Day 7: Pottery and Parties

Today, we had our third Arabic class. It has been a ton of material in three days, but our knowledge is starting to show and grow. It also rained today for the first time! They haven't had rain in a month or two so they were pretty happy about it too (not completely sure about this because I don't speak Arabic). After we finished class, we ate a lunch of tagine chicken and couscous that ALIF had prepared for us. Lunch was followed by glasses of freshly squeezed strawberry juice. I wasn't a huge fan, but some people in the group were basically chugging them. With our bellies full, we rolled ourselves back to the hotel to rest up before our tour of a pottery studio at 2:30. I'm starting to get used to having a 3-hour lunch hour because you can eat, do some work, take a nap, AND still have time for more activities.

We rode to the outskirts of Fes to a pottery studio. There we were greeted by Omar, a young man in his late 20's who owned the studio with his sister. They had quite the operation going on. On a campus half the size of a football field, they broke up quarried stone into clay, made tiles, spun clay on pottery wheels, had two huge kilns (each takes a full day to load), operated three shops, and had a bunch of small painting studios and tile work areas. Ariel got a chance to create a tagine when we were watching the guys spin clay. She did pretty well.... with a fair amount of help from the man! All the designs are so intricate and the amount of tile you see in houses is so astounding that it's simply incredible the amount of hours it must have taken to create a single Farsi house (adjective form of meaning something related to Fes). I didn't buy anything but we had a good time looking around the shop. Omar also gave us his card so we could come back. As ALIF students, we can make pottery whenever we want for free! We also get a 40% discount in the shop. Needless to say, I'll be going back at least one more time to take a shot at creating something ceramic and to buy some pottery.

We got back at 4:30 and were in the mood to go to dinner, so we popped over to Jahawra, a restaurant across the street from ALIF that we went to on the first day and had a feast. I had a great steak panini and fries. One surprising thing about Morocco is the amount of mayo they use. They cover everything with it and even put it on many salads. It must be a relic from the years of European control. After dinner, we showered and got ready for our party at 8. Everyone hung out in the boys' room before the Minnesotans were supposed to come over between 9 and 10. 3 of them showed up for a half hour and I had a crazy small world experience. One of the girls on the Minnesota program is from Princeton. She studied abroad with Beth, Maddie's twin sister, in Spain last summer and her roommate from the fall recently started dating my old roommate, Neil. Crazy connections! There are also like a hundred college students here from Spain who got to our hotel last night. They are all Americans, mostly from Texas and other midwestern state schools like Iowa and Arkansas, and are doing foreign study programs in Spain. They are on a five day excursion to Morocco, spending two nights in our hotel and then heading to the desert and to Marrakech. The strange thing is, there are less than 15 guys in the whole group. Unfortunately for them though, I'm taken, Ron's taken, and Joe is gay, so they won't have any luck with Dartmouth students. We spent some time on the roof top and in the lobby last night getting to know a few of them. We're looking forward to hanging out with some of them again tonight. It was a really fun night with lots of dancing and snuggling, and we were happy that Saturday is a day off, so we could sleep as late as we want for once! 7 of us ended up sleeping in our room last night haha so it's safe to say that we are definitely bonding and becoming closer as a group.

New pictures are up. I found out that uploading more pictures to an album, resets the privacy settings, so I have set the two albums to be able to be publicly viewed again, so stalk away!

Day 6: Movies and Minnesotans

We started the day off with our second Arabic class. In two hours, I took four pages of notes and had one mind blown. At our current rate of progress, I get the feeling we will be at least strong intermediate speakers by the time we leave Morocco. We learned a bunch of verbs, how to say where we are from, where we are, and just lots of vocabulary in general. In my opinion, it was still a really fun class and he wore a jallabrah today which made everything twice as cool.

After class, we went to Lla MJ and Si Ron's apartment for lunch. They had their housekeeper cook us massive bowls of cous-cous, like enough to feed two small African villages for a couple months. You could bath multiple small children in each of the two communal bowls and I am convinced that she cut up an entire pumpkin and put it on top of the cous-cous in addition to all the other vegetables. After the tasty lunch, we watched a Moroccan film called A Door in the Sky which is about three siblings who are bequested a riad upon their father's death and follows one of the two daughters who tries to turn it into a women's shelter and her transition from a life in Paris to a return to her Moroccan roots. It was from the late 1980's and was decent. Not much seemed to happen and we didn't finish the movie in one sitting. 

