Ifrane and AUI January 18, 2012 – Wednesday

   Got ready for the day around 9 am or so, showered and got all our things packed together and were headed off in search of breakfast by around 10 am.  We stopped at the same little café place where we had had tea the night before and had a bite to eat for breakfast, some croissants and some other small sugary pastry along with the usual small teapot of hot super sweet green tea. 

   Done with our breakfast, we headed off with a taxi to the bus stop.  Was a newer taxi and turned out to be our first that actually had a working meter in it.  I guess we just ignored what it said in the lonely planet book about not taking any taxis that didn’t have meters. We might have been a while in looking for those kind of taxis anyways. Cost what we were expecting to pay too, so worked out perfectly. 

   We got a bus right away for 20 Dh each down to Fes, but the bus didn’t end up leaving for another almost an hour.  Guess it couldn’t have worked out that perfectly in the end.  We finally got to Fes after a rather long bus ride at around 1 and walked back the kilometer or so to where we had passed the gates to Al Akhawayn University.  Was pretty straight forward in getting my room key and info from the International Programs office and we were able to get in to my room on the fourth floor of building 20. 

So far, from what I’ve seen Ifrane is a really sweet little town, not too big about 15 to 20 thousand people or so, and really clean, with red tiled roofs on almost all the buildings. I think lonely planet was pretty accurate in calling Ifrane a “little Switzerland” in Morocco.  AUI is also super nice, with all the buildings having peaks in their roofs and red tiled as well. As you walk up, they look more like chalets somewhere in Europe than school dorms and university buildings in Morocco.  And my room isn’t too bad either, nice and clean and bright. Top floor of the building, so I have one of the roof beams sticking out over my bed, but it just adds to the ambience of the room.

 (My side of the dorm room that I share with another Moroccan)

(My desk area and door to the bathroom/shower)

 (First site or the buildings on campus when you enter the main gates off the road)

 (I'm in building number 20, fourth floor, room 303 up to the left)

( the road that runs between some of the residence buildings)

 (Some building that I don't know exactly what it is, but it's colourful)

 (A small cafe on the left side and the long building at the far end is the main cafeteria on campus)

 (Some of the administration buildings and some other offices)

 (The mosque that sits at the centre of campus)

 (Everything is kept really neat with walkways everywhere, and we were told today, we're not allowed to walk on the grass -- use the walk ways)

 (Gym on the right side of the building and full size swimming pool on the left part of the building on the inside)

(Welcome sign near the mosque in the middle of campus)

   Turned out I had some kind of orientation that I had to go to that afternoon, so that kind of messed up the plans me and Stephen had about hanging out for the afternoon in Ifrane, but he hung around with me until that was done, and then we walked into town with a group of the other exchange students, where I said goodbye to Stephen at the grand taxi stand where we started his trip back down to Marakech.  It was a good trip all around with no mishaps really and nothing that went wrong that I could tell. Fourth trip with Stephen on our fourth continent complete. 

   I had some supper on the way back with some of the other exchange students, who I started to get to know, and learn al their names, etc.  They seem like a pretty decent bunch of people, and shouldn’t be too hard to get along with over the next couple of months.