October 28 - November 6

October 28, 10:18pm

I feel like I hardly saw anyone today.  I spent most of my day studying for anthro and stuch.  My out-and-about time was at the church, where I got to do sound and share a bizcocho that my host mom made with the other helpers.  I guess what the things is is that I liked having a down day but lately have been craving those relationships with people that go beyond the surface.  And I have some, I just feel hungry for it.  And I'm kind of sad.  I know I only have two more months here, so the sadness comes from a) recognizing that I miss home and I miss Costa Rica, and b) recognizing that I'm going to miss people from here.  Tito and Cristy go back to Hondruas in a few short weeks, which is going to be super sad for me because I got really close to them.  I'm spending five days in Morocco starting this Thursday...and that's not sad, but rather a little nerve-wracking.  I wish I had more time to prepare for it, maybe learn French.  And it means missing a week of youth group and church, less time in community.  I know this all sounds pessimistic   Trust me, I am excited to go to Morocco and Gibraltar!

October 29, 10:53pm

Left to righ: Javer speaking to all of us, including Analí,
Eileen, Nathan, Tara, and Mario about the things we would
experience in Morocco.  At this point, it was the toilets...

So maybe it was a lack of sleep or general tiredness, but the second half of my day was full of copious amounts of laughter.  I took my midterm in anthro today and I think it went super well; we'll see!  Then later today I had my meeting about the Morocco trip we're going on this weekend.  Many laughs were shared about how in Gibraltar, Spanglish is spoken as a national language (no joke), and how you need to bring toilet paper and use the proper hole in the ground when you go to the bathroom.  Then in Spanish we made fun of Kassie half of the time because a Spanish boy who apparently has an olive plantation wants to go out with us *cough* her *cough* haha!  And since I was sitting between Kassie and Salo, of course I couldn't focus very much, but I did pay enough mind and did my work while enjoying their company.  I love these guys, in fast all of my fellow Foresters.

So yeah, riding camels and seeing monkeys and trying to struggle through not speaking Arabic and things of that nature in a few short days!  I'm excited!

October 30, 11:00pm

I am talking to a ridiculous amount of people on Facebook because I leave the day after tomorrow and everyone wants to talk to me last-minute.  It's nuts.  I need to sleep or something.

On Tuesdays my kids at the internship are always super ridiculously annoying and they misbehave all the time, but again it's only on Tuesdays.  We finally got through all the new vocabulary though!  Yay!  Hm, what else... I mean, otherwise it was just a normal day where I finally asked that random Italian kid I keep running into if he'd be up for a tea next week, had a ton of ridiculous laughs in Spanish class over an Advil, and got tea with Jessica and had a wonderful time chatting with her.  I shared my laughs with Dean over Facebook and talked to many of my Tico friends as well as my sisters.  I also skyped my mom and dad earlier to update them about my travel itinerary for Gibraltar/Morocco.

I should probably pack but I am way too excited to think about doing such a thing.  Wait, that didn't make much sense... Too tired perhaps?  Overtired?  My mind can hardly fathom the adventure that lies ahead and I just pray that God would lead me and be my guide and I pray for safety for all of us!

November 1, 9:30am

I've been on the bus for around an hour now.  We're on our way to Gibraltar!  It's so exciting!  But let me write about yesterday since I got back really late:

Left to right: Alison, Kelsey, Sarah, Jocelyn, and Tito in a
tetería with me.

Yesterday was Halloween, and here they celebrate it even though it's an American thing.  It's not just your average trick-or-treat thing though.  There's a party culture among a lot of the youth that use it as an excuse to party hard-core before All-Saints day the next day (today), and people even practice wicca.  And that's not stuff you want to mess with.  It also seems like there's more of a dangerous sort of practical joking that happens, but I could very well just not be as aware of it in the States.  On a side note, I ran into Aurora around 6pm yesterday and she made me aware of the fact that walking between Poeta Manuel and Reyes Católicos there's a dead body under a sheet, no joke, and lots of police, and I should avoid it.  Of course my curiosity got the best of me and I went to go look anyway.  Sure enough the scene was taped off and there was a body under a white sheet and police and stuff.  It was under a set of balconies so my intuition says it was a suicide, but it could very well have been foul play or, well, demons.  I still don't know though because I didn't pick up a newspaper today.

