Morocco, There and Back Again

Salam alekum!

I just returned from what can only be described as an amazing trip.
Trip. It was certainly no vacation. Well...it was...from the daily
grind, New Jersey, and...the distraction of being constantly connected
to everything in the world via my phone and computer. Unlike last
year's European adventure, you may have noticed that you received no
incredibly detailed emails from me every few days. We weren't able to
check email for over two weeks! I did, however, keep very detailed
travel logs, and will be slowly adding them to this blog in the next few
weeks!


Beth, Amy, Anna, and I were blessed with so many new experiences that
it's really hard to understand and describe. It was physically,
mentally, and emotionally exhausting. Physically, because we
rolled/threw/carried rocks down a hill, loaded hundreds of bricks into
and out of trucks, carried buckets of water from a river to mix
cement, dug a septic tank using picks and shovels, and whitewashed
entire houses inside and out. Mentally, because we were often
surrounded by and had to communicate with people who only spoke Rifi
or Arabic. Emotionally, because of constantly being with people and
seeing such extreme poverty for the first time in person.

So what was so amazing about it? We traveled to North Africa! We saw
beautiful rolling hills dotted with bushy trees and several kind of
cacti. We met Moroccan Arabs and the Rifis in the mountains. We named
a wolf spider Charlotte and spent way too much quality time with a
donkey named Donkey. We swam in the Mediterranean (twice). We lived
with Moroccans and ate from common plates of food using bread chunks
as utensils. We built a house from a ditch in the hillside outlining
the foundation to spreading cement on the roof. We had tea and freshly
cracked almonds and actual charade conversations with the very women
we were building for. We stayed two nights in the gorgeous blue and
white city in the mountains, Chefchaouen. We got henna tattoos. We
haggled for rugs and visited the Moroccan police station in the old
medina in the imperial city, Fes. We took an overnight train ride from
Fes to Tanger. We ate too much ham and too many Magnums in one day in
Madrid. We did this all and more, and lived to tell about it.

Again, check the blog in the next few days!

Besalama,
Jess


My sister Amy and I in the back of a pickup truck in the Rif