5 weeks in

Dear readers,

I know my blog has been chock full of apologies for my inconsistent writing habits, but I'll extend another quick one. Upon getting to Morocco, we have spent more time in books than we have in the culture, so it's been hard to muster up the enthusiasm to write about our experience.

To be perfectly honest, this transition has been quite difficult for the group. We are all still slowly trying to digest the events in Egypt, and subsequent evacuation and replacement. Even 2 months after our departure, it is still difficult for us to believe that we are in Morocco and not Egypt. And even harder to understand that we are in North Africa during one of the most historic periods in its history, that Hosni Mubarek stepped down on my birthday the year we all decided to go and study Arabic in Egypt, and as we sometimes huddle around Al-Jazeera watching footage of the the United States sending tomahawks into Libya, we just turn and ask ourselves, "Is this really happening? How are we here for this? How did this happen?"

If I had to summarize my experience so far, it's all about studying. We are taking 7 classes, learning 3 types of Arabic (moroccan- darija, Modern Standard, and Egyptian), and I am pushing my brain further than I ever have in my entire life. At the same time, it is extremely frustrating to be learning a language in this type of environment. In Egypt, every human interaction became a learning experience. We needed to step out our front door to learn new words, hear the sounds, and apply new vocabulary to real life situations, and most importantly, practice practice practice. And while they obviously still speak Arabic in Morocco, our experience at Al-Akhawayn has been completely different. Students come here to learn English and French and some even claim not to know Arabic (although the Arabic they are referring to is Fusha- Modern Standard, not Darija, the local dialect). Conversations are laden with French, a language that some of us have grown to contempt, and we have been told that we are known as the weird Americans who only speak Arabic. So the environment is less than ideal for language acquisition. It's difficult when the classroom becomes the only place for language practice and sometimes it's hard to remember exactly what we are doing here (couldn't we have practiced Arabic in American classrooms just as easily?)  So to be honest, I feel like I don't know Morocco. I don't know the culture. A friend asked the major differences between Morocco and Egypt and it was difficult for me to say anything about this country that has been hosting me for 5 weeks now. I'm hoping that will change, but sadly, I'm not too optimistic.

Nonetheless, our studying is fortunately broken up with breaks and trips (oh yeah, we are in Morocco after all!) We took a day trip to Fez, a trip to the weekly market in Azrou, and a week-long trip to Marrakesh, Essuiara, and Casablanca.

Highlights:

1. Morocco is a stunning country. There are rolling green hills, snow topped mountains, and just incredible incredible beauty. I am usually a big sleeper on bus rides, but on our 9 hour trip from Ifrane to Marrakesh, I couldn't peel my eyes away from the window.







2. Moroccan Islamic architecture. We have visited about every mosque and madrasa (an Islamic version of the yeshiva) in the old cities and each one is more intricate and more beautiful than the next.






3. The nighttime market and souk in Marrakesh. Stalls and stalls and stalls of food. I got the hunger and ate a lot of meat and it was so delicious!

4. Essuaira. A little lazy beach town with an old walled in city, Essauira is a favorite destination spot for hippes around the world- Jimi Hendrix, Bob Marley, even apparently Hilary Clinton love(d) to visit these beaches, get lost in the souk, and check out the fish market and all the giant boats (and the wonderful dogs who hang out with the fishermen). We rented an apartment for 2 nights, and it was by far the craziest, most awesome apartment I've ever seen. More clashing colors and patterns than you could imagine.









5. Hospitality. We had the good fortune of staying with my friend, Zenit's, aunt in Casablanca. She fed us, took us all around the city, and helped us with our darija.

6. Being in North Africa. (We obviously stumbled on some protests in Marrakesh and I had to take some pictures) (don't worry, Mom, Morocco's WAY different than Syria!) It's great to be here with my Egyptian teachers to get a continued commentary on the events in Egypt, and get a Moroccan perspective on their government and the changes happening in the Arab world in general.

I have to go do some homework, but I will try to be better about keeping this blog updated!

Things to look forward to:
Weekend trip to Meknes this weekend
Homestay with a family in Meknes or Fez
Passover in Fez (and maybe a Flagship sader!)
Trip to the desert
May 6-8 in Spain
May 29-June 11 The Return! Monica goes back to Egypt!
June 11-14 Paris.
June 14- America once and for all.




for more pics, check out facebook

We made it!

Hello all!

