Well. We woke up a bit earlier today. 8am. Somehow we never seem to make breakfast. I had an interesting experience with the water last night. It smelt a little funny when I was showering (but it’s super hot and humid in Morocco and I was disgusting, so I wasn’t going to stop). I got out, dried my hair, went to bed like normal and when I woke up, I found that my hair, my beautiful blonde locks, were green. Not completely, but it was definitely a tint to it. Hahahahahaha. The shower curtain was green, and when we finally got to the tour of Rabat, there were girls with blue hair as well as green. James had drank some of the water from the night before, and he said his throat hurt and tingled a bit. It was just a weird thing. We had heard that the water might be a little different in Morocco, but we weren’t really expecting that one. We survived though, and I’m pretty sure that the green has been predominantly washed out. Though it definitely lasted a few days.
Anyway. We went off to our tour of Rabat. The tour guide was the woman who wrote the whole Wiki-Travel section on Alexandria, so she was just a little node of knowledge. Very nice. She told some corny jokes, but you could tell she was super smart. She was also a single mother, which was something of a novelty. The king of Morocco is travelling towards modernity, so there are things like that which are now possible for women, though they are still seen as subservient.
Rabat was interesting. It’s the capital of Morocco, but there wasn’t much to see per say. We went to a couple of palaces which had some gnarly guards with huge machine guns. We saw the royal mosque. We walked to the mausoleum of Mohammad V which was very nice inside. This was the king during WWII who turned away the Nazi’s looking for Jews when he said that there were no Jews in Morocco, only Moroccans. He’s a national hero. It’ a pretty cool story really. We had a guy take a picture for us who worked there, and he tried to take other pictures after ours. James fairly ripped the camera out of his hand. Which would have been funny except it’s a nice camera. He wasn’t going to steal it…he just started to walk around with it. Haha. He was a little old Moroccan man, but it was still weird.
Next we went to a Medina of the city (Medina means city). It was by the water and there were some beautiful gardens to see. We had some coke and water which was amazing, and went to a bakery where they make bread for the whole medina. It was very quaint, very small, and a quick visit.
On our way back home, we passed a Muslim graveyard. This was interesting. The Muslims don’t bury their dead in a funeral, they simply put them in the ground. The graves are super close together with tall thin headstones, and all the feet point to Mecca. The graveyard was on a rolling hillside, and it was huge. I think it might have been the most interesting place we saw all day. We ate dinner on the ship. Sometimes its easier than scouting and we were pretty famished.
We went to a hotel right outside of the port next. Caught up on some internet time and skyped the parents for a while. It’ll be the last time for a bit, so we wanted it to be worth it. Lexee even got up to talk to me. Hahaha.
Went back to the ship and got prettied up a bit. We had made a date earlier in the week to have dinner with the Gillespies (the couple who really liked us from Italy). We caught the shuttle out of the port (one of the only ones), and then headed off for a bout a ten minute walk. We ended up at this little authentic Moroccan restaurant that had a French name and no real tables. There are little round desk like things that you bend over and sit around on coaches. It was really pretty cool. The atmosphere was great. Mr Gillespie speaks French too, so it was easy for us to find it luckily. Eating was nice. We had a little bit of everything: couscous, some things cooked in a tanjine (which is an all day process in a little cone shaped pot), a chicken dish with almonds in a little tortilla thing (like a taco bell crisp but WAY better and cinnamon like), and then lots of different desserts which were amazing. The whole experience was great. We talked about our homes and our majors. They talked about the classes they taught. We talked about the teachers and the program in general. It was all great conversation. We walked home in a big group of people, but we mostly stayed with them. After we got back to the ship, we ended up going upstairs with them to see how the people on the seventh deck live. haha. We always make jokes that the second deck is the dungeons, but its not really much different than the other decks except we have a smaller window. Let me tell you though, the people on the seventh deck live in style. There’s a coach, and a huge bed. They have a balcony with lawn chairs and a nice view. It was intense. They had a desk and a nice little refrigerator that was pretty big. They were definitely living the high life ☺
It was nice of them to let us see for sure.
After visiting with them we went back to 2050 where I started some more homework. I’ve been reading like crazy every night trying to get things done. I’ve got a lot. My marketing class is insane. That’s all I’ll say.
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