Remember how I said I was going to a beach this weekend? Well, I definitely made it to a beach. It was beautiful; I'll post a few pictures of it once I get them on my computer. There were a few things that happened, though, that will probably provide some amusement for my friends especially in the Western world. Be forewarned--this is going to be a long post.
Getting to the town by which the beach was located wasn't a problem. The town is called Asilah, and it's a very cute town. My friends and I wandered around the medina a bit the first day we got there, and the second day, we decided it was time to go to the beach. We tried a beach just next to the medina, but it was rocky and there was trash everywhere and it was probably the length of a football field. Not exactly the awesome beach we'd been promised. Thus, we wandered back into the medina and met a really nice Rastafarian guy who apparently lived there and knew the beaches. He got us a horse cart to take us to the "Paradise Beach."
I'll say this right now: horse carts are not as romantic as they appear in the movies. The cart on which we rode was basically a flat deck on wheels and was connected directly to the horse with no suspension whatsoever. That doesn't seem like an issue until the horse starts trotting/jogging and you realize that you can feel every single step the horse takes. Bonus: the horse's bouncing is magnified because the arms and bed of the cart act as levers. In addition to all this horsey bouncing, the side roads in Morocco have a lot of potholes and such, and since the cart has no suspension, you feel every single one of those, too.
That's child's play compared with the highway, especially on the way back from the beach.
Apparently horse carts don't adhere to the same traffic laws everybody else does. This means the cart will take the quickest route possible from point A to point B. Unfortunately, the quickest route occasionally entails going the wrong way on an 80 km/hr highway. If that's not terrifying, I don't know what is. On the way to the beach, it isn't really a problem, since traffic is going that direction, but on the way back, it can be a problem. I was facing backwards, so I didn't get the full effect, but the occasional shrieks from the people in front were enough.
It sounds awful, but it was actually insanely fun, in a heart-pounding, muscle-tensing sort of way. It was better than a roller-coaster because the danger of falling off was actually quite real, which made each moment that much more exciting. Every Moroccan we saw giggled at us. They probably knew what sort of tomfoolery was involved in riding on a horse cart.
The first sort of bad thing happened on the beach when a very creepy older guy started talking to my group and wouldn't go away. He also started hitting on the girls, which was no fun. Ah, the joys of being female in a foreign country.
We should have heeded this omen (and the previous omen, in which one of our group had an unfortunate and painful--but happily not life-threatening--accident), but we didn't. Oh no. We had more snafus to encounter in the next 24 hours.
We pretty much had to run to get to the train station on time, in an eerie repeat of our performance on the way to Asilah. By the time we got to the train station and obtained a few "pizzas," we were told by an upsettingly lackadaisical ticket agent that our train was, in fact, going to be forty minutes late, so all our rushing was in vain. We decided to make the best of it and go eat our "pizzas," which were little more than tough bread with a veneer of tomato sauce and some cheese and mystery toppings.
At last the ticket agent deigned to sell us tickets, and soon after that, our train came. During the rush to get on the train, the group got separated into two different second class cabins. Normally that wouldn't be an issue, except that in this case, in an inspired moment of scintillating asininity, someone had decided to put a first class cabin in between the second class cabins. This meant that our group could not get back together. To add insult to injury, there was only standing room in the carriage my part of the group had boarded, and we were some of the last to board, which meant that we were standing next to the carriage bathroom. The problem here was twofold: first, we were standing sardine-like in a high-traffic area, and second, train bathrooms are not renowned for their cleanliness. I think the last time this particular bathroom had been cleaned was when it was built. I'm sure you can imagine how it smelled. All that was the second bad thing.
At least we were on the train at this point and it was moving.
For the moment, that is.
Probably fifteen or 20 minutes into the ride, the train lights suddenly flickered and went out, and the train screeched to a halt. Someone had opened the door to our carriage to let a bit of fresh air in and have a smoke, which I thought was a really bad idea considering that the train goes in the vicinity of 100 km/hr at its fastest. At first we figured that opening the door had caused the problem, but it turned out that the carriage in which the other part of my group was riding had somehow broken down and had to be fixed.