After the movie, which was our scheduled activity for Lla MJ's class today, we had a capital-F Fascinating lecture on the linguistic situation in Morocco by a Prof. El-Ayachi. He explained the many languages spoken in Morocco today, their history as they pertain to Morocco, and the use of Arabic and its dialects throughout the Middle East. It was just so cool. Although he dealt mostly with the socio-linguistic side of things, he delved a little into hard linguistics in answering some our questions, which was fun for me because I was able to use what I learned at this time last year in my Linguistics 1 class. This lecture today blew yesterday's lecture out of the water and everyone was awake and very engaged. I will discuss this in a later post when I have less to talk about.

When we left ALIF, we were approached by 4 of the 7 students who are here from the University of Minnesota. We'd been hanging out with them in the ALIF courtyard a bit and they wanted to check out our hotel and the pool we'd been bragging about (but have still yet to use). We asked them a lot of questions about our home stays because they have been here for 7 weeks already. They have spring break next week, but we're going to have a party with them tomorrow night which should be fun. One of the tips we were given before leaving America was to make friends with the other people studying at ALIF and, in doing so, we would have more fun. I think we are starting to see the value in that and are all looking forward to tomorrow night!

We are off to dinner now at the one Thai restaurant in town. Afterwards, we are going to try to watch the Hunger Games because it's already been illegally distributed over here, less than a week after it came out! 

Lastly, I put up more pictures today from the past three days. Lots are of the Medina. The issue is that Facebook albums have a 200 picture limit, so I have already had to create a second album. Here are the links to both the original album (in case you are too lazy to go back on the blog to find it) and to the new album.

Album 1:

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151423763520461.823111.867195460&type=3&l=cdfcc8f520

Album 2: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/set=a.10151438720835461.825141.867195460&type=1&l=efa0b4050d

Day 5: First Arabic Class

Today we had our first Moroccan Arabic class. Our professor Mohammed El Zahwari is the MAN. We only had class four an hour because he had a doctor's appointment but we learned so much in that hour. We learned a basic polite Arabic conversation between two people where we say hello, how are you, what's your name?, my name is, and, lastly, nice to meet you. The class was so fun and I'm looking forward to more class periods.

After class, I spent some time in the courtyard working on my Trip Leader application before our lunch of chick peas and bread, followed by a main course of chicken in a spicy tomato sauce, and then topped off with a glass of some delicious minty limeade. The limeade was by far the best part of the meal and tasted like a non-alcoholic margarita mix. After lunch, we had our first class session four our class taught by Lla MJ, our faculty advisor who is here with us. We just did some housekeeping work during class, talking about our home stays, the schedule for the rest of the term, and the syllabus for the class. Our weeklong break when we travel to the Sahara and around Morocco is May 5th to 11th and then we have free time to travel from the 11th to the 14th, during which we will probably be at a coastal town to hang out at the beach.

After her class, we had another guest lecture. Our lecturer, Prof. Sadad, spoke to us for two hours about sufism in its entirety. It was an interesting lecture and he covered a lot in the little amount of time he was given, which is impressive given the fact that he was basically told to talk about all the aspects of a major religion. For those who do not know what Sufism is, it is like a mystical branch of Islam similar to Kabbala for Jews or Santeria, which we are familiar with back home. The main difference, from my understanding, is how it deals with the esoteric aspect of Islam. Sufis are like a level above Sunnis (the Islamic branch with which a majority of Moroccans self-identify) and attempt to make one-on-one connections with God rather than through the use of a mosque and/or imam. This sometimes involves trances, dancing, and music in order to get closer to God. I'll be posting about Islam in general at some point in the coming weeks too.

Anyways, the two-hour lecture was exhausting after the two hours of class we had before it so we were all veritably dead. I slept for an hour and a half and then some of us went to dinner at a restaurant called Pizza Mamia which we renamed Pizza Mania. It was delicious. Afterwards, we came back and read the Andrew Lohse article from Rolling Stone all about hazing at Dartmouth. If you plan on reading it, the disclaimers I'll give you are that he doesn't have the most stand-up character, having had trouble with Hanover police on two separate occasions (he's currently suspended), he is one of 27 SAE brothers being charged by the school with hazing (last night, 24 of the other people's charges were dropped, but not his), and know that I am not in any of the frats that the article discusses. The author who wrote it is also the same one who wrote the infamous Duke lacrosse article from a few years back and who's methods are generally questionable (lied to students in order to sneak into tails events and question pledges, unreliable fact-checking, etc). Although it's six pages long, they don't talk about Lohse's personal issues until the last two pages or so, so read the whole story before passing judgment. It's on their website but won't got to print until April 12th.

