First Couple of Weeks here at AUI:

This is where we went hiking, south of Azrou, in an area called Zuid-Ifrane

     So, for those of you who think that I’m not doing any school at all while I’m over here, I’m just letting you know that I am.  Not a huge work load, that’s for sure, but I am now in my second week of classes, though start thinking of where I want to travel to the next weekend, usually starting on Mondays. Ha

     It’s crazy that the first two weeks here at Al Akhawayn University are already past.  Not going to lie, orientation wasn’t all that fun the whole time, but there were some parts that didn’t make me want to go to sleep right away where I was sitting, and I did get to meet all the other exchange students, the ones who I’ll be with along with Moroccans for the next four months.  Orientation also included filling out a bunch of forms for our residency cards, which is nice, because now we don’t have to do anything else about that anymore, just go pick up our passports when they’re done. So the entire weekend wasn’t totally wasted.

     

     One nice thing that they did do though, well kind of did. It was organized for us, and we paid our own way, was to take us, using grand taxis, down to Azrou which is about 30 minutes south of Ifrane.  It was a really cool little town, actually slightly bigger than Ifrane I was told.  We spent 4, 5 hours or so on the Sunday during orientation, and were able to see another little corner of Morocco and taste some more of their good food at a little restaurant place our group descended upon for lunch.  It was really good food. We had what they called keefta, or ground beef kebabs with some kind of spices in them, stuffed into a half circle of bread, along with amazing French fries.  They actually tasted like real potato, and were quite delicious with salt and a bit of red peper or some sort sprinkled over top of them.  A little group of us even managed to get a bit of hiking in during that afternoon when we ditched the rest of our group and hiked up through the houses until they ended and then up into the forest a bit until we had an awesome view of the city.  Overall it was a pretty fun day.  A good way to get to know some of the other exchange students as well, especially in the grand taxis on the way there and back, squished 4 in the back seat and two in the passenger seat in the front of an ancient Mercedes that sounded ready to fall apart at every little bump in the road.  Our particular Mercedes on the way down had around 550,000km to its name and had the drivers shade thing stapled into place, it was awesome. And you couldn’t open the doors from the inside on the passengers’ side. Where the handle should have existed, or did in past years, was now no more than home to a couple of random wires and electrical tape.  To say nothing more, I can’t wait until my next trip in a grand taxi. 

In Azrou on our little trip that we took during orientation

      Classes started on Monday the 23^rd, but I didn’t actually get all the classes that I was going to take finalized until Thursday, so I kind of went around not sure about things. In the end though I think I figured things out for the better or worse, and ended up with 4 classes, cultural geography, history of the Arab world, History and Culture of the Berber, and a French class.  They’ve all been pretty interesting so far, and I’ve really enjoyed the French class over these first two weeks as well, so I’m happy about that. I’m hoping I’ll be able to learn a good amount of French while I’m here. History of the Arab world is a bit of a dysfunctional class some days.  Today, two guys were supposed to give a presentation on the specific chapter that we are working through in the book. It was supposed to be 10-12 minutes, or so they were told, but it was more than half an hour before they finally came to the end. The professor told them it was way too long on the spot in front of everybody and even said that a bunch of the time they were just repeating what they had already said. In some ways I like the class, I find it pretty interesting, learning about the rise of Islam and the different factors that contributed to that, and the professor can get really excited about the topic when he’s lecturing, but he can be a bit blunt sometimes.  He also refuses anyone to leave the room during his lectures. One guy got up the other day, probably to go use the washroom or something, and was promptly told to sit back down again and that he couldn’t leave the classroom.  No freedom here. Anyways, I’m glad my presentation isn’t due until week 8, so I can sit through a couple more and figure out what to do and what not to do when my turn comes.

