Dinner in a Palace!

1st day in Morocco....so far pretty amazing.

Went to the capital Rabat and was led around by a professor from UVA who is from Rabat. We saw a bunch of touristy sites and took pictures as usual. We went to this place that has a cool view of the ocean (women aren't allowed to go to the beach during Ramadan, so we could only look at it) then she took us to a rug factory. The ladies in there were so nice they stopped their very speedy production to show us how and just smiled and one even made a little yarn bracelet for me. I got some cool videos out of it, so I'll post some later.

It's Ramadan right now, which is the time that Muslims fast in order to experience true hunger and true thirst as a way of inspiring charity (at least that is what I was told during dinner by one of the professor's friends). The cool thing about it is that we were able to take part in an iftar (hopefully I spell that right) which is when they break from fasting. The COOLEST THING about it is that this professor's family apparently used to be a pretty prominent family in Morocco..because her "family home" is basically a palace...


yes that's right, I ATE DINNER IN A PALACE tonight.


It's closed to the public and their family has a rule of no parties outside of the people who own it. It's a kind of joint ownership so no one really lives there, it's just common property. I sat at the dinner in awe of everything. it was equally as beautiful and more well preserved than Topkapi Palace in Istanbul (obviously not as crazy, but seriously I still can't believe it).

Not to mention the dinner conversation was fascinating. We talked about religion and racism and language. I'm still trying to comprehend it all. Hopefully I have more thoughtful things to say about it in the morning...because it is about 2am right now.

We didn't get back until 1am because we left late then our bus got into an accident. not really sure how it happened because everyone was asleep..the story we've come up with is that something fell off the truck in front of us that was carrying a bunch of metal rods and cracked our window. It was complicated because a group of guys were running around on the back of the truck, but I'm thinking that was just unrelated nonsense.

Going to Marrakech tomorrow and staying in a Riad!! a really nice one too :)


did I mention that I ate dinner in a palace tonight? ..okay just checking

nighty night ya'll

Gypsies

Found this old post that never got sent…..so it was supposed to be dated July 28


So it's day 3 in Bulgaria and guess where I've been all day.....in bed! I was tired last night, so I stayed in. Good thing too because around 1am I started throwing up. Food Poisoning for the win.  I'm pretty sure it's all the food that they made us in the Roma community. It was all pretty good, but I guess my stomach just can't handle gypsy food. Luckily my friend Laura had some tums and that at least made my stomach stop hurting.

Anyways...besides the vomit, my visit to the Roma community was amazing. We went to 2 different villages. One was the lower class of gypsies whose houses are all run down. They were all so happy to see us that it really masked the intense poverty that they face everyday.  It was inspiring to see people with so little be so happy.  The kids were definitely the best part. They were loving our cameras and kept yelling "photo photo" I think they've never really seen pictures of themselves before so it was crazy. I felt kind of like an alien from another planet. Most of all, it was enlightening to see how the Roma really live and how nice they are especially since this entire trip gypsies just keep getting a bad reputation. Everyone always says watch out for gypsies, especially the kids, but after meeting them in their own communities it's obvious that they are all just trying to survive any way they can. There was a single mother with 5 kids and her house was so clean for what she had to work with. A father in the village also had 5 kids and he was talking about how they have no healthcare whatsoever and he goes into town everyday to try to do odd jobs just to feed his family. It was so hard to leave the first village because we could tell that the kids were having so much fun. It's an amazing feeling to go somewhere and just have your presence make someone's day like that.
Then we went to the second village which by comparison to the first was much more well off. They had homes with real doors and a working bathroom. They were a lot closer to middle class than the 1st. We sat in their living room for a pretty long time and got to ask questions about the Roma and it got really interesting. I never knew that there was so much division amongst the gypsies or that they had their own class system within their community. Whenever the elections come up their community gets a lot of money and support, but once elections are over they get forgotten again.  They were talking about how politicians will "buy" votes from the Roma and how they have to vote that way because the voting system isn't as anonymous as it seems.
After our talk we went to what was basically their community center. It was the biggest building in the village, but it was about the size of a my living room and kitchen. We had to wait outside because they were prepping something. And it was their custom to feed their visitors bread with honey as they walk in the door. It tasted like sweetbread and when we went in there was a bunch of teenagers in there dancing and a full table of food!
They made us a feast (possibly what made me sick, but now I’m thinking it was stomach flu) most of it was pretty good. I really liked the bread and the soup. Sausage was a little strange and I couldn’t eat it, but afterwards I had some rice pudding ☺ yummm. After we ate we danced and the girls let us wear their belly dancing belts and attempted to teach us to belly dance…it was a little strange. The boys were pretty eager to dance with us and take pictures so it got a little weird after a while because we didn’t want to offend anyone..It was one of the most fun times on this trip and it was pretty sad to leave.