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hola hola hola all of you beautiful people!
I miss you all!!!! Sorry it’s been a while since I last posted, but like the title says, I have been living the crazy life. I have been so busy! Since I last posted I have had two exams, gone on two trips, and had way too little sleep. I’ve been thinking a lot about what I would say in this post and like my last post I have come up with one word to describe the past two weeks and that word is
I miss you all!!!! Sorry it’s been a while since I last posted, but like the title says, I have been living the crazy life. I have been so busy! Since I last posted I have had two exams, gone on two trips, and had way too little sleep. I’ve been thinking a lot about what I would say in this post and like my last post I have come up with one word to describe the past two weeks and that word is
CRAMMED
(bare with me this is gonna be a long one!)
I will start explaining how this word describes these two weeks with my trip to Morocco. Twelve of us girls went to Morocco through a Sevilla company called Discover Excursions. Six of us left Thursday night and stayed the night in Sevilla. On Friday we woke up to the sun shining and birds chirping, I loved that city before I even explored it! We woke up and went to meet four other girls who had taken an overnight bus to Sevilla and had claimed Starbucks as their home from 7am until 10am when we met them. We then proceeded to explore the orange tree-lined streets of Sevilla on foot for the rest of the morning. We decided to go inside of the Catedral de Sevilla, and it was definitely an incredible choice. This place was massive, I mean so ginormous and beautiful, but here is where our word comes in, we were so crammed for time. We didn’t get to spend too much time exploring the cathedral because we still needed to get food and see Plaza de España before catching the bus for Morocco. So we went and walked around the Plaza, which was so amazing, and then had an incredible meal. I have been thinking about that meal for days, I had pork chops and a baked potato, so delicious (of course not as good as yours dad!) After we went to meet our bus and our tour guides and headed to Morocco!
In the past 14 days I have been on an excessive amount of busses, and for all my fellow tall people you know that there’s not much leg room on charter busses, so once again here I was crammed for six hours. We took a bus from Sevilla down to the tip of Spain, hopped on a ferry, and then took another bus to our hotel. There we enjoyed a good (but interesting) Moroccan meal of bread, cumin soup, cous cous and some type of camelized onion/raison/braised pork combo, I wasn’t the biggest fan of that. Afterwards, I immediately went to bed enjoying a California king mattress with Claire. And that was the end of Friday.
Saturday we woke up and had breakfast at the hotel and then headed out to the little town of Chefchaouen. This place was so cool. We first had a tour from a local, learning about the history and culture of the town. One of the coolest things about Chefchaouen is that all of the walls and doors of the buildings are blue! This is to keep the buildings cool (during the summer it reaches 115 degrees) and all of the mosquitoes away. After our tour we had lunch and the rest of the afternoon was left for us to shop around and barter. Unfortunately it started raining during the afternoon, but that didn’t stop me from shopping because 1) I’m from Portland and 2) I just simply love shopping. The streets were lined with vendors, mostly all selling similar things; lots of leather goods, jewelry, hand woven blankets and sweaters, home decor etc. My friend Michaela and I made the greatest purchase in the world of our little leather backpacks, you may seem them in pictures, we never take them off. We spent a good three hours just wandering and bartering. One of the coolest cultural experiences I had there was that every few hours loud speakers would come on with someone speaking Arabic and that meant it was time to pray. Almost everyone there was Muslim, so they prayed 5 times a day. There were many Mosques throughout the town, but they were all separated by sex. At one point we were walking down the street and 20 men just started walking towards us, it was kinda uncomfy until I realized they were just going to pray. It was something totally different than any experience I’ve had. After Chefchaouen we headed back to the hotel for some rest time, dinner, and a little sangria party that the guides were a bit too excited for (all of our guides were 20ish year old guys, they were trying way too hard to make it a frat party)
Sunday was the most crammed day of all. We woke up and went to the city of Tangiers to have a bus tour (once again crammed) and then went up to the light house where we could look across the ocean and see the coast of Spain and also where the Mediterranean and Atlantic met. It was amazing. After that quick stop we went for our camel ride, which I was so excited for, but very disappointed to find out that our scenic ride was actually in a parking lot with an ocean view. But I still can check riding a camel off my list, it was an experience for sure. We stopped for a quick lunch and then went to the town of Assilah for some more shopping and bartering. Then headed back to the port for the ferry ride.