     History of the Berber is taught by a short little, half bald Berber man, who, in the first lecture, told us that calling the Berbers, “Berbers” is what we would call politically incorrect today. They are technically known as Amazighen, and we’re not allowed to call them Berbers in that class anymore.  So much for the name of the course. I’m pretty sure that instead of just teaching us the history and culture of the berber, or Amazighen, the professor is set on having us reading and writing in Amazighen by the end of the semester.  He’s constantly writing stuff in Amazighen on the board and telling us how to pronounce the words in class, almost as if it was a language course and not a history course. He even sent us the Amazighen alphabet, so that we could learn to write our names in Amazighen.  It’s actually pretty cool.

     The food here isn’t really that bad either.  From all the stories that I’ve heard from others living in dorms, I was expecting something along the lines of MRE food, or those German rations that we had in Kabul a couple times that were super processed and about ten years old, but so far I haven’t really had much to complain about concerning the food except that sometimes its almost cold.  There’s 4 different places where you can eat on campus, a grille, where they serve burgers, fries, paninis, etc, a pizzaria that serves different types of pizza as well as spaghetti and some other pastas. There’s a café where you can get little snacks, such as heavenly chocolate crepes that are quite the snack if you’re feeling down, or just want a lot of chocolate in your system, and then there’s the main restaurant that has a variety of different meals available depending on the day, Moroccan and other.  And there’s also awesome chocolate and caramel, (not together, but they have both flavours) puddings that are quite good to end a meal with and not even that expensive, which might prove a problem after I eat too many of them, but for now I’m enjoying them immensely.

On the edge of the Plateau that we hiked up on to, looking out over the Zuid-Ifrane valley. 

     Actually went on another trip already last weekend with a group of ten others down south of Azrou to where we hiked to some waterfalls, which was really neat.  It was a pretty awesome day, complete with having breakfast and then a really late lunch in a local Amazighen house, that our guide took us too.  Really good food, served in two communal dishes with lots of bread to eat it with.  It was a good time.  We finished off the day by going to find some monkeys in a cedar forest, where I guess they just wait for the tourists to come feed them.  Quite the greedy little things, pretty much grab anything that was edible out of your hands eat part of it and then grab for more, but they were pretty cool.  It was a good trip all around, and I can’t wait to do more like it in the future.

     

The day after it snowed, on our way to the main gates where we caught our van to go hiking. 

The last couple of days have been like this, super blue skies.

     So, things are going pretty well over here in Morocco, nicely settled into my dorm room by now, and have even done laundry since getting here too, so I guess that makes me fully settled in.  It was nice though, the semi weekly cleaning of our dorm rooms happened today, so after lunch I walked into a cleaner room than I had left. It’s quite a novel thing, having someone else clean your room for you, or most of it.  Something to look forward to every two weeks. Ha but for the most part we keep the room pretty clean, so it’s not too bad.  We actually got a big dump of snow on friday, making our world all white for about 24 hours, but it all melted really fast, and the last couple of days have been super nice, blue skies with absolutely no clouds. I can't wait until the days are warmer to stay.  Sadly though I have some homework that I have to get done, so this will have to be all until next time. I’m sure I’ll have had some more adventures until then, so will have more to write about then anyways.   

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. 

Fes January 17, 2012 Tuesday

   *** I guess I never really explained in my earlier blog posts what exactly a medina or a souk is, or what the socco was that I talked about, so anyways, a medina is the old original part of the city and still is to some extent the cultural center of the city usually with a big wall around the whole thing. It usually has two parts, the bazaar part with all the market stalls are, and then the living quarters section, which is referred to as the Kasbah which doesn’t have any markets in it at all.  And a souk is just the name of a covered market, which you would find in the medina.  And the socco that I mentioned is the name for the entrance to the medina I believe, if I’m right.  ***

   Didn’t make too much effort to get up very early, so ended up staying in bed until nearly 10 before going out for breakfast.  We went to a more upscale café and had a traditional Moroccan breakfast, which included eggs, some kind of meat that was both sweet and salty at the same time, was actually pretty good, bread, tea and freshly squeezed orange juice. It was quite the good breakfast, even though it cost us more than we had been paying for breakfast over the past couple of days.  Once we were done with breakfast and using the Wifi at the café, we walked into the maze of the medina and spent the next three to four hours allowing ourselves to get lost in its embrace of crooked alleys and little windings streets.

