Blogs from Fes, Fès-Boulemane, Morocco, Africa - page 23

Hello Reader. After leaving Valencia, and so many good people, I was ready to start seeing new things and meeting new people. Nothing takes your mind off being sad like tons of cheap food, fresh squeezed orange juice every morning, and traveling around a foreign country good friends. The plan was to travel through Morocco for a few days with Ali, Harri, and Mike. Ali and Harri would then head back to Valencia (and then back to England the following week) and Mike and I would continue traveling together through Portugal and up to Bordeaux for Angela's Birthday Bash. (If you remember, Angela's the awesome Kiwi I met in Toulouse when I stayed with my Couchsurfing host, Benny.) Our bus trip from Valencia to Tarifa was an overnight one. The long ride was made much easier ... read more

Fès, oldest of the Imperial Cities. Arrived here from Meknes, and with a little help from my train cabin mates (who made me an honorary Moroccan!) I was able to dodge the craziness at the station and get to my pension, Dalila... Only one word comes to mind when describing Fès: Insane. The medina has supposedly 9400 twists and turns in its labyrinth style layout, overwhelming to say the least. Life appears in many aspects as I'm sure it did in the middle ages; from the handiworks of the tanneries and the making of silk to the food and carpet merchants seen everywhere. Transportation of goods and materials is still done by donkey and horse (and if you hear "belak" get out of the way, there's a fully laden mule coming and he ain't stopping for ... read more

After waking at 0900 we put our pack-safes on our backpacks before checking out and leaving them at reception. You can never be too careful and our hotel was in no danger of making it into any luxury travel brochures. Ali's neighbour showed up on time at 1000 and our first stop was the train station where we tried to buy tickets on the overnight train to Marrakech.... or, to be more accurate, the two overnight trains to Marrakech. Ee learned that we'd be swapping trains in Casablanca in the middle of the night. We had concerns for our security or, worse yet, getting the wrong connection so we headed for the bus station and bought tickets for the 2200 bus to Marrakech - due to arrive at 0500 the following morning. We all caught a ... read more

I have now experienced Africa! My journey began on the early morning of November 1st. We departed from Granada at 6am bound for Algeciras, a city Robert and I knew very well. There we met another bus of students from Sevilla and boarded the ferry to Cueta. A quick 45 min. ride across the straight of Gibraltar and we were in Africa, well...we were still in Spain technically, Ceuta is a spanish city on the continent of Africa. After a two hour delay at the boarder we finally could say, "Estamos en Africa". The first night we stayed in Fez. It was a definite culture shock. The sides of the roads and highways were filled with people walking and riding bikes and the roads were filled with people riding mules, horse drawn "carriages" and mercedes. The ... read more

I have to post my group photo because they really have become my family here. Like I said earlier; training is a lot like summer camp. From the bottom; left to right: Mark from Texas; me; Meredith from Maryland who sings-plays the guitar-is a kickboxing instructor; Amanda and John - one of our married couples; Matt who always wins at rummy; (second row) Amina - the LCF who is with me in my CBT site; Cara from South Dakota; Nedda and Michael - the other married couple- they will be in CBT with me; Rachel - a real PCV; Lena who already speaks Arabic and is my roommate in Fès; Arturo from SoCal; Abdullah who works for PC; Abdelghani who is in charge of the YD (youth development) sector of PC and has a very funny ... read more