Sorry it's taken me a bit to write my first post (my computer was in Egypt up until a few days ago) but now we are here and getting settled and starting our Moroccan lives (although the rest of our stuff is still sitting at Alexandria University. Looks like we'll be wearing the same jeans for quite a long time!)

So first things first:

We made it here after a long long trip from our various cities in the US -> Washington Dc -> Paris -> Rabat -> Ifrane.

Ifrane, Morocco is a teeny little ski and university town in the Middle Atlas Mountains. We are at about 5000 feet and it is cold, but beautiful! We are enrolled at Al Akhawayn University, a university started in 1995 and named "The Two Brothers" after King Hassan II and King Fahd of Saudi Arabia (not actually brothers). The story goes that King Fahd donated a large sum of money to Morocco intended to help clean up a giant oil spill of the coast of Morocco. However, the currents changed and the oil never reached Moroccan shores, and apparently you cannot return a royal gift, so King Hassan II allocated the funds to open a semi-private, semi-public university that runs off the model of American universities. The result: A Moroccan university whose buildings look like Switzerland (aside from the giant mosque in the middle), American style teaching, and international students. Wild, right?

There are about 1,300 students here who all speak a combination of French, Moroccan Arabic, and English. They are generally of the upper upper class of Moroccan society (nice cars, clothes, sunglasses) and I was told that most of them have some sort of connection to the royal family or government ministers (it's a real hoity toity bunch), but we're trying to breach the language divide and start making some friends (although Moroccan Arabic?! REALLY different than Egyptian and sounds a lot like French). And people think we sound like movie stars when we speak Egyptian, because they know know Egyptian Arabic from the movies. So we confuse a lot of people, in addition to the really troubling fact that they all think we are government spies, or at least spies in training.

Our program:

The administration decided that we should compensate cultural immersion with school and class time. So we are working our freezing little tushies off. We are taking Moroccan Arabic, Egyptian Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic, Egyptian cinema, translation, and Islamic studies and are also enrolled in 1 of 3 classes at the university (Arabic media, Islamic civilization, or Arab history) (I'm taking Arabic media). On the weekends, we have planned excursions to Moroccan cities, to help give us a taste of actual Morocco, since our university is not exactly an accurate representation.


Thankfully 2 of our very favorite teachers, Ustatha Radwa and Ustath Abdu Salam, flew all the way from Egypt to come and teach us! This was a harder feat than you can possibly imagine for several reasons. Radwa was extremely invested and involved in the revolution and rebuilding Egypt's future and literally was involved in shaping Egypt's education system and Mohamed Abdu Salam had to drag his whole family (2 babies aged 16 months and 5 years) all the way here, plan our whole new curriculum, pack up all of our stuff from our apartments, and tie all of our loose ends in Egypt. Also, the bureaucracy involved in attaining visas and working with the sort of non-existent Egyptian government and banks is no simple task. To say the least, we couldn't be more grateful to have them here. They are remarkable human beings.

So despite all the challenges, we are persevering and trying to stay positive and study hard!

Now, a few bits of fun.

When we manage to get our noses out of our books, we do find some fun adventures.
Last Saturday, a few friends and I decide to explore the giant woods around our campus and go for a little hike. The scenery was amazing, we found some interesting plant life, spent about 10 minutes examining a dead fox to try and figure out how it died, and practiced taking pictures on Mae's new fancy camera.

Then Sunday, we took a trip up to a little town called Azrou. The drive was spectacular. The mountains look just like southern Spain, with rolling green hills, sheep and cows lining the countryside, and Moroccan women in colorful abayas pushing donkey carts and carrying baskets of bread. When we got to Azrou, we grabbed a quick lunch a went straight to the monkey forest. At first, we couldn't find the monkeys, so we wandered in a Narnia like forest with thousand-year-old, tall cedars, and tried yelling out in Arabic to find the monkeys.

And eventually, we did.

We saw babies and mommies and grandpas, and fed them bananas and clementines and they took them from our hands, and it was the best day ever! They were so cute and funny and playful and jumped between all the branches, and I decided that I should drop out of the program to become a zoologist so that I can study monkeys all day long (either that or marine biology so I can scuba dive). After about 2 ours of watching them and taking about 4000 pictures each, we dragged ourselves away and went back to school.

P.S My camera cord is still in Egypt so all of my photos are courtesy of Katelyn Gallagher

Monica in.... Morocco?

