Morocco-deserts, dromedaries, oases, sanddunes, cous-cous, and taijine

Spent my semena santa (Easter break) in Morocco, what an amazing country: brown and green, deserts and oases, modern and old, peacefulness and chaos. I was totally in love with the country, especially the food and the people. Was joking with my Moroccan classmate and asking him to find me a Moroccan boyfriend.

Top 10 highlights of Morocco:
1. The non-existing Royal golf course
2. Getting lost hiking: that’s what happened when you let 3 boys take charge
3. The gangster/bandit town: Rassani
4. Mesouka: playing hide-and-seek with kids in the deserts
5. Dromedary Liberalization Party: we would like to start a party to liberalize dromedary as the general public mistaken us from camels. We have only one hump but we have higher endurance. Also, the logo of the cigarette brand “Camel” is actually a Dromedary!
6. Boulette: that’s our geeky entertainment every single night!
7. Sharou’s berber haggling style: according to the locals, I bargained like a berber!
8. Debate no. 1: which native culture is more INTERESTING? North American natives or South American indigenous?
9. Debate no. 2: the importance of sports? Why are people so passionate about soccer?
10. Stop Sayonara-ing me please!! The locals mistaken me as Japanese so wherever I go, they “sayonara”, “aligado”, and “Toyota” me!
11. 10 days of Morocco, we are couscous’d, taijine’d, sand dune’d, desert’d, oasis’d, kasban’d OUT!!
12. 19 rolls of 36: the amount of film I shot.
13. 400DH exhaust: it is all about principle!

More photos on flickr!

Schlager Party, Schweinefillet, and my very German weekend

Meant to write this entry a month ago but got distracted and totally let it slip. My end of march weekend turned out to be very aleman. Went to this German Schlager party organized by our rival school. So what is Schlager exactly? According to my vary patriotic german friend F (probably the only patriotic german I have ever known), it is completely cheesy—people wear outfits from the seventies and play super cheesy 70’s german music. I had a kick out of watching some german getting trashed and dressing ridiculous outfit.

Then my dear german patriot decided to show off some finest german cuisine for my roomie. Schweinefillet in Pilz-Weißwein-Rahm-sosse: pork in some creamy, yummy sauce. The coolest thing about the dinner was the electronic pepper grinder! So cool, one of the coolest invention I must say in the culinary world!! it even came with a light—it flashed when turning on the grinder ☺ Absolutely love it. A few glasses of wine after, we started our Spanish monopoly game—poor K, the first-time monopoly player turned out to have the most properties and was rubbed by all of us. A german dinner then became a spanish-speaking evening. Me gustaba! Sitting there, watching everyone laughing their heads out and having a good time—for me, that’s the perfect picture—good food plus good friends—what else can I ask for more?

me

We had to write-up a profite of ourselves for the student committee website. So my dear groupmate J volunteered to write an entertaining one for me. So here it is, the funny profile of sharou:

Hailing from Canada, a true polymath, sharou is equally at home directing groundbreaking independent cinema as she is working on consulting projects. She manages to combine commitment to excellence with a truly laidback attitude in a way that has psychologists generally baffled and her peers extremely appreciative. She is an excellent snowboarder, a mean disco dancer and her peels of laughter can usually be heard echoing through the ESADE halls. She makes fiscal responsibility and balanced budgets look easy.