i moved - again.

I keep changing names, moving, creating and deleting accounts...
I can't help it!

Here is my new blog - www.theycallmegypsy.wordpress.com

It will cover Morocco and anything else that crosses my mind.

:)
come visit me HERE!

food rant

last night I had creme brulee from heaven - tap tap the hard caramel gives way to amazing custardy creaminess...

also, who would have thought that Morocco has such good Italian? 

No  matter where you go, if you order pizza, you get the real thin crust Italian stuff... yummm....

my bucket list

my friend Leila made this list of things that she wanted to do in her life, and I decided to to the same, mine is a list in the making, and it has long term goals and short term goals, here are only a few of the goals that I have set for myself :

*bring more colors to my house
*do something creative every week
*keep the house clean and spiritually uplifting
*pass comprehensive exams in September
*be able to run 3 miles by the end of the year
*have children


these are a few of the things that I want to accomplish - the list is longer but there is no need to post the whole thing :)

this guy is so cool, check out the art by Jim Denevan

in/out

I am neither a moroccan, nor a tourist in this country.

I rent an apartment, buy bread from the bakery and go to the supermarket.

Yet I get treated like a tourist, people try to rip me off and sell me useless things like a wooden snake or a picture with a monkey.\

We are stalled with our project right now, so we have some extra time in our hands, but it is hot, and everything is expensive, and we are not tourists, and we are not locals.

So you end up every day feeling anxious/depressed... because you don't belong, but you belong enough that you cannot do much.

And there is over a month ahead of us...

the temperature today

47C - 117F
and today was also the day that the electricity decided to boycott our apartment.
go figure.
no AC.

birthday gift failure

I had the BEST birthday gift in the world for jason! ever!
and he refused it...pff...
The gift was this:  An afternoon at a SPA, starting with an hour in a hamman (sort of like a roman bath), some algae/aromatic wraps, an hour long relaxing massage, and mint tea at the courtyard of the hamman..  he said that he felt weird having someone he doesnt know touch him.
if he only knew better.
So, instead, we went to zara and we got a really nice shirt for him... (yes, did I tell you that there is a Zara and a Mango a block away from our apartment?? heaaavveeeennnnnn....)
Since he didnt want to use his gift, I will use it and spend an afternoon at the SPA...
HOW could anyone not like a full body relaxing massage?!?!?!?!?
mind blowing.

todays achievements

* I figured out how to make the AC work at home!!! (you need to plug it in)
* another interview under our belts
* new leads to find a translator

tomorrow is jason's bday... i have planned a fun surprise for him :)
check in tomorrow or saturday to find out what it is!

(he keeps telling me not to do anything - pff... that might be how he operates, not me darling)

losing control

our neighbors in Marrakech fight all the time.

they scream so loud.

so  loud!

There is only one time in my life where I lost control and screamed... but that scream came from a deeper place, I was crying and sobbing and the only way I felt I could make myself heard was by screaming... it was only 2 or 3 words, and then I collapsed. 

I will never scream again... It is degrading to yourself, to the people surrounding you.

It is just wrong. That is not how we were created, it is our lower self taking complete control, not allowing you to grow and to think things through, not allowing time for consultation and communication.

It is like a drug, it makes you feel better in the instant, and then leaves you deflated and depressed, because you have not been able to solve anything.

Today we moved to an apartment in downtown marrakech.  It came furnished, and it has a balcony, and we get free wireless internet, kindness of the coffee shop downstairs!
The stove does not have the gas installed, and I don't know how to hook it up... oops.
Picture below showcases Maryam's delicious breakfast/dinner food at her house in luxembourg.. I miss you!

life goes on.

dinner

dinner tonight was:
Thai Restaurant:
Thai soup (vegetables and chicken in a clear broth) 45Dhm (5usd)
sparkling water (large bottle) 30Dhs - 3usd)

walk to a moroccan sweets store

buy:  a small assortment of bakhlava 30Dhs

walk to a corner coffee shop
buy a cup of espresso and drink accompanied by the bakhlava. (espresso 8Dhs less than 1usd)

two thumbs up.
as an aside, this was a night in which we splurged with our food, it is usually not this expensive :)

blue.

moroccan colors

lazy days

we had our first real breakthrough in our research today!
yay for us!

