Bonjour, Moroc!

Hi everyone!!!!!

Guess where I am???? I'll give you a hint... West Africa... they speak French there.... What's that? Elliott, is your hand up??? You're RIGHT! Senegal! Betcha didn't know THAT!!

Actually I'm not in Senegal anymore... But I WAS!! Just the other day! Betcha didn't know THAT! We left Senegal after stopping briefly at the port in Dakar for refueling. It was awesome. We didn't leave the ship, but there were little tiny fishermen in little tiny canoes all around us as we came in to port. I got super sunburned (I'm fine) after lying out on the deck, with the vague imagery of industrial West Africa on the other side of the railing. It occurred to me, in my sun-drunk stupor (I was definitely sun drunk.. or maybe I had cabin fever), that NOBODY at home (or in Chicago or New York or Lafayette or Edinburgh or at school) had ANY idea (ANY idea) that I was in Senegal. But I was. Nanny nanny poo poo! Now I'm in the Southern hemisphere somewhere. Happy summer, everyone!

But how did I get here? Last you heard, I was in Spain! Well a lot has happened since then and THAT is what I'm here to tell you about.

Actually not that much happened. More stuff has happened to my friends lately than has happened to me. I like it that way, I think... As long as it's such stupid stuff. More on that after I tell you about what I did in Morocco.

We arrived in Casablanca and me and my friends (Kendyll, Ali, Carly, two girls named Ashley, Amanda, Jacob, and Ben) woke up early to get on a train to Marrakesh, along with just about everyone else from the M V Explorer. Walking from the ship out of the port was immediately crazy. We were bombarded by men, mainly taxi drivers, who were crazily, passionately.... inviting?? Suggesting? COMMANDING us to take their transportation services. Hell no. They were over charging by SO much, knowing we had JUST arrived in Morocco on a cruise ship. So we walked past to words and expressions designed to communicate to us how unreasonable WE were being by passing these "innocently helpful" people by... I still have to remind myself, when I'm thinking back on it, that I was in the right. They were so adeptly persuasive that they made us second-guess what we knew. And what we knew was not to trust them. But anyway, we DIDN'T trust them and were rewarded by cheap rides in "Petit Taxi"s to the train station. Have you ever played Crazy Taxi? The video game? Well there seem to be NO traffic laws in Morocco- in Africa, for that matter. It is JUST like crazy taxi. I had to close my eyes multiple times.

The train ride was pleasant. Kendyll and I sat in a compartment with the ship's Art History professor and his wife. They were REALLY cool. They kind of reminded me of your parents, Lexsea... but not as cool. PS say hi to your parents for me! We talked about traveling... Ok I'm going to skip to the next thing.

THEN we arrived in Marrakesh and went straight to the Place Djemma el Fna. We had arranged to meet up with our friend Colin there the next day and I remembered it from the last time I was in Marrakesh so that's where we decided to search for a hotel. I don't know about you but I'm having trouble with the spelling of Marrakesh and Morocco back to back. I know how to spell them but Marrakesh has two "r"s and Morocco only has one but it has two "c"s... So if I get it wrong in this post please know that I DO know how to spell both.

We found what was actually a fairly cool hotel. We each paid 80 Dirham which is pretty close to $8.00 for the night. Pretty much everyone in our group hated it because the blankets on the beds were like ancient woolen ones from... who knows where. But I slept great. We had clean sheets, two person rooms with their own bathrooms, and a pretty little view out into a very private and ornate little courtyard. Oh, and did I mention that when we walked out of the lobby, we were IN Marrakesh's main square????? It was cool. We decided to only spend one night there though because people were uncomfortable. I didn't mind leaving to tell the truth.

We spent our time in Marrakesh mainly eating and shopping. The square is surrounded by maze-like crazy markets or "Souks". You could absolutely get lost in them VERY easily (we did, twice). What blows my mind is that the shopkeepers in the touristy parts are all selling the exact same stuff. The exact same T-shirts, the exact same rip-off designer stuff, the exact same shoes and bags and hookahs.. I don't know how they survive. I managed to not spend too much money, in the end I bought a pair of shoes for 12 or so dollars (I ended up throwing them out because I made the mistake of wearing them for like half an hour in Casablanca and after that they ABSOLUTELY smelled exactly like poop).

We really enjoyed the food. We had a lot of couscous and Tagine and mint tea. Tagine is the main Moroccan dish that you find everywhere you go. It's usually some sort of meat (chicken for me) and some vegetables (sometimes with french fries, my favorite) served in a clay dish that comes with this weird conical top on it to keep it warm. The best waiters kind of flourish the conical top as they serve it and steam comes up off of it smelling delicious. As for the mint tea, it is THE best. Absolutely the sweetest, minty-est tea I've ever had. It's as simple as that.

