Day 18 (09-13-10)

I don’t have any plans today… hmmm. Grabbed some breakfast and started writing out some postcards afterwards. A few of us wandered around Casablanca through the marketplace for a couple hours before coming back to the ship. Something about the heat here is just draining all of my energy. It makes me rather glad that I didn’t have to endure that awful Philadelphia heat this past summer. After a nap and some blogging, I decided to be a bit more productive, and a group of us went out into town to find some dinner and to go through the marketplace again. I’m not much of a shopper, but there are a few specific things in Morocco that I can’t leave without. Well, I can. I’d just prefer not to. I’ll let you know afterwards whether or not I actually find them all in the next two days.

Dinner wasn’t anything noteworthy, and the shopping didn’t even pan out. Too exhausted to even care at this point, and starting to feel a little bit under the weather. But we watched Aladdin tonight, and that was a highlight for the day. People kept singing Street Rat and Arabian Nights while we made our way through the souks in Fes and Casablanca, and it just made me want to watch Aladdin. It’s been years since I had last seen that movie in its entirety, and it’s much better than I remember. Kudos to Disney.

I’ve told myself that I’m waking up for breakfast tomorrow and then going out into Casablanca again afterwards, but we’ll see how it happens.

Day 19 (09-14-10)

Made it up for breakfast. But then went right back to sleep until noon. I’m still not feeling that great, but the nap afterwards definitely helped. For my last day in Morocco, I took my mandatory alone time (I try to spend at least an hour by myself in each country to clear my head and take things in) wandering deeper into the marketplace trying to get myself lost. Afterwards, I headed to the Hassan II Mosque, the world’s 3rd largest, and it was incredible. I chose not to take the tour because mosques typically don’t allow non-Muslims inside, and I never feel quite right walking through places of worhip when I’m not of a particular faith, especially one that focuses on religion so fervently. But the scale of the building was incredible, with the Minaret (tower) of the building standing 689 feet, taller than any other mosque in the world. I wasn’t sure if I would be able to make it to the mosque while in Casablanca, but now I’m definitely glad I made the trip.

I found a friend at the mosque and we walked back to the ship comparing notes and stories on our experiences in the country. It’s always fairly repetitive in the days following a port to come back and hear people glance over their stories again and again, so it’s nice to have some one-on-one time to get into more detail about personal aspects of the trips. We chatted it up during the 40-minute walk back to the gate, and were back on the ship by 3pm. The cement factory in this industrialized port was busy churning out dust that has covered basically everything on the ship’s outside decks, so I’m assuming my sickly feelings have stemmed from the concrete that’s been hardening in my lungs for the past 48 hours. Awesome. Shower two of the day is absolutely necessary after another day in the African sun (but at least I’m not as pale as I had been before), and then dinnertime ensued.

As the ship left the port, I was hoping to slide around on the tile floor like the last time we left Morocco, but the ship didn’t need to make the same maneuver. So I had a group of 15 people sitting around on the floor in socks like goofballs waiting for an event that didn’t happen. Oh well. My buddy Howard taught us a random concentration-type chanting game called Toki Toki or something. We had about 20 people (including Dean Daivd Gies) sitting on the floor in Tymitz Square (the ship’s lobby) playing this ridiculous game and chanting while dozens of people watched from the balcony above. It was highly entertaining.

All of the students on the ship are in discussion groups that were given to us upon initial debarkation in Canada, and we meet after each port to have small post-port reflection sessions. I slept through the first 2 meetings that these groups have had (naturally), so tonight was the first time I had ever gone, and I definitely did not join my assigned group. Oh well. The stories I’ve become so accustomed to hearing were shared amongst the group. Camel treks. Berber village overnight stays. Fes. Marrakech. Meeting local families and going home with them. Random anti-American sentiments. The usual. I love how these things seem normal for me. They’re still amazing to hear about, and I don’t mean to diminish their importance by making them seem commonplace because they are anything but. It’s just cool to know where people are coming from because of firsthand experience, and to know just how rewarding and eye-opening their time has been.

Oh and I watched Wedding Crashers tonight. I hadn’t seen it for quite some time, and it was mentioned in conversation today so I had to watch it. Hilarious. Class again tomorrow? We’ve just had 11 days off from schoolwork, and now I have to go back? I am not enthused. But I can’t complain. After 6 days in Morocco and 5 in Spain, I suppose I can handle day number 7 of class during a semester that started 19 days ago. Rough life. A week at sea begins tonight! Farewell Morocco, here’s looking at you.