Morocco!

I just realized my last blog post was exactly a week ago.  I feel like I haven’t stopped doing things since then! We had 4 days in Morocco, then the first day of sailing was the day of the shipboard auctions! I also had to write two papers that day that were due yesterday, but I am finally done with papers and I just have to worry about my Global Studies and Anthropology finals.  My poetry teacher just told us today that we won’t have a final, I’m good with that!  I can’t believe we only have 8 more days on the ship.  The summer has flown by and I will soon be home.  I’m excited to go home but I’m really going to miss this ship!!! I have a lot to cover since the last post, so this one is going to be about our time in Morocco and tomorrow I’ll write about the auction.  There are also a TON of special questions, so I’ll split them up.

-----Saturday, August 7-----

Today we docked in Casablanca!  The port area is pretty sketchy, and we were told it was a 20-25 minute walk to get from our ship to the port exit.  The area right outside the ship had stacks and stacks of boxcars, and everything was really dirty.  We had a city orientation at 1330, so we just relaxed on the ship and enjoyed the air conditioning until then.  Our first stop on the tour was the Mohamed V Square, which was basically a big square around a non-functional fountain with about 200 pigeons swarming around.  Little kids were running around with balloons, and people were trying to sell everyone henna tattoos.  Craziness!  Our next stop was the Royal Palace, where the king will be staying during the entire month of Ramadan.  We only got to see the outside of it, but even the outside was covered in mosaics.  We then stopped at the Cathedral Notre Dame du Lourdes and admired the gorgeous stained glass—the glass covers the entire lengths of both walls!  The next stop was the Hassan II mosque, the 3rd largest mosque in the world with the largest minaret in the world.  It was amazing, but it would have been better if it hadn’t been so overcast that day.  The mosque is built over the Atlantic Ocean and the floor is made out of glass so that people can actually pray over the water.  Our trip didn’t include entrance to the mosque, so we just observed the outside.  Our last stop was a shop in the old town, where I bought a hand-painted spice/sauce holder/server thing.  Yeah, I can’t really describe it, but it’s cool!  After the trip, we went back to the ship to escape the heat.  Shaara and I enjoyed a wonderful Mary Kate and Ashley movie that was playing on the TV (Holiday in the Sun for those Olson fans) while Steven left the room (ha!).  We enjoyed laughing at the horrible acting and one-liners.  Some of the gems: “He’s what time it is!” and “What’s up?” “…Not my temperature!”  Then Steven rejoined us, we went to dinner, we played Phase 10, and we called it a night.

-----Sunday, August 8-----

We woke up bright and early today for our daytrip to Marrakech.  There was actually a mix-up with the trips—we were supposed to go to Rabat (Morocco’s capital) today and Marrakech tomorrow, but the travel agents that SAS was working with changed the Marrakech trip to today.  So we got refunded for the Rabat trip and we were off on our 3-hour drive south to Marrakech.  On the way, we stopped at a gas station since our bus didn’t have a bathroom.  Steven and I decided that it was a perfect time for a Magnum bar (that time being 9am of course).  The Magnum bar is the most delicious ice cream bar I have ever eaten, and I really hope that I can find them somewhere in the US.  Imagine: caramel ice cream coated with a layer of chocolate, then a layer of caramel sauce, all coated in a thick second layer of chocolate. YUM.  Anyway, onto Marrakech.  Our first stop was the Majorelle Gardens, where we saw lots of cacti and a pond with lilies and tons of turtles and frogs.  The bus then dropped us off in the old city and we were walking from there.  We walked to the Bahia palace, which was home to the Grand Vizier (high official).  People here are crazy with their scooters and bikes, they scoot into the tiniest spaces and there is really no sidewalk to speak of, so the walk was interesting.  We even saw a man riding a scooter with one hand, and in the other arm he was holding a baby. Seriously??? Anyway, we went to the palace and saw all of the amazing mosaic ceilings.  We compared the rooms of the regular wives to the room of the “favorite” wife, which were huge compared to the rooms of the concubines.  The vizier’s room wasn’t too shabby either. =)  We then walked another 15 minutes through narrow streets with scooters whizzing by until we got to the Dar Si Said Palace, which is now a museum.  We had 20 minutes to look through the museum, which contained about 5 rooms with a few things in each one.  The exhibits included weapons (some daggers), jewelry (necklaces), and kitchen stuff (pots).  Everyone was basically done with the museum after 5 minutes, so we headed off to lunch.  The restaurant we ate at was squeezed in between souks in the main square in Marrakech, but it was pretty large inside!  The first course was interesting: a pile of diced cucumbers, a pile of diced carrots, a pile of cooked spinach with some kind of sauce or spice, and a pile of cooked eggplant.  Now, we had been warned since Turkey not to eat vegetables or fruits that we do not peel ourselves, so everyone kind of stared at the cucumbers and carrots, not knowing what to do.  We’ve also been taking Pepto-Bismol before every meal (the doctor suggested for everyone to do that since Turkey) so we figured we were safe.  The piles of spinach and eggplant looked interesting but tasted really good on bread!  The main course came out, and I wish I could have just kept eating that.  It was a HUGE bowl of couscous with cooked vegetables, beef, and cooked dates.  Everything was SO good, I had several spoonfuls =).  Dessert was…..weird.  It was carrot shreds in orange juice with cinnamon sprinkled on top.  I tried it because I said I would try everything, but it was just too weird for me.  I felt bad because no one in our group ate it, and so much food was wasted.  I would have been happy eating couscous all day!  After lunch we had a couple hours of free time to shop in the big square.  There were snake charmers and people with monkeys, and one guy even came up and put a snake around Steven’s neck!  We bought lots of cool things, I’m just not sure how everything is getting home!  The 3-hour bus ride home was miserable as the air conditioning kept shutting off.  Not fun!  We just bummed around on the ship when we got back, thoroughly enjoying A/C!

