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.