Moroccan Life

Well so I decided after almost a week here in Morocco that is was finally time to post something on my blog! I arrived in Morocco last Saturday (after my original flight several days before had been canceled). My first night here I stayed in a cheap Riad in Fez, but then on Sunday I was already meeting up with my home stay and moving in! (Picture - Gate to the old city of Fez)

My home stay has been great so far. My host sister Fatima speaks perfect English, so if there is something I do not understand in Arabic (which is most of the time) we can still communicate. My home stay also makes amazing food! I am sure I will put on several pounds here for sure as they will not let me leave the table until I have stuffed my face several times over! Their home is in the old city of Fez and has been in their family for over 500 years! So I am definitely getting to experience a very authentic Morocco home-stay experience. Another exciting element about my home-stay is that my host sister Fatima is getting married one week from today! Which means the house has been really busy with preparations! The family is constantly baking all types of things for the ceremonies and parties and there is always tons of people always dropping by to help with preparations. I am invited to the wedding so I am sure I will have to say more about Moroccan weddings at a later point once I have actually experienced one!

Class is going well. They keep us quite busy, we have four hours of class each day and a lot more time spent doing homework each day. This is definitely not a leisurely program, but that should be good as I am here to study and not as much to travel. I am sure I will do some traveling around Morocco, but as I have already traveled to most the major cities, I am planning to spend most my time experiencing life in Fez while studying here.

La Doche Vita

So as you might of heard due to a French strike my plane from Italy to Morocco was canceled yesterday (still trying to wrap my head around that). So this has given me several more days in which to enjoy la doche vita here in Italy. So I decided I would, like when I finished backpacking, give you the run down on some of the best (and some of the worsts) of a year abroad in Bologna Italy.


Traveling in Italy

• Best Day Trip: Cinque Terre
• Best Old Medieval Town: Siena
• Most Overrated Town: Pisa
• Places I will regret not visiting: Pompei, the Amalfi Coast, & The San Siro
• Favorite Bike Trip: Biking around Lake Garda
• Best Beach: Cefalu
• Best Church: St. Peter's at the Vatican
  
• Number one place I would recommend going in Italy: Sicily
  

Food and Drink

• Best Pasta: Anything Bolognese
• Best Pizza: Spoconapoli on Via San Vitale (owners originally from Naples)
• Best Vino: Chianti
• Best Beer: Stick to anything German, Belgium, Irish, or Czech (As there is a reason the Italians are not known for their beer)
  

Bologna

• Favorite Place in Bologna: San Luca
• Thing I will miss most about Bologna: SAIS Bologna Center and the students
• Thing I will not miss about Bologna: Dog poop, people do not clean up after their dogs here!
• Craziest Italian Moment: Riding to an Ultimate Frisbee Tournament, while an Italian drove...I was never so happy to get safely out of the car!
  

Giro d'Italia

Well I have now officially been to two of the three "Grand Tours" of cycling. I have now been to the Giro D'italia and Le Tour de France, but still need to make it to the Vuelta a Espana. Today I made a quick (because of finals it had to be quick) trip to Ferrara to see the 14th stage of the Giro d'Italia kick off. So far none of the stages had been at all close to Bologna, but today's stage started in Ferrara which is only 30 mins by train. So within just a couple hours I was able to go to Ferrara, watch the riders warm up, see them off, and be back in Bologna to study again! In Fact while I am writing this the riders are several hours away from finishing still!

The 14th Stage runs from Ferrara to Asolo. If I had lots of time today I would of loved to watch it from on top of the Monte Grapa Mountain, as those always look like really fun spots to watch cycling. While this was definitely not like watching the Tour de France finish in Paris it still was a lot of fun. Still the road the cyclists even started on in Ferrara was cobblestone just the Champs de Elysee in Paris.

Warm up area in Ferrara, all the cyclists would come by here

The Italian national champion (that is why his jersey looks like the Italian flag) stopped to sign some autographs and take some photos

All the cyclists at the start

Waiting for the stage to start. We were literally standing right on the road with nothing between us and the bikers (I almost got hit by a bike actually! you can see a bike come really close to me in the video later)

Team Garmin's (an American team) support car with all the extra bikes

Instead of taking pictures of the start of the race I took a video. So you can see how close I am to the action (probably too close) , but it was really cool. As you can see since the stage only just started they riders are not going that fast yet. No doubt they also want to save some energy for the big mountain climb as that is where this stage will be won or lost later in the day.

Overall it was a really cool to see a part of the 2010 Giro, I would love to see more of it, but that is life, enjoy what you can. This will almost for sure be my last excursion here in Italy as I have a couple more things to finish up for Finals and then fly to Morocco this coming Thursday! It has been a fun year in Italy and this was a great last trip!

Cinque Terre

So now that finals have begun clearly I should have no time left to travel....right?!? Well turns out my first final is not until this Friday. So after spending the weekend and Monday doing as much studying and paper writing as possible I decided it was time for a break. So I checked the weather and saw that it was foretasted to be a beautiful day in Cinque Terre on Tuesday so I decided to make a "quick" day trip.

Quick is a relative term as the train ride is about three and a half hours each way. Lucky for me that gave me a decent amount of time to study and edit papers even more (you can never quite escape studying during finals). So early tuesday morning (6:27) I was on the first train out to Cinque Terre.

I will say that it was a great choice. It was perfectly sunny all day long, between 70-75 degrees, and a nice breeze off of the Ocean. Cinque Terre is five towns strung along the western coast of Italy, it is unique because the towns are sandwiched between Mountains on the one side and the Ocean on the other. In between all of the towns there are walking paths so you can go from one town to another all on foot. To do the whole walk takes about 3-5 hours if you do it straight. As one might expect the Italian beaches, food, vino, and other distractions slow you down a bit! I will not say too much more about my trip as I think the pictures tell the story of the day best!

Path along the cliffs

Town of Manarola

Swimming Cove

Making my way to Corniglia

Town of Corniglia

Corniglia and Manarola from above

Coast line in Vernazza

Ocean...amazing

Coastline and the town of Montorosso in the distance (btw...I want that boat!)

As you can probably tell (if you can't get your eyes checked) it was absolutely beautiful! Only drawback is the insane number of tourists. I probably heard 10x more English and even German then I did Italian throughout the day (quite a difference from Bologna where it is only Italian). Still despite the high tourist population it was more than worth the trip, my only regret was not having more than a day to spend there.

SAIS Bologna Class of 2010

(Picture: SAIS Bologna Class of 2010, you will probably have to expand the picture by clicking on it to find me as I am hiding towards the back on the left-center part of the picture)

Hard to believe it, but in just over a week my time here in Bologna will officially be over! Classes are now finished and all that is left is papers and finals. Stay tuned though as after I finish up here in Bologna I will be on to Fez in Morocco for about two months where I will be living and studying Arabic!