We ended up standing there in that entryway, by the stinky toilet in which three guys decided to smoke hash, for probably half an hour. I was really tired by this time, so my recollection of time may be off. Anyway, the train finally started moving again after that half hour, and we contacted the rest of the group--thank goodness for cell phones--to coordinate positions. All that constituted the third bad thing. It wasn't all bad; there was a kind Moroccan gentlemen who had some essential oils or something with him which he used to occasionally alleviate the smell of the bathroom.
When the train arrived at the next stop, my part of the group hopped off and then back on again in the somewhat nicer carriage in which the other part had ended up. We reconnoitered for a while and finally found places to sit and more or less sleep.
The train had been moving about long enough for us to get back to Meknes, where we were supposed to get off, when someone peeked out the window and realized that the train was stopping in Kenitra. This would have been okay if we had wanted to go to Rabat, which is on the coast. Unfortunately, Meknes is a good hour and a half to two hours inland from there by train. Apparently we were supposed to change trains at some point a good distance back, and we had not noticed this little tidbit printed on our tickets. Another friendly Moroccan gentleman told us we could get off in Sale, which is right across a river from Rabat, and go back to Meknes from there. We got off and went to the ticket counter immediately, where we learned, to our dismay, that the next train from Sale to Meknes left at 11:25 at night, an hour after we had arrived in Sale. Again, this normally wouldn't be a problem, except that we needed to be back for Monday morning classes and Grand Taxis stop running at 11 and don't start again until 5. It looked like we would be spending the night in Meknes, so we started calling around for hotels in Meknes. Courtesy our invaluable Francophone, we found one for 50Dhs per person.
The time came for our train to arrive. We waited five minutes past the correct time and then noticed that the sign said it was now delayed by 30 minutes. Fantastic. All that was the third bad thing.
Finally, after all this ado, we arrived in Meknes and got to the hotel. The train had been freezing cold, and we were all shivering or close to it, so we were hoping for warm rooms. Apparently such rooms are not to be had in Meknes for 50Dhs per person. I have trained with heavy punching bags that had more give than these beds. The bedsheets were torn and looked like they hadn't been washed in weeks, and the blankets smelled weird. I slept in my clothes. The running water in one of the rooms didn't work at all, and in the other, there was mystery hair in the sink. There were two toilets; one was a regular toilet and the other was the hole-in-the-floor kind. Neither of them flushed normally. After we left the hotel the next morning, we figured out that flushing was the reason there was a little bucket next to a tap in each of the bathrooms. These bathrooms also were lacking in the hygiene department, and had probably not been cleaned even before they were put in.
Oh well. At least we had a roof over our heads. This might have been a fourth bad thing. There's still some debate as to whether the hotel was the fourth bad thing or the "pizzas" were or my friend's accident was, or if maybe there were five or six things. There's also debate about whether or not the Bad Things Meter resets at midnight, which would have meant that the hotel incident started a new chain of bad things.
Anyway, after this adventure, we at long last got a Grand Taxi back to Ifrane and arrived at the university at about 11. As I sit here now on my relatively comfortable bed with my computer on my lap and access to the interwebs, it feels like ages ago that all this happened. Looking back, I can see the hilarity of our situation, but at the time, it felt awful. I tried to console myself with the thought of how I could put everything in my blog, but that idea didn't hold up well once we passed Kenitra. It's all here now, though, and I'm chuckling about it as I write. At least it's something I can tell kids about when I'm crotchety and old and people can teleport wherever they want and don't have to deal with the ins and outs of ground transportation anymore.
"Dern kids. In my day, people missed trains instead of just getting lost in little pieces somewhere in the atmosphere or the digital world or whatever the heck place you younguns jabber on about. Trains were actually something to complain about!"
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Friday, October 19, 2012
Laundry and Liver
I think we're about due for a culture post now. I haven't done one in a while and there have been a few semi-interesting things that happened, so this seems like an opportune time. I also just finished midterms and am thus suddenly possessed of strangely large amounts of free time. Brace yourselves; silliness is coming.
