Spring Desert Part One: The Desert

All dressed up like a berber tourist and ready to explore the Sahara desert. 

Spring break started by heading down to Fez right away Friday afternoon once classes were done where we spent the night and then headed south again with a group of 13, including myself towards the desert.  After a long ride in some vans, that were at least pretty comfortable, especially when compared to grand taxi standards, we stopped in Rissani where we had a late lunch of Tagine and then switched to more desert appropriate vehicles and drove further out into the desert to a compound in the Merzouga area where we spent the first night right on the edges of the sand dunes about 15/20km from the Algerian border.  The next day after a tour of some nearby oasis we headed out into the sand dunes, riding camels.  Definitely an awesome experience, though the camel riding got kind of sore after a while.  After an hour or so of riding we arrived at our destination, a bunch of Berber tents nestled amongst the sand dunes waiting for us.  It was kind of weird thinking that if anything was to happen to us, the fastest way out of there would have started out with an hour-long ride on a camel.  Kind of made me feel like we’d jumped back in time a couple of hundred years or so.  We had a supper of tagine and then wandered to the tops of some nearby sand dunes to enjoy the stars. 

Where we spent the night on top of the sand dune.

A couple people had brought some bottles of wine, so we enjoyed the stars with some of that along with cheese that got a bit sandy as it got passed around.  We were all going to sleep in Berber tents, but me and another guy decided it would be way cooler to spend out night in the Sahara desert out on top of a sand dune under the start so we dragged some mats, and blankets up there along with our sleeping bags and went to sleep with nothing but the wind to keep us company under a sky full of stars and the occasional satellite.  I don’t think I’ve ever been somewhere where there have been so many stars or where it’s been so quite.  It was pretty weird, too, knowing that if anything happened to any of us, the fastest way out of there would start with an hour on top of a camel.  Felt almost like we had jumped back in time a couple of hundred years, except for having a cell phone in my pocket that worked better than it does at my house in Kamloops. 

On our way back from our night in the desert watching the sun rise.

Just after the sun rose above the dunes. 

The next morning we packed up and were riding back through the dunes to our compound by the time the sun rose out of the Algerian desert.  Back at the compound we enjoyed a breakfast and showers for those who wanted it.  I headed back out to the dunes with a couple others to get some last minute pictures jumping off of dunes and doing cartwheels down them, ensuring that everything we were wearing was full of the fine reddish sand of the desert by the time we were done.  Loaded back into the 4x4 vehicles we retraced our steps back to Rissani where we switched to the vans and made our trip back north again full of memories of the desert and loaded down with bottles of sand as souvenirs to take home with us.  

Shrunken Pajama Pants – March 6, 2012

            Did my laundry the other week and when I was going to bed, was putting my pajama pants on and they were definitely a lot tighter than the last time I had put them on before I had washed them.  They’d shrunk a good inch or two.  Oh well, its Morocco.  I was talking to this other girl the other morning when we were at breakfast, and we were talking about how things aren’t always the way we expect them to be, when she discovered that her ‘hard-boiled’ eggs were in fact not hard-boiled, but quite liquid inside still.  We came to the conclusion that we’d just say, ”it’s Morocco” and that would be our answer for anything that went wrong or was just out of the ordinary, so I’ll live with my shrunken pajama pants.  It’s Morocco after-all. 

            Things have been going pretty good lately, since my last blog post.  I decided about two weeks ago to try to work towards a half marathon that’s going to take place on the first of April in Rabat, so I’ve been trying to run at least 3-4 times a week, and so far its not going too bad.  My legs were a bit sore after the first couple of runs, but the last couple that I’ve done have all been quite a bit better.  I think it also helped that I switched to running in the afternoon instead of in the morning when it was a lot colder, so maybe that’s why.  I just tell myself that my body is getting more used to it. Ha It will be pretty fun either way, even if I don’t get a really good time or anything, because there’s about ten of us that are thinking of doing it, so we’ll probably all go down to Rabat together and just make it a fun weekend. I’m looking forward to it. 

            School is also going pretty well.  I figured that since I am here at AUI on a semester of exchange, I should probably mention schoolwork at least a couple of times.  I can’t lie, I don’t have a lot of work to do for some of my classes, compared to what I’ve had in the last couple of years back at TRU so I’ve had more time to do other things, but my classes are all pretty interesting and I’m really liking them. 

