My Semana Santa (Spring Break) was absolutely AMAZING! The trip was with The University of Granada so a group of about 30 of us including me and other Spanish students and stafff from the university hopped on down to Africa for a week.

Day 1: I started off Friday morning by leaving at 3:30am to catch the 4:00 bus that we would be taking to Morocco. The first hour or so I was so shy and scared that I was like why did I do this why did I do this why did I do this-having a language barrier is extremely difficult! I feel very comfortable with my Spanish but it is different when you are the only person who is from America AND the only one who isn't fluent. After a while I just decided to jump in and not care if I sounded dumb while speaking-which was the best decision I made all week! It took a while for us to reach our first destination of Rabat, Morocco. After hours on the bus and an hour and a hal ferry ride, we arrived to our hotel and barely settled in before exploring the town. I liked Rabat. It was my first time seeing a culture that is completely different from anything I have ever known. We walked through some markets and along the coast for a while, gazing at the street signs in Arabic, taking in the different style of clothing, listening to the different languages around us, and trying to say no to all of the people who wanted us to buy things from us (I was with another white girl who happened to be very tall, and with me being blonde we stuck out like two EXTREMELY sore thumbs that the men loved to try and embarass). We were only in Rabat for an afternoon before we had to leave again the next morning.

Day 2: Most of day 2 was also in the bus as we headed toward our base town, Imlil. We walked around it in the evening when we got there and I immidetely liked it. It was a very calm little town with friendly people and gorgeous views surrounding it. I was surprised by the amount of mules there were. They are what the people used to carry their things to and from their houses in the surrounding mountain sides. Very little amount cars were to be seen. Before dinner we hung out and listened to one of our group members play the guitar as everyone hummed along. It was a great relaxing night. :) And the best part was, I made friends! haha.

Day 3: In the middle of the night, my roommate and I woke up to bed bugs crawling all over our bed. So that was fun! Luckily I only had a couple bites on my back but my poor roommate had two on her face that made her eyes swell shut. After switching rooms we got a small amount of sleep due to not being about to fall asleep since we were so paranoid now. In the morning we had a hearty breakfast and then started off for our first day of hiking! It was sooo beautiful! I kept trying to look at the scenery and I would almost fall off the path. Thi actual hike however kicked my booty! We went for 22km up a mountain and then back down it. It was exhausting but I still absolutely loved it. We saw goats along the way, and there were quite a few little "rest areas" where men sold jewlery, scarves, orange juice, water, etc in little shacks on the trail. They were great to rest for a while at, and the fresh squeezed orange juice tasted amazing! I also had my first go at bargaining for some jewelry, and I think I did pretty darn good! After lots of sweating, energy bars, my lovely pb&j sandwich for lunch, forgetting to put sunscreen on my chest and getting burned, and getting blisters on my feet from literally running down the mountain since it was so steep, we had gone the full distance for the day! We all relaxed on rocks by the river and let the ice cold water cool our feet off. :) For dinner, our hotel made us traditional Moroccan Tajini and I liked it a lot. They made it in a TP looking pan and it had meat and cooked vegetables. And of course amazing bread to go with it. After dinner I crashed (considering we had left the hotel at 8am and didn't return until 8pm) in order to prepare fot the next day's wakeup call. :)

