i just realized the link before the one i just posted doesnt work.
so here it is again. you have two albums to look at now...
Thursday, February 26, 2009
leaving morocco
i am leaving morocco tomorrow. i have a flight back to london so i can hang out for a few weeks with francesco....and then my friend maria comes to visit! she is going to stay with us in london for a few days and then her and i are headed to prague to do some exploring in the city that is the gateway to other worlds! at the end of march i am taking another little trip to portugal (since afterall i didnt travel up the coast of portugal from morocco...my plans are always changing) francesco and i will go together for about 6 days.
thats that. i ended up staying in mirleft for 18 days and loved every minute of it. as soon as leaving became a reality though i decided i should see at least one more place before saying goodbye to morocco....i chose tafraout because i had heard such good things about it. i was a bit disappointed with it at first, it is dusty and uninspiring....but the last day it made a comeback when i discovered the vast valley behind the city and all the small villages hidden in the rocks.
here are a few more pictures of morocco....the album isnt quite finished yet so keep checking back for the last few added on the end.
thats that. i ended up staying in mirleft for 18 days and loved every minute of it. as soon as leaving became a reality though i decided i should see at least one more place before saying goodbye to morocco....i chose tafraout because i had heard such good things about it. i was a bit disappointed with it at first, it is dusty and uninspiring....but the last day it made a comeback when i discovered the vast valley behind the city and all the small villages hidden in the rocks.
here are a few more pictures of morocco....the album isnt quite finished yet so keep checking back for the last few added on the end.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
second edition
here is a second album of pictures from morocco. most are from mirleft, where i still am!
everyday i say ill stay just one more day...ive been here for a week and a half already!
hope you enjoy them
everyday i say ill stay just one more day...ive been here for a week and a half already!
hope you enjoy them
Sunday, February 8, 2009
link for morocco pictures
finally some morocco pictures for you. enjoy them....there are more coming (i know im always saying that but its always true)
so i am in a little town called mirleft now. it is the most perfect little hippie haven in all of morocco. seriously. there is one main street which is covered in sand. if you walk to the very end of the street and turn either left or right, depending on which end, and walk straight about one block you reach endless fields full of sheep and shepards and sheep shit. then you walk through the fields and you reach the cliffs that tower above the sea....and the rocks that are falling down the cliffs....and the waves below crashing into the shore. if you turn the opposite direction at the end of the main street you see endless countryside...dotted with small villages on the side of the green hills. and the kasbah, the old french fortress, on a high hill above the town.
needless to say its the type of town that sucks you in. i was planning on staying 2 days maximum but have already extended it day by day...eventually i think ill stay until at least saturday because in a neighboring town there is a camel bazar that im really curious to see (yeah thats over 1 week...and its for camels!). if i had thought of it sooner i definitely would have bought a camel and travelled around morocco just me and my spitting, bumpy best friend. tomorrow is the weekly bazar here in mirleft, the next day im planning on taking a day trip to a small neighboring town called sidi ifni which is supposed to have good beaches and good fabrics, and on wednesday there is a wedding in town that i might try to weasle my way into....which lasts 4 days! but anyway there is enough countryside here to keep me busy and enough beaches to explore...and enough sheep shit to step in! the people are super friendly and there is a nice little art scene too so im feeling inspired in many ways. ive been spending a lot of time writing and taking pictures...and studying the social networks here...putting my sociology to use in some independent research!
alright, back to uploading pictures! i hope you are enjoying them! email me anytime you want: jessieleighhodges@gmail.com
so i am in a little town called mirleft now. it is the most perfect little hippie haven in all of morocco. seriously. there is one main street which is covered in sand. if you walk to the very end of the street and turn either left or right, depending on which end, and walk straight about one block you reach endless fields full of sheep and shepards and sheep shit. then you walk through the fields and you reach the cliffs that tower above the sea....and the rocks that are falling down the cliffs....and the waves below crashing into the shore. if you turn the opposite direction at the end of the main street you see endless countryside...dotted with small villages on the side of the green hills. and the kasbah, the old french fortress, on a high hill above the town.
needless to say its the type of town that sucks you in. i was planning on staying 2 days maximum but have already extended it day by day...eventually i think ill stay until at least saturday because in a neighboring town there is a camel bazar that im really curious to see (yeah thats over 1 week...and its for camels!). if i had thought of it sooner i definitely would have bought a camel and travelled around morocco just me and my spitting, bumpy best friend. tomorrow is the weekly bazar here in mirleft, the next day im planning on taking a day trip to a small neighboring town called sidi ifni which is supposed to have good beaches and good fabrics, and on wednesday there is a wedding in town that i might try to weasle my way into....which lasts 4 days! but anyway there is enough countryside here to keep me busy and enough beaches to explore...and enough sheep shit to step in! the people are super friendly and there is a nice little art scene too so im feeling inspired in many ways. ive been spending a lot of time writing and taking pictures...and studying the social networks here...putting my sociology to use in some independent research!