Back to Morocco though. At 10, we went to one of our rooms and all watched Fast Times at Ridgmont High before going to bed. It was a funny movie and a good way to end the night.

Day 4: walking around the medina and our first class

Last night was the best night of our trip so far. We stayed up until 3 or 4 in the morning talking and getting to know each other so well. We just invited everyone up to the boys room and had great conversations.

As a result, we were all dead tired today when we had to wake up for a 9 o'clock tour of the Medina. We walked over to ALIF at 9 where we met our guide, Hakim. He is a grad student at a university in Fez and also an official tour guide for all of Morocco. He wore a jalaba (spelling?) which are like these cool wizard robes that I really want to buy. Everyone on the trip has slowly become more and more obsessed with jalabas. 

So anyways, Hakim got us all taxis and we rode over to the Medina. He walked us first to the ALIF riad in the Medina. A riad is a Morocco home with a central courtyard garden, typically featuring a fountain, with all the buildings situated around it. The ALIF riad was purchased and refurbished in the past 5 years and is gorgeous. It is a place in the medina where we can go to do work in the afternoons and hang out with our friends. It serves a social space for us without having to take a taxi all the way back to ALIF. After seeing the riad, Hakim took us to the main gates of the Medina, called the Blue Gates. The side facing outwards is blue, the color of the city of Fez whereas the side facing inwards is green, the color of Islam. Throughout the hours we walked through the Medina we only walked on two of the streets we had walked on during our previous trip there. Hakim informed us that the medina has 9,600 streets and 10,000 homes! He took us to a mosque/theological college where he talked to us about Islam, through the meat market where they sold everything from ribs to brains to testicles to camel heads, to a preschool classroom where we sat with the students and were serenaded by the 4 to 6 year olds, to the oldest religious college in the world which you cannot enter unless you can recite the entire Koran by memory, to a different tannery in the medina, to a carpet and scarf-making building where they showed us how to work looms and dressed us up in scarves, and, lastly, to our lunch spot at the Fez cafe. We probably walked somewhere between 6 and 8 kilometers today! 

The Fez cafe was an old villa owned by one of the richest families in Fez. When the French left in the 50's, many poor people moved into the recently vacated homes, which has led to the degradation of the medina over the past 50 years. The family that owned the property that the Fez Cafe is on left in the 50's and 14 families moved into the former home for the older family's concubines. The Fez Cafe bought it all out and restored it a couple years ago, replanting the garden, repainting most of the buildings, and fixing up the infrastructure. We went on a house tour which was cool because we learned all about life in a harem, which is related to the book that we are reading, Dreams of Trespass. We had a delicious lunch of chicken tagine with a variety of appetizers. 

After lunch, we barely made it back to ALIF in time for the first lecture of our Gender in the Medina class. Luckily, it was just an overview of the syllabus and it only lasted 45 minutes. I went home to take a nap, some of the girls went for a run, and other people just did some odds and ends. 

At 7:30 we went to our obligatory dinner at McDonald's. It was such a welcome break from chicken, chicken, chicken all the time. I had a big mac which was decent. They had real ketchup and real barbecue sauce too! Meredith was way too excited about the meal and already wants us to start going back for McDonald's Mondays. We were back at the hotel before Knife O'clock and are happy to finally have a break today.

The biggest highlight of our day was that everyone has decided to live in the Medina! Originally, 4 of the 10 of us had planned to live in the Ville Nouvelle part, but they have come around to the idea of life in the Medina. Learning about and seeing the ALIF riad today was definitely a swing factor for some and a reassuring item for those already medina-bound. We are excited to be living together in the medina starting next week!

Day 3: Orientation Begins

Welcome to Orientation week. Today we began our orientation at ALIF, the Arabic Language Institute of Fez. We were supposed to meet Youssf, the man in charge of housing and the school's computer lab at 10 in the hotel lobby to walk over to ALIF, however, he didn't show up until 10:45. It ended up being a useful respite because Alice was sick from our dinner last night so we spent the time hanging out with her while Lla MJ was contacting doctors for her. As of posting, she's still not feeling well, so we hope she gets better.

