AUI and Ifrane

So I realized that even though I have spent almost all of my time at the University and in the city of Ifrane, I had never posted information about it.  For living situations we started of in apartments in the Best Western Farah Inn.  We took a half hour bus ride every day to get to AUI but we had kitchens (minus utensils and cooking supplies) and living rooms.  The problem with these apartments was that everything broke easily in them.  Light fixtures or light bulbs would crash to the floor, toilets stopped flushing, and fuse switches would break.  It wouldn't quite say they were the safest residences I've ever stayed in.  Then they moved us to other apartments in the hotel, which had utensils and kitchen supplies, but in our apartment the stove didn't work.  An electrician stopped by to fix it.  He left and then an hour later I tried it and it didn't work.  Oh well, cause that day I also found out they were moving us onto campus after the weekend even though we had just moved the previous night.  So now most of us live with Moroccan roommates which is cool and fun.
Ifrane itself is fairly boring unfortunately.  It is called the mini-Switzerland because it is very peaceful and beautiful.  People aren't allowed to interact with it much though.  For example, you are not allowed to play or sit on the grass in the dozen parks that are around.  Grass is very difficult to grow in such a hot and dry climate and so they have sprinklers running seemingly 24/7 in order to maintain it.  If people use the grass then they are afraid it will go away so police kick you off of it and you can even be fined.  My idea of a park is a place for people to play, run around, and have fun.  The trees are all perfectly trimmed, the grass always cut, the fountains always running.  It's beautiful, but very fake.  The other part of this town that bothers me is the dozens of houses that are empty of furniture and even walls, windows, and doors.  The outside of the house is nice but it is just a face for being empty inside, and they all look the same.  It's like living in a town filled with dollhouses.  For entertainment here there are only a few clubs, restaurants, and activities at AUI.  I think that part of the reason parents want to send their children here, is because they honestly can't get  into a great deal of trouble. Moroccan students have told me Ifrane is the safest city in Morocco, and I have gone on one or two walks by myself to the marche without any problem.  One time on the way back from getting fruit I even met a nice gentlemen who walked me back most of the way while talking to me in a mix of Arabic, French, and English.  It was very interesting, educational, and I met someone new.  At the end he said, Ciao, I will see you tomorrow inshallah. I didn't see him the next day but I also don't ever remember agreeing to that so it was fine.  Oops.
AUI is very pretty, just like the town is.  They are very strict about not stepping on the grass and will make you pay about a $12 USD fine, but it is more interesting there.  There are more people to talk to and they set up events every week.  This picture is of the sunset behind the gymnasium.  I had never seen the sky look like it was on fire so I needed a picture of it.  The classes I am taking at AUI are Islamic Civilization and Beginning Arabic II.  In Islamic Civilization the teacher speaks almost perfect English.  He is very enthusiastic about his subject and does a very good job of separating his religious beliefs from scholarly facts.  It is also very interesting because there are both Moroccan and international students, and Muslim and non-Muslim students.  It makes for diverse questions and discussions in class.  My other class is Beginning Arabic II which is entirely international students.  We all had taken a placement test but there is a wide range of experience.  We have one student who hasn't taken any formal classes but knows the Arabic alphabet, and then some students that have taken three years of Arabic.  I have taken a year and a half worth of classes but they were crammed into 3 quarters so while it is review for me, I never learned it in depth anyways.  The class is very difficult anyways.  My teacher only knows basic English so he speaks almost entirely in Arabic.  This makes learning fast but takes a lot of mental energy.  At first I always left the class feeling like my brain was mush cause I was concentrating so hard.  I thoroughly enjoy both my classes though and almost wish I could continue for the full semester.
Today, Molly and I decided to go on a hike on the edge of Ifrane to a set of small waterfalls called Source Vitel.  According to google maps it only takes about an hour and a half round trip but we actually got back three hours later.  The first half of the river had water in it, but because Morocco is in a drought, and they just barely had the first decent rainfall since we've been here a few days ago, it wasn't high enough to reach the waterfalls.  We could still imagine the place filled with water though like it would be later in the month and it was beautiful.  It wasn't as helpful for Molly's project as we had hoped it would be but it was a great
 experience.  There was lots of natural grass along the hike and it didn't feel like the fakeness that the rest of Ifrane has.  We saw some farmers and had to ignore some children that came running up to us.  They were cute but we weren't really in the mood to deal with them following us the entire way.  When we got to the park area there were people trying to sell us things that we definitely didn't want.  We told them la shokran, which means no thanks and is usually a polite way to refuse these people, but they just seemed like we were being rude.  Oh well, what can you do? Overall, it was a great hike and escape from the city and people.


