Markets, Monkeys and Marrakech

Bonjour, mes amies et familie! I cannot believe today’s date is August 17^th. This summer has flown by and it seems like just yesterday that Heather and I were flying to Halifax, Nova Scotia. After 60 days, 9 countries, and countless memories I cannot believe how blessed I am to have had such an incredible summer. This has been the adventure of a lifetime and I am going to be thanking my parents for the rest of my life for allowing me to come on this voyage. Thank you, Mom and Dad!! I LOVE YOU!!!

 

The last country we visited before our 9 day trip across the Atlantic Ocean was Morocco and I wanted to share some stories with you all from my time there. The first day of Morocco, Heather and I got off the ship we went to the city of Marrakech, where we checked into our lovely hotel and ate a traditional Moroccan dinner complete with cous-cous and curry chicken…yummmmm!!

 

A group of us girls decided we wanted to venture out to Djemâa al Fna Square, one of the coolest places I’ve ever been in my life, complete with fortunetellers, snake charmers, monkeys, fire-eaters, and acrobats. It was soooo fun to see everything!! We made sure to dress as conservative as possible when we went out because we heard that Moroccan men were even more aggressive to American woman than Egyptian men. It was also the first time in the entire voyage that Heather and I didn’t have at least one boy with us when we went out, so we were a little nervous. We had to take a taxi that was meant for four people to the square and there were six of us crammed in. Heather had to sit on someone’s lap and we nearly died in traffic a couple times on the way there. When we got to the square we were completely overwhelmed with all there was to see, smell and feel. There was smells of sewage, spices, incense, body odor and food. There were so many people I couldn’t even guesstimate the amount in the square that night and everyone was bumping into each other, invading one another’s “bubbles”. It was a lot like the boardwalk of Venice Beach, California except at 11PM in the evening, African, on crack and with only Moroccan men. There was smoke coming from the square because of the street vendors selling food on the way to the “souks” (the markets that came right after you went through the Square). We saw acrobats, fortune tellers, a man with an owl (which I still don’t understand because it wasn’t that neat), and lots of men holding monkeys on chains and leashes. Well I kept getting grabbed by men in the crowd every time we’d stop and watch a performer. I was feeling very vulnerable and afraid so I just kept praying that it would stop. I was dressed very conservatively but there weren’t too many American girls out so Heather and the rest of the girls had to keep the men from harassing me and another girl we were with. Heather is such a wonderful best friend…she’s so fierce and strong when I need her to be (even though she’s fierce and strong ALL the time). We had two men with monkeys the size of a 7 year-old child thrown on two of the girls we were with. They were both bitten and scratched by these monkeys and I was so terrified of how big there were I paid the man 20 dirhams (about 2 dollars) just to keep the huge monkeys away from me. We made it to the beginning of the “souks” where there were women harassing us to do henna on our arms and legs and crazy Berber tribe witch doctors who were selling all these herbal remedies of everything from crystals to cobra snake skins. We were walking towards a shop and a shop owner had a wooden snake he shook at me and I lost it. I was so freaked out at that point I was frozen with panic. Heather kept shouting and trying to get me to move away saying it wasn’t a real snake but I was paralyzed with fear. I was exhausted from all the aggressive men, performers chasing me down for money since I took a picture of their performance, women with henna, and men throwing monkeys at us. We shopped for a while longer and ended up taking a crammed taxi ride back home, praying to the good Lord we wouldn’t get in a wreck. We made it home to the Imperial hotel to get some sleep and woke up to eat a buffet breakfast downstairs.

 

