never have visited had I not gone this time. So it was definitely a great experience (culture shock and all). We really loved Ourika Valley and the souks were very cool, but I would not recommend Marrakech, nor would I ever go back. Also, we didn’t actually know this until after we got back, but there were all kinds of warnings against traveling to Morocco. Like this one, for example:

Travel warning: On 28 April 2011, there was an explosion at Cafe Argana in Marrakech that killed 15 people. Authorities are still ascertaining the cause. Travel to the Western Sahara region of Morocco is not advised due to the presence of landmines. Check Safe Travel for current government warnings.


Of course, none of these warnings surprise me after visiting Marrakech, but thankfully nothing happened to any of us and we walked away with some pretty great memories. J So after we arrived in Madrid (there weren’t any flights going straight into Valencia on Sunday), we had a few hours before our train ride to Valencia. So we went to Cien Montaditos for lunch (our first weekend in Spain, the three of us visited Cien for the first time in Madrid). We also saw the hotel we stayed in while we were in Madrid and got McFlurries from the McDonald’s next door that we always stole Wifi (in Spanish, pronounced “Wee-fee”) from. It was fun being back and actually being familiar with that part of the city. Then we walked to the Atocha train station and hung out in there for a while. The station is beautiful. The entire bottom floor is like a park, with trees and ponds (with sunbathing turtles) and places to sit while you wait for your train. So Mallory took a nap while Bre and I played cards, then we decided to go to the train. Well, it turned out that we actually had to take a little train to the real train that was at a different Madrid station about ten minutes from Atocha. So that was a little hectic because we thought we were going to miss the real one. But we got there with about 20 minutes to spare, and while we were waiting, out of nowhere, Patrick shows up. Haha. That was weird. He had gone to Madrid for the weekend to meet up with one of his friends that was studying in Germany. Then he had missed his first train back to Valencia that morning and ended up on ours. I’m not sure what the chances of us just bumping into each other at a small Madrid train station are, but it’s gotta be close to zero. So the four of us sat together on the six hour ride back to Valencia. There is actually a train that only takes an hour and a half to make the trip, but it costs somewhere around 90 euro compared to our 25 euro train. Still, Marcos, Maria, and Antonio all laughed at us when we told them we were taking the regional train (it stops about 15 times on the way, haha). Walking down the street toward Marcos and Maria’s apartment, Bre and I were so excited to be back in Valencia…back to our room, back to our parents, back to the safety of Spain. It was such a relief to not be scared anymore. Bre and I were starving after our long train ride, and when we finally walked through the door at 10:45pm, Marcos and Maria were waiting up for us to make us dinner. How sweet. After they made us dinner, and after we scarfed it all down, we all went to bed.

On Monday, I got out of class early and met up with Allison and Bre to go to the beach. We took the bus, and Caitlin met up with us an hour or so later. We just spent the entire day enjoying the beach. Caitlin and I went swimming for an hourish, and when we finally decided to get out, we realized we had drifted probably 200 feet down from where we were sitting. The current hadn’t felt very strong, but once we tried to swim back that way and really couldn’t, we decided to get out and walk down the beach instead. Around five, Antonio came and joined us as well. It was nice to hang out with him again. We all left the beach around seven, and I Bisied home. That night, the seven of us girls (Allison, Jenny, Sarah, Caitlin, Bre, Mallory, and I) got together to go to the riverbed to the fair. We walked around and looked at all the carnival games and rides. They have a ride called the Bomber that is one of those needle-looking rides where you sit in the end and then the needle goes in circles while your seats roll around and you feel like you’re gonna die. Well, we thought it would be expensive, but it was only 3.50 euro (the same price as the ferris wheel). So Caitlin, Allison, Jenny and I bought tickets and got on. At first the thing goes slow, and even though we were really high up in the air, our seats weren’t flipping and it wasn’t that exciting and Caitlin and I were a little disappointed. Then it really started going. We would go flying down face first and then our seats would flip all the way around and I really thought the thing was gonna break and we were either going to go flying off at the top or go crashing into the ground on the way down. Plus, I had just eaten an hour or so before and I kind of had that vomity feeling rising. Once we finally slowed down, Caitlin and I discussed the required safety standards of a traveling fair and decided there probably weren’t a whole lot. Lol. But everything was fine and we survived the Bomber and it was well worth our money. After that, Bre, Mallory and I rode the ferris wheel. There was a cool view from the top, but other than that, it was kind of dull. I guess that’s what you get with a ferris wheel. The part that made it fun was that every time we came back down from the top, the other four girls would be putting on a little show for us: YMCA, Macarena, the wave, etc. We started performing for them too, so we would all just crack up at each other. I’m sure all the other people standing around the ferris wheel thought we were retarded. But it was fun. When we finally got off, we went to get ice cream and strawberry lemonade slushies. There was some Spongbob ride and we kept waving at the man in the Spongebob costume and he posed for a picture for me and then gave us the “Call me” signal. Lol. We walked around a while more before finally leaving the riverbed and going our separate ways home. It was a beautiful night out and a fun way to spend the evening together that didn’t include going to a bar (like the rest of our friends did).

