the world as i know it.

morgankellysullivan.tumblr.com

well kind of..so i’ve decided i really like blogging and reblogging all these silly quotes and pictures so i’m going to make a new one..trying to think of a name for it..i’ll post the link on here as soon as i make it :)

66 days, 8 countries, and 3 continents..in one summer. that’s pretty darn good. i think it’s safe to say that i’ve learned a lot about the world..and myself to say the least. this was the best experience of my entire life and i wouldn’t trade any of the memories from summer 2010 for the world. i have a serious disease now..they call it the travel bug. some would call this the end of a great experience..but i call it the beginning. this just makes me want to see so much more of the world. i don’t know if i’ll be able to stay in any place for an extended amount of time now. i just want to wander the world and use it as my playground. why is the united states so boring? there’s so much more to the world than this bubble that we live in. above all, if i’ve learned anything, it’s that i believe i can live pretty much anywhere and get along with everyone and make due with whatever you’re dealt. i spent hours with people that didn’t speak a word of english and still had a great time..and that’s just the beginning…

so i was thinking..and these are a few things i’ve learned from this whole experience

1. people are generally good - although we may be completely different and live totally different lifestyles..we all generally have the same goal. just trying to get by. contrary to my prior belief..not everyone in the world is out to rape, stab, rob you, etc. they’re more like you than you think they are. we wandered the dark alleys of Istanbul at night and we’re still alive to tell about it..that’s got to mean something.

2. the media isn’t always your best reference - if we all listened to what the media had to say about the world, i would never leave my house. they make it out to seem like an awful place. i was in Greece during some of these so-called riots and yeah it was scary, but they make it seem much more dramatic on television than it really is.

3. the world is boring and amazingly interesting at the same time - locals go about living their lives and you just visit and observe what they do on a day to day basis. if there isn’t some sort of tragedy happening then the world just goes on..

4. not everyone hates Americans - sure, we got some pretty evil looks from people in Naples and people made fun of us, but in reality, most foreigners are fascinated by Americans and want to learn more about us. Maybe we were Spice Girls to them, but they still wanted to know our opinion on Obama and the world and just thought we were the coolest new toy they had ever purchased

5. Americans aren’t as stupid as everyone thinks - some people make the rest of us look bad on television, but for the most part Americans can hold their ground in other countries. no one died. only a few people did really stupid things. I think we were pretty successful. I think that a lot of people believe Americans aren’t very bright because they don’t know much about other countries, while everyone else seems to know everything about America. I don’t know who the Prime Minister of Japan is, but the good news is, I’m willing to learn and I think most Americans feel the same exact way

6. not very many Americans travel - compared to the rest of the world at least. when we were in Ios, we may have been the only Americans on the entire island. It’s really a bummer because there’s so much out there to see and this may be one stereotype that is actually true

7. the rest of the world is not full of germs - so it’s not really that safe to drink water in Africa and whatnot, but other than that..we ate alllll the delicious food and didn’t get toooo sick. I’m proud to say I’m the only one of my friends that didn’t get TD hahah. I was a rebel..I got ice in my Starbucks and still ate all kinds of fruit and what do you know, I’m still alive

8. you don’t need too much stuff - it’s amazing how much stuff you can fit in 2 suitcases for 3 months. granted you have to be an outfit repeater which totally sucks, but other than that..you can take a little backpack all around Italy for a week and be completely content

9. traveling doesn’t have to be all that expensive - meet the right people, don’t stay in 5 star hotels, and you’re golden. transportation kills you, but other than that..if you just do the simple things in life and don’t fret about the best of the best, you end up having a better experience anyways.

10. culture is a big deal - the way people live is so different in every single country, yet they still all strive for the same goal - to make money to support their families. the way people interact is especially different, and you really see culture shine through by just sitting on a park bench and people watching. it’s extraordinary.