We walk into the breakfast line and see our friend Shannell in line at the buffet and she saw us and ran up to us, throwing herself on Heather and I. Our other dear friend, Rachel saw us after Shannell and did the same. The night before was horrific for them, including taking a crowded Moroccan train from midnight to three in the morning to Marrakech, and finding out that our hotel had no rooms left expect the “Presidential suite”. To add onto this, the girl they were traveling with was craaaaazy, so that didn’t help things. We decide they would stay in Heather and my room that evening to save them some money. Even though having 5 girls in a room with only two twin beds would be a little squished, we knew how to make it work from our time in Cairo with seven of us in one hotel room…yet again, to save money. The girls went off to do zip-lining and go on a Moroccan “ropes course” that day while Heather and I did sightseeing with our tour. Our guide, Latif, was amazing. He showed us everything: the mosques that housed all the tombs of the previous Moroccan kings, queens, princes and princesses, the palace of Moroccan royalty, a traditional Berber tribe pharmacy (a little more legit than the Berber witchdoctors that we had seen the night before but it was still sketchy…with their jars full of animal parts including a jar holding a hedgehog which apparently did something to help with the sinuses) and then a traditional Moroccan meal complete with sitting on pillows and washing our hands in the middle of the table from a man pour water on us into a ceramic bowl. It was fun. After lunch we did some shopping in the “souks” and we made it out to the square which was much more manageable during the day, even though daytime was when the snake charmers were out. I really wanted pictures of the snake charmers and all the snakes they had on carpets but I was terrified to get anywhere near their tents because I knew if I showed any interest in them the snake men would come and throw snakes on me like they were doing to all the other tourists. I gave “backsheesh” AKA: tip money to Heather and my camera and told her I’d stay a safe distance away while she took pictures for me. Well, Jocelyn and Christen go towards the tent and two men immediately throw snakes on their shoulders and force them to take pictures with them. Watching this, a woman doing henna approaches me and I tell her I’m not interested and about a minute later her henna friend comes up to me and says, “Hurry we have to get away from the snakes!” and I was terrified immediately because I was thinking she saw a man with a snake coming up to me from behind. She grabbed my hand and I ran away to her tent with her and she immediately started drawing henna all over my fingers and right hand. I didn’t want it but she kept drawing away and in about 25 seconds, my entire right hand was filled with “traditional Berber designs” and I was told I needed to pay her 100 dirhams (about 12 bucks). I was furious and started yelling at her because I didn’t even tell her it was alright to start putting henna on me and now I was supposed to pay her. Meanwhile, Heather was yelling at a snake charmer to keep the snakes off of her and we met in the middle and the henna woman attacked Heather with henna on her hand. We decided we’d just give her 50 dirham each, and she would just have to deal with it. We later found out from our guide, Latif, that we over paid by about 30 dirhams so I was mad at myself. We approached a man with a little baby monkey and this time I was very stern with him. “I want a picture with your monkey and I will not tip you if your monkey scratches or bites me.” He was kind of afraid of how forward I was so he just nodded in agreement and I grabbed him baby monkey and handed it back. My friend, Christen, who was taking my picture was ambushed by another monkey that was gigantic and I finally just screamed at the man, “You can’t just throw monkeys on people and expect to get paid!!!” The whole situation was ridiculous. I’ve decided Djemâa al Fna Square reminded me of the first Indiana Jones movie where Indiana was in Egypt and Miriam was put in a gigantic straw basket and they were running through the markets and squares. I think Steven Spielberg got the idea for that part of Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark from this square. The rest of the trip was pretty mild after we got out of Marrakech, filled with lots of bus rides and truck stops. I’ll never forget my time in Marrakech, Morocco though: complete with snake charmers, monkeys and Berber medicine men. Morocco was constantly busy and overwhelming but as chaotic it was; I want to return. The pandemonium that ensued on our trip to Morocco was something I would love to experience again. After all, if everything went smoothly and safely, I would have no good stories. ;)

 

Thank you all for reading my blog/e-mails. I appreciate your loving thoughts and prayers more than I can ever express and I love you all dearly. My friend, Tristan on the ship made a speech at Convocation saying that “The Semester at Sea Summer 2009 voyage wasn’t the adventure of a lifetime, it was the beginning of a lifetime of adventures.” I could not agree more. While this truly was a summer I will treasure dearly for the rest of my life, I know that this voyage has only left me thirsting for more countries to experience, cultures to explore, people to love on and journeys to take. I have always loved three things: Jesus Christ, people, and traveling…and I know I’ll continue pursuing those three things for the rest of my life. My dear friends and family, thanks for all your love and support!! Can’t WAIT to see you all!!!

 

Angie Blattner

 

Riding Through the Desert on a Horse with No Name....My Egypt Experience

Hello everyone!! I write to you at sea, the first day of the many days at sea that I will be having before I get home to the USA to see all you lovely people!!  I have been terrible at blogging and I need to write about the last two countries we visit so I thought I would first start by sharing some of my experiences about Egypt with you all.

When we docked the first day in Alexandria, we went on a city orientation tour all day, visiting the catacombs and the new library (the ancient library of Alexandria unfortunately burned down and used to be one of the 8 Wonders of the World) that was built in 2003. We visited the palaces and made our way back to the boat.

