Social Interaction - How do people have fun?

In this entry we will talk about the difference of the most common (but not only) ways of daily distractions people have in our beloved countries Mexico and Morocco.

**Before reading** The entry is not assuming ALL Mexican and Moroccans have fun this way!

Mexico is well known worldwide for being a high rated alcoholism country. It sounds bad but its true, most generally, Mexican people love to party and drink alcohol. Very often young Mexican people use their weekend to go to clubs or "cantinas" (bars) where they drink big quantities of alcohol, dance, sing or do other crazy stuff to celebrate the work (school) week is over again. And at a university level (specially if you live away from your parents) you could do this even 2, 3 or more times per week.

In contrast, Moroccan people are not supposed to drink alcohol because of their religion, and even if they want to, it is really hard to get "fun drinks" in that country (In compare of Mexico, for example). In Morocco they drink tea even more than we drink coffee in Mexico, they do it for breakfast, they do it after meals, they even do it in the night when they go out! (And it is pretty cheap also).

According to the United Nations, Morocco is the second country in the world in the meaning of hachis production (The first one is Afghanistan), so that, hachis is the most popular drug in Morocco, and it is smoked very freely we could say; you can be walking down the street and watch people smoke it as if it was just a regular cigarette. In some places, you can take a random taxi (preferably one with a not very old driver), tell them your neighborhood's dealer's name, and they will know exactly where to go, they will take you and wait for you until you have your "bussiness done" and then take you to your next stop.

Tea shops are the most common point of reunion for Moroccans to hang out, they go there and talk, order tea, and usually smoke one, two, three......whatever number of hachis's joints.

Is good to mention that hachis is not a legal drug in Morocco, but as in Mexico, law is very easy to defeat when you have certain amount of money to give to the policemen. We suck when it comes to corruption, but that is a topic we don't want to focus in this entry.

**If you are not familiar with hachis, check out this link that might help you understand what hachis is:

http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Hachis

Concluding, Mexicans and Moroccans have peculiar forms to have fun, but of course they are not all alcoholics and drug-addicts, you can have fun with the "help" of those substances and not abuse of them and still enjoy it; or you can just hang out with people that does that and not do it. Each one is responsible for what they do and the ways they decide to spend their free time. ¿Are you Mexican or Moroccan? ¿Do you think this is false? We would like to hear your opinion.

King Roi Hassan II

King Roi Hassan III, was last king of Morocco, before of his son King Mohammed VI. He Became King on  March 3th in 1961.
 King Hassan survived two  attempts to kill him. The first happend  in 1971, and was organized by General Madbouh and Colonel Ababou. The second one, happend on August 16 of 1972. This attemped was amazing because it happende in the sky while the king was comming back from a trip to France. Some F-15 jets from his own country, fired upon the King's plane, but luckly they failed to bring it down.

A good thing that happend while he was King, was the recover of Ifni that was controlled by the Spanish Government. 
King Hassan died of natural causes when he was 70 years old,  in his birthtown on 23 July 1999. There was a funeral in the whole country of Morocco. Many of the Presidents from the whole world attended to his funeral. He was buried at a local cementery in Rabat.

Here is the whole Dinasty of the King Hassan, comming all the way from Mohammed the prophet:

1. Muhammad, Prophet of Islam (died 632)
2. Fatimah
3. Hasan ibn Ali (died 670)
4. Hasan II
5. Abdullah al-Kamal
6. Muhammad al-Mahdi
7. Hasan
8. Muhammad
9. Abdullah
10. Qasim
11. Ismail
12. Ahmad
13. Hasan
14. Ali
15. Abubakr
16. Hasan
17. Abu Muhammad Arafa
18. Abdullah
19. Hasan
20. Muhammad
21. Belqasim
22. Muhammad
23. Qasim
24. Al Hassan Addakhil (came to the Tafilalt region in Morocco in 1266)^[9]
25. Muhammad
26. Hasan
27. Ali ash-Sharif
28. Yusuf
29. Ali
30. Muhammad
31. Ali
32. Muhammad I ash-Sharif, King of Tafilalt (died 1659)
33. Moulay Ismail, Sultan of Morocco (died 1727)
34. Moulay Abdullah, Sultan of Morocco (died 1757)
35. Sidi Muhammad III, Sultan of Morocco (died 1790)
36. Moulay Hisham, Sultan of Morocco (died 1796)
37. Moulay Abd ar-Rahman, Sultan of Morocco (died 1859)
38. Moulay Muhammad IV, Sultan of Morocco (died 1873)
39. Moulay al-Hasan I, Sultan of Morocco (died 1894)
40. Moulay Yusuf, Sultan of Morocco (died 1927)
41. Mohammed V, King of Morocco (died 1961)
42. Hassan II, King of Morocco (died 1999)
43. Mohammed VI, King of Morocco (born 1963)

