Unexpected Morocco

Unexpected. That’s the word that keeps coming to mind when I try to describe Morocco. Other words are friendly, dangerous, dirty, achingly beautiful, mysterious, joyous and sad. It’s full of contradictions, and it will take time for me to sort out exactly how I feel about it.

You definitely can’t put it into a box. It’s a predominately Muslim country that speaks French; a place where young guys in bright Adidas track suits haggle with bearded men wearing robes and slippers; where the music in one taxi can be Bob Marley and another a morning prayer. It defies expectation and definition. It makes no apologies for what it is.

On Skype talking to my Dad I had a hard time answering questions about what I thought of it. What did I think of the people, the food, the music and architecture? The fact is, I have no idea. I liked parts and found it hard to like others.

My first impression of Tangier on the northern coast of Africa was the view through a dirty taxi window, whipping through streets and roundabouts. We passed through markets and the neon glow of clubs, I saw half-constructed buildings and men on cell phones herding sheep through dusty fields between cement towers.

We rented a house through Airbnb, a site which I highly recommend. It lets you rent apartments, rooms, and houses directly from owners. If you look through you can usually find places way cheaper than hostels. Our place was located inside the Kasbah in the middle of the city. To reach the neighborhood you had to pass through an ancient walled gateway. The taxi dropped us and our bags off and we gave the driver our 150 dirham (about 15 euros) and waited for Anne, the owner of the house.

Anne and her sister turned out to be the two older ladies waiting underneath a tree, hair wrapped in scarves and wearing long robes. They led us through the dim, stone streets; at times the walls were so close you could touch either side with your hands. I got glimpses down alleys of men talking, snatches of singing coming from an open window, strange writing on walls.

The house we rented was five narrow stories and overlooked the entire Kasbah and bay. There were six of us and we each had our own room and the guys and girls had their own bathroom. The whole place was decked out in modern furniture and stocked with tea and coffee.

We dropped our stuff off and immediately set off into the city. It was about 10 and we didn’t want to get caught out in the city too late so we went straight to a place we had heard about through a friend who had lived in Morocco.

Saveur de Poisson was the best meal I’ve had in my life. Hands down. No question about it; from the service to the vibe to my new nickname given to me by our server (Gran Maestro). We walked down this wide, steep stairway and the restaurant was literally a hole in the wall to the right. A cook was up front, chopping piles of vegetables on a low wooden table, watching us with an amused grin as we navigated the slick stairs.

The restaurant itself was two rooms, the first separated by a small partition and set aside for the stoves and cooks, the second was the dining room. There were about 7 small tables and at that time there was only one other couple looking at us from the corner. On the walls were paintings and old cooking implements, pots, pans, woven baskets, and near the kitchen a porcelain sink with a nail holding grey napkins that could be ripped off to dry your hands.

Our server was a bald smiling Moroccan wearing a crisp white shirt. He spoke a muddled mix of Spanish, French, and Arabic and quickly made us feel at home, maneuvering tables around to fit us all and ripping pieces of paper off for us as placemats.

You don’t order here. The place has no menus but the food is brought out to you as soon as you sit down. Here’s a list of the courses and food:

1^st Course: Loaves of round brown bread piled high in a basket with chili paste and fresh olives.

2^nd Course: A steaming shallow pan of shark, calamari, white fish, spinach, garlic and other spices you scoop up with wooden forks.

3^rd Course: Grilled Flounder served whole with skewered shark meat and lemon.

4^Th Course: Fresh cut strawberries with pine nuts and honey, and an almond/nut mixture in a thick honey paste.

All of this we washed down with the house ‘sangria’ a chilled fruit juice made from figs, oranges, raisins, raspberries, and strawberries.

After living off frozen pizzas and cheap wine for six months my body almost shut down with such amazing food. We had to crawl back to the Kasbah that night, dodging merchants still trying to trap us in their shops and walking past homeless men wrapped in carpets passed out on the sidewalk.

