JeNeSuisPasLapin
Brad Urani Joined: October 3rd 2004
Logged in: November 2nd 2006
Logged in: November 2nd 2006
Travel Blog Posts
As-Salam Aleikum osratee wa asdikaee (Peace upon you family and friends), Hello loyal readers, its been about 8 months since my last entry. I'm sorry for the delay but several things prompted me stop posting entries. First, people in Fes, where I was living, stumbled upon this blog, and I discovered that several complete stranger moroccans knew just a little more about me than I felt comfortable with. Then I had a couple complete stranger Europeans who had been reading the blog randomly show up to visit me, and they turned out to be.. well... weird (not you Rain). So I took a little break. I left Morocco, after an amazing 11 months, and went home in August for 6 weeks, after which I relocated to windy crowded Alexandria, Egypt. Alexandria is a boring city, but ... read more
Hey Folks, sorry its been months and month since I've posted anything. Life in Morocco is busy! I had a big adventure last week. I had a week off from school so I finally decided to head up into the mountains. I went alone because most of my friend had to stay in Fes for various reasons, but I did have time to stop in Rabat with my roommate Amanda and have an amazing sushi dinner with some of our friends before I went down south. The sushi was almost as good as the mountain trip even though it cost me what I'd spend for a week's worth of Moroccan food. We sat next to a sushi conveyor belt and picked what we wanted as it came around. I'm so sick of Moroccan food... The chicken ... read more
This weekend was the big holiday: Aid Al-Kebir, La Grande Fete, The Big Celebration. All last week the streets were full of bleeting sheep, and all last weekend they smelled of roasting sheep-meat. Aid Al-Kebir is Islam's biggest holiday. I think I mistakenly reported in a previous entry that the party after Ramadaan was the biggest, but I was wrong. For the holiday, to honor Abraham's sacrifice of his son Isaac to show his faith in god, every family buys a live sheep and kills it and eats the meat all weekend. Issac was spared the knife by god who replaced him with a sheep at the last moment, but the sheep, like the several million sheep sacrificed in Morocco on Friday, knew no such mercy. I celebrated with Abd Al-Ali (AKA Abdul) and his family ... read more
I skiied Morocco on Saturday! That makes two new continents in less than 2 weeks. I left Fez on Saturday with my friend Analee (who works as an iron-age archeologist in Jordan) and we made our way up to Ifrene, the Moroccan Aspen, and then on to the ski lodge at Mischliffen by grand taxi. Clearly a colonial era legacy, Mischliffen is just 2 small hills with two rope tows and a swiss style ski lodge and hotel; but what it lacks in verticle rise it makes up for with excellent people watching and dirt cheap prices. We were the first ones there in the morning. I rented skis in the ski shop - ok actually it was just a guy with several dozen pairs of broken mismatched 80s era slalom skis tossed haphazerdly into the ... read more
Medina Al -Zahara
So I believe I was telling you about my trip to Spain before I got distracted with the history lesson. Codoba was wonderful and I had a great time exploring and meeting people at the hostel. The mosque there is incredable, it was built in the 10th century when Cordoba was the capital of Islamic Spain. Its HUGE, a giant square with a forest of columns and double arches on the inside. Unforutantely the center was cut out and a cathedral inserted in the middle by the chrisitian kings in the 17th century. The cathedral - done in the ugliset Spanish Baroque with trumpeting angles, big fat babies and bald-headed monks flying everywhere - both ruins the mosque and show by comparison just how much more ingenious and tastefull the much-older mosque is in its simple ... read more
Wow, so much to write about. First Asia... what a tragedy. The kind of suffering they´re experiencing there is foreign to us in America, we have nothing with which to compare a disaster like that. I can´t remember anything in my lifetime that has left 60,000 dead and a million people homeless in one short day, it will undoubtedly take several generations for most of those places to recover. Its especially scary for me because my original travel plans for this trip had me placed square on the Indonsian coastline at this time. Only after I started studying French did I decided to change my plan and go to French West Africa. Anyway, I´m in Grenada, Spain. I spent Christmas in Fez with my Moroccan friends. It was a complete non-event since their were no other ... read more
Ahlan W'sahlaan sadeequatee Wa asdequa. I'm still in Fez A humdulilah. Private Arabic lessons, I've decided, are the way to go. Mustapha comes to my house at 9 and makes me talk for 3 hours straight non-stop, no mistakes tolerated. I don't have to commute, I get more attention and learn faster, and its cheaper than school too. I'll still probably go back to the school in January for one more 6 week course if only to be part of the social scene there, then its private lessons exclusively until I feel like I can take the final class and get my diploma or certificate, or whatever they give here. Arabic, I've decided, is not impossible to learn, though some have told me otherwise. There are however some major difficulties involved (those who have no need ... read more
Class is officialy finished as of 10:00 am today. We had our big test, then we all went to the cafe to have tea and chocolate croissants to celebrate. This week has been both happy and sad: happy because its been the best week yet for dinner parties, discotheques and dining out; sad because most of my Asdeequa (friends m.) and Sadequaat (friends f.) are leaving and not coming back next semester. I can see already that I'm bound to meet some of the most interesting, intelligent and eccentric people in the world here, but that I'm also going to have to get used to seeing them come and go more often than I would otherwise wish. I've been an utter shopaholic lately. My attempts to buy christmas presents, furnish my room and buy a wardrobe ... read more
I ended up at a Moroccan wedding on Monday! I was walking home when a homegrown band of drummers and horn players can parading down the alley. It turns out they were my neighbors and they were happy to pull me and my companion into the fray. Inside their house we did some square dancing while the drummers banged away on baking tins, frying pans and even some real drums. The whole time I was sort of smothered with young children who were more than happy to lead me around the room by the hands (often with several children per hand) and sit on my lap and just sort of grab on to me however possible. I don't think I ever actually met the zwoj and zwoja but I'm pretty sure I met every single member ... read more
