I don't know why but I've always thought of Morocco in kind of an exotic way. So far I've been surprised by how mundane it actually is. One thing though. In Egypt people refer to hooded galebeyyas as 'Moroccan galabeyyas' and I was surprised at how true that is. About half the women here wear these pointy hooded galabeyyas; I wonder why.
We spent our first night here in Casablanca. We arrived at around 4 pm and then found a hotel and slept until around 8 then went out. We walked around this pedestrian walkway they have there and ate delicious shawerma and ice cream and drank the best orange juice I've had in my life. It was fun. The square we sat in to eat was absolutely packed with people; a lot of them were just people there by themselves, sitting and watching other people. There were also a lot of little boys kicking around soccer balls, a lot of old people getting hit on the head with soccer balls and a LOT of beggars. We bought some really cheap pirated movies too. Most of the movies were in French though. They had the new Sex and the City movie but in French. Casablanca has a very frenchy feel to it. The streets are wide, dirty and cobble-stone just like the streets in Paris. The hotel we were staying in had a guest-use computer with internet in the lobby. I was going to use it to update yesterday but the keyboard is French and it took me way to long to type.
Yesterday morning we went to visit the Hassan II mosque in Casablanca. It's huge and really beautiful. It was finished in 1993 at a cost of half a billion dollars. It can hold 105,000 people for prayer (ahem...100,000 men and 5,000 women). It has the tallest minaret of any mosque in the world and their is a laser that shines from it at night 45km in the direction of Mecca. The mosque itself is the third largest in the world after the mosques in Mecca and Medina. It has tons of local artisan work on it. It's really a spectacular sight. After seeing the mosque we drove to Marrakech. We swam in the hotel pool and then headed out to 'jamaa el fnaa square' - the center of activity in Marrakech. There are snake charmers, story tellers, monkey trainers, man pretending to be women belly dancing, tons of food and drink stalls...The thing about it though is that it doesn't really seem like street performing. Most of the people didn't really have shows, they were just trying to get you to take a picture with/of them so they could ask for money. They didn't really do anything that deserved the money though. The strangest event of the night though: as we were walking by the mosque I saw one of my counselors from Spanish camp. I couldn't believe it. What are the chances that I'd see my Mexican counselor from Spanish camp in Morocco?? The hotel we're staying at here has free wireless although it rarely works. Oh! and here there are tons and tons of motorcycles and mopeds and the amazing thing is that women ride them too. All kinds of women I've seen lots of higab wearing, tank top wearing, niqab wearing women riding motorcyles, a sight I'd never see in Egypt.
I have to go to Rabat now...woohoo!
Posted by ayah at 4:29 AM 0 comments
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Thanks for sharing that. It was fun reading it. :-)
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