my apologies

The longer I go without writing, the more daunting the task seems when I think of it. I'm not sure if I should write about what I've been up too since the last post, or just my more recent adventures. I think I'll just give the highlights and hopefully the photos can speak for a little of what I've been up to as well.

I've been doing a lot of traveling lately, really to opposing ends of the country and it's all been so fantastic. Over a month ago (my god, has it really been that long since I posted?!?), I went up to Chef-chouen in the north (about 2 hrs from Tangier), a breathtakingly beautiful place that is reminiscent of the Greek Isles, as all of the buildings are colored white and what I call Chouen blue. Even the tombstones in the cemetery are this color blue...really bizarre, but quite fitting for the town. In the main part of the town, there are no cars allowed and the main method of transport is donkey. Not for the transportation of people, the main area is easily accessible on foot, but to move goods from one place to another. There is no central natural gas system here like in the States. In order for people to cook or heat water for showers, they use propane tanks. So, since it's probably hard to carry all of them by hand, they are loaded on donkeys and picked up / dropped off at houses and restaurants throughout the day. It's quite anachronistic to see a donkey loaded with propane tanks being led by a man wearing traditional Moroccan dress throughout the cobblestone streets of a Grecian-looking village.
Highlights of this trip were of a cafe owner offering us tea or hashish. (Don't worry mom, we choose the tea!), the cat in the guest house we stayed in using the shower as its litter box...thanks for that and deciding to dump the school's bus with a couple of other students and take the public bus back to Rabat (that actually was a good choice!).



I started the next level of my class and am amazed at how fast we're going through vocabulary. Now if only I could remember all of the words I'm assigned every day! I have my same teacher from the last session and he's fantastic. He's one of the reasons that the school is great. Samir, my teacher, Fuziah the cook and the other teaching staff are fun, smart, awesome people and I'm lucky that I'm surrounded by such great people every day. If only all of the students could live up to their surroundings. Since Scott and Allison left (the two students I had class with and really like), a new crop of students has come in and they are whiny and spoiled and I can't wait for most of them to leave. It's really brought down the vibe at school. The only other person that's been at the school longer than me who interacts with others (there's one girl that we call "the spy" because she just comes for class then leaves to go home to her boyfriend who happens to work for the State Department) is leaving at the end of the week, so I'll be the person who's been at the school the longest from now on. I can't believe that because I feel like I just got here!

Three or four weeks ago, I went on the most amazing trip ever down to the Sahara and we actually rode camels out to the desert and camped there for the night. It was a pretty long trip for just the weekend, but really worth it for the experience. On the way down to the desert, we stopped on the side of the road about 5 hours into our journey for the bus driver to get a CD out of the back of the bus (a different driver than usual with a different bus...this one with air conditioning, so really quite extravagant compared to my more recent outings). After we stopped, from out of nowhere, came three boys running down the road from the flock of sheep they had been tending to (not kidding here...they were real live shepherds). Next thing you know, we were plying them with everything we could find in the bus that we did not need, like Cokes and cookies and they were in heaven. This was, quite literally, the middle of nowhere. There were dirt fields all around and upon closer inspection, houses, but because they were made from the surrounding earth, they blended into their surroundings so well that you could not see them at all from afar. Soon, there were several men who arrived, from where, I have no idea. One of them offered for all of us to come to his house for tea. It would have been really rude to turn him down and frankly, I really wanted to go and see the inside of one of the houses and to meet the people. The kids spoke only a Berber dialect and no real Arabic and definitely not French. One of the old men spoke really good Arabic though and we exchanged some words with him. It was really unbelievable that this strange man invited a group of about 12 people into his house just because they stopped on the side of the road to get a CD out of the back of the bus. We walked to his house, just a couple of hundred meters away, and found ourselves looking at baby goats and sheep and chickens. It was like they had their own private petting zoo! I was in heaven, needless to say. I even saw a group of chickens pecking at a turkey and had to wonder if they thought it tasted like chicken too. Very bizarre.
We were welcomed into the house, a low lying one room building that was remarkably cool and clean inside. We sat on blankets and pillows over the floor and were served tea from a fine silver service. Then, one of the women there baked us fresh loaves of bread from an outdoor oven and they served us homemade butter, fresh honey and homemade preserves along with some amazing olive oil. Seriously, they gave us everything that they had and asked for nothing in return. This was one of the most generous things I've ever seen in my life and I hope I will never forget it. Luckily, we were able to help out just a little bit, as one of the women had an infection in her foot and we gave her some medicines and directions on how to care for it. It didn't look too serious and I hope she's better now.
We spent that night in Midelt, a small town where our teachers had a friend who showed us around and gave rides on his motorcycle (no mom, I did not participate in that part!). We were lucky enough to have a nice hotel without cat poop in the shower and everyone was excited about that.



The next morning, we made our way down to Marzuga, the bordertown on the Sahara from where we would depart with our camels. Actually, I guess I should say dromedaries since there are no camels in Morocco. However, I have no idea what the difference is and dromedary sounds like something a know-it-all asshole in school would say, so I'm just going to call them camels.
We wound up riding in the dark out to the campsite since we arrive late (in true Moroccan style) because we had to drop off one member of our group who was really, really sick. So, he got himself a hotel (a really gorgeous place really and I was a little jealous even though he was sick and I felt really bad that he was going to miss out on the camels). So, two hours later, we and our camels arrived at a campsite where a couple of men were busy preparing us tea and our dinner. Sweet! It's about time some men saw the inside of a kitchen in this country!!! We laid out under the stars, telling jokes and talking about our day, then went inside to eat a delicious meal of chicken and vegetables. After that, we were all exhausted and went off to bed. I made myself a little spot just outside of the womens' tent out of a couple of blankets and slept under the stars. The weather was perfect and we had just missed a sandstorm a few days prior. I was totally not going to miss out on being outside in the most beautiful place I had seen so far by sleeping in a tent!
Early the next morning (like 5:30 am), we were awoken to watch the sun rise from the top of a sand dune. Um, spectacular? magnificent? breathtaking? Yup. All of those and more. I mean, how cool is it to watch the sun rise over the Algerian border as we perch on top of a sand dune in the Sahara desert? Pretty freaking cool. Unfortunately, I found myself to be a little sick and was a little more "one with nature" than I really wanted behind this random tree at the camp. Thank god for whatever water source was feeding it so I didn't give a show to everyone around.
Then, back on the camels to return to the town for breakfast and to load up in the van for the tedious 12 hour journey home. Fun!

I'll do my best to fill in what's been happening lately in my next post, including the Moroccan wedding I attended a couple of weeks ago. It went from 10pm to 5am. Whew!

Hope all are well back home and I'll see most of you very soon when I get back in just two more weeks!!! Yippee!!!