18: Marrakesh

I got busy back at Davidson. Sorry! Since it doesn’t look like I’m gunna find the time to do this right, I may as well make sure that I do it at all.
I went to Marrakesh, Morocco! It was just my friend Cam and I, and we had a great time.
We visited a lot of cool places, shopped in the souqs, and ate awesome north african food. I practiced my arabic!
We explored a cool religious school (non-muslims are not allowed in Mosques, so this is the closest possible equivalent:

My friend Shannon studying abroad in Fez, Morocco met up with us to visit a castle complex and shop in the souqs
All in all a great time. Highlights: hearing the call to prayer, interacting with locals (so nice/social/kind–very safe. However, they will do almost anything for your money… walking along, men will put a monkey on you and ask for money to remove it, or if you look at all lost tell you that you are going to wrong way and try to lead you to your destination themselves ). Practicing arabic with native speakers that aren’t my professor and speaking french with francophones from outside of France proper. Wonderful trip
Morocco in arabic is al-maghreb (المغرب), which means sunset (because Morocco is the western limit of the arab world, whereas the east is ‘sunrise’ (المشرق al-mashreK). I didn’t get a good sunset picture unfortunately, but the morning of our departure was gorgeous: