Day 66: Memorial Day Dinner

Today is Memorial Day, a day when we pause to remember all the men and women who have ever died serving and protecting the United States. Most people just see it as the start of summer vacation, a day off from school, or national barbecue day, but they are wrong because summer vacation hasn't started, there was school in Morocco today, and there is no National Barbecue Day, there's only National Barbecue Month (May), National Hamburger Day (Dec 24), National Roast Suckling Pig Day (Dec. 18), and National Pigs-in-a-blanket Day (April 24). In my research, I also found out my birthday falls during National Peanut Month, National Frozen Foods Month, and National Noodle Month and that my birthday is National Crown Roast of Pig Day. You are welcome to do more research on Food Holidays and figure out my birthday at the following link: Food Holidays.

I had an incredible Memorial Day though. I walked with Ariel to ALIF in the morning to use the wi-fi to finish up my papers. When we got there at 10, the school was packed! ALIF's summer classes start today so there are over 100 new students. I guess I should have realized this when I met Benton, but never really put two and two together. There is a big group from VMI, a group from University of Georgia, a group from University of Iowa, and more that I didn't even meet. Despite the influx of pseudo-hipsters who didn't know what they are getting themselves into, Tash, Ariel, Joe, and I worked at school all morning. I finished my paper for Lalla Mary Jean just before noon and turned it in. To celebrate, Joe and I got McChickens.

After lunch, I got to work on revising my paper on gender and sports. I hate doing bibliographies and footnotes so that alone took me 2 hours. I got my paper up to 10 full pages, with footnotes, and emailed it in at 5:30, thus finishing my Spring term!!!! After I clicked send, I quoted the character Azel from Leaving Tangier, and yelled, like I cited in my paper, "I'm free! I'm free!...I don't have to sleep with a man to make a decent living!" The effect was not the same for me as I hadn't been feigning homosexuality for the past year and a half to get a visa to Spain, but the sentiment was still there.

Afterwards, I went back to the medina and packed up all my stuff. The room is much emptier now, but Benton's stuff keeps it from being devoid of character. At 6:45, I went with Elle and Marissa to Cafe Scorpion to hang out. Alice, Christie, and Ron met up with us there, and we also saw my brother, Lotfi, and Tash/Meredith's brother, Ayoub. At 8, we had our end of program dinner at Le Maison Bleue, a swanky restaurant in Batha that had $60 meals (yes, I mean dollar$). At dinner, we had a lot of fun one last time as a group with Lalla and Si Ron. They seemed to bring out endless bottles of wine and the biggest plates of couscous and tagines. Everything was delicious and we could not have had a better time. Afterwards, we went back to Cafe Scorpion to hang out for a while before heading home at 11:15. Tash leaves at 6 am tomorrow, so it's the last time we'll see her until we get back to school. I stayed up talking to Benton about religion until 1 and then we went to bed.

Day 65: Pottery with the Sweeneys

Still finals, still grinding out the papers. However, today I finished both of my first drafts! I went to the riad in the morning and reread all of Leaving Tangier to get quotes for my comparative literature paper. I went back home for lunch, avoided eating the fried fish, and then did some more work in my room.

At 3, Elle, Marissa, Alice, and I had planned to go back to the pottery studio we visited during the first week of the term to get some gifts. Meredith called me right before we left because she remembered we were going and wanted to come too. We had forgotten that her dad, brother, and best childhood friend had all flown in last night, so we got to meet them and they tagged along too. While they took the tour of the studio, we did our shopping. I got a joint Mother's Day/Birthday present for my mom. I hope she'll like it, and, better yet, I hope it doesn't break on the airplane home!

Afterwards, I went to the riad with Joe, Tash, Marissa, and Ariel. Two big things happened during this time period: 1) I finished the first draft of my comparative literature paper and 2) I blitzed Prof Sadiqi about the length of the paper and she blitzed us all saying it should be 8 to 12, not 10 - 12 like she had said yesterday. It was like Moroccan Christmas all over again.

When I got home for dinner, I had a big surprise: a roommate! His name is Benton and he goes to Virginia Military Institute, which strangely enough, is located in Virginia. He's 21, from Texas, and a rising senior. Benton's on track to be an officer in the US Marines after graduation. He also has already done an ALIF program before, having lived with a family in Fes last summer, and he is fluent in Modern Standard Arabic. He's really nice, and I'm excited because I've decided living with him for the next two days is God's way of helping me transition back to American life more smoothly.

After dinner, I worked some more. Benton went to bed at 11:15, so I set up camp in the kitchen and worked until I finished my 1st draft of my sports paper at 1:30. I'm in a great place workwise moving into the second to last day of finals.

On an unrelated note, Mr. Sweeney told me that they have kept up with my blog in the Sweeney household this whole term. It made me ecstatic to hear that my grandmothers are not the only ones who have been keeping track of me and to be meeting one of these mysterious readers in the flesh! Mr. and Mrs. Sweeney, thank you for reading my blog. I hope you've enjoyed my posts and you probably heard some stories from this trip you wouldn't have heard otherwise haha!

Day 64: 64

It's still finals, so I'm still working on my papers. For the first day in a while, I got to sleep in so I stayed in bed until 10:30. After breakfast, I set up camp on my bed and got some research and writing done on my sports paper. I've done just over 6 pages on it so far, but the bad news is that we found out today that it's supposed to be 10 pages, not 8 like we all thought. People aren't very happy about this, myself included. After lunch, I napped for an hour and then went to the riad. While there, I began to work on my paper about Leaving Tangier, which luckily did not have its length changed from 8 to 10 pages today, too. As of writing this post before bed, I am 4 pages into that one and 6 pages into the other. That means 10 of 18 pages down and the remaining pages all have quotes, ideas, and paragraph snippets just waiting to be expanded. This has been a very relaxed finals period so far and I'm happy with my progress. I am hoping to finish both papers tomorrow so that I can do all the proof-reading on Monday and hand them both in Monday night. Not much else happened today, but Amanda graduated from high school yesterday, so congratulations on that, sister!

To keep things interesting, I will talk about the number 64, the number of days I have been in Morocco. I will now do a stream of consciousness discourse about the number 64 and relate it back to itself. 64 is a square number, the product of 8 and itself. Broken down into prime factorization, it is 2^6, so it can represented in binary (base 2 numbering system) as the number 1,000,000. Binary code is used to represent bit strings. Bit strings are used in computers. One of the first and most popular mainstream home computers was the Commodore 64. Commodore 64 was also one of the first game consoles. Game consoles. Nintendo 64 was released by Nintendo in 1996 and one of the first gaming consoles to feature 3-D graphics. Video games. Board games. Chess. 64 is also the total number of squares on a chess board and the number of disks in the myth of the Towers of Hanoi. 

A Shakespearean aside: For those who do not know what the towers of Hanoi is, it is a simple game where there are three pegs and a set of disks of descending size. All the disks must be moved from one post to another post with the conditions that no disk can be below a disk bigger than itself, that only one disk may be moved at a time, and that only the top disk can be removed from any given post. The game is pretty simple because you just have to recognize the pattern, and once you have, you can win any game in the optimal number of moves with any number of disks. The smallest number of moves for any given number of disks is 2^n - 1, where n is the number of disks. A Towers of Hanoi solver is an assignment in most lower level computer science classes. In the myth, there are 64 golden disks that Brahmin monks in India must move. However, they are wasting their lives doing this because it will take them 2^64 - 1 moves to do so, which is over 18 quintillion moves. The moral of the story is that if faced with the choice of becoming a Brahmin monk, you should run the other way because you do not have 585 billion years to spare. 

To bring us back to 64-ology though and using India as a segway, there are 64 positions listed in the Kama Sutra. Sex leads to children. Children play with crayons, and there are 64 crayons in the Crayola 64 pack. As a child, I played with crayons in the 90's. The 90's. 90's rap. Old rappers always rap about their low-riding 64 Chevy Impalas. Rappers. Musicians. Rock music. The Beatles have a song called "When I'm Sixty-Four." The Beatles are a four man group. 4 squared is 16, but if you cube it, it's 64. And thus we find ourselves back where we started at the not-so-simple number of 64. Hopefully, you learned something or another on this journey.

Day 63: WATERPARKS!!!

Today was the best day of finals I have ever had. I woke up at 9 and did some work until 10, when Elle and Marissa came over. At this point, Driss, his two friends, and the three of us went to Batha to get cabs to go to the pool. Squished with the driver into a 5 person car, we drove across Fes to a vacation spot called the Diamant Vert. They had a huge pool, big grassy areas, a river with swan boats, and most importantly 8 water slides! It only cost 60 dh to get in ($7) and we had access for the whole day. There was a big patio with a dj on it and Driss told us there are concerts there every night.

The composition of the visitors was interesting because it was all 14 to 23 year old Moroccan men. There were probably about 120 men and only 10 women in the whole place. There were no parents present either. It was the ultimate teenage paradise with the big lawns around the pool, the music, and the water. Elle and Marissa stuck out more than I did with their blonde hair and female figures. This didn't stop us though from going on every water slide in the park. Marissa had never been on a water slide before so it was an eye-opening experience for her! She didn't really like them, but I think she just needs to give them some more time. Elle and I had a blast though. The highlight was either a big white slide that finished with a bowl at the bottom where you "toilet-bowl" around and then fall out the bottom of it or another slide where it was only like a 10 ft long slide and then a 12 ft drop straight down into a big pool. The cool water felt so good and we had a good time swimming and relaxing in the sun. We also met Driss' girlfriend who was very pretty. I don't know if his family knows about her though, so we'll keep that a secret.

The three of us left Driss and his friends at the pool and came home at 2. For lunch, Lla Fatima had prepared two tagines: chicken with cauliflower and chicken with carrots, and for dessert we had honeydew on the rind. Everything was tasty.

Afterwards, I got some work done on my papers and did a bunch of research. At 5, I went to the riad to watch The Descendants with Elle and Marissa. It's a George Clooney movie that came out last year about a lawyer in Hawaii who reconnects with his two teenage daughters after his wife gets into a power boating accident and is in a coma. It was an incredible movie and both he and the girl who plays his 17 year-old daughter do a great job.

I spent the rest of the night working on my papers and went to bed by 1. Today definitely felt like summer and I'm excited to be finishing up with work over the next couple of days. Enjoy this super-summery song by a teen from Miami who is the son of my uncle's friend. This acoustic-ish reggae-ish cover of Foster The People's "Pumped-Up Kicks" just embodied the feel of today so well.

Day 62: Last Day of Class

Today was our last day of class. I walked to school in the morning for the last time. Though it has been cooler again recently, we all still end up showing up at ALIF with sweat stains in the shape of our backpacks after the 2.5 mile walk. Our Arabic final was supposed to be two hours but it only took an hour for most of us. I didn't think it was very challenging, and, if they are not too nitpicky about their grading, I think I should do well. After class, I tried to round up one last Casa Nostra group, but instead ended up going to McDonald's with Tash, Joe, and Meredith. Funny enough, we ran into Lla Mary Jean and Si Ron while we were there because they were checking out the wi-fi situation. Si Ron had a thesis defense at 10 pm that night and ALIF closed at 10, so he was going to Skype Hanover from McDonald's that night! Too funny!

I watched the season finale of Modern Family during the second half of lunch and then we had our final class with Prof. Sadiqi. Afterwards, I walked back to the medina with Elle and Marissa. Elle had lined up another meeting with the guide we had the second week, Hakim, to take us shopping around the medina. He took us to great carpet, scarf, and jellaba places. I got some good presents, but won't divulge any secrets here. We would have never found these places without him and he helped us haggle too.  At the end, when we tried to pay him for taking us around, he wouldn't even accept the money! A super stand-up guy in my opinion, but I personally would've taken the dhirams. He must do pretty well because he told us he is working 9-5 all week and showed us some pictures he had from taking National Geographic around Morocco last week. 

Afterwards, I went home and got to work on my papers. I made a big stab on my sports paper. During dinner, we watched this great show on Channel 2M that we often watch which is basically a Moroccan version of Candid Camera called Cameracash. In tonights episode, a man pretended to be blind and had a will from his recently deceased wealthy uncle. He would then ask people in a park to describe to him what was in the will, but the issue was that in order to get all the riches and livestock, he would have to get married. Once they finished reading him the will (and making funny noises to represent the animals he was getting), he would then try to convince them to marry him. I couldn't understand most of it, but comedy is one of those things that transcends borders and language barriers and the show was hilarious. The other half of it was a woman would sit at a table at a restaurant and order a big breakfast. When it would come, she would tell the person that she was going to put it all in a huge briefcase she brought with her in order to tell the waiter the meal had never come and that she wanted another. When the waiter would accuse her of fraud and open the briefcase, she would blame the other person at the table, claiming she didn't own the briefcase, and we would watch them freak out and try to worm their way out of the situation. The whole show was hilarious and at the end, each person who is tricked gets a gift. We had seen a couple episodes of this before where an actor puts another actor into a trance in front of someone and all this fake supernatural stuff around them, scaring the person watching. In another episode, an actor convinces people to come with him to dig up some treasure he found in a guy's backyard, claiming its his house, only for the homeowner, another actor, to come out and begin talking to the people. The show gets everyone in my family laughing!

Tomorrow, Driss is taking me to a pool in the morning. It should be a fun break during all the hecticness of finals period.

Day 61: Making Moves

This blog post will be just as short as yesterday's because I still have a ton of work to do and have the Arabic final tomorrow. More Arabic class in the morning, followed by lunch at the center. I hung out and did work at school afterwards until the riad opened, at which point I went back to the medina to work there. I stayed at the riad until 9 with Tash, Joe, and Meredith and then went home for dinner. Over tagine, I practiced some Arabic with my parents after explaining to them that I have an Arabic test tomorrow. I then studied some more in my room and went to bed by 2. 

I'm feeling pretty good about my level of studying as of writing this before bed. Today was super productive because I banged out the film review, did my presentation write-up, and did all my Arabic studying. That leaves me with the whole weekend to do my two remaining papers. It wasn't a very exciting day otherwise.

Highlight of the Day: in the riad, Meredith threw a roll of toilet paper at Tash, causing Tash to scream, "AHHHHH MY BOOB!!" in front of the whole riad.

Day 60: Work

This blog post is teeny because it was a small day. We had Arabic in the morning and no class in the afternoon. After eating lunch with my family, I got in bed at 1 and didn't get out of bed until 8 for dinner! I alternated between studying for like 10 minutes and sleeping for 45 minutes with some blitzing and internet time spread out in between. After dinner, I skyped my mom, dad, and sisters to talk about the coming year because, in exciting news, a spot has opened up on the Spanish study abroad program to Madrid in the fall and I've been talking with the professor about joining the program! If I get accepted, I'll have to change this blog's title to not be limited just to Morocco. That's right, you'll have to deal with my blog posts for another three months! 

After skyping, I got to work on the stuff going on this week. All the work for this term has been compressed into this week with:

- 1-2 page film review on Ali Zaoua due Monday, the movie we watched in Lla's class yesterday

- 3 page presentation write-up due Thursday for the presentation I gave last week

- Arabic final on Thursday morning

- 8-10 page paper due on Monday for Prof Green's class, I'm writing about the main character's sense of entitlement in Leaving Tangier

- 8-10 page paper due on Tuesday for Prof Sadiqi's class, I'm writing about Moroccan youth sports and the opportunities available to girls

Should be a pretty fun 7 days. It's crazy to think that exactly a week from today, I'll be packing up to head back to America.

5000 and Pictures

Hey all,

The blog hit a big milestone yesterday when it got its 5000th page view. While that pales in comparison to the millions of hits Google gets everyday, it's about 4900 more page views than I thought I would get this term. And it's not just coming from America, people all over the world have found their way to this little blog! Readers in Germany, the UK, Argentina, Peru, France, Russia, Canada, Bangladesh, Hong Kong, the Ukraine, France, Slovakia, and Malaysia have all opened the blog at least once. While the majority of these 5400 views are friends and family back home, it's fun to think that I have made some new friends out there somewhere. I think I've done a good job so far being an iconoclast by spreading information about the Moroccan way of life and hope you've felt like you've been standing right next to me everywhere I've gone the past couple of weeks. Keep reading!

I've also added a couple pages to the blog, as you should see in the horizontal bar at the top. Clicking on a page is similar to clicking on a label and will show you all the posts I've written about the specific city.

As a visual treat, I put my 9th album of the trip up on Facebook yesterday. Like usual, here's the link:

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151734767235461.850067.867195460&type=3&l=5c972ab8fc
Or go to:
https://www.facebook.com/andrewrobe
and click on Photos then "Morocco 9 - Essaouira, Assilah, Tangier"

Day 59: How to Number 2 in Morocco

Today begins our last week of class. We have Arabic monday to thursday morning with our final during class on thursday. In the afternoons we have Prof Green's class on Monday and Prof Sadiqi's class on Thursday, but are otherwise free to work on our two final papers. I walked three of the ways to school, had chicken tagine at home for lunch, and have begun studying for finals and working on my papers. Last night, I skyped Maddie for an hour before bed and watched sunday's episode of Game of Thrones.

I want to use today's post to talk about the potty. Moroccans take pride in their appearance and hold themselves to very high standards of personal hygiene. That being said, many of them smell absolutely terrible because custom dictates that you go to the hammam once a week. On the whole though, most Moroccans shower every day (everyone in my host family does) and try not to smell too bad. They also sweat a lot less than westerners do because they are acclimatized and have undergone generations of evolution to adjust to the temperature. That is why when I am in a t-shirt and shorts, I still see Moroccans wearing three or four layers without breaking a sweat. Most showers have a hose and moveable shower head, but the distinguishing feature is the lack of boundary between the shower and the rest of the bathroom. Unlike in the West, the drain for the shower is just on the floor and there is no tub or closet or glass doors or formal area you step into to shower. Sometimes, there is a curtain. It saves space, but the rest of the bathroom gets wet too. In Assilah, we had an issue because the drain was clogged when Meredith showered so water started coming out from under the door and spreading into the surrounding rooms.

In terms of excretions, bathrooms and practices vary. You have two types of toilets: Western and Non-western. The former is your standard issue Porcelain throne to which you'd bring a sudoku book or a novella and hang out for a half hour. The latter is also called a squat toilet and it's just a pretty looking hole in the ground. Squat toilets have a small hole about the circumference of a large water bottle and two foot pads to stand on. I tend to do the "one hand on the knee, one hand on the wall behind me" technique, but everyone's got their own style. To flush, there is normally a spigot and a bucket near the toilet, so you fill up the bucket and pour water around the toilet and down the hole. As a result, squat toilet restrooms tend to be much wetter. Urinals are not very popular and are rarely seen in public Moroccan restrooms. On the other hand, bidets are quite popular for reasons that I am about to discuss. In our main bathroom, there's a western toilet, and in the laundry room, there's a squat toilet. I'm comfortable using either so which one I use varies on my mood and availability.

Typical squat toilet with bucket/spigot combo. Also demonstrates typical level of cleanliness of bathrooms

For cleaning up after doing your business, Moroccans don't use toilet paper! As in much of the Middle East, they prefer what I call a "wet wash." This can come from one of four sources. 

1) The previously mentioned bucket and faucet is the default way of cleaning your crack in public restrooms. 

2) Small hose. Most private bathrooms, including the one in my house, have a small hose coming of the shower or out of the wall that is used only for washing your booty. 

3) Bidets. Only for wealthy Moroccans and hotels, a bidet combines the best of the West (sitting) and the best of the East (water shooting up your ass) into one device. 

4) Shower head. Before getting too handsy with your shower head, be sure to check that the bathroom has either toilet paper or one of the previous three methods to clean yourself. If not, that means that shower head you're about to grab has spent a lot of time washing your other cheeks too. 

Toilet paper is pretty widely available though, especially in restaurants, hotels, and homes that are less traditional; however, my house only offers the hose or the bucket so I have stolen a roll or two from ALIF. 

One of the strangest things of all though is that as a man, you can pee wherever you want! We've seen so many men just peeing on walls and on trees on the sidewalks in Fes, both inside and outside of the medina. Women would never do this, and as a foreigner, I haven't dared to try it, but it appears to be socially acceptable for Moroccan men to mark their territory as they please. 

Day 58: More Tangier

Because of our late night, we slept in till 11:30 and skipped breakfast. I showered and shaved in the morning and was ready to start the day. Unfortunately, it was raining again, so we had to modify our plan. 

First we went to a place called the Foundation Lorin where they had a couple hundred cool black and white photos of old Tangier and famous dignitaries visiting the city. I love those kinds of old pictures so this was a great free museum for me.

Afterwards, we went to a cafe near Hotel Menzah called La Giralda that overlooks the water. Despite the sprinkling outside, we could still see Spain in the distance and it was definitely raining over there too! I had some crepes and a vanilla milkshake but then I had some issues keeping them down. It must have just been a couple hour bug because, as of the time of writing this (10 pm), I haven't thrown up since lunch and have kept down some Sprite and some Pringles. I had to eat Pringles because the train didn't have any good recovery food like toast. I didn't want Pringles to see me in this haggard state, but they did and I think our relationship is still fine. Sometimes, I feel like Pringles just use me because I've got a good digestive track and they want to show off to the other chips at the grocery store. Sometimes, I feel like it's a very unhealthy relationship, but I can never say no to that face on the can; we connect. Do we need to go to joint therapy? Is a nice tupperware an okay 1 month anniversary present for a chip you recently started seeing?

After lunch and throwing up, we went back to the Kasbah to the museum. I wasn't very excited by this idea, especially because it was raining and we had to walk up some steep hills, but in the end, the sun came out as we entered the Kasbah and the museum was the best one we've seen in Morocco. It was a huge museum (the kasbah was the sultan's palace after all) and it had different rooms representing the seven periods of Tangier's history back to the first settlers in the area before the Romans. They had a lot of neat artifacts and good presentation style. The most fascinating room was all about trade through the ages. It had a huge map of the Mediterranean with each city around the ocean labelled, the trade routes from each period highlighted, and what each city would give the other cities. The map had details on over 60 goods and 50 cities. 

Afterwards, we got our stuff from the hostel and went to the beach. There was a food court next to the beach that had Dominoes and since the rain started picking back up, we hung out there instead of the beach. I didn't have any but it looked and smelled good. According to Meredith and Ariel, it was not as good as Pizza Hut.

Our train left at 5:30 and we got there early to get seats together. The train filled up too, so we had planned this well. On the ride back to Fes, I watched the movie Winter's Bone, Jennifer Lawrence's (of Hunger Games fame) breakout movie. It's about her struggles in Missouri, raising her two younger siblings, dealing with a mom who has checked out of the family, and trying to track down her dad who makes meth because he has to be in court in a week or their house will get taken because he posted it as bail. I didn't think it was that great, but it won the Sundance Grand Jury Prize for Drama two years ago. We got to Fez at 10 and found a cab that would take us and use the meter, which never happens at the train station and especially not after dark. Then it was bed time.

Day 57: Seeing Spain

Our plan was to spend all day in Assilah and then to take a 5:30 train to Tangier which is only 45 minutes to the north. When we woke up at 9, it was raining, so we changed our plans. In the morning, as it cleared up, we walked around the medina and looked at all the murals. We explored the medina even more than I had last time so I got to see some cool murals I hadn't seen yet. Afterwards, although it was sunny and clearer, we didn't trust the weather to hold so we caught a 1:40 pm train to Tangier. There was no one to buy tickets from at the station, but no one checked them on the train either, so our 16 dh ride was free! 

Assilah medina

One of the many murals in Assilah

When we got to Tangier at 2:30, it was beautiful. The sun was shining and you could see the ocean from the recently renovated train station. It is a huge city with a small medina, a large centrally located beach, and tons of big buildings and well-contained urban sprawl. I'm very happy we chose to visit it because it strikes a great balance between its traditional side and modernity and is a good example of how Morocco could be. We were barely heckled the whole time we were there and the city transitions very well between the medina and the Ville Nouvelle that surrounds it. It is all contiguously Tangier, unlike how Fes is two separate beasts. With all its hills, Tangier reminds me a lot of San Francisco. 

You can also see Spain 8 miles away across the Straits of Gibraltar, even on cloudy days. Seeing its proximity and the huge ferries that are constantly making the 35 minute run, I understand how Moroccans could get so jaded and eager to leave for Spain. Illegal immigration is a big problem for Morocco and Europe and many have lost their lives attempting the crossing. The land on the other side is exactly the same and everyone on both sides can speak Spanish, but when you throw an 11 to 1 exchange rate into the mix, it's hard to ignore the greener grass just across the Straits. Europe doesn't want Moroccans, and Morocco has lost a lot of its young talent to the allure of Europe. Moroccans have a terrible time legally leaving Morocco because to get a visa to Europe, you must prove you have over 15000 Euros in assets. Even if you have that much, you still have to deal with inefficient bureaucracies and a shortage of visas. It's not a very pretty side of Moroccan/European relations.

Our lunch spot with Spain in the distance

We spent the day walking around the medina and the Ville. We went up to the Kasbah to have the best view of Spain and had lunch on the terrace of a nice small restaurant. We tried to visit a bunch of museums but they were all closed. We went to the beach though and to the Gran Socco, a big fountain and central meeting point in Tangier. We also stopped by the Hotel Mensah to see its storied Caid Bar. It's a five star hotel built at the beginning of the 20th century that has housed the likes of Winston Churchill and other famous people. We had dinner in the medina at a fancy restaurant called El Jedad and the food was delicious. Afterwards, we were planning on going out so we went back to the hostel to drink and change.

At the beach in Tangier

All the clubs in Tangier are along the beach, including one called Miami Beach! It's a nice situation though because there is a bluff, so they are all below street level and you can still see the beach over them. We went to a club called Beach Club 555 that has a gorgeous pool and a good scene. Alice came up from Fes for the night, so we met up with her at 555 at 1 am and had a blast together. We danced a ton and the music was super loud. It wasn't the best music because Moroccan dance music features a lot of elements of Moombahton, a genre of electronic music that is percussion-heavy and features a lot of drums. There's not many words, but there's a lot of bongos; it's still fun to dance to but I would have preferred some American pop music. All in all, it was a lot of fun being out in Tangier and being right next to the beach. We could see a few twinkles from Spain. I went home at 3:30 am, but the others didn't walk home till the club closed at 5. It ended up being a packed, but fun, day with a lot of walking and a great ending.

Day 56: Assilah 2.0

So this weekend, Meredith, Ariel, and I are going to Assilah and Tangier. Of the three of us, I'm the only one who has been to Assilah and none of us have been to Tangier.

We left from Fes at 7:10 on the train. Meredith barely made the train with only 30 seconds to spare, and unlike last time, I didn't oversleep my alarms. We all napped on the way there and got to Assilah at 11:45.

We walked down the beach to the medina and headed straight for the hostel. We stayed in Christina's house again and she has not gotten any less spacey since we were last here. We went to a delicious restaurant for lunch where I had calamari and then after lunch, we took advantage of the sunshine and went to Paradise Beach. We decided to take a horse cart there and then walk back while the sun was setting, but it was less glamorous than it sounds. The horse cart, which we had been picturing as something similar to a Central Park buggy ride, was literally a two-wheeled flatbed cart with a blanket on it. It cost us 100 dh because Meredith and Ariel wouldn't let me haggle but it was an experience. We had to hold on for dear life and got bumped around so much that we will probably have neck problems tomorrow.

The beach was just as gorgeous as it was last time, except we weren't the only ones there. There were a couple soccer games going on at the very north end of the beach and probably like only 150 - 200 people total on the beach. We walked 10 minutes down the sand though and had the entire south half of the beach to ourselves with no one within a couple hundred meters to the north and no one at all to the south of us. We, in effect, became the Kings of the South and would get mad any time anyone, or any sheep, entered our Southern territories. To explain, sheep were grazing on the hills next to the beach.

We swam for a while because the water was warmer than in Essaouira. We buried Ariel in the sand and made silly bodies for her out of rocks. I pooped behind a rock but took caution not to burn my cheeks. We saw two huge washed-up tunas that were each over 100 pounds and over 6 ft long. An army truck came and removed them both while we were there. We also saw a huge jellyfish that had washed up and was over two feet in diameter. 

Our three and a half hours at the beach were fun, but we started walking back at 7:45 to catch some daylight. The sunset was marred by some clouds, but we still got some views. I had fun jumping around on the big rocks again while we walked. For dinner, we ate at one of the restaurants on the main boulevard. I had more calamari and then after we went back home and passed out just after 11. 

In other news, I found out I'm going to be a Presidential Scholar next year, a Dartmouth program that pairs bright students with faculty members to do research. I applied for it back in March and was selected by the professor I wanted to work with. I will be doing computer modeling of language shifts by creating multi-agent virtual worlds where the agents interact, communicate with one another, and live like humans, all under the guidance of the computational linguistics professor in the Linguistics department. I'm excited and Dartmouth gives me some grant money too.

Day 55: Burritos

Today I went to class like usual. I had a presentation on The Sand Child in the afternoon. I know you're probably thinking, "What! You're in school?! You have homework!? What kind of crazy plot twist is this!" to which I respond, "Yes? Yes. Yes. The plot was beginning to get a little dry anyways." The presentation was a little unorganized because I read the book and put the presentation together three weeks ago, but it went well. 

I didn't go home for lunch so I would have time to work before I presented. Instead of having tagine, Tash, Meredith, Joe, and I went to McDonald's. I had a McChicken AND a Big Mac because I put on my big boy pants this morning. I didn't walk either direction today because I took a cab to school in the morning and in the afternoon, I started walking back to the medina, but then an empty cab just happened to stop in front of Meredith, Tash, and I just after leaving school. 

We all hung out in the riad because Elle's parents are visiting for a week and brought us some of the ingredients to make a proper Mexican fiesta! We had American tortillas, rice, refried beans, salsa, and spices, but all the chicken and veggies were Moroccan. We cooked it up in the kitchen of the riad and had a lot of fun. I spoke some with Elle's mom while we had a terrible time trying to cut the raw chicken off the bones because that was our assigned job. I faked cutting my finger, with salsa for blood, to lighten the mood. It only achieved moderate success and prompted stories from my FSP-mates to warn Elle's parents not to believe most of what I say or do. The burritos tasted delicious and it was nice to have some comfort food. I'm sad I won't be around this weekend to adventure with Elle, her parents, and Marissa, but I'm sure I'll enjoy the beach weekend I've got planned.

In the riad, I watched the new 21 Jump Street movie and it was one of the funniest movies I've seen in a while. Fun fact: the directors, Phil Lord and Chris Miller, both graduated from Dartmouth in the early 2000's and they also directed Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs a couple years ago. Phil also went to my high school, Ransom Everglades, and Chris was in my fraternity during his time at Dartmouth. You could basically say we're in a three-way best friendship. 

After dinner, I skyped with my mom and Amanda. They are good. Then after that, I watched the original Batman from 1989, directed by Tim Burton. The third movie of the reboot of the Batman franchise, The Dark Knight Rises, comes out this summer, so I'm going to try to watch all 6 Batman movies between now and then. I haven't seen any of the original four films, so this was a good start. I went to bed before midnight in order to rest up for the 7:10 am train the next morning.

Day 54: Dinos in Heat

I have been going through a huge Jurassic Park binge recently. I watched the third movie last night, the second movie tonight, and the first movie is one of my favorite movies of all time. I also started reading the book, Jurassic Park, today, which, although only 50 pages in, is much more violent and exciting than the movie. Supposedly, the screenplay only used 10 to 20% of the material presented in the book.

They were made to go hand in hand. The perfect pong table

Also, today was so hot that the only time I walked was on my way home at the end of the day. I was so tired and dehydrated when I woke up this morning that I ate breakfast and then fell asleep for two hours! I ended up getting to class 40 minutes late but I felt much better after the extra rest. I repeated the same thing at the riad tonight too, falling asleep for an hour as soon as we got there when I was in the middle of checking blitz.

Besides Jurassic Park 2, I also watched a silly movie named A Fish Called Wanda about some diamond thieves in Britain. It was hilarious and all of the actors in it (Jamie Lee Curtis, John Cleese, Kevin Cline) were incredible. Cline's character Otto, hands down, stole the show in my opinion.

Do you have any suggestions for movies I should watch? Let me know.

I don't really have any new news from Morocco except it's hot. My bowels are doing well.

In the mean time, enjoy this acoustic cover I found the other day of LMFAO's I'm Sexy and I Know It.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsvlsuLau5c

Day 53: Return of the Baguette

The baguette came at me when I was at my lowest. I was covered in sweat, despite sleeping on top of the covers and having the fan my family gave me turned to the "Medium" and "Oscillate" settings. I was tired, after a night of rough sleep spent dreaming about what it must be like to be Bruce Willis when he realizes he's dead at the end of the Sixth Sense. Whoops, after-the-fact spoiler alert. I overslept, because I had forgotten to set an alarm on my dead iPhone. And I needed to shave, because I was as hairy as an 8 year-old Paul Bunyan.

Then, without warning, I opened the door to find a baguette sitting there on the table, smiling at me with its golden brown crust and relishing in my despair. WHAT. A. JERK! However, like the Star Wars movie referenced by the title of this post, it was time to make a comeback against this bready Sith lord. The shower and shave revitalized me like Leia freeing Han Solo from the carbonite in Jabba's Palace. Then I was ready to assault the breakfast table like it was the Death Star's shield generator on Endor. My ewoks, butter and strawberry jam, helped me take down some of the baguette, but before long, I found myself facing off against the baguette and the warm milk, one-vs-two like Luke against Vader and Emperor Palpatine. The Nesquik helped bring out the good in the milk and together, we were able to defeat the baguette before I drank the milk's last gulp. George Lucas would have been proud of this meal.

Have you heard enough nerd yet?

I walked to school with Alice, walked home for lunch with Marissa, cabbed back to school, and walked home with Marissa, Elle, and Tash after school. We stayed at school for two and a half hours because we had to meet with our professors about our final papers. For my gender in the medina paper, I will be writing about women's participation in sports and interviewing people's host siblings about their athletic involvements. It should be a fun paper to write and Prof. Sadiqi seemed excited about it too.
Tonight, I watched the 1 hour long season finale of How I Met Your Mother and the movie Crazy Stupid Love. Such a good movie and a good use of time. After, I watched the first 45 minutes of Jurassic Park 3, but got too tired, so I'll finish it tomorrow night.

I was just happy to come out of this day alive and as a Jedi Breakfast Knight!

Day 52: Hot Hot Heat

This morning class was pushed back until 10. Unfortunately, Fes is even hotter now so walking at 9:15 would have been miserable. I was tired. I took a cab.

Strange interactions I had today with Moroccans:
- I saw a man with his half of his index finger up his nose while trying to sell groceries. Ewww
- I watched a man pick up a foot long stick and use it as an ear cleaner
- I saw a teenage Moroccan wearing a shirt that said "German and Sexy." He was neither.
- The man who charged me 6 dirhams for water in the morning charged me 8 in the afternoon. An excellent lesson in supply and demand (it was hot, I needed water, he had water) and understanding your clientele (he could tell I was too lazy to walk down the block and was willing to forgo the extra quarter).

I walked home for lunch, but then took a cab back. After class in the afternoon, I walked home. Because we have a week and a half of classes left before reading period, my only remaining work is my two final papers due May 29th and an Arabic final on May 24th.
When I went to the riad after class today, I watched 2 episodes of 30 Rock and the new modern family where they go to Disneyland and I laughed so hard.
After dinner, I skyped with my buddy Chris Gibson for an hour and with Maddie for an hour after that. There was no layover between conversations which was a little rough. It felt like running through an airport to catch your connection but without the airport and running parts, just the out of breath thing. Both of them are doing well.

After, I watched the new episode of Game of Thrones. It was great.
And to quote Forrest Gump, "That's all I have to say about that."

Day 51: MISERABLE

Day 9 of our 9-day trip

Plan: Essaouira to Casablanca to Rabat to Fes

Have you ever spent 11 hours traveling by bus and 3 hours sitting on the side of the road in the desert waiting for said bus to be fixed in the same day? I HAVE.

We left paradise at 10 am. Essaouira was definitely the best city on the trip, and probably Morocco. As we re-entered the endless arid terrain and left my future retirement home in the rearview mirror, I finished up Leaving Tangier. We knew the drive was going to be a long haul (8-9 hours) so I was also planning to look out the windows for a while, catch up on blogging, and hang out with the rest of the group for the next six hours.

We stopped for lunch at 1:30 at a rest stop. It was pretty good rest stop food. Then, disaster struck. We were trying to force the windows open as w started moving again because the AC was like a sauna. When we pulled over so the driver, Said (pronounced sigh-eed) could help us get them open, he quickly ran to the hood rather than to our assistance. Our shock at the lack of help was soon replaced by grief when he told us that one of the main belts in the engine that basically connects everything together had broken in the heat. We had a new one but it would be hard for him to put it on himself. Road side assistance showed up within 15 minutes but was of little to no help. They left 15 minutes later. Two police officers showed up 45 minutes into our despair but didn't do much for us other than set up flares and cones to help keep traffic from hitting us. It's important to remember at this point that it is 2:30 in the afternoon and the police's thermometer says it is 42 degrees Celsius out or 105 miserable degrees Fahrenheit. We had a limited amount of water and I had a box of ritz crackers hidden above my seat that I was planning on sharing with no one. We had discussed before about how a "FSP Hunger Games" could work and who would be killed first, etc. Meredith and I always ended up in the top two of every poll but the winner varied. Unfortunately, given the temperature, supplies, and mirages, it didn't seem that unlikely that people would soon be throwing spears at each other, and I planned to save my crackers and Sidi Ali water for when the inevitable fall-out would occur. I tried to do some scouting up the hillside but Lla MJ wouldn't let me crest it, claiming there were "snakes and scorpions." I think she had already planned out where she would make shelter and didn't want me to get any advantages in the Hunger Games. Suspicions only grew over the course of our three hours. If no one else was thinking it, I was at least sitting there, twiddling my thumbs, and considering who would be the most valuable, and later disposable, ally. 

Dying out here

A tow truck showed up two hours and 15 minutes into our road-side sun burn. They spent a while trying to help the police officers, roadside assistance, and Said fix the engine. However, the whole situation can be described by a scene I saw when five of them were on their cell phones and Said has his head in the engine compartment aka Moroccan bureaucracy at its finest. At 5:30, they gave up and the tow truck pulled us 20 km to a Shell station. We got to sit inside and have snacks and drinks while they tried to fix the car. They couldn't fix it though, so they had to call a new van to pick us up from Casablanca. It got us at 6:45 and we resumed our trek again.

We played a fun game Meredith created where you had to wear a pair of noise canceling headphones and the iPod connected to them was on shuffle. You had to sing and dane the song until the rest of the people could guess it. It was pretty silly but tons of fun.

We had to switch buses just north of Casablanca's outskirts so that the second bus could go back to Casablanca. The bus that got us came all the way from Fes. We drove for a while but then it was dinner time. Said (sigh-eed), being a pro like usual, took us to a mall in Rabat where we got Pizza Hut! It was so tasty and even had pepperonis. I had a half pepperoni and half barbecue chicken pizza that was like heaven on a plate. We were all the happiest we had been all day.

Never been so happy!

We left dinner at 10:45 and were still over two hour from Fes. We didn't get home until 1:15 and my family didn't seem to be too happy that they had to stay up so late and wait for me. It was not a very good day.

Day 50: Surf's Up

Day 8 of our 9 day trip

Plan: Essaouira

I slept in until 10 and then went to the terrace for a gorgeous breakfast overlooking the sea. In the morning, Elle, Marissa, Ron, and I went shopping. Most people had already left, but we ended up running into them and swapping people. I got some shopping done but not nearly as much as I had planned to. At 1:15, I grabbed some chawarma and sprinted back to the hotel where Ariel was waiting for me. She was waiting because at 2,….

We were gonna go KITE SURFING!!!

We walked like 2 miles down the beach to find out that we couldn't actually go kite-surfing because there is a 10 to 12 hour certification process and we would have only been able to do the 2 hour safety and on-the-sand class today. Instead, we saved our 55 euros and rented surfboards and wet suits for the rest of the day for only 165 dhirams. We exaggerated our skill a little, especially me, so that we didn't have to buy lessons too.

We hit the water at 2:15 and stayed in it until 5:45. I discovered a sea fiend in Ariel that rivals myself. And, as much as it pains me to admit it, she was a more experienced and better surfer than me too! With some adjustments and help from her, I was riding the 4-5 foot waves all the way into the ankle deep water. We had so much fun and the water temperature didn't bother us at all. I could not have imagined a better day at the beach. We don't have any surfing pictures because neither of us brought our cameras. The next album won't have any beach pictures because I never wanted to risk getting sand in my lens.

The fish I got is in the bottom left

Ariel and I walked back to the hotel at 6, stopping for ice cream on the way. Marissa, Elle, Ariel, Meredith, and I had a sunset dinner at the food stalls. I got a whole sea bass and grew three new chest hairs when I ate the whole thing. Afterwards, we did some shopping and had some fun bargaining. 

Yum

Most people wanted to stay in tonight and watch the Big Lebowski on the terrace, but Marissa and I wanted to go out. Elle was M.I.A. with a fever, but Marissa and I had some mixed drinks on the terrace before going back to Le Chrysalis at 11:45. It wasn't that crowded though so we decided to check out a bar called Taros that we had seen in Lonely Planet (official bible of the trip). It had a swanky rooftop terrace that looked like it had been transplanted from the Hamptons (never been there but it seems plausible). We sat there for an hour and talked before going back to the hotel. I crashed at like 1:30 in my comfy bed, happy to not be sweating liters like the night before. Yes, I did just embrace the Metric system.

Lastly, Happy 15th birthday, Sarah Roberts! Don't crash Mom's car on the way home from the DMV with your permit. You may be 15 now, but 15's not the new 21, so don't get your hopes up for anything fun yet! You still have three long years of high school, standardized tests, and college applications ahead of you. Welcome to Hell!

Day 49: The Sea

Day 7 of our 9 day trip

Plan: Marrakesh to Essaouira

Deaprture at 10. Woke-up, had breakfast, showered, got in the van, tried to ignore my iPhone weather app which once again said the high for the day in Marrkesh was 104. The two hour drive through the arid fields to Essaouira was painfully hot and I passed the time reading our next book, Leaving Tangier, by Tahar Ben Jelloun. It's all about a Moroccan boy who gets his sister and himself tickets to Spain by being a Spanish artist's gay lover. It's a decently explicit book, but a good read nonetheless. 

We stopped at an Argan oil co-operative on the way to Essaouira where women walked us through the whole process of shelling and grinding Argan seeds to make Argan oil. It was a more enlightening trip than the visit we made to the women's NGO with Prof. Sadiqi.

We pulled into Essaouira at 1 to a cool sea breeze. We were officially free to do as we please from this moment until Sunday morning at 10 am. Our hotel, Dar L'Oussia, is gorgeous, right inside the medina walls and a minute's walk from the huge curving beach. Essaouira is located on a point with a big protected beach stretching out to the south and a windier and more exposed beach extending north from the city. The medina strikes a perfect balance because it's walled-in, busier than Fes but not as fast as Marrakesh, open streets, and lots of shops. It's also very well maintained. 

For lunch, Marissa, Ariel, Elle, and I went to these fish stands near the beach. They put out a huge selection of the catch of the day, you choose what you want, get your hag' on, and then they grill it and serve it to you right there. They have snapper, dorado, live lobsters, prawns, sea bass, shrimp, even whole eels! So many options and all sitting there for the choosing. I got a big squid and a dorado and it tasted so good with some lemon squeezed onto it. I HIGHLY recommend checking out the fish stalls because it was one of the best meals of the trip.

Afterwards, we walked around the medina to get our bearings and climbed on the ramparts some. My inner Laura Roberts has emerged and decided that there is definitely some shopping to be done here. Hopefully, I'll knock out all the presents I need to get during the day tomorrow. 

After parting with the ramparts, we rendezvoused with everyone else on the beach. It is so flat that the high tide takes away like 200 ft of the beach's width. Everyone was playing soccer; there were so many concurrent games that I even saw one game being played long ways and another game being played across, all on the same plot of sand. The water was chilly but I took a couple dips while we were there. Christy took the quote of the day.

Meredith: "It's so cold in the water"

Christie: "It's not so bad over here"

(meredith paddles over 10 ft)

Meredith: "I don't feel any warmer…"

Christie: "What are you talking about?! You're closer to the sun!"

Unfortunately for Meredith, that's not how the Pythagorean theorem works, so she never got warmer. Swimming was also interesting because Tash doesn't know how to float or swim (or drive nor has she heard of Jack Johnson, among many other lacking features. She's currently enrolled in an "American FSP" being taught by Meredith).

Coversation 2: Tash is half swimming back to shore but getting pushed around by the waves

Meredith: "Ahhh! Tash is floating away!!!!!"

Andrew: "How? She can't even float!"

We stayed at the beach from 4 to 6:30 and then went back to the hotel to shower. For dinner, Elle, Marissa, and I got take-out chawarma and ate it on the beach. When we went back to the hotel, it was time to start getting ready to go out. We left at 12:30 for some bars right outside the medina. One of them was a really nice club that had a live band and no people. This can be attributed to the Moroccan Billy Crystal who performs nightly, whose performance didn't really lend itself to doing much besides sitting and listening to him in a space that could have been a banging club. Right next door was a bar called Le Chrysalis that had a great band with a female singer that sang American covers. We ordered a 10 shot special that had all these neon and multi-colored shots, so each person got their own color. The music was fun and we danced some. After we walked really far down the beach to another club that had a talented band but was just too far and it was too late for me. Elle, Marissa, and I went back to the hotel at 2:30 and everyone else came back at 3.

Day 48: Mahi Binebine

Day 6 of our 9-day trip

Plan: Marrakesh

Today our only commitment was to go to Moroccan author and artist Mahi Binebine's house for lunch. I slept in until 10 and had some roof top breakfast. Already at 10, the temperature was over 95 degrees. The high for the day was a massive 104 degrees Fahrenheit and it was definitely a factor. Our rooms in the riad were only air-conditioned if you asked them to turn on the AC and even then, it was pretty poor AC. Today was a battle against the elements and element #1 was heat.

In the morning, Marissa and I went shopping in the medina. Element #2 was the monkeys and trying to avoid having them thrown on me again like last time I was in Marrakesh. I can proudly say that it was a Barbary-ape-free day. When we were walking around, I spent 20 minutes haggling with a guy over some gifts for my family. Besides getting thrown out of the door like usual, I got the gifts down from 370 to 200. At the end, he shook my hand and told me he had never met an American as crazy as I am before! It made me pretty happy because it provided some qualitative data to support that I have approached superhuman levels of bargaining prowess.

We left the riad at 12:30 for Mahi Binebine's house out in the suburbs of Marrakesh. He lived in a gorgoues house on a bougainvillea lined street, both of which looked like they could have been in any part of Miami. Although we came in skeptical, it was so much fun! We met his wife and two of his three daughters and both of his brothers stopped by too. His older brother was imprisoned after the Independece movement for being a socialist. He spent 18 years in a prison in the desert where only four of the captives managed to survive. The younger brother was the complete opposite: a man raised in New York, fluent in English, who was both a billionaire with a background in orthopedic surgery and who owned an investment bank in China. Lunch was a blast and Mahi was just a super jovial guy with lots of funny stories. We didn't talk at all about his work but it was interesting to see what the Moroccan upper-middle class was like and how closely it resembled western life and my life back in Miami. We ended up staying for three hours!

After lunch, we were dead tired but Lla had arranged a guide to take us to a Berber museum, to the Majorelle gardens designed by Yves Saint Laurent, and on a tour of the city. While the gardens and the museum were nice, it was too hot and we were too tired to get anything out of the experience. I slept through the whole city tour on our poorly-air conditioned bus because I was so tired. Element #3 was sleep deprivation.

We got to the hotel at 6 and had some free time during which we all napped. For dinner, we went back to stall 117, but then had a second dinner at KFC. It was "finger-lickin good." Element #4 today was hunger.

Elle had been pretty sick all day with some stomach stuff and people were all so tired and drained that we decided to not go out again. It's too bad we passed up the opportunity to enjoy the Marrakesh nightlife but we just hung out on the terrace and tried our best to cool down. Personally, I was just too full and didn't think my pants would fit after two dinners and ice cream for dessert. I went to bed at 1, finally submitting myself to all the elements except for barbary apes.

Day 47: High Atlas Hijinks

Day 5 of our 9-day trip

Plan: Dades Valley to Ait Benhaddou to Marrakesh

We left the Dades Valley at 10 because today's drive is even longer than yesterday's. We stopped on the way at a big rock for a little bit to take some scenic overlook pictures and stretch our legs. We drove through the arid countryside with the Anti-Atlas mountains on our left and the High Atlas on our right. We drove through the city of Ouarzazate on the way where there are a ton of major movie studios. 

For lunch, we stopped in Ait Benhaddou, an ancient Moroccan city that is largely intact and the shooting location for tons of American movies. We saw a list of probably 50 movies that had been filmed in Ait Benhaddou such as Gladiator, the Prince of Persia, Young Indiana Jones, and The Mummy. It's an ancient ksar, or fortified city, on hill on the banks of a dried-up river. Meredith, Elle, Marissa, Ron, Ariel, and I trekked up to the top of the city and took some pictures. You could see for miles from the top. I bought a big navy rug because this is the best region to buy rugs in Morocco. I bargained it down from 1200 to 500 and it should look good in my dorm room or house someday.

We drove for another 4 hours after lunch but it was the hardest part of the drive. We went up from the desert into the much greener High Atlas mountains. We ascended over a thousand feet on the drive and spent the whole time clutching our stomachs. It was a two lane road, mainly along the ridge line, with 180 degree switchbacks every two or three minutes. To make things worse, Moroccan trucks had no issues passing us as we drove. The drive through the mountains took over an hour and a half with no bathroom breaks because there was nowhere to pull-off. 

We got to Marrakesh just before 6. I watched episode 6 of Game of Thrones on the bus which was awesome. I also have to own up to taking a 20 minute nap on the bus which breaks my rule of not napping on the bus rides cause there's so much cool stuff to see.

For dinner, we went back to stall 117 and I had some delicious kabobs. Afterwards, we hung out at the hotel. Elle, Marissa, and I played kings on the roof of the hostel. We were planning on going out to club Silver again like we did last time, but we didn't think it was a good idea to walk all the way to the nice clubs by the time we were done playing kings. Instead, we hung out with everyone else for a little bit and fell asleep by 1:30. 

Day 46: Gorging Ourselves

Day 4 of our 9-day trip

Plan: Merzouga to Todra Gorge to Dades Valley

We rolled out of the hotel at 9 in the morning because we had a long drive ahead of us. We drove for 5 hours through the hot desert in our van to the Todra Gorge. During the ride, I blogged, took photos, and listened to music. Alice and Ron sang in the back of the bus for four hours straight which didn't make them very popular with the four people who were reading and the three who were sleeping. 

We got to the Todra Gorge at 2 and had some lunch. The cliff walls stood on either side of us, over 500 feet tall with a width varying from probably 40 ft to 200 ft across. We had lunch at a nice restaurant situated right in the middle of it. After lunch, we had free time to explore the gorge and climb the big rocks for an hour. Marissa, Elle, Meredith, and I set out on an adventure and basically started hiking/climbing up the hillside. They went over to a path but I continued my way up in hopes of summiting the mountain. I got really far up and even had to free climb for some parts of it. Unfortunately, due to the time constraints, I only made it 2/3 of the way to the top. It was fun though scrambling up the rocks and then turning around and seeing the whole valley behind me. I took a lot of neat pictures, including some of the girls way down below me.

After our hour of fun, we got back in the van to drive to the Dades Valley. We got there at about 5 and stayed at a 4-star Xaluca hotel, the nicest one yet. The hotel was all contained within one post modern building but had staggered stories like small American office buildings. There was a pool on the third floor, a tennis court on the second, and a fitness room too. We tried to find a grocery store to buy alcohol, but couldn't find one. We ended up swimming in the hot tub instead and having another delicious buffet dinner. Winning item of the meal: stuffed peppers filled with rice, ground beef, and some spices. I've decided peppers are going to be my new big food when I get back to America and one of the items on the list of Andrew's Favorite Moroccan Things of 2012 (similar to Oprah's Favorite Things list but with better items).

Here goes:

Bell Peppers - Red, Yellow, Green. No matter the bell pepper, you're bound to have a good time. Stuff it with rice for some extra fun or grill it for a kabob.

Childish Gambino - Probably better known by his name Donald Glover, this American actor has been making waves in the music scene when he's not busy performing stand-up comedy or acting on the hit NBC show, Community. He has been producing mix tapes for a couple of years.

Blogger - This nifty little site is what you're currently reading this blog post on

Bose Noise Canceling Headphones - Help drown out that acoustic noise on big trips like the wheels hitting the pavement or jet propellers. These little doo-dads are also useful to help mitigate the noise of people singing the Beatles behind you for an hour during road trips on small buses.

Scarves - Keep yourself warm AND keep that pesky sand out of your eyes while you sit astride beasts of burden in deserts worldwide. Get your bargain on and get yourself a sexy scarf in a medina for under 60 dh while watching them make them for you by hand on looms in family-owned factories passed down from generation to generation.

Jacuzzi's - There's literally nothing better after a long day in the car than finding yourself at a 3-star hotel with a rooftop jacuzzi. Don't dunk your head or you might get diseases, but invite your special someone to wear their most conservative bathing suit and split a bottle of Sidi Ali with you while you get cozy together.

Genie Pants - Not for men, but they look comfortable and many of the women on the trip wear them almost religiously. Go for the kind that has elastic cuffs.

Pantene Pro-V - Don't expect every hotel you stay at to have basic amenities like shampoo or soap. You'll enjoy having a small bottle of Pantene in your bag to keep your fine hair full of volume. I first discovered Pantene back in high school on a weekend trip to Sarasota. Because of all the compliments I got that weekend, I've used it religiously ever since.

Get those for your friends and family next holiday season. Unlike Oprah, people who read this blog post won't get all these items for free.

That night, after the buffet dinner, we hung out on the bar over-looking the town and smoked hookah. I didn't smoke but opted to split a bottle of wine instead. Hit the pillows just after midnight.