Steve Garguilo

After an exhausting day of travel, I just want to make one last note in this journal about how much I've learned and how sad it was to leave.

Even after my travels to Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Asia Pacific, and now North Africa, I still don't know if I'm ready to call myself a "Global Citizen." No matter where I am, I learn something new everyday, and I have a new appreciation everyday. I am so lucky and so privileged, and I can't be thankful enough for those things.

The people I've met abroad have been phenomenal, and none moreso than the Moroccans. My host family opened up their hearts and their homes to me. My peers opened up their lives and dedicated themselves to helping us out and getting to know us, and are now our life-long friends.

I only hope that one day I will be able to return to Morocco, and I plan to make it a goal to see to it that I do. This past week was one of the best week's of my life, and I can't say enough good things about it. To the details mentioned in the blog to things that were left out like the trip to hamam, the nicknames (all Americans got Moroccan nicknames, Moroccans got American nicknames - mine was "Mountassir"), and countless other experiences, it was a blast and was a wonderful experience that was not only educational but fun!

The week continues to go by incredibly quickly! We had a final Field Challenge to the Bou Regreg, but I think many of us would like to forget certain parts of that trip ever happened... it was a wonderful trip, but the tour guide I think had different priorities than we had going in. Still, it doesn't take anything away from another awesome day of bonding with our teammates and checking out the impressive dam. It had nothing on the Hoover Dam that I saw back in January when we were driving back home from California after the Rose Bowl, but it was still impressive for different reasons.

That night, we also cleared with our host families if it would be alright to be out a little later than usual, and we went to a club with some of our teammates. This is not the same type of club that we see in State College by any stretch, but it was a place to relax, dance a little bit, and further our friendships with our teammates. 

The next day was time for our final presentations! We'd been working all week on these stove designs, and ours was finally completed and we were ready to present. I think the presentations went well overall, and I enjoyed some of the components of each design. The best part was when we got to go around in a circle and really critique the pro's and con's of each design. I feel like we could have done that for hours! We all found things we liked and didn't like, and started to work towards one design. Unfortunately, we were all out of class time! Fortunately, though, this meant we would get to work collaboratively via Skype over the rest of the semester to finalize one design for the Mondialago competition.

After our final presentations, what better way would exist to celebrate than to take a day trip somewhere? And what better place to go than to go to Casablanca?!

The largest mosque in the country, Hassan II Mosque, is in Casablanca. It is also the third-largest mosque in the world! It was quite the sight to behold, one of the most breathtaking things I've seen since the Taj Mahal.

The day in Casablanca was filled with worlds of fun! Not only did we visit the beautiful mosque with its complex, detailed, and just gorgeous architecture, but we saw the waves crashing on the beach, and we went through the colorful shops to see the different works of art and craftsmanship that was for sale. I wish there were more places like this in the U.S., it was just so beautiful and just such a wonderful day.

We also got the chance to go to Hasna's house for a delicious meal! Her family had prepared a huge meal for all of us, and it was another wonderful time to sit down together, share stories, laugh, reflect a little bit on the trip, and also have tea! I think everyday I say something new has been my favorite part of the trip, but I think this now qualifies as my favorite part.

I am truly going to miss Morocco!

Tucked away in the heart of Rabat, Morocco is L'École Mohammadia d'Ingénieurs. An Engineering school, it is one of the most prestigious in the country. As a student in Penn State University's Engineering Leadership Development program, I was in Morocco as part of a group of students involved in a partnership that allowed students from both schools to work together, learn together, and share aspects of our cultures over the course of one awesome, action-packed week.

One of our goals for the week was to come up with a new solid fuel stove design. People die every day in developing countries from smoke inhalation due to solid fuel stoves, and by coming up with a realistic, new design, we could save lives.

As college students, we all knew the Engineering Design Process:

1. Problem Definition
2. Solution Development
3. Solution Testing
4. Design

Effective design really is about so much more than just these four steps, though. It was sitting in an Ecole Mohammadia dorm room at 11:00PM that real innovation happened. Two of my teammates and I sat down and really tried to put together all our research into one effective design. Over the course of the past few days, we had gone out into the field and gathered all kinds of data about what was currently being used, and also looked up effective designs in the developed world. We could take parts of this research into account, but needed to be flexible enough so that our design could actually be implemented in developing regions.