On Tuesday, we didn’t have Eduardo’s class and instead had two doses of Jwan. Luckily, Jwan is a pretty cool guy and instead of going to the University, we all met at the train station down by the beach. I Bisied with Caitlin and once we got to the train station, we were looking around for Bisi stations and we always Bisi pretty fast seeing as you only have a half hour to get where you’re going before your credit card starts getting charged. So we’re looking and riding and all of a sudden, Caitlin slams into a pole with her handlebars and she loses control and she and the Bisi go skidding across the pavement. Not good. But she was okay, other than the scrapes and bruises on her arms and legs. :/ So Jwan took us around the part of Valencia that I have previously referred to as sketchy. He told us about how there are plans to tear down a section of the old buildings, but a lot of people are really upset about it because some of the nice old houses would also get torn down. But through there, there are actually some really cool tiled buildings. Very Spanish, very pretty. After walking around there, we were to the port to see the boats. That was cool too. We walked down toward the beach and looked at a different part of the harbor. There were tonsssss of pretty large fish swimming around there so we fed them some of Patrick’s bocadillo. I think we just about had Patrick convinced to jump in with the fish, but then Jwan told us he’d lose his job if Patrick got hurt, sooooo we decided against it. Haha. We then went to see another art museum and I actually really enjoyed this one. It had some very good photography in it. Then, at around noon (class isn’t supposed to end until 1:45) Jwan ended class and we all went to the beach for the day. And by far, Tuesday was the best beach day since we’ve been in Valencia. The weather was perfect, not too hot, and for once, there weren’t any waves! We could actually see the ground (we joked that now if a jellyfish tried to sting us, we would see it coming) and it was almost like swimming in fresh water. No mouthfuls or facefuls of salt. It was great. So again, we stayed at the beach all day. After the beach, Morgan, Caitlin, Patricio and I all went to Cien Montaditos for sangria. We went home around nine or so. Tuesday night, I stayed in and studied for my exam for the next day.

Wednesday, I went to class, took my exam for Eduardo’s class, and went to culture class. After school, I went home and Bre and I ate lunch with Marcos and Maria. It’s always nice eating with them. After that, I met up with Caitlin and we went to the centro. There’s a university store close to the university, but they didn’t have a lot of clothing and I had my heart set on a University of Valencia hoodie. So we had asked Jwan a few weeks ago if there was another place to buy that kind of thing, and he said in the centro, there’s the old university that has a shop in it. He showed us where it was on a map, so we went there. When we got there, it was siesta time, so we walked around for a while in other little shops before going back. They had soo much stuff in that one, so I was so glad we went! I ended up getting a hoodie and a tshirt and spending way too many euros, but it was worth it. After shopping, we went home and showered and then met up again to go to Cien Montaditos for a class dinner. It was for Eduardo’s class (celebrating being done with class) and we had originally planned on going with the other grammar class but they were going somewhere really expensive, so we decided to go on our own to Cien for euro Wednesdays. Caitlin is in the other grammar class, but she decided to tag along with our class instead. So Caitlin and I went early to save a table for the 8 of us because it gets sooo busy after 8. Dinner was a lot of fun. Eduardo is so stinkin hilarious that we were all just dying laughing the whole night. He showed us his ID’s and in all of them, he looks ridiculous. He doesn’t smile and his eyes look huge, like he’s surprised. We were making fun of him and he was telling us that in Europe, people don’t smile for pictures like we do in the United States. His girlfriend is from the US and he was imitating the way she smiles for pictures by squinting up his eyes and grinning with his mouth open and we were laughing so hard. I took a video of him telling this story. He just never runs out of things to say. Also, I ordered French fries and usually when you order, you go up and give them your receipt after they call your name. Well, I ordered and I thought they called my name (“Maria”…I don’t tell them Alisha because it’s too hard for them) and so I went up there and no one was taking receipts so I took my fries and sat down. Well thennnn, they called Maria some more but I didn’t go up again but they kept calling my name so I gave my receipt to Caitlin and she went up and got my fries. So I apparently had stolen someone else’s. Haha. We hung out there for a few hours until it was getting late and we all went home to study for Jwan’s exam the next day. I guess the other grammar class’s teacher ended up getting wasted with them. Haha. Ohhh, Spaniards.

