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.

More Vacation Photos

I put up all the photos from the past three days. They cover traveling from the Sahara to the Dades Valley, climbing in the Toudra Gorge, exploring the ancient city where they always film movies Ait Benhaddou, our windy drive through the High Atlas mountains, and a day in Marrakesh.

Link: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151687221010461.845113.867195460&type=1&l=968985ca07
And always an alternative, link: https://www.facebook.com/andrewrobe, then to Photos, then to "Morocco 8 - Toudra Gorge and Countryside"

Day 45: Sahara Poolside

Day 3 of our 9-day trip. 

Plan: Desert to Merzouga to Rissani to Merzouga

At sunrise

We were woken up by 6 so we could see the sunrise. Our legs were so stiff that we had to waddle around camp. Half of us climbed up the big dune, but the other half of us went out to the small dunes on the other side of the camp to watch. I did the latter and we had so much fun watching it come up and taking goofy pictures. Some of the girls and I may or may not have gotten naked a few times and taken some goofy pictures. Don't get mad! I really needed to work on my butt tan! We climbed on the camels at 7:30 to head back to Kasbah Tombouktou for breakfast. It was even more uncomfortable than yesterday because it was like reopening fresh wounds. My body is seriously hurting. I fashioned a Laz-e Boy variant for riding a camel where you put more weight on your lower back and hook your legs under the handlebars of the saddle. Downside is that your head bobs a lot more, but the upside is that you look so fly. 

Early morning dunes

We met up with Lla MJ and Si Ron there because her knee was too bad to ride the camels.
After breakfast, some of us showered and then we drove to Rissani to see the royal families palace and a newly built shrine. We were too dead and dirty to really appreciate it though. Made it back for lunch and then we had the afternoon to ourselves. I put up pictures on Facebook and hung out in the pool for four hours.
I had a pretty big revelation during this time. I had been hypothesizing recently that I have lost weight since I got here. When I found out today that I basically need a belt to hold up my bathing suit, I changed my hypothesis to a conclusion. Data needs to be collected but I haven't seen any scales since we got here, most likely due to the lack of Bed, Bath, and Beyond's in this country. However, this weight loss has been negated by a red pimple on the end of my nose. I saw three small children pointing and laughing at it today, which was pretty detrimental to my self esteem. I think they wanted to throw a rock at it to see what would happen but I jumped in the van before they could formulate any kind of plans. Because of the zit, my ego has stayed at a pretty constant level.

At the palace of the royal family

We had dinner at 8 and then took wine out to the desert to look at the stars. We took some goofy pictures jumping off the dunes and had a blast. Elle, marissa, and I went back at 11:30 and fell asleep at some point.

Also, pictures are already up so check those out. Yes, the booty ones are there too but they're appropriately censored so don't get your hopes up, pervs

Day 44: Sa-here-ah

Day 2 of the 9-day trip. 

Plan: Erfoud to Merzouga to Desert Camp

Today started with some explosive diarrhea. 6 of the 12 of us (including Si Ron) got sick from something we had for dinner last night. I spent 7 - 9 on the toilet and then purged myself the rest of the morning by sweating it out in the hot tub for an hour and lying in the sun for a half hour. Being able to wear shorts/board shorts has been great!
We left for Merzouga at 11, but had to stop in "downtown" Erfoud to pick up medicine and water. All the towns we've been passing through are date palm oases and look exactly like something out of Indiana Jones movies. We drove through Rissani, where the royal family is from, and got to Merzouga at like 2:15.

Our hotel, Kasbah Tombouktou, is like a more desert-y version of the Xaluca but without a jacuzzi. We had a couple hours to relax after lunch before we climbed onto our dromedaries at 5:30 to head out to the Sahara. We each took a backpack and met our rides right behind the hotel on the edge of the dunes. Mine was named something like Asmahan but we renamed them after Aladdin characters, so his name was really Robin Williams as The Genie.