The next day we started with a Moroccan breakfast, six loaves of bread and a wheel of goat cheese wrapped in a palm frond. We chugged some coffee and piled six people into a taxi to make the hour drive to Asilah, a white Mediterranean city on the coast.

 

Asilah was beautiful and the day was perfect, not a cloud in the sky. We wandered through little alleys and streets. The stalls on the side were packed with merchandise: cheap key chains, bracelets, teapots, hats, shirts, robes, belts, carpets, tapestries, spices, carved wooden boxes, paints, dyes, and leather bags. The walls gleamed white and blue and in the distance you could hear waves crashing against the stone walls.

 

Side note to people travelling to Morocco. People know you’re travelling, they know you have money, and they will do whatever they can to take it from you. That being said, all it takes is ignoring someone when they try to get you to come into their shop or a firm ‘No’, but all the same. Don’t follow anyone to a second location and don’t let someone tag along with you and your group who says they ‘just want to help and show you around’. I speak from experience and it took us nearly an hour and a half to shake this guy. Many of the people I met were friendly and it’s not everyone but all the same, be careful.

Cody getting cornered

We ended the day in Asilah with a few beers and lunch outside the medina, then caught a taxi back to Tangier where we munched on some loaves of bread and hit the markets.

It’s hard to describe the markets in Tangier. One reason is that there doesn’t seem to be any real starting or ending point to them. The fruit vendors and cigarette stalls spill over into the more residential areas of the Kasbah and even before you reach them you can hear the honking of horns and growl of motorbikes as they whip through the streets. There are women and children begging for change and old men sizing you up from the doorways of their shops, arms crossed over their chests. Young men call out the different types of spices and teas and medicines they have and all the while people are walking, shoving, pushing and you’re caught in this torrent of sights and smells. There are big shops full of swords and ornamental tea sets, little shops with a couple Playstation boxes on display, clothing stores full of red, blue, brown, robes, swinging in the doorways as people pass by. Little kids with their hands on the bars of balconies call out greetings in Arabic and French. One little boy was on the third story of an apartment building with his head pressed against the bars of a window practicing his numbers in Spanish.

-Uno. I heard from above.

I looked up and caught his eye.

-Dos! I shouted back.

-Tres! He returned.

-Cuatro!

-Cinco! Seis! Siete!

His brothers and sisters ran to the window then laughing grabbed him and dove back into the house.

After the sun went down we headed into the new part of town where the nicer hotels and bars are and where alcohol is available.

It took us approximately an hour and a half to find a shop that sold any.

We went bouncing back and forth from different bars and shops and either people honestly didn’t know where we could buy some beer or didn’t want to say. A younger guy in a grocery store heard us asking for alcohol and came over.

-It’s difficult to find alcohol but if you keep looking you’ll find a place that sells it.

I thought that these might be the vaguest directions to a liquor store I’d ever heard.

-Like in a basement somewhere or in a shop?

-No, they’ll have it out on display.

-Okay, so like a place close by here?

He shrugged.

-I don’t know. Maybe down that way.



Behind the counter the shopkeeper was eyeing us. We walked outside. Almost immediately after, our friend from the store popped his head around the corner and whispered quickly:

-Go down that way and look for Casa de Pepe.

Then he was gone.

Casa de Pepe turned out to be a little grocery store and they did sell alcohol, which we bought and consumed a lot of when we got back to the house.

The blue walls of Chaoen

The next day we took a van to Chefchaoen, a town that not one of us could pronounce correctly and what I thought was pronounced Chef Chow Mein for the first half of the day. Chaoen, for short, is a town perched high in the mountains two hours south on winding roads from Tangier. We had rented the van through one of the hotels in town and it only cost about 250 dirham (25 euros) apiece to get us there and back.

The old medina in Chaoen is a sprawl of narrow streets connected by stairways, cobble stones and little shops and restaurants. Many of the streets lead down to the central square where the Kasbah is and where you can get mint tea and check out awesome views of the mountains.