11. everyone is so proud of where they are from - i learned this real quick by being in Barcelona during the World Cup game with Spain. It was hard to find someone that wasn’t wearing some sort of Spain paraphernalia. Every single bar was jam packed with people that were so excited about the same thing. It was awesome. Also, I don’t know if I just don’t notice this here in America because it’s so normal to me, but every single country had a ridiculous amount of flags displayed anywhere and everywhere. They had so much pride and spirit for their country..it was incredible. I got to give Americans a pat on the back though..when we were in Spain during the US vs Ghana World Cup game, I’ve never seen so much American pride in one little bar. It was so neat to be in such a foreign place and still see people singing America songs while wrapped in American flags..made me proud :)

12. you can find internet pretty much anywhere - sitting in nargile cafes in Istanbul, our little riad in Morocco, McDonalds in pretty much every country..it was never hard to find a place to do a quick catch up on the internet. Even when I was walking through the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul and main street of Dubrovnik, there was free public wifi. I never would have guessed.

14. the problems we think we have in America are nothing compared to the problems in developing countries - don’t even get me started on the corruption of the government in Egypt. It’s sickening to think about. We fight over taxes and health care..there’s no such thing in Egypt. Well there are taxes..about 25% to be exact and it all goes to the KING. who could even imagine living in a country that was ruled by a king?! it’s crazy to even think about.

15. English is universal - every single place we went..we found people that spoke good amounts of English. Do we speak Spanish? (kind of) Croatian? Greek? Arabic? Berber? Never in a million years. It’s really sad how everyone can speak our language but no one even puts in the effort to learn to speak theirs.

16. modernization and westernization are completely different - just because other countries have electricity and running water does not make them “Western”. It just makes them functioning. Places like Hong Kong and Japan have these things and I would never call them Western..they are clearly Asian. There’s a difference.

LAST BUT NOT LEAST…

17. EVERYONE should travel the world - there’s no better way to learn about the world (and yourself) than to see it firsthand. i believe that the only way to fully understand how the world works is to leave your own country and explore. better yet, leave with no plans..showing up in a country with no accommodations is way more fun. You might even end up staying at Popi’s Place in Ios (not really recommended). but for real, I can’t stress enough how important it is to do something like this at least once in your life. This was the best summer EVER and I don’t regret a single thing. I wish it could have gone on forever and if I was offered a chance to do it again..I wouldn’t even think twice.

Four days ago..I don’t remember..

Three days ago I went to an atheist seminar. It was weird. And it left me very confused.

Two days ago I did Insanity Workout and it was so hard, but so much fun and makes you feel awesome afterwards.

Yesterday Lo and I laid out on the bow of the boat almost all day long. There’s nothing like catching rays in the middle of the Atlantic listening to the ocean with the most perfect breeze. Tanning will never be the same again.

Today I wrote a paper about Croatia and their almost membership in the EU (yay, go them) and laid out on my professor’s balcony because Amanda won it in the silent auction. It was amazing. I could definitely live on this ship if I had a suite like that one.

Tomorrow is my last academic activity..infectious disease test about malaria, jock itch and red tide toxicosis..lovely. THEN the Ambassador’s Ball, which I’m super excited about..the first and last time I wear heels on SAS.

It’s so weird that I’m not going to see these people everyday again :( They’re all such amazing friends and I’m going to be so, so sad saying goodbye to them. Luckily..all that means is lots of snowboarding trips in Colorado this winter..yay! It also amazes me how close you can become with people in such a short amount of time when you spend every waking moment traveling the world with them. I’ve known them for like 9 weeks now and can honestly say I’m closer with them then some people I’ve known for years and years. Pretty crazy..

BUT..I am getting really excited to reunite with my best friends and make this the best last year of college EVER. <3

I’m apologizing in advance that this is going to be VERY long. So be prepared..

