Marrakech Express

Greetings from Marrakech!

We are all basking in the comfort and beauty of the riad we have to ourselves for a week! You can check out the website, http://www.riadjbellakhdar.com/index.html, and see for yourselves how lucky we are! The owner is a friend of a friend of our professor, and we are so grateful for this connection.

We arrived in Marrakech on Friday evening, after a gorgeous - although somewhat nauseating - drive over the High Atlas mountains. The scenery was breathtaking, and everyone survived the altitude changes and curvy mountain roads despite a tinge of seasickness :)

Any visit to Marrakech should begin with a tour of the Seven Saints, holy men buried in various places around the city. We stopped at one on our way in, and got a good glimpse. As non-Moslems we weren't allowed into the shrine, but we all said the traditional Arabic greeting, "Salaam alaikum" ("Peace be with you"), in order to bring baraka (blessing) upon our group before visiting the city.

We have spent a bit of time in the famous square here, the Djmaa el Fna, which is a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage Site. There is so much going on in this square! A lot of the activities and shows are intended for tourists, such as snake charmers, faux dentists, macaque wranglers, and henna artists. However, there are some attractions, like storytellers, that savvy Moroccans know about and visit. Some of us saw a female storyteller last night, and although her tale was in Arabic, we still felt the energy and richness of the oral traditions here.

We had a busy day yesterday, and visited the Marjorelle Gardens (where Yves Saint-Laurent's ashes are), the opulent tombs of the Saadian kings, the Bahia palace, a Catholic church in the new city, and a traditional Moroccan herbalist. Evenings have been free, and it's delightful to grab dinner on a terrace overlooking the square and hear the evening call to prayer resounding from five different minarets.

Today after class is a free day, although some of us are going to our guide's home this evening to learn how to prepare some Moroccan cuisine. Tomorrow is also free after class, and some of us will be visiting a plant nursery to help select plants for our service project on Tuesday, which will be working in a garden at a girls' school. We are all very excited for the opportunity to give back in some way to the community, as we have enjoyed wonderful welcomes here.

Best wishes to all of you back home! We'll be in touch soon!