TJM: Total Jo Jo Move

"The Motherland"   Week 2: Part 1 The word "week" is used loosely here, because our whole time in Italy is actually 10 days, & 6 of those days were spent in Sicily, a gorgeous region of southern Italy, also known as the island that the "toe of the boot" is "kicking." For the purposes of this blog and the way I'm telling the story of our 3 weeks in Europe, all of Italy is Week 2. Think of Sicily as part 1 of Week 2 while Rome & Cinque Terre will be part 2 of Week 2. After that, our trip includes 5 more days before we head home State-side, so that will be Week 3 (Paris and Barcelona). Unfortunately I'm a week behind on my posts, but that just means we're having too much fun, right? I think so. As I write this post about the beginning of the second week, I sit on a train to Madrid at the end of our third week. Tomorrow night, I'll be back home in the States. On one hand, it's very hard to believe that this trip we've ...

Marvelous, Mind-blowing, Morocco "I don't think we're in Europe anymore." Links to other helpful sites & blog posts are  underlined .   Les Jardins Majorelle, French-inspired Moroccan garden   Palais Badii (the Badii Palace) in the Medina, the center of Marrakech Truly Experiencing Foreign Cultures Around this time last year, I spent the second to last week of my Australian semester abroad in Indonesia. I spent one week on a solo trip in Bali, and I absolutely loved it. Throughout that trip, I kept thinking to myself "This is the most foreign place I've ever been." Well, Morocco blows Bali out of the water in that respect.    Bali was incredibly touristy, and so was Marrakech, but the culture surrounding tourists in each place is very different. In my opinion, the general attitude of Balinese toward tourists is to please them and to help them have a good experience so the tourism cycle continues. In Marrakech,  t ...