Thursday, I woke up really early to study (Jwan had given us all the questions and answers so we just had to memorize them, haha) and went and took my exam and got out at around 12 or 12:30. Caitlin and I had planned on taking a train to a city called Sagunto that day at two. So we hung out for a while and then went to the train station. The tickets cost 3 euros roundtrip, and it only took twenty minutes to get there. We got there, to this little coastal city, and walked through the cobblestone streets up to the mountain with the Roman ruins. At the top of the mountain, they have an old Roman theater and a huge palace and some other ancient little buildings. The palace isn’t really a palace anymore (and they reconstructed a lot of the theater to be able to use it) but it was such a cool thing to see! We walked around up there for three hours, and it was just gorgeous. The ruins were so cool…on one side there’s the view of the mountains and on the other side, the view of the city and the Mediterranean. So pretty. We got some awesome pictures…used our camera timers a lot to get pictures together…and we ate lunch on the edge of a cliff up there. We loved it. We were so glad we made the trip over to see that. Way better than another day at the beach. After we had seen everything, we made our way back down and stopped in a little tourist shop. Then we jumped on the train back to Valencia. I got back home around 6 to take a little family photo with Marcos, Maria, and Bre. Marcos’ nephew was getting married Saturday, so he was leaving Friday morning and we wanted a picture before that. He apologized for not being able to drive us to our bus Friday night. So we took a couple pictures, visited with them for a little while, and then got ready to go to dinner with our ISA group for our last night in Valencia. We went to the pizza place we had intercambios at our first week, but instead of pizza, we had arroz del horno, mine and Bre’s favorite dish that Maria makes. Yum! We all visited and celebrated with Sara and Hery (one of the couples in our ISA group) because they got engaged that afternoon! They were absolutely glowing. Definitely the cutest couple I know. Hery literally LIVES to make Sara happy…so sweet. So after dinner, and saying goodbye to a couple people that were leaving in the morning, a group of us girls (plus Patrick--we call him Patricio, even though that’s not really a Spanish name) walked to the little park down the street from dinner. We played on the slides and jungle gyms and just chatted and spent time together. Once it got a little later, we went to a bar called Ben’s Inn (which was kind of symbolic because it’s where we went our very first night in Valencia) and hung out there for a while. At around 1, Caitlin, Mallory, and I walked home before everyone else went to a club. I packed some when I got home before falling asleep.

Friday morning we had to say goodbye to Marcos. That was really hard. I just kind of had a sick feeling in my stomach all morning before that. When it was time for him to leave, we kissed cheeks and hugged him for a long time. It was so sad. Bre and I were a little teary. I told him we would miss him a lot and we thanked him for everything. He blew us kisses before leaving. After saying goodbye, I met up with Caitlin and we spent the rest of the morning at the beach for the last time. The water was perfect, and like usual, the weather was perfect too. We were definitely sad to leave it. We made it back in time for lunch with our families, and after lunch (Maria made Bre and I pasta and salad) Bre, Caitlin, and I went to ISA to drop off our Spain phones and print our boarding passes. At ISA, we met up with Jenny and Allison and then took a bus to the centro to meet Mallory to get horchata. I think I wrote about horchata the other time we had it…it kind of tastes like sweet icy milk (only better) made from the horchata plant and it’s the typical drink of Valencia (like paella is the food of Valencia). Antonio came and met up with us too so we got to hang out with him again before leaving. Sarah and Gab also came. It was so nice to relax and spend my last afternoon with (most of) my favorite people. We shopped around a bit before heading our separate ways to finish packing and eat dinner with our families. Before Caitlin, Sarah, Bre and I Bisied home for the last time (Yay!), we went and bought our moms flowers. We said bye to Antonio (saddd! L) and then left. We packed our stuff up (I had a lot more room than I thought I would!) and then wrote Maria and Marcos a note to put in the flowers. We just told them how much we appreciated everything they did for us and how much we would miss them and loved living with them and how we felt like a family together there. We also promised to write to them and left them our email addresses. So we took the flowers out to Maria, and she was so touched. She hugged and kissed us multiple times and told us she wished we wouldn’t have spent our money on her. We told her it was nothing and thanked her for everything. She kept saying how beautiful they were and thanking us. So then she went to make dinner and got us snacks for the bus and our flights and told us if we wanted to shower again (for the second time that day) before we left, we could. So then we ate dinner and finished getting our things together and got ready to leave. We had to meet at the stadium (our designated meeting area for our excusions) at 11 to get into Madrid at 3am. We had to be there 3 hours before the first flight, which happened to be Morgan’s at 6am. So Maria told us we should get going to catch the bus before the night ones started running, and she helped us carry our things to the elevator. We stood there saying goodbye, and I couldn’t help getting teary. She told us to come back to Valencia again and stay with them. We thanked her and she hugged and kissed us and it was so stinkin sad. Before I stepped into the elevator, I hugged her again. Then Bre and I were walking toward the bus stop, both of us crying, saying we didn’t want to leave and it didn’t feel real. We had such a wonderful time with Marcos and Maria. They took such great care of us and made us feel loved and safe in their home. A lot of our friends said their parents looked at having international students as their job and they were very disconnected from them. Marcos and Maria have had a lot of students, but never did we feel like they had us in their homes for the money. I think they truly enjoyed having us, and they really cared about us too. I’m going to miss them so much. Marcos always singing and “jucking” with us and making us laugh all the time. And Maria being so nurturing and caring and thoughtful and doing everything for us. I’ll miss hearing Marcos call us “jovenes” (we don’t have a word in English that we use like this…but it is used to refer to young/youthful people) and Maria calling us “mis chicas” (my girls). They were honestly the greatest. We were so lucky to have them as part of our study abroad experience. They were a huge part of us loving Valencia and I will never forget them. So then we rode the bus for the last time (Yay!) to the stadium (first we stopped at the cyber café so I could print my boarding passes) and a bunch of our friends were already there. We all stood around talking, and some people (including Jenny and Patricio) came to say goodbye that weren’t going to be riding the bus to Madrid with us. That was sad, saying goodbye to them. The lucky part is that most of the girls I hung out with (except for Allison and Mallory) either live or go to school in the Michigan/Ohio area. Did I ever mention that there was a total of 9 or 10 of us in the ISA group from (or going to school in) Michigan? Seeing as there was only 50ish of us total, that’s a lot! Other than the group of Mexicalis that came together, we were by far the state with the largest number of people. Weird. So anyway, we said goodbye to those not going with us, and boarded the buses to go to Madrid. Since we took two charter buses for 40 of us, we got our own seats and I just laid down and slept for most of it. After we got to Madrid, we said goodbye to Manuel (one of our ISA directors) and headed in. Some people went straight to their gates (we got there a little late) and the rest of us camped out in the hallway and used wifi. It was a long morning. (From the time I got to the airport in Madrid at 4:30, to getting off the plane in Grand Rapids, my traveling totaled 24 hours.) Slowly people left as their flights got closer, and each time, it was sad saying goodbye. My flight to Atlanta was at 10:10, and Mallory, Caitlin, Mary, and Sam were all on it with me. When we were saying bye to Sarah, Bre, and Allison, I kinda started to cry a little. But Bre said we’ll see each other for Battle of the Valleys (lol) and Sarah goes to Adrian, so I’ll probably see her again too. So the four of us (Mary got there later and met up with us at the gate) went through security together and then waited at the gate. Our flight was pretty good. I slept for some of it, watched three movies (Water for Elephants, Limitless, and that surf movie where the girl loses her arm), and ate and drank a lot of bloody mary mix and coke. I don’t mind those flights at all. They’re actually kind of fun. So after we landed in Atlanta, we all met up again and got our bags and went through customs. That’s where we said goodbye to Mary and Mallory, who both live near Atlanta. Mary, who insisted on using the phrasing “See you later,” gave us quick hugs and told us she’d see us next week. Lol. Then Sam, Caitlin and I made our way to the gates. We said bye to Sam, and since I had four hours, I went with Caitlin to her gate to hang out before her flight to Cleveland. We just chilled for a while (I finally got to turn my phone back on!) until it got closer to my flight and I decided to venture to find my gate. That was a sad goodbye too. But she goes to school in Ohio, so we’re not too far apart. Then I found my gate and got on my flight to Detroit. That flight was much shorter than I was expecting. I was so exhausted though. My body was feeling like it was 12:30 Spain time. So I napped a little, woke up and saw the drink cart coming, and forced myself to eat Cheezits to stay awake long enough to drink something. Then we were landing. My last flight was from Detroit to Grand Rapids, which is a pretty stupid flight (23 minutes), but whatever. I landed, met my family at baggage claim, and then went to Denny’s for dinner. It was so nice seeing my family again! I gave them their souvenirs, my mom gave me flowers, and Ashlee gave me a scrapbook she made me while I was gone that had pictures from Spain and my blog posts. J It’s definitely good to be home. In the airports, I still felt like I needed to be speaking Spanish. Caitlin actually did speak Spanish to a woman in Atlanta’s airport on accident. Even now, I still want to. Just some common words, like “si” and “perdone” and “lo siento.” I also have taken to converting American dollars to euros in my head in order to justify spending too much on something. Like with the Cheezits in the airport that were $4, I said to myself, “Eh, that’s only like 2.5 euros. Whatever.” Haha. It is nice to be back to using coins that I don’t have to read to know how much they’re worth and bills that are all the same size and don’t look like Monopoly money.

