Here's most of what I have so for. Sorry that I'm missing alot (Lisbon, Sevilla, Chefchaoun, Fez, my housemates, the school). More to come soon. http://www.cosmicyoyos.com/maroc/Document.htmlp Happy Thanksgiving! Brad [View Full Entry]

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I have a home! Last night I moved into my new apartment, its perfect! The building I'm in is a restored 19th century riad owned by an American couple who only spend a couple weeks a year here. I have two roommates. Gibron, from LA, is a 30 something year old English teacher at the center. He manages the restoration work and maintainance on the house for the owners. Gerald is a 50 something retired bookseller who is an expert on literature and classical music (and he knew my favorite author, Paul Bowles) The house is absoultely gorgeous, its 3 and [View Full Entry]

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Hello I'm in Marakesh! Its the 2nd day of Eid, a three day celebration at the end of Ramadaan. The strets are alive here, everyone is doing their last minute shopping and the men and women are dressed in their best. Its kind of like Christmas except without Santa Claus and christmas trees and snowmen and carols and pork products. Not only that, I can actually eat lunch now that the fasting is over (thank god). Marakesh is absolutely beautiful. The buildings are all red, the gardens are all green, and one can see the snow-capped Atlas mountains in the background. [View Full Entry]

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I just saw the king of Morocco in his motorcade. He came to Fez last night to pray at the Karouine mosque and the tomb of Moulay Idress and spent the night in his palace (which he probably doesn't use more than a few times a year since he lives in another palace in Rabat). Today as I was walking home I found the streets blocked off and a small crowd of people waiting nearby. Not more than 10 minutes later his majesty came through in his 60s era Mercedes limosine amidst at least 20 other vehicles. I could see him [View Full Entry]

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Saba Al Noor (Bright Morning) So I've gone native. I bought a Jalaba yesterday in Sefrou. For those of you who don't know about the Jalaba, its an ankle length robe with a pointed hood that the men wear here in Morocco. I like quite like a Hobbit really and I feel very mysterious when I wear it. The closet thing I can think of is the brown robes worn by those the little sand men in Star Wars with the luminescent eyes. The best thing is that when I walk through the medina, most of the carpet salesmen automaticaly assume [View Full Entry]

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Sabah Al Khar I'm still not sure how it came about exactly, but somehow I ended up giving an interview, in French, on a Moroccan national radio station last night during the election. Apparently the radio station got the name of one of the students at the center, and called looking for francophone Americans to speak live on the air. I ended up speaking for about 5 minutes to the radio station through my friend's cell phone to the whole country. The questions were prety simple but I'm pretty sure I lost in translation most of the nuances of what he [View Full Entry]

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Life is good here in Fez, school is going well, though the task of actually learning Arabic is a daunting one to say the least. EVERYTHING is different in this language: the sounds are strange, the script is strang, and tiny little changs in pronounciation make drastic differences in the meaning of the word. We still haven't gone through the whole alphabet yet, but we've started with some vocabulary. My class is nice, there's an Englishman and an American girl my age, an elderly Swedish woman and An American man who came with his family. I have two teachers, Zaim and [View Full Entry]

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Salaam Alekuem, I'm in Fez, the magical city that completely changed my life last year. This is so far my most favorite place in the world. To be honest, I was a little nervous about whether it would be as exotic as a I remember it: I have not been dissapointed. I started school at the Arabic Language Institute yesterday, we jumped right in and learned all the vowels and 3 consonants. There are 5 people in my class, we have 4 hours of instruction each day and an hour or 2 of homework. Tonight I move out of the hotel [View Full Entry]

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I made it! Beautiful Morocco. It's as wonderful as I remember and far less intimidating the second time around. I took the ferry from Algeceris to Ceuta yesterday morning after waiting entirely too long for the pension to finish my laundry (ahh the wonders of clean clothing!) I landed in Ceuta, another geographic anomoly. Ceuta, on the North coast of Africa, is a Spanish enclave and has been since the defeat of the moors in the 16th century. I didn't stay though. Instead I crossed the border and had a wonderful time arguing with the touts over a taxi ride to [View Full Entry]

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Yesterday was my most exciting day yet! I woke up in Sevilla, Spain, a wonderful city that I have incredably fond memories of from my first voyage. Chelsea, one of my travel companions, was sick so she and her boyfriend Mark decided to stay in Sevilla another night (we were suppoed to wake up and go to Morocco together). I went out alone and got some traveller´s checks, then went to the Sevilla cathedral and the Alcazar palace. The palace is an incredable monument that I somehow missed on my last trip. It was built by one of the Spanish kings [View Full Entry]

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