Ifrane definitely isn't my favorite city here, but it is pretty and the people are very nice so it is a good place to keep as a home base.  We even are allowed to pretty much wear whatever we want.  Some of the girls here wear clothes that I was surprised by because I would think it embarrassing even in the United States because they are so revealing.  This is most of their first times away from home though, so they can finally break out from their normal lives and figure out who they are.  In this way, Ifrane is an interesting view into how Morocco is changing from traditional to modern and how the country is coping with it.  

Marrakesh

Marrakesh is the economic center of Morocco and, to me, feels like a miniature New York City.  People lived crammed together, there is plenty of shopping both in high end global stores and in the medinah, and plenty of nightlife.  I was slightly worried when I arrived because we were told that girls receive a lot more attention here if they are not dressed conservatively, especially in the center of the city and not with a male to escort you.  Apparently if you are a woman alone in the main square at night then the police will escort you back to your residence (in our case, a very American four star hotel named the Meriem).  I had plenty of adventures in the city!

On our guided tour, we first stopped at a royal graveyard and mausoleum in the kasbah (government part of city protected by walls that force one to weave through the area).  Originally it had been walled off when a different dynasty had taken over and wanted to make their sites even more beautiful without desecrating the graves.  There were beautiful gardens, gorgeous rooms that we weren't really allowed into, bunches of tourists, and lots of cats.  The one on the right below was really friendly and came up to me when I held out my hand.

This is a castle of the current royal family in Morocco that is now more of a tourist site.  While the family can still use it, they tend to reside on the other side of this palace.  It used to be a place where court business was handled.  The king would both entertain guests here and deal with daily issues that were brought to him in the little square building off to the right of the picture.  What looks like bushes is actually trees in a sunken garden that are visually appealing and even produce fruits.

This tower is the tallest point in the city.  It has been the tower of two mosques.  The first of which, the people were told that it was facing the wrong direction according to the Qur'an, so they rebuilt it. Yet, it still faces the wrong direction.  Oh well, hopefully someone will get it right eventually.

The picture on the right is of a beautiful, old Moroccan university decorated in stucco art and zellige.  It was exclusively for boys looking to learn about law.  Classes were conducted in small groups with a teacher who would recite, by heart, a particular book while the students would take notes on washable boards.  When a student could meet with his professor and recite the entire book by heart, he would earn his degree in that book giving him the right to teach others about it and to practice law.  The graduation ceremony is actually where we get much of our own graduation ceremony from including the idea of degrees and the robes we wear.  We continued onto the upper floors of the university which were the dormitories for the students.  They were very similar to our dorm rooms in that they are very small and basic.  There was no furniture in these but not much would have fit if they tried.


Later in the day, we visited the medinah with our teachers and then stuck around to do some shopping and touristy activities.  I can't mention what I bought again because it would give away what some of my gifts are, but I can tell you that I tried purchasing a few more of one item that I had already bought in another city for very cheap and the store owner chased me out of the store calling me crazy for the price.  Then I had another shopkeeper try to get me to buy a rug by flirting with me.  He even went so far as to ask me what my hotel was so that he could have tea with me later that day.  He looked to be at least in his 30s. I told him I forgot the name of the hotel and eventually managed to get away from him when I saw my group walking away.  The third incident: I told my group I wanted to stop at one shop, but somehow we all got confused as to what I was doing and I ended up by myself in the middle of the medinah. I ran around for about five minutes trying to find and text them when I turned around and Khalil was standing there looking for me. Thank you helpful shopkeepers.  THEN (if you don't like snakes, skip to the next section), I ended up getting trapped by this silly snake charmer.  Earlier he had been grabbing our arms and pulling us to try to get us to take pictures with the snakes but on the way back out we thought we might as well get a picture from a few of them.  Originally, I was not going to take one of myself but then the rude one came up to me and grabbed me and put it around my neck.  He took a few pictures and then asked me for 200 DH!!! That is insane.  For a normal picture it costs 10 DH. He claimed it was because he had so many people in his group.  I told him 20 DH and he told me I was insane (apparently I belonged in an asylum that day).  He demanded 200 so I reached into my wallet and pulled out the first bill which happened to be a 100 DH, handed it to him, told him he wasn't getting anymore, and walked away pretty pissed off.  So, I lost about $12 for three pictures with a snake. What a ripoff.

The next morning we took our last tour in some of the oldest gardens in the world that belong to the royal family.  They are not very touristy and only open twice a week.  We fed some kind of fish in this big water tank.  It leads into the irrigation which is designed specifically to not be too fast to erode the system but not too slow for it to not flow.  Because of this, it has lasted hundreds and hundreds of years, although it is in need of repairs soon. The tank also used to be used to impress guests while running court duties by staging mini naval practices in it.  The building on the other side was meant to entertain guests of the former king but he died before it could be completed and his son never continued the construction.  Of what we could see, it was very beautiful and covers a huge area of land that leads up to the most recent royal palace.  Then we hoped back on the bus for a eight hour bus ride home through the mountains.