 



She wasn't impressed by the entrance to the market



View of the mountains outside the Kasbah

We sat and had tea and watched little kids trying to sell souvenirs to tourists while being kicked and shoved away from restaurants by the waiters, only to come scuffling cautiously back as soon as their backs were turned. I watched one little kid with a messy mop of brown hair, stick arms hanging out of a dirty sweater. The kid eyed us hopefully with his arm outstretched full of rings while our server (out of sight from us) cupped his hand and collected the cold water dripping from the canvas roof, smiling to himself and tapping his sheaf of plastic menus against his leg happily. When keychain kid got close enough he flung a handful of water into his eyes and the boy screeched and ran into the square, where he stood sobbing and rubbing his face. The server looked back calmly and continued smiling, tapping the menus slowly against his leg.

We finished the day with a long drive back to Tangier, a nap and a return to Saveur where we relived our infamous dinner from two nights before. This time our waiter invited us into the back where he showed us where they stew the fruits for the sangria and store the vegetables. We headed back to the apartment, exhausted and satisfied that whatever we all of thought of the things we had seen, Morocco wasn’t going to be a place we would forget, and that because we all went together the six of us could never forgotten.

Shout out to Sharon, Erica, Rachel, Cody, and Jake for making this such an amazing trip. You guys are family, thanks for reminding me that the company you keep when you travel is as important as the journey.

 

 



Abroad so far...

Five months in. My time in Spain is almost halfway over, which is crazy because it seems like I still have so much left to do and see while I'm here. I have changed though. Not that I can see it in myself but I can see it in my friends and professors, whose time here is a reflection of my own.  I can speak somewhat broken Spanish, enough to get the message across at least. I know what 4 degrees Celsius feels like and roughly how tall six meters is. I can order a beer, tapa, and ask for the check at a restaurant without stuttering and I can find the quickest way home on the metro anywhere in the city.
Spain has left it's mark for sure.
I don't freak out anymore when I can't talk to someone from back home for a couple of days, I've realized that as much as we try to hold onto things,  people grow up and apart and the relationships we had when we left won't be the same we come back to. And those that remain will be stronger for having lasted.
I know how to tell my preschool class to sit down, be quiet, and listen.
They ignore me.  But still I know how to say it.
I've met some incredible people. Some of the best-friends I've ever had and been lucky enough to land in a school that feels more like a giant family than work.
My backpack is tattered and coming apart from lugging my computer around to private classes and being shoved and squished into overhead compartments.
I've been in a snowball fight in Segovia, seen Flamenco in Cordoba, and drank scotch while watching the sun set in Sevilla.
I've used flamboyant hand gestures to ask for cough drops in a pharmacy when I've been sick and slept on the metro more times than I can count. I've been frustrated, angry, and lonely at times but getting through those days make the times when I'm taking a nap in Retiro on a Sunday afternoon all the better.

Living abroad so far has been challenging, difficult, and crazy at times, but I wouldn't trade any of my experiences so far for anything in the world.



Sevilla

     You could smell incense in the air. Two cops stood side by side blocking the thin street from cars. People were walking, trancelike, to a giant gilded statue of the Virgin Mary, perched on invisible shoulders hidden beneath a velvet curtain. There were black suited musicians, most of them young, with gleaming brass instruments and drums, silently waiting behind. I took my place among the other onlookers. The air was starting to get cold but the heat from a dozen candles warmed the tiny street and sent shadows dancing up the cobblestones. Suddenly, and with a volume that made me jump, the drums started. BOOM! Silence except for the echo rolling out like a carpet along the street. Then the brass started. One by one, the musicians started to sway.

     We went down to Sevilla without a plan, without a place to stay, and without knowing much about the city beforehand. We knew we had a long weekend to take advantage of and my good friend from school offered us a cheap way to ride down. On the way we stopped off in Trujillo, a small pueblo an hour south of Madrid famous for being the birthplace of the conquistador Pizarro. It was the first truly cold day we had and people were wrapped up in big coats, walking across the town square where a statue of Pizarro stood beneath the shelter of a medieval church. We had café and tapas under an awning. Stalls on the outskirts of the plaza sold roasted almonds, walnuts, and sweet pecans. I bought a big bag before we headed back to the car.