Let's start with laundry. I recently whined on Facebook about how attempting conversation with the laundry ladies underscores my lack of language skills. It's true; there really is nothing like trying to talk about laundry to show you how much you actually know about a language, or at least how much you know under pressure.
The episode that sparked this particular bout of "oy vey" had to do with signing in to the laundry room. I'd never had to do that before, mainly because the laundry logbook of legend was just that--a legend. This past time, though, it precipitously appeared from its magical resting place, so I had to sign in, and it was way more difficult than I expected. I had to do all the obvious stuff, like sign my name and so forth, but apparently I also had to write down my room number. The laundry lady must have thought I was an ignorant cretin; in spite of her advanced proficiency in Charades, it took me a solid thirty seconds to understand what needed to happen.
The really sad thing is that I actually speak Modern Standard Arabic well enough to facilitate exactly this type of conversation, and so do the laundry ladies. I know how to talk about room numbers and where I live and all that kind of stuff. It honestly isn't that difficult. Unfortunately, my mind was a total blank, as it is right now as I'm trying to think of a clever simile for the blankness of my mind. Yeah, not going to happen. Anyway, the moment I finished writing everything down and stepped outside the door, all my Arabic suddenly rushed back into my head, confirming the laundry lady's probable estimation of me, or at least of my memory. So it goes.
Now for liver.
This was, in fact, not my first encounter with liver. I have sampled liverwurst on purpose at home and immediately regretted the decision. If even the cat doesn't eat it, you know it's bad. Here, though, was the first time I've ever had non-processed liver, and I can honestly say it's one of the worst-tasting things I've ever eaten. In my defense, it was by accident. The comparison that came most readily to mind was cow poo. I tried not to think about it while I was eating the liver, but as far as flavor goes, liver tastes exactly like cow poo. (Point of information: yes, I do know what cow poo tastes like due to an unfortunate turn of events in which said poo was splattered on my face and into my mouth. Yuck.) It also has a really weird consistency; it's like it wants to be real meat with a grain and everything, but doesn't have the structural integrity necessary. It sort of falls apart in the mouth, and not in a good way, or at least it would if it didn't have weird bits of membrane scattered throughout.
Even massive amounts of ketchup couldn't mask the horror that is liver. I managed to gulp it down by breathing in while chewing and chewing as little as possible before swallowing the stuff mostly whole. My gag reflex kept attempting to bring it back up, but through a massive exertion of willpower, I managed to keep it down. It was good for me, I guess, since it had a lot of iron in it and I have recently felt kind of low on iron for some reason.
That doesn't mean I will ever seek liver out. I now inspect the meat extremely closely to make sure it's not super dark with little bits of membrane everywhere. There is no way liver will ever pass my lips again unless I really need to be polite to someone.
Well, I think that's a gracious plenty for now. I'm going to another beach this weekend, in spite of the fact that it's supposed to rain. We shall see. I'll take pictures regardless of the weather, though.
Until we meet again at some undefined point in the future...
Let's start with laundry. I recently whined on Facebook about how attempting conversation with the laundry ladies underscores my lack of language skills. It's true; there really is nothing like trying to talk about laundry to show you how much you actually know about a language, or at least how much you know under pressure.
The episode that sparked this particular bout of "oy vey" had to do with signing in to the laundry room. I'd never had to do that before, mainly because the laundry logbook of legend was just that--a legend. This past time, though, it precipitously appeared from its magical resting place, so I had to sign in, and it was way more difficult than I expected. I had to do all the obvious stuff, like sign my name and so forth, but apparently I also had to write down my room number. The laundry lady must have thought I was an ignorant cretin; in spite of her advanced proficiency in Charades, it took me a solid thirty seconds to understand what needed to happen.
The really sad thing is that I actually speak Modern Standard Arabic well enough to facilitate exactly this type of conversation, and so do the laundry ladies. I know how to talk about room numbers and where I live and all that kind of stuff. It honestly isn't that difficult. Unfortunately, my mind was a total blank, as it is right now as I'm trying to think of a clever simile for the blankness of my mind. Yeah, not going to happen. Anyway, the moment I finished writing everything down and stepped outside the door, all my Arabic suddenly rushed back into my head, confirming the laundry lady's probable estimation of me, or at least of my memory. So it goes.