   The Fes Medina is huge, with around 150,000 people living within it walls, and it definitely felt that crowded as we were walking around poking into the shops and getting shown hand-made woven blankets and jelabas which we kind said no too.  We did give in to one of the many people offering tours of parts of the medina, just because we wanted to see inside some of the tannery areas. Was super cool and interesting to see how the sheep skins go from being freshly skinned pelts all they way to fine supple leather, and to see all the different steps along the way, and what they use for the different dyes and things. In the end, we had to pay too different people for their “generous” service as they called it, and left one of them in particular quite unsatisfied with what we paid him who claimed we were no better than the medina taxis, referring to the donkeys that some use to get around. I enjoyed the tour while it lasted and got quite a few pictures so I was happy.  Back near the entrance to the medina we found a place to have a late lunch – at 3:30 – and had quite the filling meal of first soup, then couscous with chicken and vegetables followed by a couple cups of tea to top it off. There were a ton of restaurants in that general area, who all wanted us to come into their particular restaurant, but in the end we had to pick one and decided to go to one where we got a pretty good deal we thought.  One guy who we walked away from actually fingered us as we left he was so angry at us.  We wandered around a bit more when we were done our meal before finally making our way back to our hotel, where we both didn’t really want to do anything for a bit, still being full and pretty tired, so we watched the third Bourne movie on my laptop.  We went out again around 8:30 or so and found a small café to sit at for a while, have some more tea and pastries and just talk for a while. We stayed until the café owner hinted that he wanted to close by starting to stack the other chairs around us, so we made our way back to our room where we watched the third Rambo movie that Stephen had never seen.  Got some good Rambo action in Afghanistan in before turning in for the night, quite tired after a pretty full day.   

Tangiers to Fes January 16, 2012 – Monday

   Monday started out all wet. It had rained a good chunk of the night and was still coming down pretty good when we got up around 9:30 and slowly packed all our things back into our bags.  It’s crazy how easy it is to unpack everything out of a bag, but always takes you at least twice as long to get it back in the way it was before you took it out, especially if your bag is packed about as full as it can get to start out with.

   We checked out of the hotel, getting another signature from the hotel manager on, this time a 3 of clubs, as we went out. I decided in Casablanca to start a collection of signatures (along with the date and location of hotel) of the hotel managers of all the hotels that we’ve stayed in on our trip on cards, and hopefully one day with enough adventures and traveling around I will have all 52 cards in my deck of authentic Australian flag cards filled up with signatures from exotic places all over the world.  It will be quite the accomplishment, and will have to be celebrated somehow when the time comes.  As we stand now, I think we only have 3 cards signed, because we didn’t think of the idea until after we had left our first hotel in Casablanca, which cut out one hotel there. I’ll just have to make up for it, by traveling to a couple of extra places over the next four months while I’m here.

   We grabbed some tea, juice and a bit more substantial food in the form of some kind of cake and apple cuchen or something at the Cinema Rif, while using their wireless internet. After checking all the necessities on facebook, and writing a couple of small e-mails off letting families know we were still alive and able to type, we discovered that we wouldn’t be able to catch a train out of Tangiers until 1:35, so we just stayed put at the café where we were and whiled the time away, watching it rain even harder outside. 