My friends Mountassir (a Civil Engineer), Nabil (a Materials Engineer), and I (an Information Scientist) all sat down on the edge of a bed, a broken chair, and the floor respectively, and got to work. For this team, the diversity was not in the fact that it was two Moroccans and one American, it was in our skillsets, experiences, and worldview. We all had different skills to bring to the table as far as creating and communicating our design, we all had different experiences with stoves in the past, and all thought in different ways. Going back and forth sharing potential ideas, it was then that we were able to come up with a truly creative design (just one step on the way to innovation).

I'm a process person, and I love and respect processes, but I can't really say it was following a process that led to us coming up with this design, it was just our ability to sit down and work together and share ideas. Our design:

While this may not be the most intuitive diagram, it was created after numerous deliberations about all kinds of factors such as conductive materials, air entry, air heating, combustion, types of fuel usage, baking capabilities, the size of what's cooking, smoke exit, fuel removal, cleaning, and all types of other considerations. 

An effective, diverse team needs to be comfortable working with each other, and great things can be the result!

The Field Challenges have gotten crazy the past few days, and I haven't had as many opportunities to write!

While continuing to work on our Mondialago stove designs, we've been spending a good amount of time the past few days learning about water treatment and wastewater management processes and procedures. The science behind these are absolutely fascinating, and Dr. Schuhmann, Dave Vargas, and guests alike have been helping us to understand these complex topics.

One of our craziest Field Challenges yet was to Chellah. Our clue is what inspired today's title, and the Americans and Moroccans all had to work together to solve the clue, then explore the necropolis to understand the hydrological history. 

We were tasked with doing this in individual teams, but when we all pretty much figured it out together, we decided to not quite follow our instructions exactly, and we all went together and explored together. This was probably the most fun and educational day of the entire trip. Leisurely walking around the beautiful landscape and looking at the waterways and vegetation were awesome things to do. I wish everyday could be like this and meeting new people and learning about them and enjoying the sun and investigating cool things. What an experience!

Another Field Challenge we took was to Meknes to understand the hydrological history of that city. Each team was tasked with a different destination, and ours required us to hop on a train and go hours outside the city for this investigation. Luckily, Lamyae was on our team for this trip, and her family lived in Meknes! Her father proved to be a huge help, from giving us tea (awesome!) upon our arrival, to getting us connected with all kinds of people around the city to show us everything we needed to see. 

These Field Challenges were just such awesome experiences, and made us all really close as teammates. I was becoming very fond of all of our classmates from Ecole Mohammadia, and knew it was going to be very tough to say goodbye!

I can't believe that reading over my previous entries this is not something I've yet discussed!

Moroccan Tea is amazing, and is one of the truly awesome parts about being in this country, and especially about staying with homestays and really being immersed in the Moroccan culture. 

While "tea breaks" were customary in India, it was a completely different type of tea and really was for a completely different purpose. I feel like the tea in Morocco is not only better tasting, but more meaningful. It's really an opportunity for everyone to be sitting together and just talk while enjoying this delicious treat. The fresh mint leaves really make it, and distinctive way of pouring confirms to you that it's a special moment.

In my pictures, you will see typical tray that would come out at Moroccan Tea Time. The beautiful teapot typically is very detailed like this, and then these small glasses (~3 oz. if I had to guess) are all that you need. The tea is VERY hot and VERY sweet. It's such a wonderful thing to have, and I will really miss it. And not only will I miss it because it's so good, but because it's the time that I've really enjoyed sharing with my host family and friends. When we sit together and have tea, we are just having a nice, relaxed time and just soaking it all in.

I feel that in the U.S., this is a part of my life that's missing perhaps: taking some time to just relax and soak things in. I have a great appreciation for that, and maybe I'll need to take back a tea set of my own and make time for tea time in my apartment!

Today really centered around one theme: "How do you define good leadership?"

We had the chance to regroup at class this morning and each present what we found as far as our stove research. We found some things some other teams did not find, and other teams found things we did not find, so it was very productive and very good knowledge sharing. We then had a short opportunity to work on coming up with some designs.

At the conclusion of the design brainstorming sessions, we had a lecture from Dr. Schuhmann about leadership. While I've heard talks about leadership before, including from Dr. Schuhmann, I really enjoy these types of discussions, and each manages to touch on some different piece that I haven't exactly heard before. At the conclusion of this presentation, we were left to go on another Field Challenge, this time to ask strangers the question posed above: "How do we define good leadership?"

