Pictures Because Tired

Hello, friends!  I'm a little sleep-deprived today, so if some things either don't make sense or are weird pop culture references, that's why.  I'll try to keep that to a minimum, though.

Why am I sleep-deprived, you ask?  Long story.  Mostly it's because my internal clock keeps trying to wake me up at about 6 a.m. no matter when I went to sleep.  I think it's still a little confused.  At least it's consistent.

Anyway, this past weekend, I got to go to Rabat with a bunch of pretty awesome people.  Yeah, I know, I'm way behind in posting this, but I've been... yeah, no, I haven't been especially busy.  There goes that excuse.  I guess my tardiness is attributable to the fact that I've had a lot of writing to do this week for homework so by the time I finish my homework, I really just want to look at pictures of cats on the Internet.  This is all tangential.  See?  This is what happens when I'm tired.  Lucky you can't hear me or you'd get a bunch of bad impressions of famous accents.

The main point here is that I really liked Rabat.  After the desert aridity of Ifrane, the coastal humidity of Rabat was wonderful.  My skin no longer resembled the Utah salt flats.  Of course, it does again now that I'm back in Ifrane, but that's a tangent again.

How about pictures?  They're worth a thousand words or something so maybe I'll just post those and stop trying to form coherent sentences because obviously that's not working.

Kitties in the medina!  Not necessarily pettable kitties, but at least they didn't have pemphigus foliaceus like some other kitties I've seen.

My group went out on a little tiny rowboat to see the sights and so forth.  This was one of the sights.

This was another sight.

This is the inside of what is now the National Jewelry Museum and what used to be the king's guest residences.  We got the whole tour, but we were only allowed to take pictures in certain areas because they didn't want flash photography.  This photo happened to be the one that came out the best.

Rumor has it that this entire pillared area was once covered with a roof, but the roof fell down a really long time ago and the kingdom didn't have enough money to fix it at the time so it's stayed unfixed ever since.  Personally, I think it's cooler without the roof.

The Hassan Tower, which is the most visually significant part of the old mosque that's still standing.  It's up on a hill of sorts, so you can see it from kilometers away.

Oh look, a hoomin!  This particular hoomin happens to be me.  (Unless you were there and laughing at me, you have no idea how ridiculous I looked getting up on that pillar, which is almost as tall as I am.  I still have small bruises on my ribs and a brush burn on my right elbow from doing the worm to get up there.)  Behind me is His Late Majesty Mohammed V's mausoleum.  I took some pictures inside, but they don't look very good because there wasn't much light.  I won't post them here unless someone begs me to.

Another part of the old mosque, taken from this angle because it looks cool.

The flag was cool and I really, really like palm trees.  REALLY like them.

Post Scriptum...
I know many of you have heard about the bombing of the consulate in Libya.  First of all, don't worry; that's a really long way from Morocco, and even if it was closer, I seriously doubt Ifrane would be drastically affected.  Second, there have been no major problems in Morocco itself.  There were/are demonstrations in Casablanca, but as far as I know, nobody's tried to blow anything up, so it's okay.  Everyone I've spoken to here has denounced the actions of the people in Libya as non-Muslim and wrong.  For the people back home who might be worried about me and are reading this, you don't need to be worried.  I'm fine and am by nature a very cautious person when it comes to things like this, so I won't do anything surpassingly stupid and I will keep my eyes open, now as always.

Later, gators.