   The rain let up a little bit and when we finally left, it wasn’t coming down that hard, just enough to get you wet, but thankfully we both had rain covers for our bags and decent rain covers for ourselves, so weren’t hindered too much by the rain.  Before grabbing a taxi out to the train station we stopped at a small snack shop and got a couple of sandwiches similar to what we had had for supper the day before with some kind of curried chicken and french-fries all in a long bun along with some vegetables.  It might have been the wrong thing to do at that exact moment, or we should have left slightly earlier from Cinema Rif, because we arrived at the train station just as the train was pulling out of the station.  We bought our tickets then anyways for the next one later that afternoon and decided to eat our sandwiches.  Turns out when we went to board the train at 3:35 that that wasn’t the one we had to take either to get to Fes, and neither was the one that we barely had missed at 1:35, so it was a good thing that we hadn’t gotten onto it in the end. 

   We found ways to entertain ourselves by counting people, writing a couple of postcards, going through some pictures and deleting a couple of the 500 odd pictures that we deemed unworthy of keeping, and finally grabbed our bags and walked down to the beach that a couple hundred meters down the street.  It was super windy and started to rain again, so we didn’t stay out too long, but long enough to have an interesting conversation with a guy who offered to take our picture together who turned out to be a gay who was trying to get out of Morocco, because he wasn’t accepted as who he wanted to be by his friends and family here and was trying to get to another country where being gay isn’t such a problem.  Canada turned out to be his dream country, to be able to live in any way he wanted to, and sadly enough he’s kind of right, so when he found out I was Canadian he asked me how hard it would be for him to get some kind of work permit to come to Canada. It was kind of weird, because the whole time I was wondering if he had decided to start talking to us about his issues because he thought Stephen and I were gay. I sure hope not. Ha, definitely time for Stephen to get his hair cut.  Other than that little episode down by the beach, nothing else really happened until we were finally able to board our train to head down to Fes.  The trip down was pretty uneventful, later than we had hoped it would go, as our train was a bit late in getting out of the station, but we made it to Mechra bel Ksiri, where we had to switch trains in time to catch our connecting train, so that was good. Ate the rest of the food that we had left with us, along with a bunch of Spitz that I still had in my bag and did a couple sudoko races, which Stephen sadly won. It was awesome though, because on our second train, we managed to get into one of the cars that had small compartments that seated around 8 people or so, and had one whole compartment to ourselves, which was a lot nicer than the open cars, where we were subjected to listening to Arabic music randomly playing out of people’s cell phones or groups of Berber women discussing the latest trends in dessert dress codes or the health of their camels in high pitched voices. 

   We ended up arriving in Fes almost on time despite all the delays we had had at around 10 oclock.  At first we were planning on just walking to the hotel that we had in mind of staying at, which was only around half a kilometer or so away from the train station, but as soon as we had come out of the train station, we were pretty much mobbed by a bunch of taxi drivers who insisted that their livelihood depended on us taking their taxi to wherever we were going, so in the end, we did take a taxi with these two crazy guys, one of whom I’m pretty sure was high on something illegal, who also claimed he was some kind of singer who had been popular in Amsterdam back in his day; which I’m sure was before he had lost most of his teeth, probably only had one or two left in his mouth, at least from what I could see.  Both him and the driver talked constantly as we drove to our hotel, rarely even looking at the road, drifting from one side to the other, and straightening out with a quick jerk on the wheel when we threatened to either hit the parked cars on the one side or oncoming traffic on the other. But in the end we made it safely to Hotel Royal and were able to book a room for two nights at a pretty reasonable price, which also included a bathroom and hot showers between 7 and 11 in the morning. 

   After stowing our stuff in the room we headed off to where the hotel manager had told us were a couple of small restaurants and cafes to find something to eat and found a little snack shop that was still open, serving sandwiches and burgers, etc. so we had a bite to eat there before heading back to the hotel and bed for the night.  

Tangiers January 14, 2012 - Saturday

(The new Train Station in Tangiers)
   Woke up at 5:50 to an annoying alarm clock, and made our way to the train station, grabbing some warm chocolate filled croissants on the way from a small road side stand.  Managed to check some e-mails using the free Wifi at a small café in the train station before the train arrived, but didn’t get much time, as it was pretty punctual. 