I don't know if you've heard the news or not yet, but the Flagship Program has decided that it is no longer safe for our program to be located in Egypt and has decided to move us to Ifrane, a little town in the Atlas Mountains. While I am less than thrilled about this decision and I want more than anything else to return to Egypt, finish what I started, and accomplish the goals that I have set out, I am trying to think positively and get myself psyched about learning dirija, the Moroccan dialect of Arabic.

So... mutsharefeen ya maghreb (nice to meet you, Morocco), safi (ok), inshallah this experience will be muzain (God willing, this experience will be fantastic!).

I guess I'll have to change the title of my blog. 

The Exodus

Firstly, I want to start off this blogpost thanking all of you for your outpour of love and support. I have been overwhelmed by emails, phone calls, and facebook messages (and an open invitation to stay with my friends in Tel Aviv for as long as I need)  from all of my friends and family, and have been truly touched by all of your concern. Now, as my friend, Katelyn, said, let's just keep that sentiment going for the people of Egypt right now. For my teacher, Radwa, who has been on the front lines protesting since last Tuesday. For my friend, Mohamed, who has been out in the streets protecting his neighborhood from looters. For my teacher, Ustath Nour, who just had a baby girl last month. For my teacher, Ustath Imaad, who has been out protecting his church. For all of my friends and teachers and all of those who took care of me when I was in a foreign place. And for all the Egyptian people who are putting their lives on hold and risking their safety in pursuit of freedom.

For the past week, I have been on a really strange journey. The irony is not lost on me that on the day of the revolution, I took a bus out of Egypt through Sinai and crossed the border into Israel, and that Israel has been in some way my safe haven from the revolution in Egypt. All of my stuff is in my apartment in Alexandria, including my computer and American cell phone (let's hope it hasn't been looted), and my brother joked saying that I just had to leave before the bread could finish rising. In Israel, my Hebrew and Arabic have morphed together to form an incomprehensible monster of a really gutteral language that no one understands, I feel comforted when my taxi driver turns out to be Arab, and I have felt overwhelmingly lost and sad. All I want is Egypt. I have been glued to my friends' blackberries and iphones, checking for news, and scanning pictures of Alexandria so that I can assess the damage of the spots that I frequent often, and the uncertainty of the future of Egypt is really weighing on me.

There's been a lot of talk, especially in Israel, about why these protests have broken out, whether they should be supporting by the American government or the Israeli government, and whether this revolution actually represents a positive change for the Arab world. It seems to me that the fear that many people feel about this revolution is justified. You may be shocked to hear me say this, but the way I see it, this revolution may not just be about a change in leadership, but about a change in precedent.

From my time spent in Egypt, (and by no means am I trying to convey that this is the feeling of all of the Egyptian people or that this is in any way an accurate depiction of the Egyptian way of thinking. What is to follow are my thoughts and my observations, so please, don't think that this is absolutey Egypt) I have tried to peice together where anti-Zionism and anti-western sentiments have come from and why. This has been one of my biggest personal struggles being in Egypt, and next semester, I was hoping (and am still hoping) to do a research project on the role of Zionism in Egypt. From my point of view, Egyptians see that for the past 30 plus years, their government has been supported by the American government in order to protect Israeli interests. They have endured a crippling economic crisis, the slow deterioration of their most basic human rights and civil liberties by the hand of Hosni Mubarek, and when they look at the news, they see this man who has come to represent their oppression shaking hands with Barack Obama, George Bush, Bill Clinton. American president after American president has supported their poverty, their hunger, their deteriorating credibility within the Arab world, the rigging of their elections, the support of torture among Egyptian police forces by continually funneling aid Mubarek and supporting him, no matter what. And while they have heard countless commitments by these American presidents saying that they will pressure the Egyptian for more democratic reforms, for the loosening of the reigns, as of the November 2010 elections, the Americans had not followed through with a single one their promises. Hilary Clinton expressed "her disappointment" in response to one of the most corrupt elections in history, and the $1.3 billion dollars in aid kept funneling in to the corrupt pockets of the Egyptian government.