Riding the dromedaries was soooo uncomfortable. Our two hour trip was both a blessing and a curse. The red dunes were beautiful and magestic and there was a nice wind so it wasn't too hot; however, your groin and your ass get KILLED by the saddle. I had to shift my seat and my poorly-wrapped head scarf every two minutes. I joked that I spent 70% of the riding trying to get comfortable and 30% of the ride trying to figure out where we were!
We got to our oasis campsite in the shadow of the biggest dune at 7:45. The dune was over a thousand feet tall. They had some old skis we could use, but my size 12 feet were way too big. Elle, Meredith, Marissa and I climbed up the dune as the sun was setting anyways so that Elle and Meredith could ski. It was like walking straight up hill, except every step you took, you slid 6 inches back and you went up to your ankle in the sand. I was pretty happy I didn't have to carry skis and boots too cause I would have died. We were dead tired after a half hour of climbing, but Meredith and I left marissa and Elle a couple hundred feet up and made it to a crest on the side of the dune. We took some cool silhouette pictures and then rejoined them. They ended up skiing down in the dark. Elle did really well but only one of Meredith's boots would click in so she had to ski on one ski! I had fun bounding down the slope though and we ultimately concluded it was worth the effort. 

Meredith on the dunes

We drank some wine when we got back and had dinner at 9:30. Afterwards, we took the bottles of wine we brought with us and carried them a little bit up the dune to watch the moon rise. We had a full moon, the biggest one of the year according to NASA, and could see a ton of stars too. We sat on the dune for two or three hours and then went to bed in our tents at 12:30.

Desert Pictures

Can be found here:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151660471380461.843835.867195460&type=3&l=92902ff7da


Or they can be found by going to my profile and clicking on my photos and clicking "Morocco 7 - Two Days in the Desert"
http://www.facebook.com/andrewrobe


This post comes to you from the Sahara. I'll be blogging about the past two days in a couple hours

Day 43: Erfoud

Today is the first day of our 9 day trip. 

Plan: Fes to Ifrane to Erfoud

So I woke up at 7, showered and had my second pastry day in a row. Pretty tasty stuff. We had to be at Batha by 8:15. Luckily for me, I had packed the night before so I had some extra time in the morning to do stuff like shave my half-beard (it still hasn't connected to the chin/mustache yet) and clean my room. 

The High Atlas Mountains

On the bus ride, I sat next to Marissa and we talked as a group for like 8 hours straight. I really don't like sleeping on the bus because I figure I'll only be here with this group once in my life and I want to spend the time getting to know them and looking out the window. The transformation of the landscape was amazing. We started out in fertile Fes with rolling hills of fields spread out to infinity. Then we entered the Mid Atlas mountain range, one of the 4 mountain ranges in Morocco, and began to climb up. We saw huge pine forests, tons of rocks, and big open flat valleys. We took a break in the town of Ifrane where there is Morocco's equivalent to an Ivy League college. Ifrane is a ski town half the year and was built by the French, so it's very European with man-made ponds, big sidewalks, and good urban planning. Many Fes residents use it as a getaway now but Moroccans weren't allowed to visit or live in the town until after the Independence movement. We took some pictures with a stone lion carving, the only other thing to do in the town besides ski or study in the University. 

We continued driving and actually saw one set of ski slopes, which had a chair lift and two runs. The land scape started becoming flatter and more arid the further we got. Then we found ourselves on a very flat dry plain with the Mid Atlas behind us and the High Atlas mountains in front of us. They had huge peaks that still had snow on them! We stopped for lunch at a very nice restaurant outside the town of Midelt and had a buffet. The food. Was. So. Tasty. I also got a Moroccan beer with lunch, a Flag Special, because I had read in Lonely Planet that more of those are consumed every year than the leading brand of bottled water. It wasn't bad but it came in a funny little bottle. I don't know enough beer terminology to dissect the flavor/consistency nor do I know enough beers to name the equivalent American beer. There was also a really cool fossil museum attached to the hotel that Meredith, Marissa, Si Ron, Elle, and I explored. We took some fun pictures with dinosaurs. 

In the fossil museum

Once we started driving again, we began weaving our way through huge canyons and seeing big rock features in the distance. It felt like driving through the American Southwest. It was so pretty.

Driving

More driving

We got to Erfoud at like 4 and had the rest of the afternoon to ourselves. The hotel, Xaluca, was gorgeous and had two pools and a hot tub. It was modeled after a casbah and the rooms were really nice. I stayed with the boys like always. In the afternoon, we went swimming for a couple hours. Dinner was another buffet and then afterwards, we drank mixed drinks in a tent while listening to music. When the group fragmented, Elle, Marissa, and I went to their room and had a danced party and jumped on the beds. It was a super fun night and I ended up falling asleep there.

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.