   We met up with some pretty interesting people on the train during the 3.75 hours that we had before reaching Tangiers.  For a good chunk of the time we chatted with this Idriss, who ran a small print business in Rabat and was on his way north to visit his family in a small town just south of Tangiers.  The others were a group of guys, some of who were in a band who were headed to Tangiers to buy guitar strings or something. With their bit of English mostly Stephen’s French and my universal hand signals and lots of smiling, we entertained ourselves for the rest of the trip. A couple of the guys even offered to share their weed with us when they hopped outside quickly at a stop to smoke.  We kindly declined after watching him crush it up and roll it with hands that looked like they hadn’t been washed his entire life. Arriving in Tangiers we started walking towards the city center but ended up taking a taxi about half way cause my bags got to heavy to carry anymore. 

   We had a bit of difficulty finding a place at first in the medina of Tangiers, but with the help of one of the guys we had met on the train who randomly showed up we finally managed to find a room for the night.  I think he was hinting at us letting him sleep in the room with him for the night, but we feigned ignorance of what he was saying in his Arabic and very limited French, smiled and thanked him and left him at reception before heading up to the room to drop off our bags. 

(Fully packed fruit markets in the medina of Tangiers)

(More different types of olives than I've ever seen)

(One of many alley ways and small streets we wandered around in for hours in the Tangiers Medina)

   We then headed into the maze of small alley ways and little streets that wound every which way through the medina, driving you in circles and bringing you to random little cafés in the most unexpected places for a couple of hours.  I had one slightly awkward encounter when I was taking a picture of one of the entries into the medina and an old lady with thick glasses who happened to be in the general direction of where I was aiming my camera starting waving her skinny little arms and screeching, probably bringing curses down on my head and my children and grand children’s heads to come, telling me she didn’t want her picture taken. (I assumed that part, but I think that’s what she was saying) I got the hint and decided it wasn’t worth it and moved on to one of the other numerous entrances into the medina to take my picture. 

   Got a number of unintentional tours and from a couple of old guys who made it their business to inculturate us in the ways of the medina.  Rashid turned out to be a painter who was slightly senile I’m sure told us all about the his paintings and brought us to all his favorite restaurants and cafés around the medina while telling us about his trip to Canada and how awesome Canadians and Dutch were, sometimes repeating himself over and over again.  I think he was slightly put off when we didn’t end up staying at the place he had chosen for us to have lunch at, but we finally managed to say good bye and be rid of him.  We found our own little cook house to eat in and had some delicious soup, with some kind of lentils and little noodle things in it that was really good, and chicken kebabs with a tomato sauce all served with bread along with water with lemon juice in it.  Slightly better alternative for 30 Dh than the 180 we would have been charged at the last suggested place.

(Stephen and our painting tour guide guy Rashid)

   Our next tour was from Coca-Cola this old guy with a slight hump back and hook-nose, who wore a purple took on the top of his head pulled down low over his eyes, and walked with both arms clasped behind his back bouncing slightly with each step.  Knew excellent English and explained that he had gotten his nickname because everybody knew who he was, which we learned was not an exaggeration over the next hour or so. 

   Coca-Cola showed us all over the medina, parts of which we had already been over, but also explained a lot of the history, which parts were older than others and which had more significance to the majority of the people. He took us to a small café near the entrance to the Kasbah, where the Rolling Stones had once enjoyed a few full pipes of kif, (hashish) along with a bunch of other supposedly famous people from years ago that I had no idea who they were.  We ended our tour down on a terasse near the gate to the port where we parted and I paid him a couple of Dh for his services.  He wasn’t exactly happy with the amount I gave him, but took it in the end when I threatened to take it back again. 