The second day a bunch of us went on a SAS trip to the Giza Pyramids, Sphinx, Step Pyramid of Zoser, mummification tombs and the tombs of the high priests. We also went on a jeep safari in the sand dunes near the Sakkara pyramids and a camel ride in the desert. It was awesome!! After we got back from our adventures in Cairo we decided to be brave and venture out into Alexandria for the evening. Heather wore a he jab (a head scarf) and I was basically dressed like a boy because the two of us didn’t want to get harassed by the Egyptian men for being American girls. We also brought two of our guy friends out with us for an additional safety factor. Well, we get out of the port and about 25 taxi drivers bombard us with “Taxi Ride!! Taxi Ride!! Where you want to go??” and this crazy guy with a gimp and an arm cast hobbles over to us and tells us this taxi driver will take us anywhere in the city for 10. Well, we’re thinking since we’re in Egypt he means 10 Egyptian Pounds (the ratio is 5 Egyptian Pounds for every American Dollar) and so we’re sooo excited! We have him take us to the boardwalk where all the cafes are. He expects 10 US dollars. We get in a fight and say there was a miscommunication and he got his gimpy friend on the phone and they were yelling at us in Arabic…it was a mess. So we give him the money and tell him to leave us alone. Well, the only problem was that the taxi driver dropped us off on the wrong side of the street and we had to get to the cafes, which were on the other side of the 6-lane highway. There were no stop signs, crosswalks or pedestrian crossings of any kind. Egyptians don’t believe in that stuff. They also don’t believe in lines on the road. Cars are barely stopping in front of this guy and everyone’s honking and waving their hands. What?!!? Well, this café waiter sees us struggling to get across the road and literally acts like Moses, parting the Red Sea and some how miraculously leads us across the crazy six lanes of traffic to the other side of the street. It was like we were the Jews getting out of Egyptian slavery. Well, we HAD to give him our business after he risked his life for us. We were sitting at the café and all of a sudden an entire wedding party walked in and everyone was cheering and applauding. Apparently after you get married in Egypt, you have your reception at a café. The taxi ride home was confusing because we thought we told him to take us to the port in Arabic but he looked at us really funny and took us to the Alexandria library at 1AM instead. We were having such a language barrier that I just took our a pen and paper and drew him a picture of a bunch of boats sailing and he finally understood and got us to the boat. Thank God for Pictionary skills.

The third day in Egypt Heather and I went with our two guy friends, Will and Cheyenne, on a train to explore Cairo independently and meet up with some more of our friends who were already there on a SAS tour. Well we get to the train station in Alexandria and it seriously looks like something out of an Indiana Jones movie, very 1930’s. There is a sign for a “telegraph” and the trains look like they could have been from a movie like “Casablanca” or something. We buy our tickets for Cairo and we realize our “ticket” is this guy just writing some Arabic scribbles on a tiny little piece of paper; I’m keeping the ticket forever because it’s so ridiculous. We walk to get on our train and pass this train wreck on the side of the station. The train was completely destroyed and there was rubble and debris and I’m thinking either this train wreck has been here for years and no one’s cleaned it up or it just happened. Well, come to find out it had happened the day before and one of our friends from SAS that speaks Arabic told us later that he was in the train station and one of the workers shouted, “Hey, we found the arm!!” in the debris. Apparently someone lost their arm and there was a big search party for it. WHAT!?!?! At this point I am really praying hard for the good Lord to keep us safe on our journey to Cairo. We get on the train and its really nice, and it’s AIR CONDITIONED which is the biggest blessing ever in this 120 degree heat. Once we make it to Cairo safely, PRAISE GOD, we check into our five star hotel! We have been mainly staying in hostels for the majority of the voyage and so we decided that if enough people share a hotel room with us we can all split the cost of a nice hotel room. There were seven people in our suite at the Safir Hotel Cairo and it ended up only costing us 19 US dollars a person to stay the night. Yessss….we go to the Egyptian Archeological Museum and see all King Tut’s possessions they found in his tomb in the Valley of the Kings. We met up with our friends Sayble, Rachel and Shannell at the hotel after that and decided to eat dinner on the Nile River for Shannell’s birthday. We get to this restaurant and the owner comes out and is so excited that Americans are eating at his restaurant. He gives us a tour of his restaurant, which turns out to be not only a restaurant but a bowling alley and a pool hall too. Then he proceeds to make us all bowl a couple of rounds with him while they are cooking our food. I never thought I would go bowling on the Nile. After dinner we went back to the hotel and hung out until bedtime. I decided the next day I wanted to watch the sunrise over the pyramids. Well…it didn’t exactly go as planned.

