Morocco, Africa

So many new experiences the past few days! Thursday night we finally made it out to a club and it was really awesome. It was up in the Albaicín area which is on this mountain across from the Alhambra. The dance floor overlooked the Alhambra that was all lit up. At some points I would just look outside and be like yup, this is really happening, because it was so surreal. I met two British girls that were really fun, and some spanish guy bought me a 6 euro drink (which is ridiculous in my opinion, I'm def not cute enough for a $10 drink), anyways I'll take it.
Then on friday we went to the polar opposite of spectrums from the club and took off for Morocco. The bus picked us up from the farthest point where we live possible (so it was a solid 45 minute trek) then we picked up more people in Málaga, the headed to the port to catch the ferry. We ended up meeting this girl from southern california that I got along with super well, she's graduated but is going to a small school where you don't get tested it's just if you want to be there, and is taking flamenco too. We're going to hang out in Granada, so yay for making friends. I also met people from Holland, Germany, Norway, Poland, New Zealand, London, and Austria on this trip. They all knew at least 3 languages. Knowing 2 is super lame. So we crossed over and were then in Ceuta which is Africa, but still a Spanish city. Five minutes from there we cross the border in Morocco. There you arrive at a semi culture shock. We literally witnessed little kids jumped the border into 'Spain' (i put it in '' b/c its weird that its on the African continent). All the woman were in long dresses and had their hair covered, some even their mouths. It just doesn't seem right that the men can where anything they want yet the woman almost all crouch under their clothing. We went to our hotel which was outside the city Tetuan and met our tour guide who was hilarious and he said that we could call him michael douglas because he kind of looked like him. He was awesome because he really taught us about the Arabic world, teaching us some words, and he took us to less of the touristy things and more the cultural immersing places. The best example of that was the next day when we went to Tetuan. He took us through this narrow street that was a market. Tons of people sitting on the street selling veggies, chicken, and lots of fish. Cats were everywhere, and were grabbing at the fish that they were selling. Bees lined the breads and sweet they were selling, and it was not a very sanitary area. Some people felt really uncomfortable, however I thrive on this kind of stuff and new experiences (particularly when i know we're safe- we had like 4 bodyguards-they were more for making sure we didn't get lost though). Outside of the inner city part, all the nice buildings were green and white, green representing Mohammed. We saw henna, had people try on authentic wedding dress (basically wrap a woman up in as much clothes as possible and all you can see is her eyes), saw natural toothpaste from peanut trees, natural deodorant rock, everything was so cool! They brought us to this rug place where they tried to get us to buy rugs at really expensive prices (because you have to bargain with all of them, always get the price down to about half), the rugs were really awesome though, i will admit. Then we ate lunch: cous-cous with veggies and chicken and sweat tea (they're tea is super good). We then headed to another city called Tanger. On our way to Tanger we stopped and go to ride camels, even though camels do not belong in these green mountains at all, it was definitely more of a touristy thing. Tanger goes from the top of the top (mansions that the governor and famous people live in ontop of the mountains) to the poor people who hastle you for money. The one thing I do like about this culture is how they don't care about the outside of their houses, which is kind of humbling, because you don't know their wealth until you step into their houses. Also their doors are small so that you bow you head to entire your "sacred" house, thereby humbling you again. We also stopped at the point where the Mediterranean and the Atlantic ocean meet.
The next day we went to Chef-Chaouen, which was again completely different. The medina (or center) of this city was more like something from Greece. It was on the side of the mountain where in the distance you could see two peaks that stand for Chef and the other one Chaouen. It was quiet, because it was all foot traffic in the center, all the buildings were white with blue doors which stood for peace (white) and God/religion (blue). We say people (actually some boys, surprisingly) washing clothes old school style from running water coming down the mountain into washboards. Everything was just so incredible, makes me want to travel more, particularly to see more of Africa. After lunch we came back and I got back to my room around midnight. Awesome weekend. I'd suggest the ungrateful to go to Africa. Even though the parts of Morocco we saw were actually a lot better off than i pictured. I guess i was thinking more sub-saharan.
Well this is super super long, thanks for being interested if you made it this far. شكرا or phonetically: shokran (thanks)