Youssef rolled up on a motorbike which was the first indication that he would be a really cool guy. He is about 6'4", around 28 years old, plays on the city's basketball team, and told us that his real title is "to be our best friend." He walked us to ALIF which it turns out we had been walking by every day because it's just a block from the hotel. The courtyard is gorgeous and the classrooms are nice too. They have a bigger library than I would have expected with a collection of over 1000 American DVD's. I'm going to check some out to watch at night after I begin living in my home stay.

At ALIF, we met with Si Abdellatiff (don't forget Si is like Mr. and Lla is like Mrs.) for an hour to discuss safety, this week, and our time at ALIF. Afterwards, we had chicken tagine for lunch in the courtyard at ALIF. The dessert we had, orange slices and strawberry slices sprinkled with cinnamon, was especially delicious.

After lunch, we set up our junky little Nokia phones we are going to be using while we are here. Phone plans are interesting because it costs 1 dh per text and 3 dh per minute to call (about 12 cents and 37 cents respectively). Instead of buying minutes, you add money to your phone whenever you start to run low.
With our phones all set up, we headed out with Youssef for a walking tour of the part of Ville Nouvelle surrounding ALIF. We went to a huge convenience store, Fez central park, some ATM's, and just generally got comfortable walking around on the streets. He took us back to ALIF by 4 because we had a lecture scheduled with a professor from the University of Fez about Moroccan politics since 1956 when Morocco became an independent state. I won't try to sum up the two hour session about 30 years of history on here because it would not do Moroccan history justice. The first hour was information and the second hour was discussion/question-and-answer.

Today we also met some other students studying at Alif while we were in the courtyard. There's a group of 7 here from the University of Minnesota that are here from January to the end of May. In the girls' professional opinions, there was one cute guy in their group, but I'm under the impression that he's gay. Updates to follow after we stalk them from a distance some more.

Done for the day, we walked to see the gorgeous hotel pool and then went back to the main boulevard, Hassan the second avenue, to go to dinner. We ate roasted chicken at a restaurant called Chicken Mac that Youssef suggested to us. Ron had a hamburger that was better than expected. One of the strangest parts of meals here is that the ketchup is much sweeter than American ketchup so I haven't been using it on my fries or chicken.

We then went to get ice cream after dinner and went back to the hotel to mess around on the computers and rest up before our walking tour of the medina tomorrow.

Lastly, I put up some more pictures from today on the Facebook album.

Pictures Up

Pictures are up from the first two days. They can be viewed even if you do not have a Facebook
 https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151423763520461.823111.867195460&type=3&l=cdfcc8f520

Day 2: My friend Mohammed

I slept 11 hours last night. WOW. So we woke up at 10 and went downstairs to grab breakfast before it closed at 10:30. Just your typical hotel breakfast with pastries. Don't forget that there's no bacon cause they don't eat pork. After breakfast, we split into two groups: 

Group 1 (earlier risers) - Andrew, Marissa, Joe, Meredith, Elle, and Tash

Group 2 - Ron, Christie, Alice

Ariel was still not feeling 100% so she rested today in order to be well before we start school activities tomorrow. We stopped by the McDonald's on our 45 minute walk to the Medina in order to get water bottles and to get some change. I say, "the McDonald's" because the only one in Fez is 100 feet from our hotel and is nicer than a Carrabba's. They don't serve Big Macs, but they have Big Tasties. They also serve McNuggets, McFlurries, and McFondues! Afterwards, we ambled on towards the Medina where we had a great day.

Fez is split into two haves like many Moroccan cities. One half is the Medina, the older walled in cities. These are the type of areas most people think of when they think of the Middle East. Small tight streets with 3 - 5 story buildings on either side. There's no space between buildings; they're all adjoining. The Medina is similar to the area Jason Bourne runs through in one of the Bourne movies or like the typical roof top jumping scenario you might picture. The other half of the city is the new part, in Fez's case, it's called Ville Nouvelle. It's modern, the streets are boulevard-esque with big medians, lots of roundabouts, and many bad drivers. For the first week, our hotel is in Ville Nouvelle, but starting next Tuesday, I will be leaving with a family in the Medina.