   We checked out the port area a bit, but then headed down towards the beach to find some ice cream. Got a couple more offers to buy some hashish along with some help from another person on the street who claimed to know where he could find us ice cream, but when he started taking us somewhere into town away from the beach we decided to abandon the ice cream, not wanting to walk too much further.  Almost as soon as we had left him, a van marked with “National Security” on it pulled up and one of the guards pulled him inside before driving off again.  As they pulled him into the van, we heard him shouting that he was only showing us where to buy ice cream, and guessed they were taking him away for trying to sell us hashish or something.  No idea what happened to him, but thankfully they just ignored us and we went and sat on the beach for a bit like we had planned, sadly without our ice cream though. Maybe we will be more lucky tomorrow in the ice cream hunt.

   Back at the hotel we both passed out for a couple of hours on our beds, only waking up when we got cold to get a couple of blankets, but we did end up going out again after sleeping a bit more to find something to eat for supper around seven or so.  We found a snack shop selling chicken shwarma, burgers and fries. Stephen’s words ”it was nothing out of the ordinary” but I was quite content with it.  We then headed to the Grand Socco, where the entrance to the medina was and found a small café with wireless Internet that we could use and checked up on the rest of the world while drinking sweet green tea with mint leaves.  Stephen commented that his tasted kind of funny, but we attributed it to the cup not looking like it had been washed in a while, or that the leaves had already been used in someone else’s cup and he drank it anyways.

   Got a couple more offers of hashish on the way back to our hotel, bringing the days count up to eleven, which took longer than it should have, because we got lost, but we eventually found it with a little help, and made it safely into our beds.  

Ceuta, January 15, 2012 – Sunday

   We didn’t want to have to rush off in the morning, so we took it a bit slower than we had the day before, only setting our alarms for 8:30.  We decided to stay another night at the same hotel for the next night, so we didn’t have to pack up all our things and take all our bags with us, which was nice. Grabbed whatever we needed for the day and headed down towards the bus station, which was a short taxi ride away, finding a breakfast of chocolate croissants along the way.

   We had thought that the bus ride to Ceuta would only be an hour or so, but it turned out it was almost 2 hours, so we didn’t arrive in Ceuta (or Sebta as they call it in Arabic.  We found out that a lot of Moroccans don’t consider Ceuta part of Spain, but as a part of Morocco that is only un-rightly occupied by the Spanish) until nearly noon.  The border crossing was fine, and the Spanish passport control officer called both of our passport countries, (Swiss and Dutch) “safe good countries” and waved us through without and stamp or hardly even looking at the passports.  For the next four hours or so, we just wandered around the small peninsula and island of Ceuta, taking pictures and at one point getting a ride from this one guy who was teaching his girlfriend how to drive a standard in their BMW.  He figured we were probably lost or something and asked if we needed a ride up to the lookout point where we were headed to, which we didn’t refuse.  

   

   Ceuta is a pretty sweet place: really clean, but definitely quite the tourist place with a big harbour and cruise ships in it, dumping huge amounts of groups to go touring around.  We headed back to the border at around 4:30pm and got across again without too much hassle, only having to brush off a couple of hustlers who tried to sell us entrance forms that were provided to us once we had reached customs.  Turned out we had missed the 4:30 bus, so ended up having to wait until 7 to catch the last bus back to Tangiers, but it wasn’t too bad.  We found a little snack shop and bought some awesome sub-like sandwiches that had fries and everything in them, so that kept us entertained for a little while, otherwise we just sat around and ate spits, talking to pass the time, and trying to figure out what the Arabic signs said around the bus station.  

   The bus ride back took longer than it took going to Ceuta so we didn’t get into Tangiers until nearly 9:30, by which time a lot of the cafés were already closed, so we just decided to head back to the hotel and call it a day, but along the way we came across a café that was still open where a bunch of Moroccans were watching a football match, Barcelona versus Real Sebet. Quite the entertaining crowd, so we joined them for the remainder of the game and actually got 2 goals in that Barcelona scored, while drinking cups of sweet green tea, bringing the end score up to 4-2 in favor of the favorite team for the majority of the room, definitely Barcelona as could be seen from the pounding on tables and yelling whenever they got close to scoring or did manage to get one in.  The rest of the trip home wasn’t too eventful, walking through the alleys of the medina back to our hotel and we were only offered hashish twice before we got to our room. A good day all around.  

