"Quiero ser una gota de lluvia." I want to be a raindrop.

In 5th grade, I was taking the writing assessment that the state of Tennessee required me to take. The prompt was "Pretend you're a raindrop. What would your life be like?" I remember that I wrote something about falling into a rainfall meter that was owned by my uncle, Brian. I then wrote how he took the water to my grandmother's house so that I, along with my liquid compadres, could be used in a hummingbird feeder. Let's just say that 21 year old Tanner is slightly different than 11-year old Tanner. This is my take on raindrops as I was sitting in a bus, in the rain, between Granada and Sevilla somewhere in the mountains of southern Spain. Enjoy.

I want to live like a rain drop. But I don't want to be just any rain drop. I want to be a rain drop that is just so fortunate to land on a car. Watch them. Watch the tiny highway system they create on a window as a car drives down the road. With guns ablazin', they smack the side of the window only to stay stationary for just a split second. Then, one, two, three, four raindrops come together to create a little liquid rocket ship and they shoot across the window. Once their tiny journey is over they join all the rocket ships that came before them at the bottom of the car. They then make a big pod and fly down onto the road. From there, they're picked up either by other cars or evaporation. Why do I want to do that? Well, it's not the journey that's important for the raindrops. It's what they leave behind. As they shoot across the window, they leave a clear jet stream that contributes to the tiny little highway system. With these little streams, tiny little water rocket ships or even the lonely, straggling single raindrops can jump onto that little jet stream and shoot along with ease. I want to leave a path. I want to live life fast and furious and see and do all I can but all along, I'd like to burn a trail across the world so others can do exactly that. Then as they drop off the car to what later becomes the final resting spot of these little rain drops. Except, just because their life is over doesn't mean they aren't continuing to aid in this thing called "life". They are working together to help animals, plants, and other organisms live. They're creating amazing bodies of water just to add to the beauty of this amazing planet. They're creating that mud puddle in that driveway in Lawrenceburg, TN that that little 5 year old named Tanner rides his battery powered Jeep through only because he thinks he's "mud man". They assist so much in this world simply by being exactly as God created them. This is what I'd like to be. A raindrop.

Walk from Isabel's House

Another video blog!

Morocco. Maroc. Marruecos. المغرب.

On March 29, I went to Morocco.

The day started with me meeting Becky and the rest of the DiscoverSevilla.com (DiscoverExcursions) group at the Portuguese Consulate at 9:30 and jumpin’ on a bus. We jumped on this FULL bus and hit the road for Tarifa, Spain. There are two ports where one can catch a ferry to Morocco: Algeciras, Spain and Tarifa, Spain. After the 3 hour ride and the Toy Story 3 watchin’ on the bus, we finally got to the port. There, we loaded a ferry (pictures below) and headed to Africa. It was so cool that we could see Africa from the land of Spain. We stood on one continent and looked at another. How cool is that?! So here are the pictures of the ferry.

 That's Africa, y'all.

Okay, now we’re in Morocco! After going through the “security” which was just people shoving each other through some “metal detectors” that did absolutely nothing, we were boarding the bus that also rode with us on the ferry. As we’re exiting the port on the Morocco side (Tangiers, Morocco), I look to the right outside the window only to see 5 teenage boys running at our bus. We’re driving and they JUMP ON OUR BUS. They begin riding with us on the back of the bus. Now, at this point, I’m not sure what to think. I’m wondering if this is normal. I mean, this is my first time in a third world country, so I have no idea. Turns out, they were actually trying to get in the bottom of the bus to get our luggage. Someone got out and ran them off, though, so it was all good. So, that was my introduction to the country. From there, we drove about an hour to our REALLY cool hotel. It was on the beach, but the beach wasn’t visible. We were covered by trees. It was set up like a resort. Super cool. That night, we ate at the restaurant in the hotel (like we did the second night as well). The interesting thing about this restaurant is that they bring the big plate and uncover it and put it on the middle of your table. Then you just get your food off that and put it on your plate. Also, everyone just smokes inside the restaurant. The weirdest thing to me, however, was the fact that there were cats walking around the restaurant. Like, real cats. They just walked around, ran under the table, or whatever else. It was so weird. After eating, we ran off to bed and went to sleep.