I met some really great people in Spain that made my trip very special. I really loved everyone in my ISA group. I just want to talk a little bit about the people I was closest to, because although I used their names a lot, I never really said much about them. Bre, Caitlin, Sarah, Mallory, Jenny, Allison, and I were pretty much inseparable the whole trip. Looking back, we attribute that to Sarah’s birthday in Toledo when we went out for dinner and sangria and bonded. J Those girls were awesome and I’ll miss them so much!

Toledo, Spain
Sarah, Caitlin, Jenny, Allison, Mallory, Bre, and Me

Caitlin

Caitlin is from Minnesota and goes to school in Ohio. The month and a half before Spain, she had studied in Botswana and then traveled through Europe for two weeks (she flew from southern Africa to northern Europe and worked her way down to Spain). Caitlin quickly became one of the people I was closest to on the trip and I really grew to admire her a lot. She’s such an adventurer and very outdoorsy and athletic, so we liked doing the same things. She’s also super smart (I’ve asked her her major probably 5 times and still forget…biomedical engineering I think? Pre-med whatever it is) and she’s great with directions, which complimented me well seeing as I suck at them, haha. We spent a lot of time together in Spain and I’m really gonna miss her a lot.

Bre

Seeing as Bre was my roommate (and friend of course), I probably spent the most time with her. From our very first weekend in Madrid (with our room with the twin beds pushed together), to our homestay, to Toledo and Barcelona and Pamplona and Morocco, we enjoyed spending time together and experiencing Spain. We absolutely adored our home with Marcos and Maria and our cute room overlooking the soccer courts. The four of us became a little family in Valencia, and I’m glad I had Bre to experience it all with. Luckily, she goes to Grand Valley so I’m sure I’ll see her again.

 Allison and Jenny

(or, according to their mom, "Yenny" and "la otra chica"--the other girl)

Jenny and Allison were roommates in Spain and between the two of them, there was never a dull moment. We loved hearing their stories about the latest with their host mom (the seventy-year-old woman who barely fed them and sent them to buy her gin). Jenny goes to Ohio State and is definitely one of the funniest people I know. She’s has a real dry, sarcastic sense of humor and I was always cracking up at her expressions and reactions. She’s the kind of person that’s just fun to be around. Allison is from Florida and she’s a blast too. She’s definitely an adventurer and was always looking for a good time. Jenny and Allison were the only two brave enough to run with the bulls in Pamplona and stay overnight in the desert in Morocco. The two of them were literally inseparable and watching them say goodbye was maybe the saddest thing ever. I’m definitely gonna miss those girls.

Sarah

Sarah is from Indiana but goes to school at Adrian. Sarah’s best friend Gab (who was in both summer sessions in Valencia) convinced her to study abroad in Valencia. Sarah is such a sweetheart. Even though she’s from Indiana, she has this strange accent with certain words that apparently comes from her family, and we were often giggling at the way she said things. Sarah had a lot of Bisi problems (crashing them mostly) but I could always count on having someone to Bisi in dresses with. J Sarah is such a fun, sweet, go-with-the-flow kinda girl, and I’m gonna miss having her around.

Mallory

Mallory is your classic southern girl. She’s from Georgia, and she had about half of our close friends saying “y’all” by the end of the trip (unfortunately, I didn’t pick that one up). Mallory is such a sweetheart. Everyone loves her. Going to Morocco, Mal researched and planned practically everything (thank goodness!) and was by far the most organized and reliable of us all. I trusted her judgment with everything. She was definitely the one we could all count on. Mallory is going into nursing, and she’s gonna be great at what she does. I’m gonna miss her, but the plan is for us northerners to all meet up and travel to Allison in Florida, picking up Mal on the way. J

Morgan

Morgan is absolutely crazy. She’s loud and funny and I had a blast with her. She came to Valencia with her boyfriend Andrew (they both go to Michigan State), but unlike most couples I know (and the others in our group), the two were not attached at the hip and they were able to spend time apart and make their own friendships. Morgan and I were class/beach buddies (although she’s partly Mexican and got about 4x darker than I did). So many times she’d frantically call me in the middle of Eduardo’s class (he’d tell me to answer it), saying she’s not trying to skip class and she’ll be there in 10 minutes. Then she’d come crashing through the door, out of breath, telling Eduardo “lo siento” (he’d just look at her, amused) and then slide into the seat next to me and tell me whatever crazy story she had from that morning (ie, shattering a beer glass all over the floor and needing to clean it up before coming to class). Most the time I spent with Morgan, I spent laughing, and I’m so glad I got to know her.

I absolutely loved my time abroad. It has definitely been a highlight of my life. I learned so much about the culture and people of Spain that I never could have without staying in the country. I feel extremely blessed to have had the opportunity to study abroad and I am thankful for everyone in my life that supported and encouraged me in doing this. ISA was a great program to study abroad through and I would recommend them to anyone looking into study abroad. The extra excursions and activities they included in their program were awesome and they allowed us to see some beautiful cities in Spain that we probably wouldn’t have on our own. Our ISA directors (Manuel, Sara, Barbara, and Raquel) were so helpful and involved in our trip and were always there if we needed them. Spain (and Morocco too) is something I will remember for the rest of my life and it has really opened me up to international travel. I can’t wait until I am older and have money to travel the world! I will definitely be making a trip or two back to Spain and beautiful Valencia. J Thank you to everyone who was interested in my travels and who took the time to read my blog. I love you all.

Besos! 

Barcelona!

I watched the running of the bulls every morning (except Saturday and Sunday) of San Fermin. It became a nice little routine in the morning and I actually enjoyed it a lot. Since I have class at 9, I always eat breakfast at 8…right when the running began. So Marcos would move my breakfast to the seat that can see the TV, and the three of us would watch it together. It was always the same: first the runners stretching and getting ready, the group of people chanting around the statue of San Fermin, the lighting of the little rocket that signifies the bulls being released, and then the run, ending in the arena where we sat when we were in Pamplona. Last Wednesday, day 7, was the second to last day. It was a good ending too, as far as casualties go. The front bull plowed down six or seven people. Lol. Literally plowed them down. Again, I don’t think anyone was seriously injured, but I’m sure some people will be in some pain for a while. My favorite part was Maria. Even though she has watched San Fermin for decades, every time someone got hit by a bull, she would shriek, “AY, AY!” and screech some Spanish words and Marcos would join in with her. Wednesday I just sat in my chair giggling at all her shrieking because so many people got trampled. I’m chuckling now just thinking about it. I really love my homestay. I got sooo lucky with them.