Lookout spot in Gibraltar.

So I continued walking to my Spanish class, helping a graduate student along the way find Acera del Darro, and in the class we did lots of work with subjunctive and then told scary stories the second half of the class (where, of course, several stories about Lake Forest were shared).  After that I went to bible study and then Sarah, Kelsey, Jocelyn, Alison, Tito, and I went to a tetería to drink tea and we shared lots of funny moments and also chatted it up with the guy who apparently always works there, Amin.  He loves conversation and especially cultural/spiritual conversation, which is super fantastic.  I hope to have more of that.  I was going to meet up with my intercambio after but it was already super late and no matter how much I wanted to see her as Mrs. Lovett from "Sweeney Todd", I was tired and had to get up at seven.

My monkey!

So here I am now!  Jenny and I have talked a ton already just about some of our struggles, being honest with each other, as well as our excitement to be going off on this adventure.  I can't wait to see how God shows Himself through this and I can't wait to learn about these new cultures (well, new to me)!

10:51pm

We have to wake up at 6:30am tomorrow to go to Morocco... In any case, our day in Gibraltar was great!  We took a bus all the way to a city in Spain that borders Gibraltar, then walked across the border (with our passports of course) and entered UK territory where we had a guided bus tour around the whole city, checked out a cave, and spent time with monkeys.  We also hiked all the way up to the almost-top of the rock and back down, which was so worth it but I know I'm going to be sore tomorrow.

There are 260 monkeys in Gibraltar, all wild.  They control the population by bringing families of extra monkeys back to Morocco where they are originally from.  I had one on my head.  It was amazing.

At the top of the Rock of Gibraltar.

Later on we went and got dinner in the city before walking all the way back to Spain.  It's cool because during the day you can see the coast of Africa and at night all the city lights over there.  It's neat technically being able to say that I'm in a part of the world where I can see parts of three countries all at the same time (UK, Morocco, and Spain).  Also, random but I cannot understand when the people in Gibraltar speak their Spanglish.  It's so weird.  So we spoke English most of the time with our guides and waitresses, though they still understood us if we switched over into Spanish by accident.  The city is small: only 30,000 people.  All in all it was a very cool experience.

November 2, 10:39pm

We also stopped for a camel ride before getting to Asilah.

So I am living in what feels like a palace.  I kid you not.  Whatever I thought Morocco would be like was more or less incorrect.  Jenny, Sun, and I lucked out and got a homestay with three English speakers in addition to the rest of the family.  Since I hardly know Arabic I can get by with English and basic French.  It's been cool so far.  We're in Rabat currently.  This morning we took a ferry over and I had my first ferry ride... I can't say I quite enjoyed it since it was so rocky but it was short!  Then we hung around Tangier with our British guide Jess before going to the women's center to have a cultural discussion with Selma and Mohammed, two Moroccan students.  We exchanged money and drove to Asilah for lunch and for walking around the medina before coming to Rabat.

The basically-palace I was living in.

I expected some sort of culture shock but again I really don't get that initial shock.  I for sure stick out like a sore thumb because of my appearance and language but it's okay, you know?  Anyway, tomorrow we're supposed to have more time with Moroccan students, which I"m super pumped about!

PS:  The veil is empowerment, not oppression  if you think about it from the perspective that here women don't have to use their beauty to get men, but rather their personalities.

November 3, 9:33pm

I don't even know where to begin!  I wish I had another week here in Rabat!  I also wish I had better French, but that's another story.

The Roman ruins.