And while all of this was happening, the west was shocked to see a growing afinity towards religion and Islam, the growth of the support for the Muslim Brotherhood, and they were not able to peice together why. But I have to ask, why wouldn't poor Egyptians, undereducated and dissatisfied with their political representation, flock towards the Brotherhood? Why wouldn't they try to understand their poverty by turning towards the Koran and hoping that this is part of God's plan? Why wouldn't they see the American and Israeli government in some way supporting and encouraging their suffering? As Egypt grew poorer and poorer and saw more services cut, more rights taken a way, no end to the regime of the Mubareks as Gamal Mubarek campaign posters started to clutter the streets of Cairo, Alexandria, and Suez, why wouldn't they cry, "Enough!!"

The way I see it, these protests, while largely they are a call for freedom, democracy, basic dignity and human rights, they are a call for a restructuring of the political order. The Arab world, which has been dominated by Turkish policies, then British and French, and now American and Israeli, is calling for governments that are not so easily swayed by the dominant world superpower but actually care about promoting the interests of their people. They do not want a government that can so easily take advantage of their people, that can continue to allow settlements to grow in the West Bank and can continue to support and defend the seige on Gaza. They want a say in their lives and in their futures and the way that they conduct their international relations as well as their domestic policies.

In light of this, as we look ahead, what can we expect for the future? For Israel? Everyone is scared of the Muslim Brotherhood. Israeli is shaking, wondering if they can trust the peace treaty or whether they should start calling out their reserves. Firstly, the way I see it, there will be no war with Israeli any time soon. These countries are scrambling to piece a government together and piece any form of order together, how could they possibly have time to declare a war on Israel? Or how could they possibly risk that giant aid package from the states as they are desperately trying to reopen their banks and encourage investment? What I can predict is a future change of tone towards the Israelis and Americans. I doubt the Egyptian people will continue to tolerate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict much longer, and I feel that it is in Israel's best interest to extend a hand of support for the Egyptian, Jordanian, and Syrian people as they form their new governments, and also to solve the conflict as quickly as possible. As we know, the Arab world's number one problem with the west is support for Israeli policies. If this conflict is solved, the risk facing Israel from the Arab world is greatly diminished.

Similarly, I do not fear the Muslim Brotherhood. I think they now fear the Egyptian people. This revolution has changed history. For the first time, Egyptians have banded together to topple their own government. I hope, and I believe, like other grassroots democratic revolutions, this one will be successful. This revolution has sparked massive interest and investment in politics in the Egyptian people, and I do not think that they will allow themselves to be continually taken advantage of. They will get free and fair elections. And they will participate. And their government will be forced to respond to their will.

As painful as it is not to be in Egypt right now, I support the Egyptians 100%. Every one of them deserves freedom and democracy. They deserve food, fair wages, and self determination. I believe in democracy and its merits. And maybe I am being foolish and naive, and just like I have been slapped in the face this week with the reality of the world and politics, I will be slapped again in a few weeks or years. But I cannot allow myself not to hope and not to believe.

Eish. Horiya. Kirama insaniya- Bread. Freedom. Human Dignity.

Do You Hear the People Sing?

On January 25, 1952, the Egyptian police force located in the city of Ismailiya resisted British calls to evacuate the Suez Canal Zone. As a result, 41 officers were killed, and the next day, to honor the courage of these officers, Egyptians took to the streets in Cairo, protesting their monarchy. Later that year, Egypt toppled the king and became a democracy.

Since that day, January 25th has been a national holiday in Egypt called "Police Day," honoring the sacrifice of police officers in the protection of their freedom and country.

However, in the past 59 years, the Egyptian police force has come to symbolize the deterioration of the rule of law in Egypt. A police force that used to represent the people's interests began to honor only the will of the tyrant. And during the 30 year rule of President Hosni Mubarek, the police force has ruthlessly arrested opposition members, beaten and killed activists, and disregarded basic human rights.

So on January 25, 2011, the Egyptian people decided that they had enough. On a holiday meant to honor the police, 80,000 plus Egyptians stood in the face of police and authoritarian tyranny, endured rubber bullets, water hoses, tear gas, and beatings and demanded what is rightfully theirs.

عيش! حرية! كرامة انسانية!

Bread! Freedom! Human Dignity!

Following the Tunisian Revolution, social networks and twitter buzzed with news of a planned revolution on January 25. A facebook group called, "يوم ثورة على التعذيب والفقر والفساد والبطالة" (yom thoura ala al taatheeb wa alfakr wa alfisad wa al bitala- A day of revolution against torture, poverty, corruption, and unemployment) boasted 97,621 members, saying "no to violence, yes to peaceful protest and demanding our rights."