So anyways, we walked to the Medina and just jumped into a side street so as to get closer to our goal of getting lost in the Medina. We were warned to watch out for people who would offer to "guide" us and try to extort us; however, we had the complete opposite experience. Within three minutes of walking, an 18 year-old boy approached us but was a huge help. We tried to brush him off at first, but he stuck with us. His name was Mohammed, the most popular name in the world. First, Mohammed walked us to a tannery. Tucked behind a group of houses in the heart of the Medina is a tannery owned by a number of families. They have huge limestone pools where they coat lamb skin in a mixture of pigeon poop, water, and some other ingredients and let them sit for 25 days. Any given vat was like 6 feet deep, 2 feet wide, and 6 feet long with at least a couple hundred skins in it! After, they would move the skins to pools containing colored water for dying. All the dye was made naturally and from plants. It smelled awful, to describe it lightly it smelled like riding on a New York subway next to a vomiting hobo and his disgusting pet llama.

After, Mohammed took us to a spice pharmacy owned by a family friend of his. The man gave us a tour of odors, letting us smell about 15 - 20 of the hundred bottles in the shop and explaining the properties and significance of each one. They also did Henna tattooing there. Elle, Tash, and Marissa all had it done on the outside of their hands for good luck and I got one done on the palm like many men do. Before Moroccan weddings, all the women go to a Henna parlor to have there hands and feet done. It took less than 10 minutes to do each one, but we had to let the mixture settle on our skin for 2 - 3 hours after. As you can imagine, it was hard for me not to close my hand! We also got our first bartering experience. While we didn't do the best job, the girls bartered theirs down from 200 dh each to 150 and I reduced mine from 120 to 60 dh. 

After this, we walked to a carpet store where a man showed us his loom and explained the carpet making process. Blankets, which are made by men, take 4 to 5 days to make where as carpets, which are made by women, can take up to a year. He said men only make blankets because they want to go make money where as women are more patient so they make the carpets. He also showed us the three different types of each: cotton, wool, and cactus! The most surprising part about the cactus carpet is that they do not burn, as he proved to us with a lighter.

We then stopped by a pottery shop and bronze shop before Mohammed took us to his house to meet his family. His little brother Hatim who was about 10 had met up with us during the day and accompanied us too. He was the oldest of five with three little brothers and a little sister who is only 3 months old. His family hosts students all the time to the point that at the age of 18 he can speak 8 languages: Moroccan Arabic, Standard Arabic, French, Spanish, English (fluently), Japanese, Italian, and German. Moroccan homes are very vertical with a very central, steep staircase and rooms that branch off it on each level. We went to the roof top where his family was eating to talk and drink mint tea. His family was very welcoming and we played with his pet tortoise and baby sister. While there, Marissa got invited to attend one of Mohammed's family members weddings! Afterwards, he took us to a delicious roof top restaurant to have a 3 o'clock lunch and our first true Moroccan meal. He left us during lunch but it was so good. Most meals are communal plates where you use bread to scoop your food rather than utensils. We ordered four different types of a food called Tagine. We had two lamb, one chicken, and another type of chicken. The lamb dish featured prunes that were so good that they tasted like candy. We found our way out of the Medina after and split again into two groups. Elle, Marissa and I walked home while the other three took a cab. The best part of the whole day was that the only thing we paid for was lunch and the henna. Everything else we did was free! Walking through the Medina was an awesome experience with street vendors on either side for miles selling anything you can imagine.

We had dinner at 6:30 with Lala MJ and Si Ron. They took us to a nice restaurant called Restaurant Marrakesh. I had a delicious meal called a pastilla which was a chicken and vegetable mixture surrounded by dough and topped with powdered sugar and cinnamon. It was unreal. I also had a delicious house salad, which contained apples, carrots, raisins, lettuce, and corn and an incredible orange for dessert. After dinner, we got back to the hotel by "knife o'clock." We found out that it is a true thing because walking home in Villa Nouvelle, a woman walking by put her hand in Meredith's purse! Luckily, nothing was taken but it still reminded us that we should be careful.

I put up a lot of pictures on Facebook tonight. Be sure to check those out. I'm also going to try to include two or three photos with each blog post once I figure out how to.

