Mrs. Brightside
Throughout life, there are always those moments that make you acutely aware you’re really still just a traveler. Like a true Go Girl travels the world, we all take that personal journey that may not always take us around the world but takes us to various places in our minds and personalities. For me, this [...]
Notes on the Return
So it’s been a couple months. You’d think I would have already gotten over the inevitable feeling of reverse culture shock, and we’d be on with life, right? Well, apparently not. Even after two months of being at home, with friends, and being busy, Morocco seemed to invade my brain once more. I was shopping [...]
Triumphant Return, Tearful Goodbye
There are some things that never change, and where I am in the globe certainly isn’t one of them! Somehow, after a long plane ride over the Atlantic, I ended up in the U.S. How did that happen? I’m back to the land of wide-open spaces, huge malls, and, of course, the birthplace of fast [...]
Adventures in the Blue Mountains
As I sit here musing upon my time here in Morocco in my last few days in the country, I don’t think I will ever forget my time in Chefchaouen. Chefchaouen is a small mountain town in the North of Morocco that’s about a 2.5 hour drive from the Mediterranean coast. It’s beautifully nestled into [...]
A Moroccan Education
This week has been filled with education and educational experiences. For starters, I began teaching English in a conversational style at one organization in Sale, the sister city of Rabat. That has definitely been a lot of fun, and has brought me closer to Moroccan youth culture than I ever thought I would be. Each [...]
A Moroccan Education
For the past two weeks, I have been living (almost) truly on my own in Rabat in a house with 11 of my fellow study abroad classmates. Well, at least independent of my Moroccan host family. I am currently figuring out how Moroccans go about their daily business, aka finding food among the many vendors [...]
Salaam/Salut/Hello!
When you go to a foreign country, you expect to hear a different language that what you’re used to (except if you’re traveling to an English-speaking country, of course). However, you don’t expect to hear a variety of languages completely melded together. In Morocco, there is a clear distinction between languages when people talk about [...]
Zwina Bizef! Touta!
Street harassment. It’s just one of the realities of living in a North African country, so I hear. And from my experience, it is definitely real. What constitutes street harassment, though? Americans have a very strict view of what harassment is, sexual or otherwise, but in Morocco that definition is stretched a little bit. For [...]
Escape to the Country
Ah, the countryside! It was a very welcome relief to get away from noisy and dirty city to the wide-open spaces of rural Morocco. However, after spending last week with a family in the countryside of Morocco, I must say that everyone lives in a different way, and some ways are more different than others. [...]
High Heels and Hijab
It seems that the two most commonly used words in conjunction with the Middle East are “terrorist” and “hijab”. While Morocco isn’t a country most people consider to be part of the Middle East, a shared history and religion keeps the country tied to the Persian Gulf and surrounding countries. The connection started when the [...]
Jessie was born into a traveling family. After going on vacations across Europe with her family growing up, she has always had the desire to travel. So when she got the opportunity to travel to Thailand and Cambodia with the non-profit group, Teachers Across Borders, she discovered her love of studying other cultures and hasn’t been able to let it go. From her experiences in Cambodia, she became involved in the non-profit organization, Cambodia’s Children Education Fund, and has followed her interest in education to Morocco. She’s. She’s currently studying culture, Arabic, and education in Morocco, and has been fortunate to become a sister in a large family of 9 living in the Medina of Rabat. You can follow along as she discovers Moroccan family life, culture, and a little bit about herself as she reflects upon her experiences.