Okay, it’s March 30^th now! We are headed to Chefchaoeun, Morocco. We got on the bus, and rode for 2 hours through what was quite possible the most gorgeous landscape I’ve ever seen. Seeing mountains in North Africa was something I don’t think I’ll ever forget. We finally get to the city and meet our hilarious tour guide. First, about the Moroccan people, they’re wonderful. But, like other Arabic-speaking people, they’re body language is so foreign to us. They’re in your face, loud, and mean-sounding. They SCREAM at each other just in regular conversation. It was so odd and off-putting. Anyway, so he tours us around the “Blue City” for a little while and it was SO picturesque. We did the tour and then hit the streets to shop and have free time. The cool thing about shopping there is the fact that EVERYTHING is bartering. You never accept anyone’s price. I did all my haggling and everything in Spanish. It’s funny because when I’m in a foreign country, Spanish just comes out first. I automatically assume the people speak Spanish. I don’t know why, but it just happens. So the Moroccans spoke Spanish and English with me like it was no problem. As a people, they speak many languages. There’s several people there that speak 3 or 4 languages. I bought little keychains, pins, and leather products and then we left this city to return to our hotel, have dinner again, and crash. Overall, I loved it. Before I went to bed, though, I went to sit on the beach by myself. It was really cool. It was completely dark and it was just me and the ocean in Morocco. Gosh, I loved it. Here are a few more pictures of Chefchaoeun:

Tour Guide 

The whole city was in the mountains.

So then, on the 31^st, we got up, and left for Assilah. We drove once again on the bus for what seemed to be 110 hours and finally got to Assilah. Assilah  was another really cool city. To me, though, it wasn’t as cool. Whereas our hotel was on the Mediterranean, Assilah was along the Atlantic Ocean. They had some more amazing views of the ocean. However, it rained like the whole time we were there as well. We didn’t really get to do much there because it wasn’t that huge. We didn’t have a tour guide or anything. We did the ocean and things and once again hit the streets for some shopping. I once again haggled and bought some more handmade things. We then left and headed toward the...CAMELS. We drove like 30 minutes or so, stopped at a cool cave, stopped at a restaurant to eat, and then hit the camels. What’s funny is that the camels were just on the side of the road in like a driveway. We rode around a tiny circle and then got off. We weren’t on the camels long, but hey, I can say I rode a camel in Africa. We then left the camels and headed back to Tangiers (the port) and headed back to good ole Spain. Below are some pictures of Assilah and the camels.

Overall, my Morocco trip was nothing short of life changing. Although I spent less than 48 hours there, I learned so much about a new culture. It was truly a different world than anything I’d ever seen and I’m better because of it. If you ever get the chance to go to this beautiful country, do it.

Semana Santa

Sorry for waiting so long to blog again! Once again, I said it wouldn’t be long, and it was. Well, this is the blog for Semana Santa. I’ll blog about Morocco really soon. Anyway, here we go.

La Semana Santa means “Holy Week”. As you probably know, Spain is a non-institutionalized Catholic region. They, in their history, were institutionalized, but now they have religious freedom. Because of this history, basically every piece of history and every tradition is connected to Catholicism. Semana Santa began something like 500 years ago. What Semana Santa is is each church has their own “paso” (float) or “Virgen” (Virgin Mary on a float) and sometimes both. Actually, some churches have several. Each paso or virgin (just call them both pasos) has its own route, time, and length. With each paso walks the “nazarenos” which translates to Nazarenes. These are the men (and more recently, women) that are wearing the garb akin to the Ku Klux Klan. The nazarenos’ uniforms are based upon the Spanish Inquisition outfits. The KKK then used these uniforms as their uniforms. The two are completely disconnected. Here is a picture of the nazarenos I’ve just described.

So anyway, that is La Semana Santa in a nutshell. I had the ones I wanted to see, as did my friend Becky. We hit the road on Sunday and, after moving through the 100 gazillion people Spaniards, got to see a paso that’s called “La Borriquita” at the Iglesia del San Salvador (San Salvador Church). Here’s a picture of that paso. Throughout that day, we saw La Estrella (The Star) too. My old host brother, Bartolomé, was in that one as a nazareno. Throughout the week, we saw La Macarena and a couple other ones. Sometimes I didn’t even know what we were looking at. Haha, that’s just how it was.

  

Overall, I didn’t love Semana Santa. It was really cool getting to see the pasos because they were GORGEOUS. But, there were so many people it was almost hard to enjoy. You had to try to make it through all the people all over the city and then spend about 3 hours standing through the whole process of 1 paso. The floats themselves took about 1 ½ hours, but you had to get there so early to stand to have a good spot. I’d give Semana Santa a 4 out of 10 if I were scoring it. But hey, chalk it up to yet another experience! Below are a couple of pictures.

La Borriquita

La Estrella

La Macarena (this is one of the most famous statues in Sevilla, it's a Mary that is crying and her face is on postcards, shirts, etc.)

I really am not sure what this one is because it was one that I just happened to run into and couldn't get past until it passed so I could cross the road.