    

Trujillo

          When we got to Sevilla, Cody, Jake, and I thought it best to go ahead and figure out a place to stay. It was the day after Halloween and we didn't realize that the hostels would be all booked up. We followed our phones around winding streets, looking for the blue and star sign of a hostel. Finally, after four rejections, the owner of one offered to rent us his private apartment. Altogether it was only 10 euros more a night than a regular hostel room and this way we wouldn't have to share a bathroom or kitchen.

          Not planning turned out in our favor. The view of the city was incredible. We spent the next two days travelling with a friend of mine who showed us all of the best places to walk, eat, and drink in the city. Here are a couple of my favorites:

1. Serranitos in El Patio: Serranitos are a specialty in Seville, especially if you find yourself in El Patio. The bar was packed with people and we had to scream to get our orders heard but the atmosphere was amazing. When you get your bocadillo you sit on raised steps in the back of the bar and eat, throwing your napkins and toothpicks on the ground in true Spanish style. A serranito is a ham, green pepper and mustard sandwich served hot. Wash it down with a glass of beer and you're ready for a couple more hours of sightseeing.

 

 

2. Las Setas : Literally The Mushrooms, Las Setas is the largest wooden structure in the world and dominates the middle of downtown Seville.  For around 3 euros you can go take an elevator to the top and walk around the curving stairs that follow the contours of the sculpture, getting amazing views of cathedrals and white washed buildings. At the end you trade your ticket in for a beer or glass of sangria. This is a great starting part if you're touring the city for the day because it allows you to orient yourself to where the major sites are.

 



 



3. The Cathedral and main square: Nearly every town in Spain has a major square around which are the major sites but Seville's was by far the most picaresque for me. Whitewashed walls, orange trees, clean streets, flamenco dancers, gypsies that try to steal from you while handing you a sprig of rosemary. It's the picture of Spain you always had in your head. Add to that amazing weather, horse drawn carriages and street music and you have an unforgettable experience.

4. Plaza de Espana : At dusk we headed to Plaza de Espana. Originally built for Spain's world fair, the massive complex is now one the greatest tourist attractions in Seville. We walked through giant pillars just as the sun was setting. I've never seen anything like it. The Plaza is shaped like a horseshoe with a circular moat on the inside. The size alone knocks the wind out of you and we all split up to explore it on our own before we were capable of speaking again. Around the outer walls are murals depicting the different regions of Spain. Bridges span the moat and connect to a giant tiled circle where carriages and street vendors sell roasted chestnuts and drinks.

 

 

Like the procession we wandered into that night, Seville was strange, beautiful, and totally unexpected. It goes to show you that sometimes the best adventures are those unplanned. 

Travelling Alone

"You know what no one ever talks about?"

A friend asked me.

"What's that?"

"The lonely times. The gaps when nothing's going on and you want to be home."

I've been thinking about that a lot lately and she was right. It's a dirty secret that we don't bring up, that travelling alone and living abroad isn't always what our posted pictures seem to be. The holidays can be especially tough when you're living four thousand miles away. Bus rides through the countryside can be bleak when it's dark and raining and you're tired and every mile is taking you further away from your friends. That's where I found myself a couple days after Christmas. Taking a night bus from Dublin to Kilkenny to see some more of Ireland before I flew back to Madrid.

For some reason the aloneness of where I was hit me. Any immunity I had to loneliness had been wiped out by the closeness of family and late night talks with my uncle and playing with my little cousins over the past week. Now here I was again, about to stay the night in a hostel in a town I didn't know, way out in the rainy Irish countryside.

After I dropped my stuff off at my hostel I walked into town to grab dinner. Eating alone that night I realized something about travelling alone. It forces you to think about the people you want to be with. Whoever you're having that imaginary conversation with, whoever you want to be using your shoulder as a pillow on a long journey through the country. It makes you really think about who you want to spend your time with.