Now for liver.
This was, in fact, not my first encounter with liver. I have sampled liverwurst on purpose at home and immediately regretted the decision. If even the cat doesn't eat it, you know it's bad. Here, though, was the first time I've ever had non-processed liver, and I can honestly say it's one of the worst-tasting things I've ever eaten. In my defense, it was by accident. The comparison that came most readily to mind was cow poo. I tried not to think about it while I was eating the liver, but as far as flavor goes, liver tastes exactly like cow poo. (Point of information: yes, I do know what cow poo tastes like due to an unfortunate turn of events in which said poo was splattered on my face and into my mouth. Yuck.) It also has a really weird consistency; it's like it wants to be real meat with a grain and everything, but doesn't have the structural integrity necessary. It sort of falls apart in the mouth, and not in a good way, or at least it would if it didn't have weird bits of membrane scattered throughout.
Even massive amounts of ketchup couldn't mask the horror that is liver. I managed to gulp it down by breathing in while chewing and chewing as little as possible before swallowing the stuff mostly whole. My gag reflex kept attempting to bring it back up, but through a massive exertion of willpower, I managed to keep it down. It was good for me, I guess, since it had a lot of iron in it and I have recently felt kind of low on iron for some reason.
That doesn't mean I will ever seek liver out. I now inspect the meat extremely closely to make sure it's not super dark with little bits of membrane everywhere. There is no way liver will ever pass my lips again unless I really need to be polite to someone.
Well, I think that's a gracious plenty for now. I'm going to another beach this weekend, in spite of the fact that it's supposed to rain. We shall see. I'll take pictures regardless of the weather, though.
Until we meet again at some undefined point in the future...
Monday, October 15, 2012
The Criscuit Saga
The name will make sense if you read the (admittedly very long) post, okay? This was a long and traumatic experience and the things that came out of it were... well, they weren't cookies, that's a fact.
It all started quite a while ago, actually. A few friends and I were craving real, home-baked chocolate chip cookies, because the closest things you can get to that here are uber-crunchy Chips Ahoy. We didn't get to try to make the cookies until last weekend, though (not the one that ended yesterday, but the one before that).
First of all, it's impossible to find brown sugar in Boondocks, Morocco, or really anywhere outside the US and probably Canada, apparently. Maybe you can find it in the UK. I don't know. Anyway, the point is brown sugar cannot be had for any price here. Neither, apparently, can vanilla extract or baking soda. After over an hour of wandering around the local market, we finally were forced to come to the conclusion that we were not, in fact, going to find real vanilla or any variety of baking soda. Thus, we trekked back to campus to begin our preparations.
Fortunately, there's no shortage of recipes for chocolate chip cookies without brown sugar. Without vanilla and baking soda, though, is a totally different story. It seems that in order to make chocolate chip cookies without baking soda, you need brown sugar, and vice versa. We had to improvise. I'd used Coca-Cola before to make stuff rise a bit, so I figured we could probably use that. (Note the use of the word "figured.") We were already basically making everything up as we went; what was one more little substitution, right?
Once we finally got all our ingredients together, we realized we had no real dishes to bake or mix in except a tiny saucepan (dirty), two soup spoons (also dirty), and a basting tray (disgusting). In an uncharacteristic stroke of luck, I happened to have dishwashing liquid, so we were saved from having to make food with other people's germs on it. We also had no real oven; just convection ovens. It was at this point that we began to seriously question our plan, or lack thereof.
First we had to break the chocolate into chunks, because there's no such thing as chocolate chips here. That took the longest, but it was tasty. Since I don't tend to document anything well, it didn't occur to me to take pictures until well after the chocolate phase. Oh well.
