Una Vida en la Granada: A life in the pomegranate: Orientation/Morocco

So, to begin with...for those who didn't figure out the title of the blog...in spanish, Granada means pomegranate, which is what it was named for since it is a very common fruit found here. Pomegranate trees are quite literally, everywhere.

When I first got to Granada, it was a bit overwhelming. My host family does not speak a word of english and they speak very, very quickly. Needless to say, it needed some getting used to. My host family consists of a mother and her three children; they are all in their twenties and they all live at home. At first this was a bit weird, until I learned that compared to the US, there are not many countries that kick their children out of the house and expect them to figure out the rest of their lives the minute they hit 18 years of age. Fascinating. But then again, a 29-year-old woman still living with her mother is still a little too strange for me to side with.

Orientation consisted of 3 hours of class a day for two weeks of a spanish language immersion. It allowed us to get used to the very odd eating schedule, the way of dress, and allowed us to learn our way around Granada while still taking some sort of class. It was definitely hard to get used to considering it was difficult to simply find a person to whom I could speak english.

We visited the Alhambra, which is the last remaining Arabic fortress in Spain during the Christian reconquest. It was really interesting since that is where Granada gets its prominent Arabic culture and is what the city is known for. From the top of the Alhambra, you can see the entire city of Granada and distinguish its different sections; from the Gypsy caves to the center of the city.

Orientation ended with a 4-day trip to Morocco. First we went to the port city of Algeciras, which is should not be one of the first cities you see in Spain coming over from Morocco--you'd want to turn right around. After staying there one night, we were off to Morocco.

The first place we went to once we got to Morocco was a women's shelter. It's a shelter that takes in women who are uneducated and don't know how to support themselves, troubled divorced women, as well as abused women. This shelter teaches them a trade, in this case it was working with textiles, which has a large market in Morocco, and provides them the opportunity to get a job in that particular trade. We had lunch there and had a chance to discuss many of their views on women, marriage, and modernization; topics that even people in the program disagreed enormously.

Our schedule:

Day One ALGECIRAS - TANGIER - RABAT
9:00 Boat journey across the Mediterranean Sea from Algeciras, Spain to Tangier, Morocco
9:30 Visit of the women's center DARNA and informal conversation with Moroccan students
about cultural diversity, education and woman's rights in Morocco
12:00 Lunch at women's center DARNA
13:30 Drive to Asilah along the Atlantic coast
15:00 Walk through the Medina (old town) of Asilah
16:00 Drive to Rabat (3 hours)
19:00 Meeting of the home stay families (Three students will stay with one family.)
20:00 Walk through the Medina of Rabat in small groups
20:30 Dinner with home stay families

Day Two RABAT
9:30 Facilitated discussion “West and Islamic worlds - images about each other”
11:30 Visit of the Roman ruins Chellah and the Mausoleum of King Mohammed V
13:30 Lunch with families
15:30 Exploration of Rabat's Andalusian houses in the Kashba and the street life in the medina market. Individual options: to spend time in the art museum or gallery, at the ocean or in the gardens of the castle. (This afternoon will be spent in small groups to create space for authentic experiences of the place and for personal connections. Two American students will be accompanied by one or two Moroccan students from AMIDEAST/Rabat University. )
18:30 Meeting of all students at the Oudaia gate
19:00 Conversation with a Peace Corps Volunteer about living in Morocco
20:30 hammam (traditional baths)
22:00 Dinner with family

Day Three RABAT - RIF MOUNTAINS - CHEFCHAOUEN
8:00 Drive to Rif Mountains
12:00 Walk in the Rif Mountains to a family in a mountain village. Lunch in the house of a family.

17:30 Drive to Chefchaouen
18:30 Short walk through the medina of Chefchaouen with some background information about its Moorish and Jewish inhabitants and its historic link to Al Andalus.

20:30 Special celebration dinner in the Medina of Chefchaouen

Day Four CHEFCHAOUEN - CEUTA - ALGECIRAS
7:00 Walk through the Medina / looking down at Chefchaouen from outside the city gate
8:00 Drive through mountains, fields and cities to Ceuta (2 hours)
11:00 Crossing the Moroccan - Spanish border
14:15 Boat journey across the Strait of Gibraltar (1or 2 hour time difference)
15:30 Good bye in Algeciras, Spain

Needless to say...there was a lot on the agenda. Staying with host families in Morocco was interesting because our host mother didn't speak a word of english or spanish, only arabic and french...this created some difficult when trying to communicate. Mostly, it was a two-day game of charades.

It was a lot of traveling, but Morocco is a beautiful country and was very accepting, especially to a group of American students. The students we spoke to emphasized that Morocco was the first country to recognize US as a country and they were the first to have a US embassy outside of the US, over and over. It's as if they were trying to convince us that they were good people and didn't dislike us, despite a few prejudices some people in the US share, ie- the radical pastor from Florida. It was comforting that they were able to look at a group of American students and just see us, not what our country represented...whereas in America, we do the complete opposite.

Here are photos from Morocco: