My Fourth in Beijing...

(Home Sweet Home)

So I have officially made it to China! After our 13 1/2 hour flight, Julie, who works for KSU Study Abroad offices, and Dr. Holland picked us up

from the airport. My flight was long, a girl behind me puked 10 times, and we didn't have our own T.V.'s. So it wasn't the best flying experience that I have ever had. In fact, I fly quite often and have never had someone puke on a plane, let alone in the seat directly behind me! The most significant thing we all noticed when we landed was the pollution in the sky. No blue sky here. Just a foggy haze. I think I already miss the blue sky! We are staying at a University here in Beijing for really cheap! It is pretty nice too (all things considered). Not your 5 star hotel experience by any means, but it works good for us. The beds are a lot harder than I am used to. However, I still slept really well because I was pretty exhausted by the time we got to the university. In fact, we all slept straight through dinner hours and didn't wake up until around 5:30 in the morning. So I pretty much slept from 5 pm to 5 am. I think my internal clock has adjusted pretty good though. : )

So today we woke up super early and decided to take a walk before breakfast. Because that is definitely what I should be doing with my foot, right? Well, lucky me my foot held up as I got my first good look at what Beijing had to offer. We say street vendors with some tasty food. We were a little nervous to try it but I think we might tomorrow. I guess we wanted at least one day stomach problem free. haha. Really, I think my stomach could stomach it. Plus, my Mom hooked me up with some Pepto. : ) Another cool thing we saw was a lot of people out exercising. There was this group of older women playing hacky sack and people lifting weights outside, people waking up there body parts with few slaps on the butt, and even some b-ball.

After our walk we ate some breakfast. It was rice and a couple of unknowns. Good unknowns at least. I took a picture to show you all. So it was pretty good considering all that I really wanted was a banana. Got to expereince things like the people though. : )

After breakfast we ventured forth to Silk Road. We all got to put our bartering skills to test! i pretty much spent more than I should have but got a lot of cool stuff. Scarves, rings, stamp of my name, jade stuff, chopsticks, fan, calligraphy pens.... So sorry if you wanted your gift to be a complete surprise because I sort of ruined it. But at least I got that shopping out of the way. Everyone would always yoller at us, saying you are my friend so I will give you a "special" price. Yeah right. They would start us out at 600+ RMB and we could usually get them down to 35 RMB. I am definitely not the best bargainer because I am a touch to nice but I had a few pretty "ruthless" friends with me.: ) We actually got pretty good by the end.

Next we had some lunch as this place that was China's version of Burger King. It was a little hard and confusing to order and find seats but it cured our hunger. It actually wasn't too bad and it was fun trying each other's food. All I can say, is that we pointed at pictures and really didn't know what we were eating. So once again a few unknowns. : )

We braved the subway system next. One word: crowded. Denton, another KSU student on the trip, was saying that this wasn't even crowded. They definitely have a different sense of space than Westerners. So we made it through the subway travel unscathed and ventured forth to the Forbidden City. Or so we thought.

See nobody tells you that when you first walk in that it isn't the Forbidden City. So we walk around, spend 15 RMB for a ticket, another 4 RMB to check our bags that aren't allowed in. We go up a bunch of stairs, look around a bit in the "Forbidden City" and then come back down. After some more wandering in this huge place, we meet this lady who spoke English. Se invited us to look at some Chinese paintings. So sweaty and happy to find a person who speaks English we say sure. We go into this air conditioned room, look at some nice paintings and chat with her. She then ask us if we are going to go into the Forbidden City. We just kind of look at her like "you have got to be kidding?" So apparently all the walking and spending money was just to see the front gate. Nice huh? So we walk all the way back to get our bags we checked to get into the Forbidden City. We learn that you don't have to check your bags to get into the city, only the gate. So we felt a little scammed but you live and you learn. Plus, it is our own fault for not researching more!

So we spend 65 RMB to get a ticket to the big show (about 7 bucks) and head on in. We walked a lot. Not good for me and my bum foot. The pavement was ancient and broken in many areas. There were many steep ramps and steps. But I am a trooper and made it through. People really liked staring at my foot. : ) Also, I had people approach me several times and ask me if I wanted a wheel chair. One guy said I was crazy when I told him no. I am sounding like such a complainer here but I really did find it all worth the pain and sweat. We saw some interesting things. Next time I go back, I won't be on crutches and I will get some sort of tour guide or automatic tour guide. Just a side note, the forbidden city is HUGE and you will get a workout no matter what. The best part was the Imperial Garden at the end. The whole thing was pretty much void of all plant life until the end. Silly Chinese.

So upon exiting the Forbidden City, (which I was happy to do, so I took a pic of the exit sign) we were bombarded with people trying to get us to buy stuff. I was a little irritated by this at this point, so i ignored them all. We walked a little, then decided on a taxi. The taxi was my savior. It was cheap, a little cramped, and a heck of a lot better than trecking through Beijing.

We ate supper (about $1.25) and had short logistics meeting. Now I am sitting here typing you this lovely blog. it is about 8:30 pm here (7:34 am in US) and I am pretty much completely exhausted. A very eventful and fun day. My foot feels fine too; so Mom don't worry.

It feels odd to miss all the 4th's activities, I guess I haven't missed them yet though. It is just now the 4th for you. Have fun and enjoy one of my favorite holidays!

The Traveling Bogart,
Kasie

China Bound!

Hello Everyone!

Tomorrow (today technically) I venture forth across the pond! I am of course very anxious to get over to China and even more so to start teaching some English. Well I haven't quite planned my first day yet but I will have 13 hours and 32 minutes of fun on a plane to take care of that!

Right now I am staying with my friends Shannon and Mike. I worked with them at Wally World until they moved over to Independence, MO. It is a little closer to the KC airport than Manhattan. We went and saw Mr. Brooks at the theatre and then caught up over Iron Chef. It was actually the first time I had seen Iron Chef and it was dubbed over. They were all asian speaking people. So I guess I was getting warmed up to the language barrier I am about to face! : )

It is around 2 am and I can't get to sleep. I think I am just excited for tomorrow. Then again, it could be just bad sleeping habits. But I think the more I stay up, the more likely that I can sleep on the plane. Oops...so much for lesson planning. : )

So like Morocco (sorta Egypt too) I will be blogging my little heart out. jk but I will try my best to keep everyone all informed about what happens to me in China. It is sure to be an experience!


The Traveling Bogart,

Kasie

Dairy Buffalo Herds

Hey everyone! Sorry but I am having troubles loading my pictures again! : ( But I thought that you would still enjoy reading the posts.

So the first day we started off with a bang! Cairo is absolutely CRAZY! In the daytime there are 18 million people and in the night time there are 8 million people. There are traffic jams everywhere and it takes forever to get anywhere. It is also very dirty! It is also really hard to beat the good times wwe had in Morocco.

But we did get to visit a Dairy Buffalo farm today. It was pretty interesting and we had a good time. They actually have these things called Flying herds that never see the sunlight. They are kept right here in the city of Cairo and are housed in the buildings. Then the people sleep on the floors above them.

That is a pretty condensed version of everything but i just can't write anymore right now. : )

We did get to see the pyramids today! I will write more later.

The Traveling Bogart,

Kasie

Off to Cairo We Go!

So today was a day for buying last minute gifts, wrapping up what we had learned, saying goodbyes and jumping onto our next flight to Cairo, Egypt! So I did buy a couple of things and got ready for our 4 and a half hour flight. It was a pretty uneventful flight and trip. Well we did fly Air Maroc though. It does make for an interesting flight. Sometimes the people have trouble finding their seats and safety demos are optional (jk). They pile you on these little buses to take you out to the planes and everyone just loads all at once, So there really isn’t much organization at all. Then halfway through the flight they sold perfumes and cigarettes. Plus, they tired to feed me raw fish again! But we finally made it to Cairo at around 1 in the wee hours of the morning. We bought our visas, cleared customs and got our bags in no time! Dr. Solomon was there to greet us and provide us entertainment on the ride to our hotel. He is a very energetic man! Especially, at one o’clock in the morning. He gave us this passionate and full of energy speech about the dairy buffalos and flying herds. In fact, even though it was early in the morning, we were all ready to go look at some buffalo! It is actually pretty humorous that he could take a bunch of jet-lagged tired beyond belief students and get them pumped up to see these flying herds a the time of night (morning). I can tell Dr. Solomon will be a fun guide for the rest of our stay.

The next post will be all about the Dairy Buffalo and flying herds. So don’t worry it things are a little unclear. Then next after that come the pyramids and camel rides! So now I am actually almost caught up! We visited the buffalo stuff today and we are off to experience the Sphinx and Pyramids tomorrow!

It will be an exciting day! Here is a teaser picture of the Nile River from our hotel balcony. Can you say five star hotel? It is so nice!!

The Traveling Bogart,

Kasie

Our Last Full Day

So today is our last full day in Morocco. Tomorrow, we hang out in the morning a little and then make our way to the airport for Egypt! It was a great day! We are up in the Northern part of Morocco in and around Rabat and Meknes. We actually stayed the night in Rabat and got to meet Mustapha’s wife Hiat and older daughter. All very, very nice people. It is a little funny because we actually ate with them at a Pizza Hut! Rabat is Morocco’s capitol so it has places like that. It was an exciting dinner because we got pizza, ice cubes and straws! Things we all take for granted. You can also add toilet paper to that list. I have trained myself to have some sort of paper on me at all times now. : ) There’s nothing worse than finishing up and then realizing you have no toilet paper! I don’t think I mentioned this before, but many times you will have to pay a lady in the bathroom a duram or two to use the douche (as they call toilet in French). By the way, French is spoken A LOT in Morocco.
We got to meet the Ag attaché , Michael Fey and the US Ambassador of Morocco today. He is the guy that represent our president in Morocco. It was a very unique and interesting opportunity. I mean not everyone gets to meet the US Ambassador of Morocco! We had to stand up when he entered into the room. Plus, we remained standing as he help himself to lemon aide and banana bread. Which pay the way, I have never tasted lemon aide so deliciously good in my life! We just sat around in Michael Fey’s beautiful home and chatted and listened to him talk. We all were very impressed and had a great morning.
So then we were off with another bus drive through the countryside. We could see green stuff this time! Also, for a lot of our trip we say the coast or fields of grapes, sunflowers, and various other flowers. We were told that this part of Morocco is very much similar to Mediterranean areas of Spain. So when we finally made it to our destination we arrived at a small farm. Much to our surprise there was a big Berber tent set-up. But wait! It gets much better. We actually got to eat our lunch in that Berber tent! It was sort of a surreal experience lounging in the tent with pillows and rugs after rugs after rugs covering the ground and part of the back. I have said it again and again but Moroccans have some of the best hospitality. They are so very kind. So we took off our shoes, which is a Moroccan custom and went to sit down in the tent. We had a man come around and pour water for us to wash our hands, and then we were served mint tea! Next came lamb shish kabobs! Very delicious!! Next came something I wasn’t expecting! We were served TWO whole lambs for us to gobble up. We just ate with our right hands, using the bread to tear off pieces of lamb. It was very good. Then we were served a huge heaping platter couscous. It was actually the first I had tried. It kind of reminds me of rice. It also had carrots, potatoes, beans and squash in it. Of course this was quite tasty as well. After all of this, in perfect Moroccan tradition, we had fruit. We had watermelon and honeydew. At this point were about to bust! Just a little side note, Moroccans feed their guests way more than enough food. They actually want there to be a lot of leftovers. It just shows prosperity and is proper when entertaining guests.

After the Berber tent meal, we walk around the farm and saw their cattle and lamb that they just let roam around to graze. The tents are set up so that the people can see their animals for miles and miles. They can also see when others are approaching. After all the excitement it was time to load back up in the bus.
They next part of the trip was a trip to a winery. I have never been to a winery before so it was pretty interesting. We also got to do a little taste testing at the end. They were all very tasting. I would have bought some but they didn’t have any for sell. Just trust that it was good. : )
So tonight was our farewell dinner! I just want to throw this in. I am sitting in Cairo right now and I really miss our last night in Morocco. We were lucky enough to be invited over to Mustapha and Hiat’s home for dinner and fun. It was just fun to hang out and relax with some amazing people. We also got to meet Mustapha’s younger son and daughter. When the younger son came in, he went around and gave all of us kisses on both sides of our cheeks. I think some of us were caught off guard, even though we had seen this greeting before! : ) Then we made fun at Ashley for saying his cheeks were soft. Just for some background his son is probably in our middle school age group or younger.

We had another amazing meal and along with that, good conversation. I had what I thought was fish at the time. Unfortunately, I later found out it was sheep brains. Shame on you tricky people. : ) Hey, but I am still here. Another thing that was pretty exciting was getting our henna done! Mustapha had invited a lady to his house to do our henna. She did an amazing job. She was very fast and very detailed. I really like looking at my henna. : ) At the end of the night we had a champagne toast to friends we came to Morocco to be friends with and all the amazing thing we had just learned.

I will definitely miss listening to Kurt and Mustapha talk about anything and everything from Morocco to life in general. They have a wealth of knowledge and it is all very interesting. Plus, they were just really genuinely nice people to hang out with. We will all miss them.

The Traveling Bogart,

Kasie

Oh the things that happen in Morocco!

(A palm tree in a wheat field!)

So another exciting day in Morocco! This was the day our bus broke down, we ate at this restaurant that served us undercooked chicken, and we got to see a beggar man get into a pushing fight right by the doors to our bus, Really all these problems weren’t too bad and actually make for good stories and pictures. : )

So we fixed the bus problem by doing a rolling start…downhill. We all got out and pushed the bus! Good thing it was our little bus because out other big bus would have been a challenge. Apparently, we had blown a fuse.

Earlier that day we had visited some Oasis’. Basically they plant in tiers. The first tier is the palm tree, then the olive, then the fruit, and barley and wheat, etc. They are pretty small plots. The main thing that was stressed to us was the fact that what the farmers make today is actually the same amount they will make twenty years from now. Not a lot of room to expand or grow. We saw a variety of fruit trees; apricot, almond(nut) , and pomegranate. Katie, this reminded me of you. : ) Oh and this Kansas girl got her picture in a wheat plot! The cool thing about this oasis was that we drove out into the middle of a dried of river bed to get to it. It is crazy to think about how little water they get in the south. In the future the Moroccans will be a great model to look to when the United States faces water conservation problems. One thing I did notice was that along the roads, they would have ditches or aqueducts to move water through. They also have reservoirs that the government controls and uses to release little amounts of water at a time to help replenish the water table. We also talked a lot about how wheat was grown in Morocco for obvious reason that made since at the time it was introduce but that less wheat should be planted. It is a high water and low labor crop. Moroccans need a low water, high labor crop in order to survive. Moroccan find great success with their olive trees. In fact I can’t recall a meal when we didn’t have olives. With the pit of course. : )

So that oasis trip was very interesting. On the way there we traveled through breathtaking scenery. The roads were narrow and steep and curvy. Out bus was big and bulky. As you can probably imagine, it made for some interesting turns. Kurt made a funny comment on how we all needed to buckle our seatbelts for the next part of the journey. But we didn’t have any seatbelts! Kurt and Mustapha sure did like to play funny jokes on us. Anyway, we made it safe and sound to our next destination.

This place was another place I wish we had scratch and sniff photos! We toured a rose processing facility. It was pretty neat to see how they extracted the rose oil from the petals. I can’t remember the specific amount of rose petals it took to make one liter of oil but I don remember it was a an enormous amount. I guess that is the reason it is over 3,000 dollars to get some rose oil. Sorry friends, I am just not that rich to get you that good smelling stuff. Actually, Pamela, my roomie said it reminded her of a funeral home! : ) Anyway, we left that place and hit the road. We actually stopped along the side of road to get some roses form the little boys who were selling them. We bought to rose leis. Anytime our bus stopped on the road or in a city you better believe people would come to check us out or try to sell us stuff. Like the boys with the roses. That is were the beggar man comes into the story. We were eating our less than tasty meal (actually our only bad meal experience) and had our bus parked across the street so we could watch it. Well these men were standing around waiting to sell us stuff and ask for durams. Well we got our bus driver to drive the bus to our side of the street. When that happened the men changed side but most of us were on the bus already before they could get to us. This beggar man, who actually had a deformed leg got really mad at another man and pushed him down right by our bus door. We were all like “close the door!” So certain people won’t worry, I really didn’t feel threatened or in harms way. It was kind of exciting and by this point we had all had to deal with this type of thing. So then the beggar man sat right by our bus and screamed every now and then. About what? I have no idea. The funny thing about this was that Jill wasn’t on the bus when we got on and we were all looking at her to make sure she was okay. She mouthed to us to stopped staring at her because she didn’t want the people to approach her. It was kind of funny. Good thing Kurt was still out there to help Jill to the bus.
I think this was the day we also went to the market. They have their market on Thursdays. There is no other town in the region to have a market on Thursday so it eliminates competition. Let me tell you it was an interesting site to see. For some reason a Moroccan guy got mad at us when Mustapha asked about a calf. It started an argument between the guy and Mustapha. Kurt told us that Mustapha just liked to argue. : ) He also said the other Moroccans thought the mead, mad Moroccan was being to uptight. Just imagine a crowd of Moroccan people gather around all of us Americans arguing right in front of us about God knows what. Mustapha had it all under control though. And once again we never felt threatened. Most of the Moroccans were all very curious and nice to us. We even had two little boys follow us all around the market.

(Mustapha popping popcorn)

In the market we saw many things, ranging from movies to tools to cattle. It was all a lot to take in. Just imagine aisles and aisle of tents with spices, bread, meat, vegetables all crammed together. Then throw in a bunch of Moroccans and 14 Americans. We got a lot of attention. We ended up buying wool scarves from a lady. Then Mustapha help this man pop some popcorn and bought some for all the kids following us around. They really loved that. It was probably my favorite moment of the day. On our way out of the market we all had to cram to the side to make way for the meat trucks. They drove these trucks of meat down through the narrowest places imaginable. I was squashed up against the side as they drove by. As we left a very old lady asked me for durams, I felt sorry for her so I gave her 10 durams. I think I heard that many people live off of two dollars a day. I gave her a little over a dollar. So it was an interesting visit to their version of a Wal-Mart.

(Live animals at the market)

I hope I am not leaving anything out! There is just so much to see and to do! All I have is one more day about Morocco! Time sure does fly when you are having fun!

A look at Morocco: Swimming in the naked pool, Snakes, Knives,Transhumance and Bargaining 101

Yet again I a little behind on this blogging thing! We have just been so busy and by the end of the night I am pretty much done for. As promised I will give you all some exciting updates. We got the chance to go down even further down into southern Morocco. We were in Taroudant, Taliouine and Ouarzazate. While we were in Ouarzazate we stayed at a really cool hotel overlooking the city. It had this pool that had windows looking into the restaurant! Supposedly, it is because the hotel use to be a nude hotel and people could see the naked people swimming around in the pool while eating supper. Well we took the plunge, not naked though, and swam around and took pictures of us underwater in the restaurant. Fun times! People most likely thought we were crazy because it was freezing outside! That is actually the second time we got to swim in Morocco though! Both times were pretty chilly. : )

So later that night we were in for a BIG surprise. In Morocco most of the rooms in hotels or restaurants are very relaxed and made for lounging. With pillows and short tables and lots of beautiful wood ceiling carvings and colors! So we went to this room in our hotel and got to see a snake charmer and belly dancer! We also got to try Moroccan beer! It is called Casablanca and was pretty good. I got video of the snake charmer and belly dancer. We had a cobra, sidewinder and some nice snake. It was the snake he liked to put on people. : ) Jill our Collegiate FFA leader and a guy named Eric were not fans of the snakes! Jill curled up with her feet up on the couch and Eric screamed when they put the snake on him. It was such a cool thing to see. Then the snake charmer must have though the snakes weren’t enough because then he started to poke needles in his mouth and spitting hot water through the holes. This was crazy! I actually had to look away a couple times because he was bleeding. Now I know you all wanted to know that! : ) When the belly dancer came out we let the boys give her moolah. It was still very cool to get to see these parts of their culture. After that we stayed up a little longer and danced with some Arab friends.

The next morning (at least I think this the right order), we went to visit the headquarters for the Transhumance for Biodiversity Conservation in the Southern High Atlas. It was basically a project that was in place to conserve the most diverse flora and fauna in Morocco. People in this region are traditionally Transhumance or nomads. They are sheep herders who move their sheep to the best grazing lands each season. Their life is extremely difficult. They don’t have schools, medical care, or veterinarian care. This way of life is disappearing and along with it a lot of their plants and animals are becoming extinct. So the Transhumance project is one that is pushing people to return to that lifestyle. It kind of boggles my mind that they wish to send people back in time and technology but it would be the best thing for the environment and the people in the long run. The Transhumance project is now providing mobile schools, hospitals and vet clinics for these people in hopes of attracting more people.

At the project headquarter we also got to visit with a lady who was in the Peace Corp. She had been working with her village to get running water and try to make things better for the people. She was actually at the end of her 2 year service term. It was interesting to hear from a person who was actually living with the people and living like the people. Especially, since I have considered Peace Corp after college. Don’t worry Mom, I think I am still going to teach!

So after all that in the morning, we got to do some shopping! I bought two beautiful Berber rugs. I am keeping one and am not sure who gets the second. I just got so caught up in the bargaining process with the men that I ended up buying two. But I got the second for 500 Durams less than he originally quoted me. It was crazy, the men were rolling out rugs left and right and they were all so amazing. I made friends with this one guy, the one selling me the rugs. He told me I had expensive taste and would laugh when I argued with him on the price. It was a really fun experience. The only bad thing is that I now have to lug around two heavy rugs!



As if the rugs weren’t enough excitement we decide to go to the Kasbash. It is a Moroccan castle. It was a nice little tour. The main thing to note was as the castle went higher the doors and ceilings became shorter and shorter to support the weight. They are made from clay. They had really nice ceiling carvings.

Well I think I will end this post and add more to the next.

The Traveling Bogart,

Kasie