When we were done, we had a ton of chocolate chunks. We guessed it was probably in the vicinity of maybe two cups. (Note how certain we are at this point about measurements.) I then realized that all the measurements in the recipe were in cups, not grams or liters. Great. Fancy math must happen. Fortunately, there exist on the internet converters for cups of XYZ substance--butter, for example--to grams. The flour conversion really didn't seem right, though, so we started guesstimating based on the ratios in the recipe. (Yes, this process was highly scientific and precise and accurate measurements were used at every juncture.) We piled everything into the saucepan just in time to realize that it might not fit. Stirring was a very interesting exercise and resulted in multiple flour puffs.
After much ado, we decided it would be easier to take the batter out of the saucepan and knead stuff into it instead of trying to stir it, which was rapidly becoming a messy and inefficient modus operandi. We now knew for certain that any sort of traditional cookie was completely impossible, so we basically were just trying to make something edible.
Once we had gotten most everything kneaded into the dough (it was definitely not batter at this point), I realized I'd forgotten the Coke and vanilla sugar. I made a little brew in the bottom of the saucepan, and back went the dough. It ended up looking like this:
(Those hands belong to my lovely friend who was also part of this venture.)
Basically looks like batter after we added the Coke, right? It would have been much more like batter except that it had Paula Deen-worthy amounts of butter in it, in spite of the fact that everything in the recipe was measured relative to the butter. I still have no idea how that worked.
At long last, we got the cookies into the convection oven, after Googling convection oven and regular oven differences and trying to figure out how to turn the dangnabbed contraption on.
At first we turned it on what we thought was low, just to make sure we didn't torch the cookies, because apparently that's a distinct possibility in a convection oven. Turns out the little picture that looks like it should mean low actually means just the bottom element is on. Guess what the cookie tray was sitting on. Yes, that would be why only the bottom of the cookies looks like it's cooking.
It took us a few minutes to figure this out, so we had to move the cookies up onto the top rack to cook the tops, too. The top element heated unevenly, so we also had to spin the tray around every now and again to at least attempt to cook everything the same amount.
Just before the Last Trump, after about two hours of toil, the cookies were done.
That's my hand to the left, for scale. Those of you who know me in real life know that I have rather large (basically man-size) hands. That should give you an idea of how big those "cookies" were. They were also about an inch thick in the middle.
Of course, it's now abundantly obvious that those monsters are not, strictly speaking, cookies. Neither are they biscuits or scones, though, so another friend dubbed them criscuits. Surprisingly, they were pretty tasty, though they didn't quite taste like regular chocolate chip cookies and obviously they didn't have the right texture, either, seeing as they lacked baking soda and had an overabundance of butter. Oh well; it momentarily satisfied the comfort food craving. Nom nom nom.
Thus ends the criscuit saga.
It all started quite a while ago, actually. A few friends and I were craving real, home-baked chocolate chip cookies, because the closest things you can get to that here are uber-crunchy Chips Ahoy. We didn't get to try to make the cookies until last weekend, though (not the one that ended yesterday, but the one before that).
First of all, it's impossible to find brown sugar in Boondocks, Morocco, or really anywhere outside the US and probably Canada, apparently. Maybe you can find it in the UK. I don't know. Anyway, the point is brown sugar cannot be had for any price here. Neither, apparently, can vanilla extract or baking soda. After over an hour of wandering around the local market, we finally were forced to come to the conclusion that we were not, in fact, going to find real vanilla or any variety of baking soda. Thus, we trekked back to campus to begin our preparations.
Fortunately, there's no shortage of recipes for chocolate chip cookies without brown sugar. Without vanilla and baking soda, though, is a totally different story. It seems that in order to make chocolate chip cookies without baking soda, you need brown sugar, and vice versa. We had to improvise. I'd used Coca-Cola before to make stuff rise a bit, so I figured we could probably use that. (Note the use of the word "figured.") We were already basically making everything up as we went; what was one more little substitution, right?
Once we finally got all our ingredients together, we realized we had no real dishes to bake or mix in except a tiny saucepan (dirty), two soup spoons (also dirty), and a basting tray (disgusting). In an uncharacteristic stroke of luck, I happened to have dishwashing liquid, so we were saved from having to make food with other people's germs on it. We also had no real oven; just convection ovens. It was at this point that we began to seriously question our plan, or lack thereof.