 The next morning at 4:45 I wake up Heather and Cheyenne to travel to Giza to watch the pyramids at sunrise. Sayble, Shannell and Rachel had done it the morning before through SAS and it looked sooo beautiful. We get in a taxi that doesn’t understand any English so I have to draw him a picture of the pyramids. Whoever said Pictionary was a wasted skill was just lying to them selves. We show up and the gate to drive to the pyramids is closed off and there is a police officer that says we can’t go in until 8AM. Well, the sun will be up by 8AM so I’m frustrated at this point. All of a sudden this Bedouin guy comes up to us and says, “Hello. I can take you in the desert to see the pyramids for only 80 Egyptian Pounds.” I’m thinking that’s way to much money and that it sounds really sketchy so I tell him no about a thousand times. Well, it turns out it’s a business all these local Egyptians do for tourists who want to watch the sunrise but can’t get in by car. They ride you around the road and gate to see the pyramids. Well we go to the stables this guy has and there are all these donkeys and horses and camels and I’m thinking this is probably what the manger scene looked like when baby Jesus was born. I try to haggle with him to get the price down but he won’t budge and so we decide to take a taxi over to the Sphinx to watch the sunrise over there. Well we get there and we realize the sun won’t rise over the Sphinx and the pyramids but behind them. We didn’t want to watch the sunrise over the Pizza Hut by the Sphinx so we see about 10 more guys who are wiling to take us on camels and horses to see the pyramids at sunrise and we find a guy who can take us all for about 6 US dollars a person. We hop on horses and apparently since Cheyenne is a boy he didn’t have to have a guy leading him on his horse so he was up ahead of us doing his own thing. I had a nine year old boy leading my horse and Heather’s guy was a paraplegic man on a donkey smoking a cigarette and singing some song in Arabic. I’d always wondered where the men who are pestering you at the pyramids and other various touristy sites lived and hung out before this morning. Well, we got to ride through their Arabian horse and camel jockey village that morning and everyone was waving to us and dancing to really loud Arabic music. I felt like Indiana Jones in the Temple of Doom movie when he’s riding into the village in India on the elephant. There were little four-year old kids holding their baby brothers and sisters with no shoes on and orphans sleeping in the hay next to the camels. It was absolutely devastating to see all the poverty. We were definitely not in the touristy part of Egypt anymore but we were in full-on third world Egypt. We notice that there are two different types of people out; the really impoverished people and the rich guys who own a lot of oil from Dubai who were riding around in Escalades and Hummers. It was such a striking contrast. All these Egyptian Arabian horse riders and passing us  in the village and galloping off into the desert. Then our horses start galloping too and I realize that it’s 6AM and I’m in Egypt galloping on an Arabian horse through a village of horse and camel jockeys on my way to the desert with a nine year old Egyptian boy and a paraplegic on a donkey and I realize I need to start re-evaluating my decision making paradigm. Well we get to the desert and pass this horse carcass that’s been completely deflated with the skull peeking out and a pack of desert jackals surrounding it and Heather shouts to me on her horse, “Hey Ang, this idea surpasses all your other great ideas.”  We get to the top of this sand dune and the boy and the paraplegic say, “We are here.” And I look out and can barely see the pyramids because of all the smog and pollution covering them and I look all the way to my right (no where near the pyramids) and I see the faint image of the sun coming up through all the smog and pollution. Thank you Egypt! So we take pictures anyway, even though we didn’t get to see the sunrise coming up over the pyramids, we got a much better story.

We got back to the hotel and told the rest of the gang what happened and we decided we’d go to the Citadel Mosque and the bazaar that day and try to keep things simple. Four of us get in a taxi with the craziest taxi driver ever. This guy sees Rachel taking out a Vanilla Mint from Starbucks and he says, “Can I have one??” and then pops it in his mouth and says, “Sleepy pill?? Sleepy” and I whisper to Shannell, “Why would a taxi driver willingly take a sleeping pill while driving through Cairo traffic??” At this point I’m so used to this stuff happening I can only laugh as the driver proceeds to laugh and swerve through traffic explaining that he can get a ticket for not wearing his seatbelt but “he no get in trouble for driving with swerving back and forth.” We get to the Mosque and it’s so hot we can barely walk. We buy 2 liter bottles of water to stay hydrated because it’s about 120 degrees out and we’re all sweating more than we’ve ever sweat in our lives. We leave the Mosque and are approached by this Police officer who wants to take us on a tour. Well, he takes us to this Police Museum near the Mosque and proceeds to take us to all these old cells of prisoners that died there and keeps telling us to “shhh” and “be quiet” even though no one’s around. He shows us a cell where eledgedly a bunch of American journalist were hung…grrrreat. After the “tour” he keeps saying “hasheesh” which Heather knew meant “tip” so we all had to pay this Police officer for the weirdest, freakiest tour everrr. After this we got to the bazaar and only stayed for an hour because we were so exhausted from our adventures.