Now for this part of the story I need to give a little background info. After freshman year of high school I went to Alaska to work on my Uncle Tony’s fishing boat. For all you Moran’s reading, you know I didn’t love it up there, I like to say I was a little young, but nonetheless I learned a lot from that trip. Earlier on Sunday I was telling the girls about it and they were in complete shock because they had never heard anything like it. They all started telling their stories of getting sea sick and what not, and I just explained that I was not phased by motion sickness because I spent so much time living on the boat. But back to the ferry ride. It started off just fine, we were laughing, having fun etc. Then it got a little rocky and the other girls weren’t feeling so hot. Then it got really rocky, I mean waves splashing against the windows rocky. Emily was in front of me holding herself in a literal ball, Claire was about to cry, Chaley was legitimately blue she was so woozy, and then Michaela, Allison, Mary, Ali, Colleen and I were feeling fine. Allison, Mary, Colleen and Ali made the mistake of getting up to walk around, not only did they see massive amounts of puke, they all flew through the air because the boat was moving so much. They came back quickly and soon enough, one after the other, Allison, Mary and Colleen puked, joining in with all the others on the boat. Afterwards they all were so annoyed with me because the rockiness of the boat did not even phase me (thanks Uncle Tony!)
The ferry ride was quite the adventure to end that trip. We then crammed ourselves on two more busses arriving back in Madrid a short 12 hours later. Monday I got up early and then crammed for my Business Law test all day and the following days of that week I studied for my Management Theory test. I know it’s surprising, I actually do study! But that ended quickly, and early Friday morning we crammed ourselves in another bus for Cadiz.
The bus ride was a long, yet fun one, because 20 friends and myself took over the last ten rows. We arrived to our hotel, which ended up being more like a resort, just in time to watch the sunset. We dropped our stuff and rushed to the beach to wait for the green flash, but like always, I didn’t see it. We then went out on the town to a club and danced our little hearts out, and once again on Friday night I enjoyed a nice hotel bed.
Saturday morning I had my first eggs and bacon breakfast since I have been abroad and it was simply incredible. I completely stuffed my face-and then my backpack with some sandwiches for later that day. After breakfast we went down to the beach and just ran and danced around (the beats pill has been quite the hit and very handy-thanks again dad). Once again we were crammed for time on the beach and had to make it back quickly to change into our disfraces (costumes). Now originally I was going for the la bamba girl- with the fruit on her head, but I don’t think it quite came across that way. I wore a one piece long-sleeve/long-pant red leotard with a fruit hat, I don’t really get how people missed the point, but oh well, I loved my costume. That leotard is hands down the most comfortable article of clothing I’ve ever worn (even though it’s a huge inconvenience to use the restroom when wearing it.) But anyways, after we changed we enjoyed a few bebidas in one of our rooms and were on our way to the carnival (on another bus.)
The carnival was a bit hectic. I don’t know exactly what I expected but this place was insane-and so crammed. Thousands and thousands of people were on the streets wearing who knows what kind of costumes. It was hard to navigate through the crowd with all twenty of us. Once we got to the main area, in front of the cathedral, we chatted amongst ourselves and locals for hours. I have to admit we lost a few throughout the day- including myself and Allison. There was no way for all twenty of us to stick together, but hey we all made it out alright. Thanks to Burger King, we enjoyed a few whoppers and also were able to find our friends. We went back to the hotel around 12 Saturday night and enjoyed a great dance party- thanks again to the beats pill- until I was utterly exhausted and went back to bed.
Sunday morning was a rough one. We didn’t have time to do much of anything, but I made sure to get myself some more eggs and bacon, before we had to get back on the bus. Once again, I crammed myself onto the bus and we traveled the nine hours back to Madrid. Cadiz was a weekend well spent full of lots of dancing and making new friends, I was seriously loving life there!
These past couple of days I have experienced the last few instances of being crammed in what I swear to be smaller than a twin bed catching up on sleep.
Although these two weeks had their crammed moments, they were nothing but amazing! What a spectacular 14 days I had.
If you made it down this far, you are awesome. So sorry about the lengthy-ness!
Stay tuned- next up, Munich and Prague!
Mucho amor y besos
Megmo
PS. I am sad to say I am having computer issues so haven’t been able to make any videos- but they’ll be up in the coming weeks! Until then, enjoy a few photos below!