I watched the Argentina-Germany game in a restaurant surrounded by germans... I was the only supporter for Argentina, it was scary.
Also, we found a little apartment to rent for a month here in Marrakech, right next to the hotel we are staying and owned by the sister of the hotel's owner... so we got a good deal and we get to stay in this area of town (the best one in marrakech)

the days have been hot, we usually walk to the medina about 1.5 miles away from the hotel, not too far... but then we walk around downtown... so we usually walk 4 or 5 miles a day under the strong sun... we got a little bit of a heat stroke a few days ago (see post below) so we are trying to be smarter about when we go out and when we stay inside.

Morocco is very similar to latin american countries in that they have late dinners and slow afternoons... everything seems to slow down at about 1 or 2 pm... people crowd coffee shops and restaurants trying to escape the unforgiving sun, they sip freshly squeezed orange juice and drink mint tea.
The only people that you see walking outside are tourists that just don't know any better, and try to take as much in as they can in their usually not too long visits.

We are becoming more and more like the locals... but still need to get used to the mint tea... oh! and we both have henna tattoos now :)

hot

it was hot today.
hot like 105F - 41C
hot like it was not so much fun to walk about 4 or 5 miles under the HOT sun.
hot like dripping sweat
hot like water didn't hydrate.
hot.

memorable

The train ride from Rabat to Marrakech was long, stuffy, hot, humid, uncomfortable... and yet, it gave us moments such as these, precious and exciting, that I will never forget.

motivation and self confidence

most job descriptions require that the person be self motivated/assertive...

I always thought that I was... 

But I am finding more and more that I don't do well without specific guidance and a to do list.

Take this case for example, I need to be pushing our local IPA contact here in Morocco to give me the signatures and the papers that I need in order to move on to the next stage of our research, but instead of knocking on their door and planting myself in front of them with my questions/requests, I wait for them to answer my email, assuming that they know about the urgency of the matter.

It drives me crazy.

I drive myself crazy.

This summer will give me the opportunity to develop the skill of self confidence.

I'll let you know how it goes...

Guess who....

Is going to Marrakech tomorrow!!!!????

;)

Saturday we spent walking around Rabat and doing all the things that lonely planet told us to do if we visited... here is a photo of us when we took a lunch break and caught the second half of the South Korea and Uruguay game.

Also a photo of the Mausoleum of Muhammad V, the grandfather of the current king of Morocco.

a morning in my life

So our hostel in Rabat has a shared bathroom for all the guests... not a bad thing, in fact, most budget options have a dorm-like setting... The problem with this specific setting however, is that it has a traditional moroccan toilet (i.e. a hole in the ground), ok, I can work my way around a hole in a ground, I have spent summers using out houses and such, so this shouldnt be so bad... but when I talk about moroccan style, I mean, MOROCCAN STYLE...  they have no toilet paper but a bucket with water to clean yourself, so the floor is always wet, and as a woman trying to use this facility, well... lets just say that it presents some challenges.

Now, about my biology... I like to pee first thing in the morning, and call me whatever you want, I cannot use their toilet... I dont want to risk getting my pants, feet self wet with their little mechanism or their floors... so every morning I get dressed and rush through morning obligations and go out and take a cab to a coffee shop on the other side of town which I know has a western toilet... 

And that is how my days begin in Rabat.

On another note, we are moving to Marrakesh in a few days to begin phase 1 (month 1) of our research... yay! lucky us for ending up in such an awesome place for our work... I am pretty excited... and pretty scared about the possibility of not being able to find as much information as I needed for the work that needs to be done... 

RED TAPE

ruins my life.

cada vez

Cada vez que viajo al extranjero me cae la nostalgia...
No es una nostalgia de esas que te hacen llorar ni nada, solo nostalgia y ya.
Quizas es porque soy la extranjera en medio de tanta gente que esta en su casa, en su medio... y yo tengo que acrodarme de como se dice algo en frances, frustrada de no poder comunicarme con la facilidad a la que estoy acostumbrada.
Hoy me puse una polera que tiene la espalda abierta.. di unos pasos fuera del hotel, y me acorde que asi no me puedo vestir aca.
Es lo que me atrae y lo que me hace extrañar
Es la experiencia de algo diferente, que me hace querer algo familiar...
Y al mismo tiempo se que son estos momentos los que van a cambiar y formar mi experiencia en Marruecos.
Los momentos en los que siento que no estoy en mi elemento son los momentos en los que aprendo mas y mas gano de mi experiencia...
O quizas solo es el mundial que me hace querer estar en Chile junto a toda la hinchada :)

question of the day...