Last Wednesday I went to school, gave a twenty minute presentation in my culture class on the customs and traditions of Spain, then went home (I almost always have picnics during the week and bocadillos are getting old) and had lunch. Bre ended up going home for lunch today too, so the four of us ate together, which rarely happens. After lunch, I napped a bit before meeting up with Caitlin to go to the centro for a fieldtrip for our culture class. (Note: if you’re not interested in culture and history stuff, you may wanna skip this paragraph.) We have gone on multiple excursions for that class, and it is by far the best and most interesting way to learn about history in Valencia. We visited a few places: Torres (I forget the rest of the name), the Roman ruins, the Cathedral (again), and the Admiral’s Baths. Other than the Cathedral, these are all places I didn’t even know about, so it’s so nice our teacher takes us to them. Plus we get in for free because we’re a class from the University. So the Torres place is a huge castle that at one point was used to defend the city. We first went inside to where the prisoners were kept. We then climbed up into the top of the castle into the castley structures (Idk their names) where guards used to shoot people down from with their bows. The views from up there were amazing. This city is beautiful. We also took lots of cool class pics (there are only 7 of us in my class) defending the city with our imaginary weapons. All over up there, they have these structures that have little slits so you can hide behind them and shoot your arrows through the slits without being shot yourself. It’s pretty cool. There’s also a dried up moat. We had lots of fun up there. Also, my teacher Jwan (that’s not how you spell it, but it’s how you say it, so I will stick with that spelling) is growing on me more and more. He’s probably in his thirties and I think he’s gay because he wears purple and he likes Lady Gaga. But he’s super nice and he loves to chat with us about the United States and he’s just fun. So after the Torres place, we went to the Roman ruins. The story behind that is a long, long time ago, all the ruins were above ground (obviously), but the river flooded and all the sediment buried it. So about 15 years ago, a house was there and it was torn town to build apartments or something, but during the construction, they discovered these ruins underground. So now it’s a museum and they dug it all out so you walk down to all the ruins and it’s really cool. There’s glass floors to look down into wells and they have models and painted walls to show you how the city used to look. They even found old pottery and plates and jewelry that they have on display. It was really interesting. I definitely felt like I was seeing something I could never see in the U.S. After thatttt, we went to the Admiral’s baths. We had a tour guide for that one, and we first watched a video on the functions of all the baths. There are three rooms: the hot room, the warm room, and the cold room. The hot room was kind of like a sauna, and they would heat up the water over a fire and pour the hot water all over the floors and they would wear special clogs so they didn’t burn their feet. The warm room was where they bathed and got massages and what not. And I don’t really remember what the cold room was for because I think I lost focus of the video by the time the cold room rolled around. But after the video, we walked through all the rooms and every room had star-shaped skylights to look out. So that was another unique place to see. Also, Jwan apparently loves ice cream because every time we go on an excursion, we stop to get it. Obviously we all love it too, so it works out well. So that’s where we stopped after the baths. Morgan, Caitlin, and I all got the large this time. It was delicious. Our last stop was the Cathedral and we just walked around and admired its beauty some more. Jwan showed us where they do the Baptisms and he showed us how the floorplan of the Cathedral is in the shape of a cross. (Did I ever mention that on the scavenger hunt we went on the first week we were here, we climbed up all the stairs of the Cathedral? Allllll 207 of them.) Also, there are many churches in Europe that claim to have the real Holy Grail. But the experts believe that the real one is the one here in Valencia. And it’s in the Cathedral. Unfortunately, you can only see it during the morning; it’s locked up in a separate room. But a couple of my friends have gone to see it and they say it’s pretty cool. So we peeked through the locked gates into the room it is in, but it was pretty dark. We were supposed to be going to the Lonja also, but Jwan said we could do it another day.

So after the fieldtrip, Patrick and I Bisied back toward ISA because he lives around there and I was meeting up with some friends at Cien Montaditos for dinner. He didn’t know the exact roads to take, but he claimed to have an excellent sense of direction, and sure enough, he had no trouble finding the street we needed. And by chance, we happened to pass the Cien Montaditos I needed! Haha. So I parked my bike and went in. Cien Montaditos is a sandwich place that is very popular chain in Spain. Even Maria and Marcos like it. They have 100 (hence the “cien”) different sandwiches you can order and most of them are one euro. The sandwiches are little…only about 4 inches long…but they come with potato chips and most people will order three or four of them and be full. On Wednesdays, Cien has everything for a euro. All the sandwiches, all the appetizers, beer, and their sangria-like drink. So I got two sandwiches (I was pretty full from my ice cream) and the sangria. This time I got a Mexican taco sandwich and a chicken Caesar sandwich. They were both delicious. We hung out there until it was packed, then Jenny, Allison, Mallory, and Bre were all going to a bar, but I decided to Bisi home and go to bed because I have to get up at 7:30am for class. So, I read a bit and went to sleep.

Thursday I had class…double grammar because Jwan and Eduardo (my other teacher) switched a class period. So next week I will have double culture and I’m hoping Jwan will take us somewhere for part of the day. Eduardo is one of the craziest teachers I’ve ever had. He is probably around thirty and he’s so goofy. He hates the beach and he hates the heat. So every morning he’ll come in huffing and puffing about how hot it is and swearing under his breath. I just laugh at him, because it’s always the same. Then he’ll talk with us for twenty minutes or so because the grammar classes are supposed to get in lots of Spanish conversation, and then he’ll teach us. Eduardo is also an avid smoker, so he gives us a 15 minute break every class period so he can go smoke. Lol. Also, Eduardo randomly uses the F word all the time. In Spanish, the word is joder, and he will casually use it in conversation like it’s no big. Haha. For example, the other day, Trista was explaining some Texan tradition and she had a picture on her phone so she handed it to him so he could see and he goes, “Ahh, joder,” as if he was saying, “Ahh, I understand.” Lol. He’s crazy. So in class, he played the first halves of commercials and we had to predict what we thought was going to happen. Then after four or five of them, he played one of those commercials where you’re watching intently and then a big scary face pops up screaming, and Morgan screamed so loud that I was pretty much paralyzed with fear. Lol. After class, Bre and I went souvenir shopping through the plazas for a few hours and then I met up with Caitlin and Sarah to shop for clothes. I needed to find some light linen pants for Morocco because you’re supposed to have your knees covered. The shopping trip was unsuccessful on my part.