alright, back to uploading pictures! i hope you are enjoying them! email me anytime you want: jessieleighhodges@gmail.com
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
morocco
so i know this has been a long time coming...and probably wont answer the millions upon trillions of questions that i know you all have....such as where the heck am i? what the heck am i doing? and if you're anything like me, what the heck have i been eating?! but ill try my best.
right at this very moment i am sitting in an internet cafe in marrakech, morocco wasting time before my bus at 4 to tiznit, morocco. it is a bit rainy outside, and yes, slightly chilly. morocco may be in africa but it does get cold in the winter.
so far i have been in morocco for about 2 weeks. on the ferry ride over i met a dysfuntional family from the states ( i cant remember how much i have written before so sorry if i repeat a bit). there was a girl, the mom, jessica, who was travelling the first time to gain inspiration for a book she is writing....a fictional comparative between conservative christians and muslims. she is 25 and a bit clueless about the ways of the world...she's an artist afterall....she lives in a dream world (not really such a good quality when you are travelling with two children in a muslim country). and the children! two girls...a 4 year old named shea who quickly became my best friend....and a 2 year old named reina who loves yogurt and cookies. we spent many quality hours playing pretend campfire, pretend fishing, pretend dog sitting, and real eating of biscuits. and last but not least there was adam, a 28 year old chaperone who is friends with jessicas husband. he agreed to go along, expenses paid, to carry bags, help with the girls, and do general planning. in the end he got the shit end of the deal because of previously stated characteristic of jessica....he had to do EVERYTHING! but he is a super cool guy who is really good at having nonsense discussions with hints of hidden important truths. we got along really well. me him and the kids.
eventually after breezing through northern morocco, i left them to pursue a bit my desire to find an NGO working with street children that i could volunteer with for a few months. i had already started contacting one in casablanca and they seemed enthusiastic about having me on board. BUT there was a catch. i had been having francesco help me email them in french....basically he was writing all the emails and translating the ones they sent back. i looked them up in casa and went to visit their sites and when they realized i couldnt speak french it turned into a disaster. no one there really spoke english since french is the administrative language here (morocco was colonized by the french). actually the only people who speak english are the ones working directly with the tourist industry. soooo...in the end i think this particular NGO wont work out. i did visit the shelter home while i was there and i think it would have been really interesting in terms of comparing their strategies to the ones used by the NGO in india...BUT oh well. there are a few other opportunities on the horizon, so i will keep my fingers crossed.
the other big news is that francesco came to visit for a long weekend. ha...such a globetrotting couple we are. we spent the day he got here and the day before he left in the main, big tourist city of marrakech. it is exactly what you want from morocco...snake charmers, belly dancing transvestites, couscous, tajines, huge endless bazars selling lamps and tea sets and carpets and any other kitch moroccan thing you can think of, mint tea, henna tattoos, a medina of small streets and bright colors, dust, donkey carts, honking traffic, pointy hooded-KKK looking cloaks (called jellabas), berbers, blissful tiled guesthouses, etc etc. its the traditional morocco turned over the top for the tourists...so that now its hard to know if its like this in spite of the tourists or because of the tourists. BUT THEN we also discovered another morocco...an altogether different and separate morocco...outside of the medina walls. the modern morocco of posh cafes, people dressed like the french drinking coffees that cost more than they do in london, minimalistic design and fancy shiny cars, namebrand clothing and women smoking, drinking, and kissing in public. this is the real morocco actually. the morocco they have made for themselves that is completely removed from the morocco inside the medina walls, independent of tourists. big discovery that has led to continued discussions and thoughts about the dynamics of life in morocco. before it was too simple....we were seeing exactly what we thought we would see...but now it gets more interesting...
in between we went to a small coastal town called essaouira. super small, super nice, with nothing to do...especially in the rain. but still we managed to spend a good 3 days happily doing nothing....including going to the nicest doctor ive ever been to in my life because i was a bit sick...
and now....im going south in search of warmer weather and the desert. from there the plan is to travel back up the coast to towns such as agadir, maybe stopping back in essaouira for a day or something, safi, a few smaller towns, maybe rabat, a few of the places i breezed through with the family (larache and assilah), and a mountain town called chefchaouen. and then take the ferry back to spain...do a few places in the south (cordoba and seville) and then up the coast of portugal.