Day 4: This was my favorite day of the entire trip. We got to hike to "cascadas" (waterfalls) that came straight out of the mountain. They truly were a sight to see! The first part of the hike was pretty strenuous and it was really hot. I also came extremely close to falling in the river we had to cross but the guide caught me so only one of my legs went in..phew! (At this point I was already the clumsy one of the group so it surprised no one haha) Sunscreen was impossible to keep on from all of the sweating which lead to me having to wear a jacket since I was already burnt..ugh! Our group leader lady also taped up my feet for me since my blisters were hurting pretty bad. I was a hot mess! Pedro, a nice guy in our group who is a lot more experienced with hiking than I am, also gave me a pair of socks to wear the next day that were more ventilated than mine. How nice of him! Also, yesterday when I kept putting sunscreen on the Spainards were laughing at me since they never get burnt. However, they all got burnt the first day and were right there with me applying it every hour today! haha. On that note, none of them could pronounce "Lizzy" so for the entire week my name was either Lucy, Lissy, "la chica americana" or "la chica rubia" or just plain "rubia." This mean the American Girl, the blonde girl, or just the blonde. :) I didn't mind because they weren't doing it to be mean, I actually found it funny lol. At the end of the hike we went to our guide's house where they gave us snacks and tea (very traditional for Arabs to offer their guests tea). It was a great time and fun to see his house and his famly members-which of course included children. :) By the end of the hike today my knees were aching a lot. The stairs were a struggle back at the hotel! But on the positive side, the showers only had ice cold water so that at least felt good on my sunburn... :)

Day 5: Sadly, today was our final hike of the trip. We left the hotel and then started off going straight up the mountain side. The view from there was breathtaking. We then walked down the otherside of the mountain and wound our way through a couple different pueblos (small towns) and had some breaks along little streams. For the final part we wallked along the mountain trails up and down and up and down until we reached the final little pueblo where our bus was meeting us to pick us up. After cooling off a little bit by the river, we put our stinky bodies in the bus and headed off to Marrakesh! Marrekesh is a bigger city in Morocco that is fairly tourist based. It had a main plaza with people selling lots of different things and baking treats and nuts too. Some of us went to a terrace rooftop restaurant for dinner and had entertainment of a guitar, drummer, and a belly dancer while we ate! (I even danced with the belly dancer for a little bit). :) The restaurant was really pretty and had good traditional Arabic food to go with it.

Day 6: Today we took the bus from Marrakesh to the smaller town of Asilah in Morocco. I loved Asilah. It is a beautiful white washed town on the coast of Africa and it was a perfect way to end the trip with the group. In Asiilah, we walked downtown and explored the small winding streets. My friends and I got Henna painted on us by the ladies on the street. We also did a little bit of shopping before going to a restaurant and getting lots of sea food to fill us up. I really liked all of the food-my friends had to show me how to eat some of it and had to explain what some of it was..haha you can tell I live in Iowa! At night some of us went to the beach and hung out drinking some wine. We played games and it was a blast. We played telephone (the game where one person says a sentence and it goes around the group and then you see if it is still the same sentence at the end) only we played in all different languages so it was hilarious to see the difference at the end. Around 2am we decided to go inside and I was like okay good I'm tired and our bus is at 7am in the morning...however, I forgot I was with Spainards which meant the night was young! Therefore, we went to the club that was next to our hotel! Jeeze! Surprisingly, our entire group was there (apparently none of them sleep) and we danced the night away. :) It was an amazing last night with my group! I was finally able to understand their different accents and follow along in their extremely fast conversations. :)

Day 7: We left our hotel at 7:30-not 7 as planned..once again..Spainards :)-and got to our ferry at 8:30 which was supposed to leave at 10am. ONCE AGAIN we did not leave on time and 10am turned into 12:30pm. AHHH! I was going to flip because I had to be on my bus at 3:30pm to go to Sevilla, Spain. However, everything went okay, the ferry got going, we got some lovely views from the top of the boat, and sadly said goodbye to Morocco. :( When the ferry landed at 3:12pm, I unfortunately didn't have time to say goodbye as I grabbed my luggage and sprinted to the first taxi I could find to get me to the bus station. But I made it! And off to Sevilla I went to enjoy the rest of my Semana Santa in Spain. :)

Morocco is my favorite place that I have visited outside of Spain so far. I loved the different culture, food, and way of life. It was a cutlure shock to see how hard working some of the people are and then they can barely make enough to feed their families. Most of the houses in Imlil didn't have running water, and our "hikes" were part of their daily lives. I'm so happy I went on the trip and got to meet new friends along the way!