Morocco!

Sorry that I didn't post anything for so long, but I was in Morocco from the 4th till the 10th and after that I was busy with homework and studying for tests!

I went to Morocco with school and it was amazing! On the 6th of March I celebrated my 17th birthday there. We had an awesome cake and I got some small presents from the teachers. In the evening we were allowed to have wine with our dinner, which normally wasn't allowed. I also enjoyed the rest of the trip. We spent the first two days in Marrakech where we did a lot of shopping in the souks, which meant a lot of haggling! I thought the haggling was really much fun, I managed to buy some nice things, such as a bag for which the guy wanted 250 dirhams (nearly 25 euros) for 150 dirhams (nearly 15 euros). We also visited the leather tannery, a pharmacy (where I bought some things again, like Moroccan tea and Ras el Hanout, which is a spice), a Koran school and the Bahia palace. From the rooftop of our hotel, which was in Marrakech Medina (the old part), we had a wonderful view on a mosque and lots of palm trees. On Monday we drove to Imlil, a small village in the Atlas mountains. On our way there we had a camel ride, which was something I'd never done before. First I found it a little scary, but in the end it was really much fun! On our first afternoon in Imlil we went for a walk to another village where some of my classmates played soccer with children from the village. The next day I did geography work in the morning, and I learned more about the impact of tourism on Imlil. We also went to the Argan Cooperation, where young women were making Argan oil. I bought a bar of soap made of Argan oil. In the afternoon we dug irrigation channels, which I didn't enjoy so much because I was lazy, haha. On Wednesday we went on a 6 hour hike in the mountains. Nearly everyone was dreading this, but in the end most of us really enjoyed it! We had lunch on the mountain, in the open air. The food was also prepared in the open air and it was lovely. On Thursday we left Imlil again early in the morning, because we still had to drive about 6 hours to Casablanca airport. I really miss Morocco and I'm sure it's a country I'll visit again!

Here are some pictures (some were taken by me, and some by friends, if you'd like to use one please ask me first! Oh and blogger reduced the quality...):

The view from our hotel, a really pretty mosque!

















The view from our hotel on the busy street. We had to cross this to get to the main square, which sometimes was quite scary because Moroccans don't seem to know what a zebra crossing means...


















Part of Djemaa el Fna, the main square by the souks.
















The leather tannery, which smelled quite bad...

My birthday! The cake was amazing :]

I'm really happy with this picture of the mosque! And as you can see we had great weather as well!



















Abena and I on a camel, a great experience.

This road went up the mountain we climbed on, but of course we had to take 'paths' which actually couldn't even be called paths.


















Again, the road on the mountain.


















The view from the Kasbah du Toubkal, where we stayed in Imlil.












All in all it was an amazing experience, especially because it was my first time in Africa! I learned a lot and would love to go back to see more of Morocco sometime. If you want to go to Morocco, I advise you to not go to a luxury resort because you won't experience the culture and see much of the country. Choose for a place like the Kasbah du Toubkal, which is being run by locals. Oh and Moroccan food is really good, especially the round breads (don't know what you call them)!