I want to say that Morocco was my favorite place that I’ve been this summer BUT it’s really hard to compare it with anywhere else I’ve ever been. It’s on a whole other level. Before this…Croatia was my favorite place. It still might be, just in a totally different context. That was more of a fun, beachy vacation place. Morocco was just an explosion of culture. This was the first place that I didn’t feel like a complete tourist and we actually did things that were sooo unlike anything else I’ve gotten to do in other countries (aside from riding camels because now I am a professional). A lot of people on SAS didn’t enjoy Morocco nearly as much as we did, and I think that it’s safe to say we owe it all to our tour guide, Simo. He was literally the best person I’ve met out of all the countries we’ve been to. A girl that went on SAS last summer hooked us up with him and we contacted him about a month ago telling him we were coming and he just set up a complete itinerary for us and set us up with this AMAZING place to stay and he was just so great. He goes to the American University in Marrakech so he spoke really, really good English. It was so awesome to not only learn so much from him, but we got to teach him a lot as well which is really rewarding. The thing about Morocco was that there wasn’t any particular event that made it the best place ever…there was just a feeling that you get when you’re there that made it so eminent. It had such good vibes all the time. The people were friendlier (although I think my opinion of this may be swayed since we just came from Egypt where they were awful…but we really did hardly get harassed which could have been because we were traveling with 5 guys plus 2 Moroccan tourguides OR the people are just better…I’m going to believe option number 2) and they didn’t hassle you to death. It was a lot cleaner than Egypt, but you could definitely tell you were still in Africa. A lot of these places we’ve been to have a new section and an old section and Marrakech was one of them as well. You could be in the Old Medina and play with monkeys and snake charmers and get fresh squeezed orange juice or you could go to the nightclubs and Pizza Hut (don’t worry..we only had it one time), KFC (the Moroccans are obsessed for some strange reason, ew) and McDonalds in the New City. It was a lot like that in Istanbul and Dubrovnik too. The two were even separated by a giant wall. Prettyyyy cool.

Day One: So we took the train from Casablanca to Marrakech (there’s not really anything significant about Marrakech except that it’s the main tourist area and it’s about 3 hours inland from the coast) and we were shoved into little compartments with no one that spoke English. It was fun. Kind of. Once we got there, our little friend Simo was waiting for us with our names on a sign. It was really cute. We got into our Mercedes Benz bus and met our driver, Mufasa, and off we went to our riad. Riads are the main accommodations in Morocco. They’re basically old palaces turned into a mix between a hotel and bed n breakfast. They’re all privately owned and hold about 9 people. So we basically got a riad to ourselves. We got soooo lucky. It was so beautiful and the owner was the nicest little French lady, Sadia. She gave us each huge hugs and a kiss when she greeted us at the door. Sooo cute. We all sat down in the courtyard and had mint tea (it’s actually sugar water with a little bit of a mint flavor so naturally, I was obsessed). After that we went our to walk around the main square in the Old Medina…it’s called Djemaa El Fna. I have no clue how to even go about saying that so I just call it “the square”. It’s the main gathering area with all the monkeys, storytellers, scribes, snake charmers, etc. And they also set up all kinds of awesome food stands and a million fresh squeezed orange juice and grapefruit juice stands. It was super cheap for a glass and it was the tastiest orange juice I’ve ever had. We played this random game that they had set up in the center  of the square where you hold a fishing pole sort of thing with a ring on the end of it and you try to get it over the top of a soda bottle and if you do it then you win the soda. It was one of those things that looks really easy and then when you go to do it, it’s almost impossible. We were hooked on that for awhile until we decided we were starving and went to dinner. We went to the rooftop terrace of a different riad and had a traditional Moroccan meal. There were all kinds of fruits and veggies and their classic soup and lamb with figs and chicken cooked in a tangine. It was really, really delicious. It’s so weird to think that two months ago I never would have touched half the food that was on the table. I’ve become so brave :) After that we went back to the riad and got ready to meet up with all of our other lovely SAS friends at the biggest club in Africa, Pascha! We rolled up in our Benz while everyone else was in taxis. It was great. Once we got to the front of the line, we find out we get the “blue-eyed discount” which actually means we pay like 5 times more than everyone else. We’re all broke college students, not rich Americans..they’ll never understand hahah. Pretty much anyone that doesn’t speak English gets in for 100 dirham ($11 US) and we are oh so lucky and get to pay 350. Of course I was not okay with that so I snuck in while no one was looking and everyone else paid. Oopsies :) It’s so awesome to hang out with your friends in completely foreign countries..it just makes everything much more fun. So we stayed out until like 5am and had an amazing time until we had to wake up at like 8 am the next morning. Blehhhh.