Friday morning at 8, we left for Barcelona as one of our ISA trips. The bus ride was pretty long…with the break we had halfway, it took about 4.5 hours. But the ride was sooo pretty. Valencia is south of Barcelona, so we just drove right up the coast line. Mountains on one side, the Mediterranean on the other. Beautiful. When we got there, we had an hour (or so) long bus tour. We drove up to the top of a mountain that looked over all of Barcelona. Barcelona is a very pretty city, but it’s too big for my taste. The views were cool though…the coast and the mountains and all the city. There is a famous church in Barcelona called the Sagrada Familia that is still being built and has been for a couple centuries now. The architecture and detail of the church is amazing. It is absolutely gorgeous. We didn’t go inside the Sagrada Familia because it cost around 10 euro (the money is going toward the construction) and the line to go in was about an hour and a half wait. There was an architect named Gaudi that lived until around 1925 and his work is all over Barcelona. He had taken over the plans for the Sagrada Familia but after he died, his plans were destroyed in a riot so no one really knows what the final product was supposed to look like. The plan is to have the church completed in 15 more years. The church has many huge, detailed, pointy towers that kind of look like a crown. It really is a site to see. After our bus tour, we checked into our hotel and had free time. We walked around a bit before heading toward the beach. Since it was opening day of Harry Potter, we wanted to see it. Mallory, Bre, Gab, Kristin, Andrew and I found out about a theater that was playing it in English (with Spanish subtitles) so we went there. I felt kind of bad spending my time in Barcelona in a movie theater, but I’ll always remember seeing the last HP in Barcelona. The movie was amazing by the way. Cried my little eyes out (a few times). So after the movie we walked back toward the hotel and stopped at a doner kebob place to eat. Yummm. I could eat those every day. So then once we got back it was night time and everyone was going out to a club, but the problem is, I don’t want to stay out until 5am like everyone else, and I don’t want to spend 10 euro on a cab to go back to the hotel alone (especially when I don’t know Barcelona at all), so I stayed in and caught up on my Internet time and was completely happy with that. I was also happy the next day when we had to get up early and I was well-rested.

The thing about Barcelona is that everyone speaks English. I think I heard more English than Spanish. Kinda weird. It’s also super expensive. So the next morning we went to breakfast at the hotel and it was actually a decent breakfast. At our Madrid hotel, the didn’t have a lot of the breakfast foods we’re used to at home. But in Barcelona, along with the usual, they had eggs and bacon!!! So I made little bacon and egg bocadillos and it was delicious. We also made sandwiches with their lunch meat and cheese and stuck them in our bags to eat for lunch. J So we had a three hour walking tour and to be honest, nothing we saw really stuck with me. We went into a cathedral (we had to cover our shoulders and legs, so I threw jeans on under my dress) and saw an old temple, and at another church, there was a wedding about to start, and they actually let us go in. So we sat in the back with a bunch of other randos not invited, but our tour guides made us leave right before the bride walked down the aisle. Boo. We did see the couple later though after the wedding. So we had free time after we saw all these things and we walked around and I don’t wanna say it was boring, because it’s hard to be bored in Spain, but Barcelona was my least favorite of the cities we have visited in Spain. We just didn’t really know what to do or where to go. We went to this Gothic neighborhood (part of the city, not an actual neighborhood) that Manuel suggested, and it was alright, but we weren’t too thrilled. I think it’s because Barcelona is so big that a lot of the main attractions are so spread out and not really in walking distance, so we just didn’t see a whole lot. So we took a little siesta in the middle of the day and then in the evening, we went to dinner at some restaurant. I just got tapas because I wasn’t very hungry. Tapas are kind of like small appetizers, and the people will go from bar to bar and eat tapas before dinner or lunch. So after dinner, Caitlin, Sarah, Gab, and I took the metro to a palace we had seen during our bus tour that has fountain/light shows at night. That was probably the coolest thing I did all weekend. The palace was gorgeous at night and it had light beams shining behind it all over. There are two long reflection-type pools with small fountains leading to the palace and at the end of the pools was a huge fountain that would shoot up into the air and change colors and go with music. It was really cool. We watched for about an hour and then Gab and Sarah left and Caitlin and I walked up the manyyyy steps to the palace. They even had escalators that took you half way up. Haha. Once we got to the top, the view was amazing. Barcelona looked so pretty at night. So we got a lot of fun pictures and afterwards, before getting back on the metro, we got strawberry lemonade slushies and sat by the fountains for a while. Then we got home at about 12:30 and everyone else had gone out again so we just hung out for a while before going to bed.

