Heading to MOROCCO

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Reed’s Entry

Stop 2: المغرب

For some ungodly reason, Sha woke me up. While some may think of “2:45 pm” as a reasonable time, I submit that they have never come between me and any bit of sleep I can get my hands on. Eleni, who can easily live off of 12 hours of sleep a week, was already prepared to get off the plane and knew better than to be the person to wake me up. As I groggily gathered my belongings, while silently cursing the sun, I took a look out to the landscape we were flying over. As we got closer to landing, we got a chance to see Fez before landing right outside of the city. We saw the beautiful stone structures of the city that just gives you a sense that the city has been there long before we were born, and will remain for long after we have passed.









The second we landed, we were enamored with a sense of wonder that not only were we on another continent, but that we can do whatever we want in a foreign country with no parental supervision. Despite my insistence that we cartwheel our way to the Dar Batha Museum in downtown Fez, we took a cab instead. Immediately, my four years of arabic language and culture classes made me try and talk to the driver in Arabic, as Eleni and Sha watched on with the same kind of embarrassment that one watches their dad make bad jokes with. I had forgotten that Arabic in Morocco (or مغرب as its named in Arabic) is a separate dialect than what I had learned. So despite what I thought was an “In” with the predominantly arab culture of Morocco, turned out to be some minor offensive statements. Thankfully, Eleni spoke french, and because of assimilated french aspects of culture, the language is still in use today. So when we arrived at Dar Batha museum at 3:40 pm we (I) had already insulted the first Moroccan we met, so we figured that the day could only get better. After the museum, which showed centuries of moroccan culture that we could barely fathom, we decided that we needed to get back to the airport. After getting in a taxi, we were prepared to take a 7:30 flight up to France, but were immediately surprised when we got there. Not only was the plane not there, but because of issues with my passport, which were left undisclosed to us, we had to stay overnight for some extensive background checks with the State Department in D.C. We were fed a small Moroccan dinner ofشاورمة مع شاي or Shawerma which is a kind of meat and vegetable wrap with tea. When we woke up the next day at sunrise, we heard the last call for our flight that was delayed 12 hours, we took the 6 o’ clock flight and left morocco, all of us with the memories from what has to be the oddest day we had ever experienced.

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