This was another wonderful opportunity, and we also got new teammates for this exercise. I had a chance to work with Charles and Hasna, and the discussions we had as we went around Rabat were wonderful. We attempted to explore different sections of Rabat than we had explored on the day previously. This took us through the streets, to an elementary school, and eventually to the school of our peers: Ecole Mohammadia d'Ingenieurs.

Here I had the opportunity to ask this question and get answers from the perspective of students and of faculty and staff. Throughout the day, we had been asking people whose qualifications ran the gamut: small children, students, young men and women, older men and women, military personnel, policemen, staff at the mall, and all kinds of different perspectives. This was a great exercise as it allowed us to see a number of differences and similarities in answers.

One interesting observation was that there is no direct translation of the word "leader" into Arabic or Darija, so that almost left us to define the word just to ask the question. Some took this to just mean "manager" and referenced the individuals for whom they worked, but others took it to mean more of what we stereotypically think a leader is, someone who doesn't necessarily have to be a manager, but has other qualities. I really enjoyed this day, and the chance to all assemble back at Ecole Mohammadia was great. A number of other teams were also there at the end of the day, and I had more of a chance to interact with Ibtissam, Youssef, and others who were wonderful to spend time with. The week was starting to go by awfully fast, though!

Today has been a wonderful experience, and I know that this is going to be a great week in Morocco. I woke up after not nearly enough sleep (but a wonderful sleep it was) and then took a long-awaited shower. The family was all gathered around the kitchen table for breakfast, and we enjoyed some delicious pastries for breakfast. To my surprise, we also were served coffee, but that wasn't the surprising part. The surprising part was the taste: it was just like Indian coffee! OK, it's not exactly the same, but with milk as the base it was very close, and sure was so good to taste it again!

We left our family then for the day and headed out to the meeting place to go to AMIDEAST for class for the day. I don't think any of us really knew what to expect. We took a petit taxi to "Macdonald Agdal" which was the Agdal McDonald's, and then walked around the corner to the school. We were first introduced to our teammates, and that was a lot of fun. We went around the room explaining "2 truths, and 1 lie" and then everyone else had to guess which was the lie. We got to know our peers even better while working on an innovation exercise in which we had to come up with the WORST design possible for a spoon. This helped us to really see what the important factors and design considerations were for a spoon, and had we needed to go further in designing a new spoon, we would have had a great foundation.

We didn't spend a TON of time in class beyond this, though, as it was time to start work on Mondialago. Mondialago is an Engineering Design competition that desires to see engineering projects that help to save the world, and that also involve a cross-cultural collaboration component. We would really fit this mold well, so our design was going to be for a more efficient solid fuel stove. This led to our first "Field Challenge" of the week: explore Rabat for examples of solid fuel stoves. Rabat is a pretty big city, probably the size of a Harrisburg, PA, so that meant we had a lot of potential ground for exploring.

Not only did this afternoon afford us the opportunity to look at stoves, but also to really let us know each other. My new teammates were Lamyae, Mountassir, and Nabil, and together we had beaucoup fun over the course of the day. We enjoyed a nice lunch at a small restaurant, and then asked the staff at the restaurant to show us their stoves. We got some pictures and observations, and then left to see the sights of Rabat while stopping along the way to look at more stoves. Places we stopped included the parliament building, Mountassir (the Winner)'s high school, and many markets.

Nearly all of the people we encountered were very friendly and were more than willing to accommodate our request to look at and take pictures of their stoves. One man went as far as to call his stove his wife, he loved it so much! The sights and smells of Rabat during the day were something I really enjoyed as we walked around. For a developing country, Rabat is very well developed, and is relatively clean and pleasant. It is a joy to walk around!

At the conclusion of the field challenge, we had a little bit of difficulty finding our homestay in the Medina, but made it back eventually and never made that mistake again! We had a wonderful dinner with our family and then fell asleep quite easily after a long and productive day.

After the first lunch we had with our host family on Saturday, we went out to explore the city with our little host brother. This little bundle of energy proved to be more than we could handle on a couple of occasions, but overall was a blast!

We left the house in the Medina and he navigated us through the streets to the main road outside. The Medina is basically set up like a maze of houses, and until you get the hang of it, I could certainly see getting lost! Once he had guided us out to the main road, we saw just the beautiful beaches in the distance and the palm trees.

