Cheap Tourists

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Signs of culture shock may include: dizziness, claustrophobia, displacement, and a slightly glazed over appearance as you realize there ARE no streetsigns.

I write again from Marrakesh in something called the "cyber park" where I am mostly surrounded by other tourists with equally bad french and dressed eerily like myself. I figure I'd take the opportunity to write an entry as internet here is not always reliable, judging from the dank upstairs hole with one working computer we used yesterday in Tangier.

We set foot on African soil yesterday after taking the ferry from Tarifa, Spain to Tangier, Morocco. I had steeled myself for an onslaught of people the moment we arrived, but instead it began as a slow trickle that rapidly grew as we headed deeper into the city. Apparently, everyone here is a guide, their father is a guide, and their uncle is a guide, and he lives in the US, right near you! There was this one particularly nasty little gnat of a man who kept following us and trying to convince us that Tangier was impossible without a guide (not true). After several minutes of him running his mouth and us ignoring him, he called us cheap tourists (and something else in arabic, which I am sure was not nice).

The hassling "guides" was nothing compared to the hassling from men which was almost constant there. It's sad because it makes me distrust everyone automatically, which isn't natural for me. I have to stop myself from smiling, from appearing too friendly, from making eye-contact. It's exhausting. If anything, it's cured me of any unease I had about being seen as a "tourist." There is no way I can blend in here!

We arrived in Marrakesh early this morning, fresh off the night train where we spent 10 hours in a sweaty, close little "couchette." From the French "coucher" meaning "to go to sleep", and "ette" meaning "very little". An accurate description if I ever heard one.

I don't feel like I can give an accurate portrayal of Marrakesh/Morocco yet, so I'm going to wait on that. I don't have many decent pics yet either. How embarrassing.

Next up: Fez?

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