Rabat January 13, 2012 – Friday

   Caught the 8am train out of Casablanca port train station and arrived in Rabat shortly after 9am.  We tried using the wifi that was floating around the train station but a security guard who obviously had nothing better to do with himself and his position of power told us we were able to sit where we were, so we decided to just head and try again when we leave Rabat. Lugging all of our bags with us, we made our way from the train station towards the Medina, where we hoped to find a place to be able to stash most of our bags, so we wouldn’t have to haul them around with us the whole day.  

   

   We happened upon patisserie Majestic that we recognized from the lonely planet guide and stopped there for a bite of something fro breakfast.  Café o les, and some different types of pastries were quite enough to satisfy us both for the time being. We then proceeded on into the medina and eventually found a place where we could dump our bags in a cheap room and headed off through the medina to explore and find our way to the ocean.  

   Spent a good couple of hours walking along the coast and taking plenty of pictures out on various points and interesting rocks that we deemed to be epic picture taking spots.  Made our way around the end of the point and went and checked out the Tour de Hassan II, yet another tribute to a Hassan, and we also saw the mausoleum where Mohamed V and Hassan II are laid, all encased in marble and displayed for the public.  Spent a good chunk of time taking random pictures around the Tour Hassan where all the pillars from the old mosque still stand after the rest of the structure was destroyed in an earthquake years ago.  Got a couple of good jumping pictures with the tower in the background and even ventured some planking and hand stand ones on/against some of the pillars when we got over the fact that the security guards might kick us out for doing it.  Turned out it wasn’t that sacrilegious and we were fine.  We made our way back to our hotel room for a little bit before venturing out again to find something to eat in the later afternoon. 

  

   We found a little stand where they were selling different types of sandwich kind of things.  I still don’t know what I didn’t just take the chicken one that looked like dörner kebab, but anyways, now I know for next time.  I got the plain meat one that I thought was just beef, and Stephen got the mixed one that was the beef looking meet and this other really red sausage that we had no idea what kind of animal it had come from.  We made our way back down to the ocean through the medina to eat our food and discovered that the “beef” was actually just a lot of liver cooked up with onions and peppers and stuff, and still after eating most of his sandwich, Stephen still doesn’t know what the red sausage was.  I don’t think I have to say that we didn’t finish it all up. I had had quite enough after about half of mine, though Stephen did manage to make it almost the whole way through his.  All part of traveling, trying new things, and then knowing what to avoid when looking for the next meal.  

   We sat around the rocky beach a little bit, eating spits and just watching the waves crash into the rocks and fisherman casting their lures into the water, but never catching anything before heading back to our hotel room.  We stopped at a small hole-in-the-wall internet café on the way and checked a couple e-mails and facebook and things after we figured out how to use the keyboard that was totally set up differently. We definitely take immediate internet access for granted back home. Ha but it finally worked in the end, and we were able to let our parents know that we were still alive and rough travel plans for what we were going to be doing in the next couple of days.  Back at the hotel I had my first encounter with a squat toilet again after many years now, but it went relatively well although it was kind of wet in the bathroom. I attributed that fact to the last guy who had been in there, who by the sounds of it had had a kind of a rough time and seemed to splash around a lot and came wheezing out of the bathroom when he was done, visibly exerted over his latest antics that clearly accompanied his trips to the toilet.  Thankfully I noticed that there was no toilet paper before I went in, and was able to get some tissues from Stephen that did the job just fine.  Got to keep my eyes out tomorrow for some toilet paper somewhere, definitely should be considered a necessity when traveling around here.