The center of the square goes CRAZY at night. All day there are women with henna stands, men selling orange juice (SKETCHY), men with monkeys and snakes that they'll literally throw on you if you're not careful and then demand money. But at night bagillions of other people show up. I do NOT know who these people are but they come literally in droves (I think.. I'm not positive what actually constitutes a drove)... They mostly end up standing around street performers who say things in Arabic that I couldn't really understand and kind of dance.. I didn't really watch the street performers much. What I DID watch, standing in the crowded circle around a shirtless guy with long white hair who appeared to be dancing, were the men in baggy coats who would walk around the circle. These men were clearly not watching the show. They weren't even watching the people. Their focus was on the waist area of the audience-members. They carefully took in the vulnerability of people's camera cases and purses and pockets. My friends and I had all stowed our stuff away so obsessively as to be almost paranoid so I wasn't worried about our group and fortunately nothing of ours was stolen, but it was a real wake up call.

The next day, after pretty much failing to meet up with Colin (it's ok, he was with other people) we wandered around with this crazy, 5'4'' SAS guy named Jake. Jake has a napoleon complex. Also he has medusa hair, piercings on his nose, eyebrow, lip, two biceps, and hip. Plus a tattoo or two. By this point, our group consisted of Ali, Kendyll, Carly, and myself, the Ashleys and Amanda having left on an earlier train back to the ship. Apparently Kendyll kind of knew Jake but I'm pretty much still not sure how we wound up with him. In a nutshell, he represented himself to us as an experienced traveler, fluent in French, and great at making friends with "the locals". We became gradually disenchanted of this impression, beginning at lunch when he asked our waiter for "le check". From then on it became more and more clear that, although I guess his parents spoke French, he only believed that he did. In fact what he did instead was use a bizarre French/Arabic accent, bad grammar, and too much volume as he spoke English to waiters, shopkeepers, the people at the train station etc. I've heard of people doing this but I've never seen it in action. I assumed if someone DID talk like that, then that someone was probably an old, racist, white geriatric or something, not a young hippie, self-proclaimed citizen of the world. Example: I was buying those shoes I told you about, that I ended up throwing out. I was doing really well with the shopkeeper. I think he asked me for like $20 and I told him, truthfully, that my friend Ali had gotten a pair just like them from another shopkeeper for $10. I made it clear I wasn't going to pay more than that. Suddenly, out of the blue, Jake storms into the shop, turns to me and dramatically says "NO NO! HE NO UNDERSTAND YOU" but with an accent. Then he turns to the man and says "CHEE-PAIR" (cheaper) "CHEE-PAIR". I ended up paying $12 instead of $10 because I was just embarrassed and wanted to get out of there.. Pretty much the same thing happened at another little stall. My friends and I were inside talking to the guys who worked there. They were about our age and both of them spoke English fluently (one had studied at I forget which college in New York for a year). Suddenly, Jake, who had been out in front of the stall negotiating over a T-shirt makes a HUGE fuss shouting "NO NO NO! COME, FRIENDS! WE MUST LEAVE! THIS MAN DISRESPECT ME! HIS PRICE- RIDICULOUS! COME, FRIENDS! THIS MAN VERRRRRRY RUDE". We were like, seeya Jake YOU storm out, we'll finish our conversation. So he did and we did. Apparently the man Jake had been negotiating with ended up insulting him by calling him "George Bush's son" and a "terrorist" NOT kidding. Way to fit in/befriend "the locals"! The rest of us kind of just laughed, apologetically with the guys we had been talking to.

So then we made our way back to the ship. We drank some wine on the train and made friends with the middle aged Moroccan woman in our first class compartment (first class is like $12 versus $8). Her name was Layla so we sang Eric Clapton to her several times. I think she liked it.

As for the stories I hinted I'd tell about friends doing stupid things, one was the story of Jake, and there are two more which I'll briefly describe:

1. Our friends Jacob and Ben ended up going skiing with one of the Southern boys "Beer" (it's his last name but everyone calls him that). They had a nice day of skiing, believe it or not, but afterward were caught in a late night snow storm and unable to get a taxi. Unfortunately they had also just about run out of money and didn't have enough to stay at the mountain lodge and get a cab the next morning. They ended up paying a guy in a truck $40 to take them down the mountain which took hours and involved long, freezing negotiations in the dark (none of the guys spoke French) and like 10 other Moroccan guys piling into the truck. Jacob told me he was pretty sure they were going to AT LEAST get mugged. I would have mugged them. But they made it unscathed, believe it or not.

2. Back on board the ship, leaving Morocco, we went through CRAZY rocky waters. I'm not really sure why although I'm sure it was explained at some point. Our Southern friends decided to go to the Union which is at the bow (if that means the front) of the ship, the rockiest part during turbulence. We had been advised to be in our rooms, seated, with our possessions well-stowed but they were like, "Let's see if we can run all the way across the union and survive!" Two of the three of them ended up with canes and one ended up with a broken wrist. AND everyone's parents got an email being like, "Some people were injured in the crazy turbulence- DON'T WORRY!" Fools. Kendyll and I stayed in our rooms and ALL our furniture (beds, table, chair, bedside tables) slid all the way across the room TWICE. The beds slid even though we were IN them!

I'll write an update about Neptune Day (the wild and crazy festive day when we celebrated crossing the equator) sometime in the near future.

LOVE to you all!!!

Martha

PS I'm going to be arriving in Namibia on Valentine's Day, in case you were wondering what's next on the agenda.