Tetouan and Chefchaouen

i.e., a break from the monotony. 

Nine in the morning last Saturday and all forty-five of us hopped back on a tour bus. This time, we were going to spend the day in Chefchaouen, a quaint/touristy mountain town a few hours away from Tangier. On the way there we stopped in Tetouan for maybe half an hour, but I’m not sure why, and we didn’t really do anything there. After Tetouan, though, the drive became really picturesque. Here is a photo to prove it:

And then as we were able to see Chaouen, it was also really pretty:

However, as we got even closer, got off the bus, and grabbed our prepared cheese sandwiches, it hit us: the weather was pretty unbearable. We walked through the souq, which was pretty, most of the buildings rinsed a pale indigo sort of color, most of the shopkeepers friendly and outgoing. However, my main achievement was buying a one-dirham (one!) popsicle, which was delicious and necessary for survival, I think. Then we reached the main square and sat in a café, drinking orange juice and lemon Fanta, etc., etc. The heat was still a little overwhelming, though, and I made a comment about how I wished I could shave my head. Frank, being Frank, decided he could cut it, and I was feeling just hot/spontaneous enough to go along with that. So he asked the guy at the café if we could borrow scissors, and of course we couldn’t, because it was a café, and why would they have scissors sitting around that we could borrow in order to cut my hair? However, he did direct us to a tailor down the street. So we walked there, and Frank asked him for scissors, and he gave us a pair and then a better one when Frank pantomimed cutting my hair. Then, I sat down in the middle of the street and he cut off all my hair. It was ... an experience. I am not entirely sure what I was thinking. James and Alex walked by and were equally perplexed, then even more so when they walked by an hour later and Frank was still hacking chunks of hair out of the back of my head, and some bemused Moroccan children/shopkeepers were standing around as well in a state of what I can only assume was astonishment and confusion.

In the end, the haircut didn't go particularly well, but it did achieve its aim of making me feel cooler, and when we got back James took a hair clipper to the back in order to even it out slash try to mask the bald spots. So that was something. My only fear now is that I look slightly identical to my mom...

But yeah. So that was an adventure. The drive back from Chefchaouen also involved a strange run-in. The bus had stopped so people could use the bathroom, and I decided to take a couple of pictures of the sunset:

This went as expected. However, as I was walking back towards the bus, I randomly decided to take a photo of a group of men sitting by the road. They weren't actually by the road, I suppose, as they were behind a fence (that later came in handy), presumably on private property, but still. Group of people, at a table, no motive for me to take a picture other than "hey, let me capture humanity rather than just the physical beauty of this setting." Apparently this was a Bad Idea. Upon realizing that their picture had been taken, the men leapt up from the table and started yelling, and I immediately deleted the photo from my camera and hoped I hadn't offended them too gravely. The anger and gesturing continued, though, and I frantically tried to explain in a variety of languages: laysa hunaka sura, la borré, I deleted it. I handed the camera to one of the men so that he could see, because that seemed to be his objective, but upon taking it from me he began to pantomime smashing it to the ground, and only stopped at the behest of one of the other men. The calmest of the three asked me what language I spoke and I responded English o español because clearly my MSA wasn't about to help me communicate in this situation, but no communication in any language really ever happened until the bus driver came over, said something to them in derija, reclaimed my camera, and led me back to the bus, where I proceeded to panic over the fact that I was offending people because that was so never my intent at all.

But yeah. Oops. Overall a really strange day. Got back in the evening and went to a bar/club to hang out with James' Moroccan journalist friend and some of her friends for a little while. Got back after curfew but the gate wasn't locked, which was good. Went to sleep. Woke up Sunday afternoon and got back to the whole school thing. So it goes.