Now that I've been alone for close to four months I've had long talks by myself with ghosts of people back home. I've laughed thinking of what I was going to tell my brothers and sister about my most recent trip. I've had my shoulder ache in a bar, wanting to put it around the person I love. You see so many amazing things abroad, you meet so many interesting people that sometimes you have to stop yourself from turning around and telling something to the person that isn't there. The one you can't see for six more months that's back home.

I haven't found a vaccine for this ache yet. All I can do is try and keep myself moving forward. Get myself out of bed, see new things, keep pushing myself to learn and explore despite it. When you get home and you're back in that comfortable warmth where you belong, you'll have plenty of stories to tell and adventures to share, and you'll be more appreciative of the people you left behind when travelling alone.

5 Things I'll miss about Christmas back home

Christmas time in Madrid

     The year is winding down. The other professors and I are finishing up our classes and planning trips back home or elsewhere in Europe for the holidays. Ticket's back are ridiculously expensive this time of year so heading back to Florida for a week isn't an option. Instead I'm flying to Ireland to spend it with family there. Although I'm so excited to be back in Belfast drinking Guinness with my cousins and speaking English for a whole week, there are somethings I'm going to miss about being home for Christmas.

     1. Christmas Eve at Dads. Drinking too much wine, opening presents while Andrew and Dad play guitar together (Paul and I making fun of them the whole time), eating dinner and telling the same stories we told last year, and the year before, but laughing just as hard. Hayley and I talking about books or travelling and trying to have a real conversation before Andrew strikes a goofy pose from across the room and I spit up my drink.

     2. Midnight Irish coffee with Mom. Taking a shot of Jameson and Baileys with my Mom at midnight in our coffee while everyone tries to figure you sleeping arrangements. In 25 years this is the first time I won't be sleeping on someone's apartment floor or squeezed onto a couch with my brothers and sister snoring next to me. My Mom always made sure we were together.

     3. Christmas Morning. Seeing my Grandmother, a little smaller than last year but funnier than ever. The most upbeat, happy, amazing, intelligent woman I've ever met. She beat cancer last year and every Christmas I get to spend with her from now on won't be taken for granted.

     4. My Dad. Just my Dad. Walking around in his boxers in a Hawaiian shirt playing Christmas carols on his mandolin with glasses hanging from his collar and his hair in a cowlick in the back.

     5. The best dinner of the year. Hands down my favorite meal of the year. A couple of years ago Hayley, Paul, Andrew and I started going to a restaurant for Christmas dinner. We buy a couple bottles of wine and talk for hours. I never laugh that hard with anyone. It's the kind of laughing where you can't breathe and your sides hurt and you have tears running down your face. When I leave and walk out into the cold I feel flushed and exhausted and happy. All it takes is that one dinner to make everything okay. I'm 5 again and I'm with people that love me unconditionally and everything is a big ball of significance and meaning. For those couple hours we beat back the world and nothing can touch us.



     I miss my friends and family but I'm excited for what Christmas and the new year will bring. Merry Christmas to my new family in Spain, my family in Chicago, Northern Ireland, and Florida, have a great one guys.

Teaching

 

      Sometime around noon today I looked down to find myself in an apron with a giant tortoise printed on the front in bright pastel colors. His name is Tex. Because I'm wearing the apron, I am now Tex. I want to tell the three year-old student sucking back snot who is holding on to my leg that although my appearance has been cunningly disguised as an amphibian I am still his teacher before bubbles of mucus soak into my pant-leg. While trying to disengage him however, I am still trying to get three students to understand what I mean when I say 'please get that out of your mouth, it's not safe and you'll be electrocuted' and calm down a hysterical young Chinese girl. I look up at the teacher I'm supposed to be assisting and her head is in her hands.

     

Luz Casanova-The front of my school in Carabanchel

 

 My teaching day usually starts off so full of promise. I wake up and take a quick shower, throw on some clothes and pop my I-pod on and run out the door. I grab a coffee at the metro stop closest to my school. The air is cool, I have a hot drink in my hand and I'm awake and ready for the day.