"If you are scared for Egypt, if you want your rights, join us."

The day started eerily quiet. On my drive to school, the streets and university were completely empty. The day continued like this and even by 4 oclock, I had not heard of anything happening in Alexandria, only about protests in Cairo.

However, by 5:30, I got a phone call from Katelyn. "Monica- there are protests coming down Port Said (a street that I live off of that runs throughout the city). Should I go down? Should I check it out?"

5:45 pm

Mae and I go down to Port Said to meet Katelyn. My street had been cordoned off by a police barricade, so Mae and I stood back behind them and watch as hundreds and hundreds of people marched down Port Said. They were carrying Egyptian flags, chanting "حرية! حرية! حرية!" Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!
"ya Mubarek ya Gaban!" "Hey Mubarek, hey you coward!" "inzel! inzel! inzel!" "Step down! Step down!" Men, women, children, old people, young people, Christians, Muslims, veiled women, unveiled women. It was a march of the Egyptian people. A march of a people who were finally saying no to tyranny and demanding the right to live.

So we locked arms and started walking along the sidewalk, following them and eagerly trying to hear their chants. We started to walk up a hill and began to see the crowd that had amassed behind us. Hundreds of people, it seemed never ending. A man in front of us turned around and smiled at us and offered us a potato chip. People were hanging out of their balconies, taking pictures, video taping something that they had never seen before- Egyptians organizing and finally saying no!

After about 10 minutes of walking, we saw a group of people in front of us turn around suddenly and start running. "The police are beating them!" So in a flash, the 3 of us were out of there, running at first but then walking back to my apartment. As we walked down the street, we saw the aman (security) come charging down the street to try and meet up with the protesters. Following them were 15 police vehicles, ready for arrests.

When we got back to my street, the crowd and police were gone. Just a few stragglers discussing what had happened. So we went up to our roof to see if we could see any more, but all we could hear were a few chants. "واحد، اثنين، الشعب المصري فين؟" (wahed, ithnayn, al sh3ab al masri feyn) "One, two, where are the Egyptian people?" (The rhyming is much better in Arabic).

As the night went on, we heard more and more reports of protests throughout the country. One teacher who had been participating in protests all day said that the police started beating them pretty badly and spraying them with tear gas, but the men around her protected her. We heard of one man being beaten to death in Sidi Gaber. 2 friends of mine had been at another protest in Kofr Abdu and reported thousands there as well. In Cairo, we saw pictures Midan Tahrir in the center of town- a reported 50,000 showing up to protest and threatening to stay the night and well into the morning. Mohatet al Raml, Alexandria's down town, had also been flooded with thousands of protesters, tearing down posters of Gamal and Hosni Mubarek.

Their official demands: departure of Hosni Mubarek from office, fixing the deteriorating economic situation that results in poverty, high rates of unemployment, and rising prices, elimination of corruption, political reform, modifying the constitution, and fixing the parliament. In short, they want Mubarek gone, an end to the emergency law, and a serious addressing of the economic crisis.

This morning, rumors are spreading that Gamal and Susan Mubarek had fled the country to London, although the American embassy has denied these claims. The front page of Al Masri Al Yom just reads "انذار" "warning." Underneath is a picture of protesters in Cairo. More rumors that twitter, internet, and facebook have been shut off in certain parts of the country (although not where I am). But as I went to Mohatet al Raml to buy my bus ticket to Israel, it looked as if nothing had happened there the night before. People were going to work, unloading fruit for their fruit stands, getting haircuts, driving taxis. The only remains of the night before were a few ripped posters of Gamal Mubarek.

My friend, Matt, ended his blog post with an appropriate quote.

It's the moment of truth and the moment to lie
The moment to live and the moment to die
The moment to fight, the moment to fight, to fight, to fight, to fight
It's a Brave New World.

Nadi Sporting

The Flagship program is awesome. I say this for a lot of reasons, but one major reason is the internship program. Unlike any other program in Alexandria currently, our program mandates that we chose any organization in the city of Alexandria and offer our services for 10 hours a week. The goal: language practice. 10 hours a week in a field of our choosing learning relevant words, phrases, meeting people, in some cases helping humanity, and in other cases, just chilling with Egyptians and experiencing the culture.