The last day in Egypt Heather and I visited a privately run orphanage where we found out was much better than the governmentally run orphanages because apparently some of the state run ones had people working in them just to steal the children to kill them and sell their organs to local hospitals. The orphanage we visited had a man who ran it and cared deeply for the kids. He made sure all his workers went to social work school after high school and gave them all an extensive interview before hiring them. We got to color with the children afterwards, which was really neat. We got back to the boat and I was so tired I wanted to sleep for days but I knew that we had five days at sea coming up which meant a whole lot of school.

Well, I hope you all liked my Egypt stories and I know you were all probably freaking out while reading a couple of them but don’t worry, Jesus always protects me through whatever crazy situation I’m in. ☺ I love you all and I can't WAIT to see you in like 9 days!!!!

Angie :)

Boats, Brawlers and Babies in BULGARIA

So, while I was in Egypt yesterday I realized I hadn’t written my blog for Bulgaria so I apologize for the delay on this post. Bulgaria was interesting, to say the least. I was kind of hesitant to go to Bulgaria because of the whole post-Soviet satellite state thing as well as the fact that Bulgaria is the human trafficking hot spot of the world but I knew we would be protected by Jesus and it’d be fine. We dock in Varna and a group of us decided to explore a little bit before our field trip Human Trafficking FDP we had at the municipality of Varna with the mayor and the local governmental representatives. We walk for about 5 minutes and we realize that Varna is NOTHING like Istanbul. There was nothing to do, nothing to see and it was dirty, desolate and depressing. We ate at this Italian restaurant because it was the only restaurant we could find within a 10 mile radius and we had a horrible experience. My friend, Rachel ordered a chicken salad and they gave her a salad with eggs, questionable sandwich meat that looked like ham, mayonnaise and tapioca pudding and it was terrrrible. My other friend, Shannell (who happens to be black) ordered pasta but it came a half an hour after our food, because apparently Bulgaria is extremely racist and they decided to discriminate against her. This is our first impression off the boat. Great. Then when we went to our FDP and it ended up being very disheartening because we found out that even though Bulgaria is the hotspot for Human Trafficking, the Bulgarian government hasn’t done anything about it. The entire field trip was basically saying that they were excited to START doing something about fighting Human Trafficking but there were no programs or laws passed yet. Basically I walked out of it extremely disappointed. The next day Heather and I had a trip to Nessebar, a tiny little Bulgarian fishing town that housed numerous medieval churches made of stone and filled with beautiful frescoes. It was beautiful and so much fun. Nessebar definitely made up for the previous day in Varna. The third day in Bulgaria we went to a resort town about a half hour away from Varna called Golden Sands. Caroline, Rachel and I decided to try out some water sports in the Black Sea and we hopped on a giant inflatable couch-looking thing called the “Big Brawler” that was being pulled by a Bulgarian guy on a speedboat. One of the water sports guys approached us and said, “I hope you know the captain will try and throw you in the water. He is going to do it.” I was like….mildly terrified. We get out on this “Big Brawler” and the Bulgarian guy is haulin’ it through the Black Sea at a speed that I am unable to determine at this point (but it was verrrry fast) and he’s swerving back and forth and we’re barely hanging onto the “Brawler” and nearly flying off. Well, Rachel flies off first, and then I followed her shortly and finally Caroline. We were all floating in the Black Sea with our life vests on and we had to have him drive over in the boat and have us climb on the “Brawler” in the middle of the sea. It was kind of the craziest, dumbest thing I’ve ever done. I am not sure why I thought going tubing in a post-Soviet satellite country was a smart but I’m glad I made it out alive. That night I was sore and didn’t want to go out so my friend Cheyenne and I walked to a coffee house with free WiFi and I was able to get on Facebook and upload pictures for the first time this entire trip!! Hooray! The last day we were in Bulgaria I went to a local orphanage that had 50 children between the ages of 3-7 years old. We were able to ask the social workers there any information we had on the orphanage and then we got to play with the kids for an hour and a half. It was a blast! We played with bubbles and we went outside on their two playgrounds they had and we made mud pies in the dirt and scooped sand and ran around. This one little girl was obsessed with my big sunglasses and she kept putting them on but upside down and it was adorable. The orphanage visit definitely made my time in Bulgaria amazing and it was my favorite portion of the Varna port.

My next blog…EGYPT!! Love you and I miss you all!!! Sorry again this took so long to send out. Only three more weeks until I’ll be home!! HOOORAY!!! I hope you’re all having a happy August and staying out of the heat!!