i will try to post pictures in the next few days....i was going to today but time is quickly running out before i have to catch my bus....i never seem to have the time to get all the things done on a computer that works that i want or need to do.
i hope everyone is well and id love to hear from you!
jessie
right at this very moment i am sitting in an internet cafe in marrakech, morocco wasting time before my bus at 4 to tiznit, morocco. it is a bit rainy outside, and yes, slightly chilly. morocco may be in africa but it does get cold in the winter.
so far i have been in morocco for about 2 weeks. on the ferry ride over i met a dysfuntional family from the states ( i cant remember how much i have written before so sorry if i repeat a bit). there was a girl, the mom, jessica, who was travelling the first time to gain inspiration for a book she is writing....a fictional comparative between conservative christians and muslims. she is 25 and a bit clueless about the ways of the world...she's an artist afterall....she lives in a dream world (not really such a good quality when you are travelling with two children in a muslim country). and the children! two girls...a 4 year old named shea who quickly became my best friend....and a 2 year old named reina who loves yogurt and cookies. we spent many quality hours playing pretend campfire, pretend fishing, pretend dog sitting, and real eating of biscuits. and last but not least there was adam, a 28 year old chaperone who is friends with jessicas husband. he agreed to go along, expenses paid, to carry bags, help with the girls, and do general planning. in the end he got the shit end of the deal because of previously stated characteristic of jessica....he had to do EVERYTHING! but he is a super cool guy who is really good at having nonsense discussions with hints of hidden important truths. we got along really well. me him and the kids.
eventually after breezing through northern morocco, i left them to pursue a bit my desire to find an NGO working with street children that i could volunteer with for a few months. i had already started contacting one in casablanca and they seemed enthusiastic about having me on board. BUT there was a catch. i had been having francesco help me email them in french....basically he was writing all the emails and translating the ones they sent back. i looked them up in casa and went to visit their sites and when they realized i couldnt speak french it turned into a disaster. no one there really spoke english since french is the administrative language here (morocco was colonized by the french). actually the only people who speak english are the ones working directly with the tourist industry. soooo...in the end i think this particular NGO wont work out. i did visit the shelter home while i was there and i think it would have been really interesting in terms of comparing their strategies to the ones used by the NGO in india...BUT oh well. there are a few other opportunities on the horizon, so i will keep my fingers crossed.
the other big news is that francesco came to visit for a long weekend. ha...such a globetrotting couple we are. we spent the day he got here and the day before he left in the main, big tourist city of marrakech. it is exactly what you want from morocco...snake charmers, belly dancing transvestites, couscous, tajines, huge endless bazars selling lamps and tea sets and carpets and any other kitch moroccan thing you can think of, mint tea, henna tattoos, a medina of small streets and bright colors, dust, donkey carts, honking traffic, pointy hooded-KKK looking cloaks (called jellabas), berbers, blissful tiled guesthouses, etc etc. its the traditional morocco turned over the top for the tourists...so that now its hard to know if its like this in spite of the tourists or because of the tourists. BUT THEN we also discovered another morocco...an altogether different and separate morocco...outside of the medina walls. the modern morocco of posh cafes, people dressed like the french drinking coffees that cost more than they do in london, minimalistic design and fancy shiny cars, namebrand clothing and women smoking, drinking, and kissing in public. this is the real morocco actually. the morocco they have made for themselves that is completely removed from the morocco inside the medina walls, independent of tourists. big discovery that has led to continued discussions and thoughts about the dynamics of life in morocco. before it was too simple....we were seeing exactly what we thought we would see...but now it gets more interesting...
in between we went to a small coastal town called essaouira. super small, super nice, with nothing to do...especially in the rain. but still we managed to spend a good 3 days happily doing nothing....including going to the nicest doctor ive ever been to in my life because i was a bit sick...
and now....im going south in search of warmer weather and the desert. from there the plan is to travel back up the coast to towns such as agadir, maybe stopping back in essaouira for a day or something, safi, a few smaller towns, maybe rabat, a few of the places i breezed through with the family (larache and assilah), and a mountain town called chefchaouen. and then take the ferry back to spain...do a few places in the south (cordoba and seville) and then up the coast of portugal.
i will try to post pictures in the next few days....i was going to today but time is quickly running out before i have to catch my bus....i never seem to have the time to get all the things done on a computer that works that i want or need to do.
i hope everyone is well and id love to hear from you!
jessie
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