getting to site

• From Ouarzazate to Rabat I made the 12 hour trek with a fully charged ipod and a couple Dramamines just to be safe – I really miss driving – public transport is the worrrrrst. There was a cool week long music festival going on when we were in Rabat for the night that shakira and kayne west preformed at, but of course the night we were there the headline act was someone named Shannon Sharon or something – we opted out and got pizza instead.

• From Rabat I traveled to Fes by myself – shout out to tatianna – trip wasn’t the same without you. This part of the story takes some explaining – in morocco there are two types of taxis – one only goes within city limits (petit taxi) and the other goes in between cities (grand taxi) – I got in a petit taxi and asked him to go to the grand taxi station close to the mcdonalds (ommm nom) in my broken darija that he clearly didn’t understand. He kept asking if I spoke French and once I said no I guess he figured I was lost and needed to go somewhere else other than Fes because he brought me from the bus station to the train station. Logical? From there I figured I might as well ask how much a grand taxi would be to the next city I needed to go to and they wanted 200 dirhams, which is ~10% of my MONTHLY living allowance and I would still be 2 hours away from my village. Needless to say it was waaaay too expensive/not worth the money and I went to a different taxi stand and ended up paying the right amount for the trip – 10 dirhams – WIN.

• Once I made it to the town about 10 km from my site I forgot how to finish getting to my village. I knew I had to take a rickshaw van of death through the mountains but I didn’t know who to talk to or which van to go to. I slumped down at a café with all my stuff and probably looked totally helpless because this random man came up and helped me figure out where to go – never count out the kindness of strangers.

Welp. Now I’m in beautiful Mghila (my village) in the mountains and I have nothing to do. Not really sure what to do in terms of any projects and I don’t know anyone other than my host family so I’m just straight doing nothing right now. Life isn’t too bad though because Moroccans and I love the same things: food, naps, and watching tv. Although if at ANY moment ANYONE feels like talking feel free to call, I spend most of my days zoned out and bored thinking about how much I miss target and chipotle.

Here are the things keeping me sane

• Fox movie channel that shows random American movies including shallow hal and john tucker must die, as well as national geographic abu dabi
• The cell phone plan and the fact I can talk to muh pc peeps fo free
• My laptop – fully equipped with all things entertaining – I’m currently making my way through the office
• Counting the god phrases used during a conversation – there are usually enough that I’m satisfied with this game
• Cell phone solitaire – thank you nokia
• Pepto bismol. Enough said.

I’ll leave you all with some insight from my host pops: “tea is the whiskey of morocco – we drink it when we are happy and we drink it when we are sad – we drink it all the time”

Yes, yes you do.