-----Monday, August 9-----

We didn’t have any trips planned for today and we didn’t feel like making our way to Rabat on our own, so we just decided to check out the souks that were a few blocks from the port.  So I said on the first day that it is a long walk from the ship to the port entrance, probably about 1.5 miles.  There is a free shuttle that apparently runs from 9am to 9pm, but we never saw it once.  So we walked, and I was disgustingly dripping with sweat by the time we made it to the gate.  The souks were interesting, everything was really cheap (money-wise, not quality-wise) and no one was interested in bartering.  We got some good trinkets!!  We trekked back to the ship for dinner and called it a night.  All these trips are catching up with me, all I want to do is sleep!

-----Tuesday, August 10-----

Today is our last day on land until the USA!  We wanted to go back to the Hassan II Mosque so that we could look inside, but we slept in so we didn’t leave the ship until 10:30 or so.  We took a cab to the mosque, spent about 15 minutes trying to figure out how to get in the mosque, then a security guard told us it wasn’t open for visitors until 2pm.  Great.  We walked a few blocks until we found a restaurant for lunch.  Steven ordered a chicken and French fries tagine, and I got a meat tagine.  We waited about 45 minutes for our food, but it was delicious!!!  I had bought a tagine in Marrakech and I am glad the food that comes from it is good!  Tagine is the name for both the stew/meat and the dish thing that it’s cooked in.  Yum!  It wasn’t even 1pm when we finished our lunch, and it was really hot (around 45 degrees C) so we decided to get a cab back to the port and spend the rest of our dirhams in the souks.  We successfully spent every last dirham!  Getting all this stuff home is going to be interesting…



LOTS OF SPECIAL QUESTIONS / COMMENTS!

After leaving Morocco, a student said, “Do we have an interport student on the ship?”

(Conversation taking place in smoking area, deck 5)
Student 1: “Where are you going?”
Student 2: “Upstairs to get some sun.”
Student 1: “But it's really cloudy.”
Student 2: “I think it will be sunnier up there.”

Student 1: “I weighed myself in kilometers today” (pronounced kill-AHH-meh-ters)
Student 2: “I think that's a measure of distance.”
Student 1: “Oh, I meant kilometers then.” (pronounced kill-oh-MEE-ters)

Student 1: “What school do you go to?”
Student 2: “West Virginia University.”
Student 1: “Oh, I've never been to Virginia.”
Student 2: “Well have you been to West Virginia?”
Student 1:  “Wait, West Virginia is a state?”

Tomorrow’s post will be about the shipboard auction! It was a lot of fun and we raised SOOO much money!