The next morning, we ate some more breakfast, stole some more sandwiches, and went to el Parque Guell. That was also really cool. This was also Gaudi’s work and it was awesome. Very modern, very unique. The buildings (mostly just gift shops now) looked like they belonged in Candyland. They reminded me of gingerbread houses. I would honestly love to live in one of those houses. They were so cool. Gaudi’s architecture was very mosaic in the park and it was just very fun. Part of the park is a little overlook and for that, he designed large columns underneath and made the ceiling half circles to drain the water into the columns for (I think) the city to use. After that, we rode the bus to another part of the city where Gaudi designed a couple more buildings. I just love his architecture. The first one is an apartment building now (I can’t imagine how much it costs to live there) and the building has a kind of wave to it and the balconies are all black metal shapes and swirls and strange designs all together into a weird jumble. It looks amazing. The second building is a museum now and the front is multi-colored mosaic tiled and the wavy roof looks like reptile scales and the balconies look like skeletons. It kind of has the same “fake” feel as the gingerbread houses. I just loved them. Along with the Valencian architect that designed all the arts and sciences buildings and other buildings throughout Valencia and Spain, Gaudi is definitely one of my favorite architects that I’ve seen in Spain (or anywhere for that matter). We had more free time after that, so we walked around Las Ramblas, a plaza basically meant for tourists. Haha. We looked through shops and just walked around. We ate lunch at a restaurant with Mexican food. Our meeting place for the bus was the statue of Christopher Columbus (he was Spanish) so we went over there a little before we were supposed to meet. All along the base of the statue giant lions jutted out about 10 or so feet off the ground. We decided to climb the lions to take pictures. The problem was that once I got on the tail, there really wasn’t a good place to grab to pull myself up on its back, so Caitlin gave me a boost. I ended up flat on my stomach on the lions back hugging the thing for dear life. We were all dying laughing (including the randos standing around watching), but I was literally terrified. Lol. Mallory got a nice little string of pictures of the process of getting on the lion, including me face down on the thing. So eventually I got the courage to pull myself up to a sitting position, got a couple pics, and I got down asap. It started to sprinkle a bit, and we got on the bus and headed back to Valencia. Overall, I enjoyed Barcelona, but a little bit less than our other trips.

Monday was a beach day. It was also the easiest day of classes ever. Eduardo talked with us for a half hour before he had to leave for a funeral, and then Jwan let us out 45 minutes early too. We asked Jwan about our final exam, and he said he had one prepared, but he didn’t know if he wanted to give it to us. He said because there’s only seven of us, and because we participate so much, and because he feels like we’re his children (lol, aw), he didn’t feel like a final exam was really necessary. What he eventually decided to do was to go through the exam questions and answers with us, so all we’ll have to do is study them for the exam and we can all get 100%. Best final ever. Thanks Jwan! J Over the weekend, Bre and I also got two new roommates in our house. Maria and Marcos introduced us last night. One is from Germany and she’s only 17. The other is also 17 and is from Slovania I think? She was super awkward to talk to. The German girl and I had breakfast together Monday morning and she’s a nice girl, but she only spoke to me in English, so it’s like Q-Hey (our Korean roommate, and I obviously don’t know how to spell her name) all over again. Oh welllll. At around 10:30, Bre and I met up with Caitlin, Sarah, Jenny, Allison, and Mallory at the City of Arts and Sciences. We wanted to see the buildings and pools at night, so we just walked around and took pictures. It was very pretty. After hanging out for an hour or so, we went to McDonald’s because Sarah was in one of her must-have-ice-cream-right-now moods. Haha. So we all got ice cream and sat around chatting for a while. Then we all grabbed Bisies and headed home to bed.  

Tuesday for culture, we went on another field trip with Jwan. This time, we went to an archeological museum and another art museum. The art museum was modern and abstract, and until the floor with the optical illusion paintings, we all just kept making up silly interpretations of the abstract stuff and saying, “I could’ve done this…” The archeology was cool. Pottery and artifacts and bones and all that. All stuff found around Valencia. But at this point, I think we’ve all had enough of museums (we’ve gotta be nearing 10 or 15 in the last thirty days). So Jwan took us to this museum that had a little park in the inner square outside. So we sat for a little while and chatted before jumping back on the bus to go back to the University. After we got back, Morgan and I headed to the beach again and around three or four, more of our friends started joining us, so that was nice. Then my intercambio friend Antonio came and hung out with us too, so that was fun too. Antonio and I spent probably 45 minutes in the ocean swimming. The waves were huge…not the undertow kind, but the slam-you-hard-in-the-face kind. At around 7:45, Juan and I Bisied back home (he lives a street down from me) and us four girls ate dinner together. Lol. Kinda strange.

Tomorrow we leave for Morocco. Our flight leaves Valencia at 7:10pm, and we’ll be in Marrakesh an hour later. Friday Bre, Mallory, and I booked a day trip to the Ourika Valley. (Jenny and Allison are going on a multiday trek through the desert, so we won’t be going together.) We will be seeing a traditional Moroccan house where the lady makes us mint tea. We then go on a two hour long hike into the Valley to see mountains and ruins. We also have a twenty minute CAMEL TREK! I can not wait!! We eat a traditional dinner and come back. Altogether, the trip is 8.5 hours, so it should be very interesting! Next week is our last week in Valencia...already! I feel like I just got here. This has been suchhh a wonderful experience, but at the same time, I’m definitely looking forward to coming home.

Besos!