The sound of the petit taxis whizzing by us was quite the sound, but not nearly as obtrusive as the rickshaws in India! I was impressed by the hustle and bustle of the day, there were a lot of people out and about, and I was a part of it having the chance to walk around with my little brother and my friends Jon and Gopal.

We walked through the streets a little bit taking in everything, the sights, the smells, and all Rabat had to offer. Then we made it down to the beach and saw the beautiful waves crashing up against the shores. We paused here to take the opportunity to skip some rocks into the water. It was then that a gentlemen came over to us and asked us where we were from and engaged us in some wonderful conversation. He informed us that he was a student studying music and loved the violin! I could relate to an extent as a musician myself (trumpet player) and we each shared some favorite tunes. While doing this, he shared some names of Moroccan tunes with me as well that I intend to look up.

Upon finishing this conversation, we decided to walk further out onto the beach. It was then that our little brother decided he wanted to build a sandcastle! Of course we obliged and had a lot of fun in the process. The castle went through many incarnations, including many a time being destroyed by our brother! Some other friendly people came up to us and it gave us a chance to practice our Darija. Everyone was so friendly.

As we started to tire from the construction of the castle, the sun was starting to go down, and we watched the sun set over the beach. What a wonderful afternoon it was.

Well, we're here!

This has been an incredibly long and exhausting day, but I've seen so much!

It started with me waking up in Indianapolis, IN after celebrating the men's team's victory over Illinois (despite that game being in Happy Valley and me actually being present for the women's team's loss to Illinois in Indianapolis). I then saw off the bus taking the rest of the band back home and I took a cab to the Indianapolis airport where I caught my flight to JFK. At JFK, I met the rest of the class and then caught the flight to Casablanca. 

When I saw the rest of the class, I immediately started to get excited about the travel! Our TA Dave Vargas had created a little book for us that also includes plenty of helpful information. While we've been studying some of the basics of the language for the past few weeks, the booklet includes even more and should serve as a big help. It's been a help already!

Upon our arrival in Casablanca, the first thing I started to notice was the Arabic language written all over everything - doesn't seem like it would be that big of a difference until you are actually here and you see it. The language is quite beautiful when all spelled out, and reminded me of my experiences in India seeing the Hindi language everywhere.

We left the airport to go to a train station and then took a train into Rabat. The ride wasn't terribly long, but it was long enough that we could relax a little bit and just look out the window at everything surrounding us. It was striking how much a lot of the towns we passed reminded me of the rural places in India that I've seen. The homes are not very big, but are made out of whatever materials are indigenous to the area, and whatever they have will suffice. The biggest difference was the beautiful green of the grass and pastures that we could see. I found this to be surprising, but have learned that this is indeed a rare occurrence and is only due to an unseasonably high amount of rain.

The train took us to Rabat where we then went to AMIDEAST for some additional cultural awareness training before we would split up and meet our host families for the day. The people at AMIDEAST were very helpful in answering our questions and helping us get ready for the long week ahead. We were all exhausted already and technically it was only late morning at that point in Morocco (we lost our night because of the flight!).

Once we left AMIDEAST, we met our host families. This was one of the most wonderful aspects of the whole trip. I was staying with Gopal and Jon, and our family was amazing. We really did hit it off and feel like a family right away. The mother and father helped us to learn some words in Darija, while the little brother took us around the city. We had an absolutely delicious lunch and dinner before our long-awaited sleep!

It seemed like it was never going to happen, but now it's come up so awfully quick! We are about to embark on an awesome journey to a new place that I've never been and to an extent have no idea what to expect. Yes, I feel prepared thanks to the handy book that our TA Dave Vargas has made and thanks to the awesome dinner we had last night at Dr. Schuhmann's house, but at the end of the day, a lot of things are still going to surprise me!

As an incoming freshman at this University, I really was not a "global citizen," and while I certainly had a respect for other cultures, I don't think I had a significant appreciation for international exposure and international projects. Since enrolling in the ELDM, my mindset has been completely changed and I can't say enough about how much of a more mature individual I've been able to become and hope to continue to be able to come.

I will be in MOROCCO in a few short days (leaving campus now because I'm headed to Indianapolis first for the Big Ten Basketball Tournament [Go State!])! I can't wait to land and share my initial reactions!