Food, Recipes and Spices

In this particular issue can be found similarities between Mexico and Morocco, they share a special taste for seasoning their food with a variety of spices, among them are cinnamon, chiles and saffron.

      Moroccan Spices

  Mexican Spices

The reason why Mexico and Morocco have many similarities is clearly influenced by Spanish and Arab who came to these countries many years ago, and although it was at various times the influence was in some ways very similar.

Returning to our theme, we also observed that both cultures added to the dishes lemon, olives, almonds and many vegetables, as a sort of garrison. 

Both cuisines are rich in color, a special feature as many cuisines around the world are sober and have no color. From my point of view I think that adding color to the food also has to do largely with the personality and identity of the nation.

 Mexican dish

Moroccan dish

You can found some moroccan recipes on the links that we present you now:

http://www.moroccan-recipes.com/
http://www.magicmorocco.com/morocco_food/

And for mexican recipes you can see the next  links:
http://www.gourmetsleuth.com/Recipes/Mexican-Recipes-191.aspx
http://www.ifood.tv/r/mexican/recipes

Spirituality - Faith's influence in daily life.

With this entry, we don't intend to support or attack any of the 2 religions we are about to mention.

*To better understand this entry, it would be nice if you had some background information about Islam and Christianity. If you wish to do so, check out this link:

http://muslim-canada.org/islam_christianity.html

According to INEGI (National Institute of Statistic and Geography in Mexico), nowadays 88% of the Mexican people believe in Christianity. In the same way, according to Patrick Johnstone, Operación Mundo, around 90% of the people in Morocco believes in Islam.

Unlike other countries that have no dominant religion, Mexico and Morocco's people's daily life are very influenced by Christianity/Islam.

Imagine you are in Morocco (you are Muslim) and you are listening to music in the middle of the afternoon; suddenly you hear the prayers from the mosque near your house. You are supposed to turn the music off (or being more pious, you are not supposed to be listening to music! You are supposed to be IN the mosque praying!). And don't forget the fact that you can´t go to a restaurant and order food that contains pork. Also, bars are exclusively for tourists (so there are very few), because alcohol is forbidden for Muslims.

On the other hand, imagine you are in Mexico and you pass in front of a church (you are Christian), you are supposed to cross yourself as a sign of respect because you are passing in front of God's house.
Maybe you are a mexican 19 years old girl with all your life a head you, well, if u "have fun" and don't take the necessary precautions, you might be forced to get married before you want and with someone you are not really in love.

These are just some examples of how religion effects life in Mexico and Morocco. In addition, as strong as it is, religion can be used for political intentions as well as for marketing.

Here is a video of an ex-christian woman born in Puebla, Mexico, that decided to change her religion to muslim. She makes some comparisons of the two cultures, but we don't have to forget that this is just her point of view and each one of us has to make our own conclusions.

Introducing Mexico Meets Morocco

This is a blog made by 3 mexican students from Universidad Popular Autónoma del Estado de Puebla, in Mexico.

The main intention of this blog is to compare the cultures of Mexico and Morocco, two fraternal countries that share a common history being conquered (Mexico) or expelled (Morocco) by/from Spain.

Because of that, these cultures share a lot of cultural aspects. In this blog we will compare arts, spirituality, government, social interaction, culinary culture, as well as other aspects about their respective cultures.