Day 1: Trains, Rooftops, and Hustlers

Please keep in mind the exchange rate from dollars ($) to dhiram (dh) is like 1 to 8.25. Also, the time difference is 4 hours from EST.

So we took a train from the Casablanca airport at 8:00 AM and paid premium price (250 dh or only about $28) to be in first class for both the train from the airport to Casablanca Central and then for the next train from Casablanca out to Fez. We had our first ripping-off experience when porters took our bags to the train. They literally only carried them from the bottom of a set of three stairs to the top of the stairs. Then, when they asked us for tips, we just gave them a bunch of coins, which we later figured out were 5 dh and 10 dh coins aka waaay too much.

Our first train ride was short (<30 mins) and went without a hitch. When we got to Casablanca Central Station, we switched trains to our Fez train and continued on our way. In this train, we had private carts that sat 6 people. Although the tickets had the girls in one room and us boys in another, we just all sat in one. Most of us slept on the 5 hour ride but there were two highlights of the train ride. Alice's feet were swollen from traveling for two days straight so she decided to elevate them by sitting upside down in her chair. This elicited many strange stares from Moroccans. The second highlight was that there was a snack cart on the train like in Harry Potter. They didn't have chocolate frogs, but they had pringles which I bought.

When we got to Fez, we disembarked, walked out the station, and found a cab. Begin hustling experience number 2. We needed two cabs but unsure of typical rates, we were tricked into paying 50 dh for each cab. When we got to our hotel which was only four minutes away, we tipped them an additional 10 dh. The concierge, our new best friend, later informed us that our cab ride should have been no more than like 6 dh for each car and we should not have tipped the drivers.
We checked in and then went to a creperie nearby for lunch. The french fries in Morocco so far are DELICIOUS. After lunch, we had an hour before our meeting with Professor Mary Jean Green and her husband Ron, so we went to the rooftop terrace to look out and have a drink from the bar. Drinking is not acceptable in Muslim culture but many hotels serve alcohol because it's obviously an easy way to make money from tourists. We split two bottles of wine between the 8 of us before meeting with our professors. When 5 o'clock rolled around, over some mint tea, Lla MJ (pronounced la-la em jay) and Si Ron (see dawn) laid out the week for us and gave us some more general safety information.

For dinner, we walked up the street from our hotel to another restaurant and had some delicious pizza and chawambras (like gyros/sandwiches). I'm getting much better at deciphering French menus, but Arabic still looks to me like drawings done by an ADD child. After dinner, which ended just at 9, we came home. I coined the term "Knife o'clock," which derives from being told to be home by about 9 o'clock because after dark "the only people out are those who are looking for trouble and carrying knives" (Lla MJ). We went to the roof top bar, split some more cheap wine, and bonded as a trip. Ariel was feeling under the weather so she didn't come to dinner or hang out after but we hope she starts feeling better. I went to bed at 11.

Travelling

After being up late seeing the Hunger Games at midnight, I woke up at 8 to go to Miami International Airport to fly to JFK and then travel on to Casablanca. I got to my 11:30 flight at 10:15 and had a great experience in the airport.

I was riding the sky tram from gates 25 to the station for gates 1 to 20. As the doors were about to close, a black lady came on yelling "Does this train take you to gate 40?" repeatedly. If she had stopped to read the sign on the side of the train, she would have seen that we were going to gates 1 to 20. However, as soon as she asked the question a second time, the doors closed and a voice came on over the loud speaker that said "Now leaving for gates 1 to 20." Unfazed, the lady asked us all again, "So is gate 40 there?" and an Asian guy quickly responded, "Don't you know how to do Math?" It was fantastic.

I sat in JFK for four hours while I waited for my flight to leave. As time passed, Christie, Alice, Joe, Marissa, and Ron all showed up. We boarded our Royal Air Maroc flight at 5:20, leaving our American lives behind. I rode on the plane behind a screaming baby, next to an ex-Marine, and in front of Alice. I spent the flight being audibly reminded of the baby's presence and reading the Life of Pi. When we landed in Casablance at 5:30, an hour earlier than we were supposed, I was ready to be off that plane, now equipped with the knowledge that not much worse could happen on my trip after being behind that baby and having to eat two airplane meals over an 8 hour period. We barely got our luggage (Joe's was in the last five bags to come out) and then changed some of our money. After finding our way down to the train station in the basement, we had a 45 minute break before we could start our travels to Fez.