History of the Arab world can be kind of confusing at times when we go off on tangents about random stuff, but other than that most of what we learn about the rise of Islam and the disorganization of the world of Islam in the years afterwards is really cool.  The professor can get pretty distracted sometimes though, it’s pretty funny. 

           And then my French class is a lot of fun, and I think I’m actually learning quite a bit, so I’m really happy about that, and the trips that I’ve done around Morocco have given me good opportunities to practice my French.  I definitely think it’s improved. Either that or I’ve just gotten more confident with the French skills that I already had. 

           History and culture of he Berber has been an interesting class, learning about how the Berber’s first originated in North Africa and what roles they have played in the history of this area as well as that across North Africa throughout the past centuries.  The professor is quite funny, a short little, mostly bald Berber man, also quite disorganized sometimes, and quite biased a lot of the times, though he tries not to be biased he told us.  It does get some good discussions going though, as there are a number of other ethnic berbers in the class.  The exchange students that are in the class usually just sit there and listen to them argue about stuff, because we don’t really know what’s going on half the time, not having grown up in a Berber context.  That class is also my only class that I have twice a week, so it’s 80 minutes long, and I’ll have to admit I’ve almost fallen asleep sometimes when the professor goes on some long ramble about some organization or something that exists today that’s trying to bring back Berber culture into Moroccan culture.  I tried to help myself stay awake throughout class by bringing some m&ms and lining them up in front of myself and eating them one at a time after every five or ten minutes or something to help the time go by.  I think it worked for the first class, but last class it didn’t help at all.  I’m good for the first 50 minutes, which is the length of my other classes, but anything after that it seems, my brain just wants to shut down and do nothing. It’s pretty terrible, so I’ll have to try to find some other way to entertain myself now. 

           Then my geography class isn’t too bad.  Once we got over the boring section at the beginning where we were just covering basic geographic concepts that are used and moved into more looking at how people migrate around the world and different factors that affect migration patterns, etc it got a bit better, but the professor just moves really slowly it seems in that class. 

This is just an awesome picture all around.  and yes, we did get stared at while trying to get this picture. 

           This past weekend I went to Casablanca from Friday until Sunday with five other exchange students.  Had some good adventures, including one right away when we got to Casablanca.  We took the usual route of grand taxi to Meknes, and then the train from there onwards to Casablanca.  One guy though had forgot his passport at AUI though, and as foreigners in Morocco, whenever you check into a hotel, they look at your passport and have to get the number that is stamped into it when you enter the country for their records and technically they’re not supposed tolet anybody stay at their hotel without that number.  So that caused some problems for us.  

          The first three hotels that we went to, refused to let us stay there without having that number, (like they are supposed to, which at the moment wasn’t the best for us though).  Finally, however, we found one who agreed that we could stay there, as long as we went down to the police station and got some kind of form filled out and stamped by them, so that we would still all be following the rules and nobody would get in trouble.  I don’t know why any of the other hotels didn’t suggest that, because they just lost business from the six of us, but anyways. 

           So, Brian, the one who had forgot his passport and Beth, who probably had the best language skills of our group headed off in a taxi to find the police station, and thankfully after about an hour and having to find a second police station after the first one they went to proved pretty empty which they found out by pretty going into it and finding nobody there and everything dark they finally got back to the rest of us who had stayed behind with the right forms all filled out and stamped, so we were good for the night. 

Part of the Morocco Mall, huge aquarium, and there was some kind of music afternoon or something going on, because there were a couple different groups that got up and played songs while we were there. 

Found ourselves a Starbucks and enjoyed a caramel frappuccino, which tasted pretty much the same as one you'd get back home, expect for the whipped cream on top, which was weird and not the best.  

Pigeon plaza in Casablanca. Actually I don't know what it's called, but it should be called that. 

Hassan II mosque in Casablanca, third biggest mosque in the world, can hold 20,000 people inside and the outer square can supposedly hold another 80,000

One of the many massive doors of the mosque

           We spent the next day and Sunday morning wandering around Casablanca, exploring the mosque and Morocco mall and some other places, before heading back to Ifrane.  We stopped in Rabat for an hour on the way and got ourselves almond/avocadoe smoothie things, which are awesome, and some pastillas and oranges for the rest of the train ride back to Meknes.  Good weekend all around.