Events

December 2022

When my friend and teammate Evan David offered for me to visit his home in Morocco for a few weeks, I jumped on the opportunity to explore the world. During the trip, we experienced both Morocco and Spain and even different communities in each of the vastly different countries.

Going into this trip, our only plan was to have no plan at all. Our goal was to just experience the world as it was and to participate in the communities we were visiting. Both Evan and I had heard about American tourist stereotypes and knew that what we wanted wasn’t to observe these communities as if we were in a documentary; but rather, we wanted to experience these communities. This meant trying our best to learn at every step; from trial and error with the native languages to asking for their recommendations on what to order and where from, to even simply just talking to the locals with the simple goal of wanting to get to know them.

The three of us quickly learned how different our lives were here in the US after starting in Imlil, a tiny and rural village in the High Atlas mountains of Morocco that had only one road leading there. The village was recommended to us by Evan and his parents as a beautiful region knowing that it would be the fastest route out of our comfort zones and we quickly embraced it. We stayed in a small hostel with no heating and immediately took notice to how kind our hosts were, preparing “Berber whiskey”, a mint tea named after the Moroccan natives, despite us arriving close to midnight. In the morning we were fed a traditional Moroccan breakfast then went out hiking through some of the trails in the mountains, an absolutely beautiful experience for someone like me who has never been in the mountains before. Once we returned to the village, we were fed a Moroccan dish known as “Tagine”, slow cooked vegetables and beef that had been cooking for over 24 hours and eaten with your hands and Moroccan bread. I would make a trip just to eat that again! We then thanked the hosts of our hostel then left for Casa Blanca (where Evan lived) but made a stop to experience the city of Marrakech. Marrakech is a large city known for its shopping, so we spent no time making our way through the Medina; an absolute maze of shops and local food stands and ended our time their playing soccer with a couple of local kids in a park. We then finally made it to Casa Blanca where we rang in the new year with excitement of how much was left to experience. The next two days, we planned out a route through Spain then went out surfing, with Evan being our teacher before sitting around a fire and meeting some of their neighbors.

Spain admittedly wasn’t as major of a culture shock, but the differences were still clear to us, and the goal remained the same: Experience the cultures. We tried new foods, ate at mostly local family-owned restaurants, and made new friends with people from different countries simply because we just happened to bump into them and decided to start talking.

To say I learned from this experience would be a criminal statement because what I did was grow. I grew into a new person who appreciates the smallest things in my life after spending a day in a village that had no internet access and was still able to see the joy in the experience and witness the happiness of those that lived that way. I grew to recognize that every stranger is a friend if you are willing to get out of your comfort zone and be curious. I grew to realize that the best way to travel isn’t to spend time at a resort or at Google’s recommended tourist stops; its going to a lesser known town or city and asking them where they recommend to get food or where you can go to spend a few hours of the day. But most importantly, I grew to discover that no matter where you are in this world, the people don’t change but the culture does; and just because the culture is different from your norm should mean that you embrace the opportunity to experience it so that we can all coexist.