How many suitcases will I need to buy in order to fit all the amazing things that they sell in the markets?

sub, sand... it's all the same in Morocco

el pan de cada dia

before coming to Morocco, I spent 4 days in Paris with Maryam, and something happened that I have been thinking for some time... As Maryam and I sat at a little boulangerie in St. Germain des Pres, having a salad with baguette, a man approached our table and dove for our basket of bread... my reflex was to grab his hand and tell him that he could not do that, but he angrily shook me off, took the piece of bread and walked away.
After 5 minutes, he came back and tried to get another piece of bread, this time I got up and grabbed the basket and told him that he had to ask for it... he backed up a few steps and started screaming obscenities at me... no one has ever said anything like that to me, with so much spite and hate in their voice.
I was also livid, I could not understand how someone would get to a place where he felt it was his "right" to steal, to take what did not belong to him, and be offended if he could not get it.
The amazing thing is though, that he didn't look like your typical homeless person... his clothes were not very bad, and he clearly had enough resources to buy cigarettes and booze... so his anger didn't come from being hungry,  or from not being able to feed his family... bis anger was the anger of a 5 year old, he could not get what he wanted.
In my head I kept thinking that this was how communism was faulted... you encourage laziness and slothiness (I just made up a word)..

shoes, figs and goat heads....

The medina is a place of many wonders... you can find fake puma shoes, next to a stand of exquisite leather bags, next to a date and fig stand... and the list goes on... so you would not really be surprised when you come across a stand with animal heads on sale... right?
They stack spices high and I everytime we walk past a spice stand Jason and I marvel at the engineering behind the stacks of cumin, paprika and ginger...
The busy medina is right by the hostel were we stay, and every day we fall asleep with the sound of men, women and children screaming at the top of their lungs to anyone and everyone who cares to hear (or doesn't care) to buy their products.  Our hostel is also conveniently located between two mosques... for the past 2 days we have been woken up at 4am with arabic chanting that goes on for about 20 minutes... It is not as charming as you might think, when you cannot sleep because there is a busy street next to you and then wake up early in the morning with chanting through loudspeakers.  But we are poor and cannot afford to go anywhere else :)
There is a clear division in Rabat between the poor/rich areas, which can also be called the traditional/liberal areas... where we live, it is rare to see a woman without a full hijab... where we work, girls walk around wearing tanktops and skirts... we get culture shock just by going from one side of the city to the other!
Rabat is also plastered with cute coffee shops, with outdoor sitting and upstairs sitting... no matter where you are you can find a place to have coffee for a dollar, if you are willing to let yourself smell like smoke, you sit inside, if you want to die of second hand smoke, you sit upstairs, and if you just want to chill and enjoy the breeze you sit outside... it is what it is.

a stroll around the medina

Yesterday I discovered the part of Morocco that I had been looking for and expecting... the market with the leather shops, carpet shops, jewelry, clay objects and artesanias.... reminiscent of the Grand Bazaar...
We visited the Kesbah des Ouidaias (photo), which is the site of the original Rabat (and of course, the oldest part of the city) and I tried a tajine again which was 100% better than the one I had on my first day...

Work is a little slow, we are encountering a lot of red tape and have a small suspicion that there isn't much of an informal aspect of money lending... which would make this summer quite interesting... I am trying not to get too disappointed and take things as they come.... and hope for the best :)

finally here

Jason is here!
I was so nervous something would happen to him, I prayed for at least 2 consecutive hours in the airport... but he is here, safe and cute as always.... although with a really bad haircut... (who goes to a barbershop in NM to get a haircut?!) he is a cross between a guy in the army and a chicano....

the U.S. of Morocco

The two richest neighborhoods in Casablanca (or Casa, if you are a local) are called Florida and California....

 wonder what are the slums outside the city called....

a map

For those of you that need a little lesson in geography, here is a map of morocco, for the time being we are going to be in Rabat, but not for more than a week or two... Located in the northwest of Africa and touching noses with Spain, Morocco, in my own mind, is the land that brings and merges together the Middle East, Europe and Africa.
walking down the streets you see a woman completely covered, next to a woman wearing a little miniskirt.... although the former is much more common than the latter.

**Hijab is the Quranic requirement that Muslims, both male and female, dress and behave modestly. The most important Quranic verse relating to hijab is sura 24:31, which says, "And tell the believing women to lower their gaze and guard their private parts and not to display their adornment except that which ordinarily appears thereof and to draw their headcovers over their chests and not to display their adornment except to their [maharim]..."**


I cannot see how a woman married to a man, will be okay dressed in this way while the husband will wear a suit, or shorts and a t-shirt, or whatever he may feel like wearing on that particular day... but it is done, and they seem to have no problem with it... so so be it.
(it does make sense if you never want to do your hair though :)

my first tajine

I was very excited about trying a tajine last night... 

My mind had already seen it, tasted it and loved it.... and in some ways I did... 

The one piece of meat was really tender (like melt in your mouth tender) and the saffron sauce was very good.... but the fact that I asked for vegetable and meat tajine and that I got a prunes and meat tajine, didn't cut it for me....

It was good, yes, but I think that it would have been 100000 times better had it had a side of fragrant basmati rice.

Rabat - Day 2

wow.
I finally made it!
Maryam, Nima, Yasmin and I stayed up all night wednesday and then drove the Germany to the ryanair airport (frankfurt-Hahn, or something like that)... Let me just tell you, if you need to know how to distribute 50 kilos into two bags of 15 kilos each, these people are the people that you need to know :) it's magic.
My week in paris-luxembourg was amazing.... Maryam was the best host in the world, we walked through crowded parisian streets, had coffee in cute places (including starbucks when we wanted coffee that was bigger than an espresso cup) ate delicious macarrons, baguettes, food... watched most of the world cup games that were played during those days, explored Paris on a boat but mostly on our feet, did all the trouristy things we were supposed to do, stayed at a little hotel a couple of blocks away from the louvre (I COULD SEE IT FROM MY WINDOW!) in st.germain des pres.... and once we arrived in luxembourg we slept, watched tv, read and rested...
I arrived in Marrakesh Thursday morning and took the train to Rabat... I swear that I think something happened to me, because that train ride felt like a 10 hour ride (but the clock said it had only been 4 hours- I do not trust my watch anymore)
For those of you who are interested, yes, I got tricked by a taxi driver...he charged me way too much but I was way too tired to fight for the real price... at least he was nice and talked the entire ride to the train station...
I have not seen Morocco yet, not after 1 and a half days.... but here is what I can tell you... the scenery from the train window was a marriage of gold, brown, red and white sand.... there are some rocks here and there, some bushes here and there, some olive trees, and some hills... and then, goat shepherds, kids really... sitting on a rock, watching their goats roam around, I don't what those goats could eat among the rocks and sand, but something they must find, since there were so many herds all over the place!
Rabat is a busy city with crowded streets, and lots of street vendors... I am staying in a little hostel in the heart of the medina, before crashing I decided to go for a short walk to check it out... every other vendor was making some sort of meat dish which involved cooking and carving a cow's face... yuumm? I was too scared to eat anything, what a wimp... so I bought a banana and went back to the hostel took a shower and slept for 15 uninterrupted hours.... bliss.
Jason arrives tomorrow night, I cannot count the hours until he is here, which also means I will have to take the train to Casablanca (or if you are moroccan, Casa) and pick him up!

So here I am, sitting at IPA Maroc ready to start work!

I leave tomorrow

I leave tomorrow.
Good bye Oregon, good bye Estados Unidos de America...
the itinerary:
USA --> Paris, Luxembourg, Morocco, Israel --> USA
And hopefully some other stops in between (like Athens for 8 hours, etc)
My blog is officially official **fireworks**claps**shouts**
See you on the other side of the pond, on the other side of time
ta da.