Day Two: We woke up bright and early and Sadia served us breakfast on the terrace of our riad and we had crepes and tea with honey and marmalade. It was yummyyy. Then we drove out to Ourika Valley to hike to waterfalls! We made some stops on the way though. First we stopped to go on a little camel ride once again. Instead of the desert, we went through the mountains this time so it was a nice change of scenery. I don’t think my camel had a name this time but it was kind of gross and being attacked by flies. And the stupid camel behind me kept biting my butt while we were riding! So we’re just trotting along and all of a sudden three men carrying rifles walk towards us. They’re a lot scarier in real life ahhh. We were scared pretty much the whole time because we could just hear gunshots but didn’t know where they were coming from, but apparently they were just hunting wild pigs. I’m pretty sure they missed and shot a dog though :( We were ready for our camel ride to be over after that sooo we got back on the bus and went a little Berber village in the High Atlas Mountains. Berber people dominate a lot of Morocco. They speak Berber and have their own way of life and are not planning on changing that anytime soon. The villages consist of little houses made out of mud. They seemed like reenactments of the old days that you would see in museums, but that’s actually how they live. Everything was really old fashioned and the goats and cows lived in the house with them (gross). The only thing that I found really strange was that even though they were all old fashioned, they had a satellite dish on the top of their mud house and the women were watching TV while sitting on hay couches. Talk about cognitive dissonance…Anyway, we went up to the roof of the house and laid on rugs and just kind of took it all in. The Berber man played us some music and sang while they served us more mint tea and we all just kind of laid there in silence just observing everything for hours. It was such an indescribable feeling. After that, we went on to the Argan Oil Womens’ Association. Argan oil is the main export of Morocco and it’s just a really nutty oil that you can use for cooking or cosmetics. They showed us how it was made and then wanted us to buy all their products and I’m a sucker so I got lotion and some really yummy almond butter/honey/argan oil/nutella-ish type thing. Once we left there, it started to downpour. It was crazy. We were stuck in traffic going up the mountain for a little while but we just people watched out the window and were completely entertained. We were driving along a river the whole time that was slowly getting fuller and fuller and there was just sketchy handmade bridge after bridge going across. It was so neat. Until we found out that we were walking across those too haha. We had lunch at a little restaurant (couscous!!!) and waited for the rain to stop so we could still go hiking. Luckily it stopped so we got to go. It wasn’t really a hike. It was more like rock climbing and river crossing back and forth. I guess it was more difficult than usual because it had just rained so the river was kind of out of control, but I think that made it more fun. It definitely brought out my nature girl side, which hasn’t happened in a long time haha. Once we got to the waterfall, we were just speechless. It was gorgeous. Nothing like a tropical waterfall you would see in Hawaii, but it was still pretty. The water was too dirty for my liking so I opted to just take pictures while other people got in and freezed to death. I was satisfied with my decision hahah.  Once we left we had to book it down to the bottom because we were 3 hours away and had to get to a hamam (oh God..just wait) in Marrakech pretty soon. Oh also, the only CD our driver had was Michael Jackson’s greatest hits. I now know every word to every song. Sweet.