First we had to break the chocolate into chunks, because there's no such thing as chocolate chips here. That took the longest, but it was tasty. Since I don't tend to document anything well, it didn't occur to me to take pictures until well after the chocolate phase. Oh well.
When we were done, we had a ton of chocolate chunks. We guessed it was probably in the vicinity of maybe two cups. (Note how certain we are at this point about measurements.) I then realized that all the measurements in the recipe were in cups, not grams or liters. Great. Fancy math must happen. Fortunately, there exist on the internet converters for cups of XYZ substance--butter, for example--to grams. The flour conversion really didn't seem right, though, so we started guesstimating based on the ratios in the recipe. (Yes, this process was highly scientific and precise and accurate measurements were used at every juncture.) We piled everything into the saucepan just in time to realize that it might not fit. Stirring was a very interesting exercise and resulted in multiple flour puffs.
After much ado, we decided it would be easier to take the batter out of the saucepan and knead stuff into it instead of trying to stir it, which was rapidly becoming a messy and inefficient modus operandi. We now knew for certain that any sort of traditional cookie was completely impossible, so we basically were just trying to make something edible.
Once we had gotten most everything kneaded into the dough (it was definitely not batter at this point), I realized I'd forgotten the Coke and vanilla sugar. I made a little brew in the bottom of the saucepan, and back went the dough. It ended up looking like this:
(Those hands belong to my lovely friend who was also part of this venture.)
Basically looks like batter after we added the Coke, right? It would have been much more like batter except that it had Paula Deen-worthy amounts of butter in it, in spite of the fact that everything in the recipe was measured relative to the butter. I still have no idea how that worked.
At long last, we got the cookies into the convection oven, after Googling convection oven and regular oven differences and trying to figure out how to turn the dangnabbed contraption on.
At first we turned it on what we thought was low, just to make sure we didn't torch the cookies, because apparently that's a distinct possibility in a convection oven. Turns out the little picture that looks like it should mean low actually means just the bottom element is on. Guess what the cookie tray was sitting on. Yes, that would be why only the bottom of the cookies looks like it's cooking.
It took us a few minutes to figure this out, so we had to move the cookies up onto the top rack to cook the tops, too. The top element heated unevenly, so we also had to spin the tray around every now and again to at least attempt to cook everything the same amount.
Just before the Last Trump, after about two hours of toil, the cookies were done.
That's my hand to the left, for scale. Those of you who know me in real life know that I have rather large (basically man-size) hands. That should give you an idea of how big those "cookies" were. They were also about an inch thick in the middle.
Of course, it's now abundantly obvious that those monsters are not, strictly speaking, cookies. Neither are they biscuits or scones, though, so another friend dubbed them criscuits. Surprisingly, they were pretty tasty, though they didn't quite taste like regular chocolate chip cookies and obviously they didn't have the right texture, either, seeing as they lacked baking soda and had an overabundance of butter. Oh well; it momentarily satisfied the comfort food craving. Nom nom nom.
Thus ends the criscuit saga.
Monday, October 8, 2012
Busy busy busy
That's why I haven't been posting lately. Lots of things have been going on here, but sadly not all of them have been particularly interesting. Midterms are already upon us and I doubt you all would want to read about the duties of the Umayyad and 'Abbasid caliphs, so I don't have that much noteworthy material to choose from.
Never fear, though; I do, as usual, have pictures!
Yes, that is a picture of my feet, and yes, it is here on purpose. It's almost impossible to upload pictures to Blogger accidentally since Blogger will hate me if I don't resize them all from 4000x3000 to something more manageable. Anyway, the reason I took this picture is to show off exactly how much I've been wearing flip-flops. My friends call it the X-Men tan for obvious reasons, and it's even more pronounced now than it was two weeks ago when I took this picture.
This is the beach I went to three weeks ago. The water was pretty cold most places, but there were a few little tidepool-type things that were a bit warmer. The air and sun were fairly hot, though, so at least the water felt sort of good if you just put your feet/lower legs in it. Any more than that and it got very uncomfortable very quickly.