We had literally no boundaries. We could chose anything. Get a map, point anywhere and show up for 10 hours a week. So, people took this to mean different things. People worked at non-profits working with women, children and development, others worked with musicians, journalists, writers, in cafes, ahwas, diving for archeological remains, working at a center for the blind, at a bar, at an American center conduction dialogues between American and Egyptian students, planning peace conferences. You name it, we did.

In general, internships don't really exist in Egypt, so the concept was quite difficult at times to explain.

"No, maam, I don't want to get paid... No, sir, we aren't slaves, we can't recruit other slaves to work at the bakery across the street..."

But, despite cultural and linguistic barriers, we all seemed to make it out alive and we definitely tried to make the most of the often times difficult experiences.

So... what did I do?

In the beginning of the year, while I was struggling to find an internship, my friend, Kamelya, told me about an opportunity to play sports with kids with special needs at Nadi Sporting, the country club-esque facility down the block from me. So I hopped on board.

It turned out to be fantastic.

It wasn't exactly playing sports with kids like I had anticipated, but I more became an observer/ mascot for the Nadi Sporting Special Olympics Team. Participants are all young adults/ adults (men and women), many of them older than me, and every day, they show up to train for a different sport. They play basketball, ping pong, track and field, swimming, polo, and gymnastics, and those are the sports that I know of. They have both an inter-Egyptian league and every few months, they compete in matches between different clubs from all over the country. And every four years, the Egyptian Special Olympics team recruits from these clubs to chose their participants. This year, I found out that out of 8 swimmers going to Athens in June for the international competition, 4 of them are from my club. Every other club in representation had only 1 or 2 players chosen. So my guys are legit. I'll even admit, I played them in basketball one week and I got crushed. We even had a team of Japanese volunteers (without special needs) to play them in a scrimmage yesterday and they got crushed as well.

Here are some pics!

me and the bball team (top (left to right)- monduh, yusef, mohammed, mohammed, omar, bottom (left to right) waleed, nour, rami, mostafa)

rami

before a swimming championship

Fish Dinner

 Let's take a break from the serious subject matter of this blog the past few posts and discuss something a little more lighthearted... like fish.

Yum! Fish!

Fresh from the Mediterranean, these little suckers are caught every morning by fishermen in delightful fishing outfits and long fishing poles, sitting on the rocks right next to the beach or out in their teeny canoe sized boats in the middle of the raging sea. A few days ago, while I was crossing underneath the Corniche, the tallest, skinniest fisherman I had ever seen was walking in front of me. He was wearing tight, black wet-suit bottoms, flip flops with black socks, and a striped grey and green hoodie (he was wearing the hood as well) and of course, the obligatory cigarette in his left hand, and despite his height, he seemed to be waddling like a penguin under the tunnel until he grabbed his bag of fishing supplies and was off to battle with the morning's catch.

Alex is known for its fresh seafood, and although I am usually a fish-free vegetarian in my real life, I realized quickly here that if I were to survive without dying of malnutrition, I was going to have to start eating fish.

So with my guest, Talia, I decided it was time to really partake in what this city has to offer.

Nada (my roommate) told us of this really sha3bi (popular Egyptian) fish place called Hoda el Gondol, right near the university in the neighborhood of Azarita. Described in Lonely Planet as a place offering "fresh and ridiculously cheap seafood... no menu and little English is spoken... just turn up, point to the trays of fresh fish lining the downstairs display and find yourself a seat. It's located down an unmarked alley; ask for directions as everyone knows it by name." Sure enough, when we hopped in a cab and said "Hoda el Gondol," the driver knew exactly where to take us.



As described in Lonely Planet, we walked down an unmarked alley and found ourselves facing massive trays of fish. On our right, the fried ones, right in front of us, the grilled filets and whole fishes, and to our left, the shrimp and clams. Immediately, the men working there offered us samplings of the shrimp, clams, and fried calamari (my first time trying clams and calamari) and wow! It's delicious. Mae said it tasted like KFC- fried goodness.








So we ask them to assemble us two mix trays and then head upstairs. Each plate (costing 35 pounds and coming with a soda, rice, bread, tehina and salad) contained a grilled whole fish, a fried filet, shrimp, fried calamari, and clams. They also brought us some spicey fish soup, but I didn't like that at all.

Favorites (in order):
Fried filet and calamari (but I think I just like fried foods)
Shrimp
Grilled fish
Clams

The rice and salads were also quite good.

All in all, I would rate this restaurant pretty highly, but recommend going for lunch when the fish is a little fresher.