We got back into Marrakech and had to go to this little herb pharmacy thing to get our “supplies” for the hamam. We sat in there for a while and got to try all kinds of different herbs and spices that supposedly do different things for your body (totally a bunch of BS but everyone fell for it) and it was really hilarious and now I have clear nasal passages so I guess it was worth it. Now..as for the hammam…I don’t even know where to begin. It’s kind of a tough thing to write about because it was such an experience that I don’t know how it would sound in writing. I’m tempted to film Jess and I talking about it because it was just such a ridiculous event and words don’t really do it justice. I’ll do my best..you just have to understand that as horrible as it sounds, we actually had a really good time and just laughed it off. You have to be a really, really unreserved person to handle this kind of thing in my opinion so I’m just really glad I was with Jess and Kylie because we just laughed hysterically the entire time. This hammam (Turkish bath house, remember?) made the one in Turkey seem like just a little precursor. Plus that one was beautiful inside. This one, not so much. First of all, we get there at like 11 o’clock at night and we’re the only ones there and I think they were closing so the hammam ladies were already disgruntled. So we get in there..naked with huge, gnarly naked Moroccan women once again,  and they started treating us like prisoners of war. We basically were just in this hot tile room all sitting in a circle having buckets of water poured on us when we least expected it. Then they start the scrub. Oh my god..I have never been scrubbed so hard in my life. The purpose of it is to scrub off your dead skin but I literally had no more skin left. No more tan, no more sunburn, no more tanlines. It was all in little skin noodles surrounding me on the ground. Soooo gross. And so painful haha. Jess got a skin noodle in her hair. It was very amusing. So they’re scrubbing my entire body and feet and then they so graciously scrub Jess’ face with same scrubber that was just on my feet. It was so disgusting but we were already sitting in a pool of dead skin and oil so things couldn’t get much grosser so we just laughed. Anytime they would want us to  move or do anything they would just drag us around through the slippery pool by our feet. Then they proceed to give us a “massage” and then repeatedly doused us with water straight to the face. And of course there’s a huge bucket that they were cleaning the scrubbers in filled with dead skin and I turn to talk to Jess and I get this massive bucket straight to the head. There’s a lot more to it buuuut it’s kind of one of those things you have to hear about in person or you just had to be there. It doesn’t sound funny..but I promise it was. We just left a bit traumatized. So now that my hair is a huge mop of oil..we run back to the riad and somewhat get ready to go out to dinner and then out to a hookah bar and belly dancing show. Lovely. We ate at a little café that had spaghetti so of course I HAD to get it because that then fulfilled my goal of eating spaghetti in every single country!! I didn’t really do it on purpose until the end when I realized that I really did have spaghetti everywhere we went. I think Spain wins for best spaghetti I had though. I don’t know if I ever talked about it on my blog but I had this amazing pizza that had spaghetti on top of it. I don’t know what was so special about it..I think just some different spices but my mouth is salivating just thinking about it. Anyways..so we went to this place called Montecristo which was like 4 levels of a restaurant/bar/club..we went to the rooftop and smoked some hookah and watched bellydancers dance to American remixed music. It was really neat, but I was sooo exhausted. After that we just went home and passed out because we had yet another big day ahead of us.