      My first few classes are primeria or elementary school aged kids. These are my best behaved students of the day. They can be bribed with anything. Telling them I'll draw an American flag on their work if they finish is enough to get them in a frenzy. They ask questions, they are quiet when I ask them to be, and they are generally respectful and nice to be around. About 10 I get one of the older students to grab me another coffee and I chug this while writing in the staff room.

      My next group is harder. The seconderia students are not interested in where I'm from or how I can help them. I'm just the guy standing in the way of the chalk board speaking too fast in a foreign language. I try to get through the next hour without causing anyone bodily harm.

      By noon I'm out of steam and it's time for the big leagues.The infantil or preschool group is like if you took a group of the criminally insane, made them bite-size, then got them drunk. As I walk into the classroom I'm confronted by a litany of offensive sights and sounds. I rank them in my head to organize which to deal with first:

 

 

-There are two boys holding another, extorting payments in the form of jigsaw-puzzle pieces.

 

-A thin girl has her hand shoved up her nose to the wrist, searching for something that is probably better off lost.

 

-The boy in the corner being quiet and pensive as he stares at the wall just shat his pants.

 

-A crazed three year old has just taken ahold of a plastic cup and is wielding it as a weapon against four cautious students who are looking for their opening in what appears to be the toddler version of a classic bar brawl.

 

       I quickly disarm the cup kid, send the two mafiosos back to their seats, and (with paper towels encasing my hands) remove the girls forearm from her nose. I avert my eyes from the boy in the corner and wait for the real teacher to arrive to deal with the rest.

 

       When I get home I'm exhausted, my clothes need to be fumigated and I feel frustrated. Not because I feel overworked or mad, but because I didn't expect to care this much about teaching. I catch myself getting really excited when that light clicks and a student understands a tense or can answer me in broken English. When I flop down on the couch at night and grab a beer I thank God for the thousandth time that I had teachers in my life that stuck it out and put up with my snot, disrespect and insanity so that I could be here now.

     

 

 

 

 

 

A typical day in Madrid

One of the reasons I wanted to move abroad was to live somewhere long enough for the place to sink in. I wanted to be changed. I wanted to adapt to the things around me. Vacations aren't really enough time to get the full effect of a place. I wanted to really live somewhere. I wanted to buy groceries and ride the metro, be annoyed and frustrated at times and become a local. I'm only a month in so I can't really say whether or not living here has made a permanent impact on me yet but I do know that I love it here.
The people have a lust for life you can taste. The culture is centered around living, not working. And although their economy is one of the worst in Europe at the moment, you could never tell by looking at them. My walk to the metro every morning takes me down a two-lane road separated by a wooded boulevard. I wake up early when the steam is still rising from the sidewalks as fruit and vegetable vendors hose off the walks in front of their shops. Open cafes line the street and offer café con leche, churros, zumo de naranja, and pan for breakfast. Students run to catch buses, parents lead their kids by the hand to their schools and the air is thick and fragrant like a birthday candle has just been blown out.
The metro is fast and efficient. It's clean and has color coded lines that make it easy to identify and remember. I usually only wait about five minutes for one to come rushing into the station.
My school is located in Carabanchel in the southern district of Madrid across the river. The neighborhood is working class but lively. I found a kebab place across from my school that sells thick lamb sandwiches in a white and brown sauce packed with lettuce. They bring it out to you steaming, cupped in a square of parchment paper. During lunch I usually grab a cana to go with it, a cheap half-pint sized cerveza. After my regular classes I head to some private ones located in different areas around Madrid. My last class is located twenty minutes form my apartment so I cut through Retiro park to get there.
Retiro park is a massive expanse of fountains, garden, glades, ponds, atriums, and cafes right down the street from me. I take any opportunity to pack a backpack with my laptop, some food, and a book and head there for a few hours.
After I cut through Retiro to my neighborhood I stop off at the mercado to grab dinner. A loaf of bread still warm from the oven, sliced jamon, olive oil, and a bottle of wine costs me three euros.
I go to sleep full, content, and tired.
You would think a month would be long enough for the honeymoon phase of living here to wear off but I still find more things I love about living here everyday.