Indonesian culture night! The two men in suits in the middle are the Indonesian ambassador to Morocco and the president of the university. The performers danced traditional Indonesian dances and played some angklung music, which was really cool.
This is part of the Bab al-Mansour in Meknes at the main entrance to the old medina. It's a huge tourist attraction, as evidenced by the fact that a bus stops there about every 15 minutes and lets out a load of people armed with DSLRs, sun hats, and guidebooks.
The Bab proper. I couldn't get a straight-on view of it because I would have gotten run over by one of the aforementioned buses or perhaps a city bus. Obviously there were also a bunch of people in the way.
Kitty! He was hanging out at the restaurant at which my little group ate for lunch. We called him James Bond because he's wearing a tuxedo. He was very friendly.
We thought it was really funny that we found a "Montana Bar" in the middle of a Moroccan city. No, we didn't go in; this picture is courtesy the massive zoom on my camera. As you can probably tell, it looked like the sort of place where weird stuff happens, so we avoided it.
This is another gate to another part of Meknes, near the Grand Taxi station. For those of you who don't know, Grand Taxis are taxis that travel between cities and Petit Taxis are taxis that travel within cities. We had to take a Grand Taxi from Ifrane to Meknes, since it's about a 45-minute drive and none of us really want to drive a standard in Morocco. Actually, I don't really think any of us want to drive at all here.
Anyway.
We couldn't figure out quite where this gate went; it wasn't exactly the old medina but it wasn't exactly the new medina, either. It was pretty, though, especially with the giant moon next to it.
The night before we went to Meknes, a friend and I attempted to make chocolate chip cookies. I'll post the Cookie Saga later, along with a description of my first taste of liver. I will say no more on that subject for now...
Later, gators.
Never fear, though; I do, as usual, have pictures!
Yes, that is a picture of my feet, and yes, it is here on purpose. It's almost impossible to upload pictures to Blogger accidentally since Blogger will hate me if I don't resize them all from 4000x3000 to something more manageable. Anyway, the reason I took this picture is to show off exactly how much I've been wearing flip-flops. My friends call it the X-Men tan for obvious reasons, and it's even more pronounced now than it was two weeks ago when I took this picture.
This is the beach I went to three weeks ago. The water was pretty cold most places, but there were a few little tidepool-type things that were a bit warmer. The air and sun were fairly hot, though, so at least the water felt sort of good if you just put your feet/lower legs in it. Any more than that and it got very uncomfortable very quickly.
Indonesian culture night! The two men in suits in the middle are the Indonesian ambassador to Morocco and the president of the university. The performers danced traditional Indonesian dances and played some angklung music, which was really cool.
This is part of the Bab al-Mansour in Meknes at the main entrance to the old medina. It's a huge tourist attraction, as evidenced by the fact that a bus stops there about every 15 minutes and lets out a load of people armed with DSLRs, sun hats, and guidebooks.
The Bab proper. I couldn't get a straight-on view of it because I would have gotten run over by one of the aforementioned buses or perhaps a city bus. Obviously there were also a bunch of people in the way.
Kitty! He was hanging out at the restaurant at which my little group ate for lunch. We called him James Bond because he's wearing a tuxedo. He was very friendly.
We thought it was really funny that we found a "Montana Bar" in the middle of a Moroccan city. No, we didn't go in; this picture is courtesy the massive zoom on my camera. As you can probably tell, it looked like the sort of place where weird stuff happens, so we avoided it.
This is another gate to another part of Meknes, near the Grand Taxi station. For those of you who don't know, Grand Taxis are taxis that travel between cities and Petit Taxis are taxis that travel within cities. We had to take a Grand Taxi from Ifrane to Meknes, since it's about a 45-minute drive and none of us really want to drive a standard in Morocco. Actually, I don't really think any of us want to drive at all here.
Anyway.
We couldn't figure out quite where this gate went; it wasn't exactly the old medina but it wasn't exactly the new medina, either. It was pretty, though, especially with the giant moon next to it.
The night before we went to Meknes, a friend and I attempted to make chocolate chip cookies. I'll post the Cookie Saga later, along with a description of my first taste of liver. I will say no more on that subject for now...
Later, gators.
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