Day Three: We woke up and had another crepe and tea breakfast on the roof before Jess, Dan and I went to get registered at the Marrakech city hall with Simo. I’m not really sure why it was only the 3 of us because there were 8 of us total but we basically just got registered as a guest in Marrakech so if anything went wrong they would somehow be able to find us? I’m not really sure, but we got to sign the guestbook of Marrakech, Morocco, which was not something you get to do very often! Once we got back to the riad (it was quite the maze through all these shops and little alleyways and the only way you could get back there is if you could literally just remember because there were no street signs anywhere) and got everyone else we walked to the Bahia Palace (boring), Dar Si Said Museum (even more boring) and Majorelle Gardens (really beautiful and awesome; it has plants from 5 different continents in it) but it was 115 degrees out so I was pretty much dying. Then we took (another) horse drawn carriage to our lunch at a Moroccan family’s home. They lived in a typical Moroccan home kinda similar to our riad and it was really nice. It was such a strange, but awesome experience to be around an entire family (all generations live together) that doesn’t speak a word of English, but somehow we were able to spend 6 hours there and communicate and have a great time. They taught us how to make mint tea (like 20 blocks of sugar and some mint leaves and boiling water) and we just hung out with them while they lived their lives. They had 3 little kids that we got to play with…one was a baby that was probably less than a year old and when we walked into the house at first they just handed me the baby…uhh what? I was holding a child that I did not know and I was trying to speak English to it. This would never happen in America haha. They made us a huge bowl of couscous and just stuck like 10 spoons in it so we all shared it and it was just scrumptious. When we finished they took us upstairs to do henna! It’s such a social thing there…like all the women’s entire bodies were covered with weird designs and it was completely normal. We couldn’t really tell them what we wanted so we kind of just let them go to town on us. They did our feet and our hands with crazy floral designs before we finally made them stop. The boys all got Superman, Batman, etc on their chests..so embarrassing. So after we were all stuffed and covered in henna we walked over to the main souks of Marrakech. They were the ones that were used in Sex and the City 2! We got to see the exact stall that the girls bought the shoes at in the movie..it was awesome. I didn’t get anything..Jess got a teapot. She’s special. We’re still trying to figure out how she’s going to get that home. Once we left the souk, we got dinner at Pizza Hut! We had to be exposed to a little bit of American before our long voyage home..it was as good as always..even though they were out of the pan crust, which is obviously the best one so we had to settle for cheese stuffed, but it was still delish. We wandered around Marrakech some more until we were all too tired to function and then we went back to the riad one last time before waking up the next morning to drive allll the way back to Casablanca, of course listening to MJ the whole time.

Sooo that’s pretty much my Morocco adventure. I can’t believe this was the port that we had the shortest amount of time in. That’s unfortunate. I wouldn’t have minded cutting out Egypt and doubling our time in Maroc. Bummer. Nahh I’m just kidding. Egypt was a great cultural experience and now I never have to go back.

Last night we laid on the top deck of the ship and they turned all the lights off so we could watch the meteor shower. That was probably one of my favorite memories on SAS so far. We all just laid together and sang lame songs and got to see lots of amazing shooting stars. It was just so great. Love love love my friends. I’m going to miss them so mucho.

I can’t believe it’s almost over…one week. It’s going to be so weird going back to real life with a working phone and I actually have to make food for myself and not get my bed made every single day. How sad.

The Ambassador’s Ball is in a few days..gettin excited!

Miss you. xox

Morocco is my favorite country that I’ve been to this entire summer.

last preport of the summer was tonight = :(

staying in an amazing riad in Marrakech with my friends for the next 4 days = :)

getting an A on my Global Studies test = :D

eating pigeon for dinner = ehhhhhh

tonight is supposed to be the rockiest night of the entire voyage. the ship tilts to a 40 degree angle on each side from 11pm-4am. awesome. looks like i won’t be sleeping tonight. we were told to take everything off countertops unless we wanted it to fly at us while we’re (attempting) to sleep. soooo we’re having a sleepover!

the entire faculty and staff gave the students a standing ovation at preport tonight. i almost cried. that’s bad news..i am going to be the biggest mess on the last day of SAS…best summer of my life.

Anyway…Morocco was conquered by the Spanish, French and Arabs all at different times so I’m super excited to see how each country left their mark. I was reading how it’s nearly impossible to get around by street signs because they change languages so often. You can find mosques next to French parks next to Spanish restaurants. It’s going to be so so so interesting. Good thing Jess speaks some French because Spanish is definitely my only language forte. And the only Arabic I know are the numbers…compliments of the study sheet made for me by my roommate.

I’m going to try to bring a pet chimp home. apparently these are readily available on the streets of Morocco..and maxi needs a playmate. wooohooo. well..it’s either that or a cobra. I choose chimp.