After breakfast today (and finally some good coffee) our group went to the Mausoleum of King Mohammed V and his relatives and then to Salé where we got to sit in an NGO building and talk to three very cool Moroccan students about politics and things of that nature.  We had a trip to some Roman ruins as well and then went home for lunch (meat tagine, soooo good) and then had three incredibly wonderful hours of quality time with the Moroccan students.  We gave each other Moroccan/English names (I'm Zahra, and we renamed Medhi to Lucas Gregory) and talked about each other and life and language and our studies.  This is actually the reason why I wish I had another week: to get to spend time with people here more.  People are so great!

We then went to a hammam, which is a public bath.  Basically we girls all went and scrubbed each other in a sauna.  It was incredibly awkward at first and then incredibly invigorating and cool.  Then we got henna tattoos, and now we're waiting on dinner.

November 4, 11:25pm

My super awesome pile of pillows in Rabat!

I don't feel ready at all to leave Morocco, and I get a feeling that, God willing, I'll be back in the future to pay visits to all these people.  Saying goodbye last night after talking until 1am as well as this morning to our host mom was really kind of hard, and today as we made our way to the Riff Mountains I just delighted completely in the rural landscape as this aspect of Morocco reminds me a lot of some of the things I love about Costa Rica.  I played with the translator Abdu's two nephews and talked to Abdu and highly enjoyed the mountainous countryside.  When we finally got to Chefchaouen, once again it seems so different from the other places in Morocco.  It's more of a city and a lot more languages are spoken here, and I met and spoke with quite a few shopkeepers.  One of my hopes is to talk to someone, perhaps one of the shopkeepers, again tomorrow to find out about tourism here and how (un)sustainable it is, or isn't.  After dinner, our group debriefed and went over tomorrow's schedule and now I'm in my room in a hostel.  So, real quick, fun facts: I didn't use a Turkish toilet once here, I like hijab/the veil, I love the little kids here, and well in general I love these people (because, as you know, I love people in general).

November 5, 11:50pm

Dinner in Chefchaouen.

Wow, what a blur these past few days have been.  It all feels like such a dream.  And I feel, for whatever reason, very conscious of my own desperate need for Jesus in my life.  It's kinda cool!  Today after (according to Jess) a "brisk walk" to take pictures and look out over Chefchaouen, we ate a quick breakfast and did a little more quick shopping before we piled into the car, headed off to the Spanish territory of Ceuta where we walked through the border, and took the ferry to Algeciras, drove to Marbella for lunch, and finally arrived back in Granada.  I am feeling exhausted and a little sore-throated but it's all good.

The medina in Chefchaouen.

Would I choose to live in Morocco for the rest of my life?  No.  Would I go back?  Oh yes.  I would love to just spend more time in every single one of those places.  It was such a blessed and incredible experience.  It's a little uncomfortable because the more I travel and keep little bits of other cultures with me, the less "American" I feel I am, and it's a bit disconcerting.  But as I spoke about with Jenny (praise God for bring such a discerning lady into my life!), my citizenship in Heaven comes before all else.  :)

November 6, 1:30pm

The Moroccan flag.

So my kids at my internship here have an English test on Friday and apparently don't know anything.  Uh-oh.  Anyway, I got to do their reading speed tests today, which was interesting.  It's been raining here all day, and it's cloudy and cold, but I have tea with Natasha and the election party to look forward  to!

I just can't get over still how impactful the trip to Morocco was and how much it has changed my own perceptions about the nation, and I wish everyone had the chance to do a trip like this.  It has broken my stereotypes of the veil/hijab (it's used by 75% of women but it's more of a cultural thing, as in less religious and more of a comfort/modesty thing), of the living conditions of the people (sure there are shantytowns, but there's also really nice homes like the near-palace I lived in), of the education of Moroccan students (depends on the city, but many know tons of languages), and of the level of hostility (next to nothing; rather, Moroccans are usually super duper friendly, honest, hospitable, and fair).  I want the world to know this, to erase such harsh stereotypes that could be placed against this people, to encourage more of a cultural exchange.

Now I need to get back to speaking only Spanish and not Espanglais (español-English-francais) mixed with two arabic words, hahaha!  How blessed I am to have had this opportunity.