Getting here: Part 2

(I am finally writing this, so I can get back on track and start talking about my actual Moroccan experiences.)

Okay. Continuing where we left off. So this international flight was a pretty massive plane, but the neatest one I've been on. Every chair had a screen on the back of it, touch-screen, on which you could watch movies, or TV shows, or play games, or listen to music, or even watch the progress of the plane across a map. Looks like this:

Except  less not-broken.

It was nice to be able to watch stuff, so long as you didn't mind being interrupted every 10-15 minutes to hear an inane announcement about the time, food, or weather, followed shortly by same announcement again in German. I watched part of Monsters Inc. in Arabic, then I switched to English, (I was about to hear the language for two months, no need to jump into it before getting there), then I watched an episode of House, one of the Big Bang Theory, and then Mulan. The screens were admittedly a little bit sketchy. They didn't really register the exact spot that you tried to tap, and you generally had to try multiple times. Well, the screen upon my headrest must have seen better days, because the person who was sitting behind me was highly vigilant with their screen-navigation, and thusly, they successfully fended off my sleep demons. I'm so, so appreciative.

"The harder I tap, the better it works." 

I unfortunately sat in the middle seat of the middle row, but that's just how that always goes.

So, after 8 hours of non-sleep, our flight finally arrived in, you guessed it, GERMANY!!

"I have no idea what I'm doing." 

Seemed a little bit like we were going backwards, if you ask me. We ended up in Frankfurt, which interestingly, was where we were supposed to go. I guess these were the cheapest international tickets. Still, I've been to Germany now (sort of)! They had these really nice jewelry stores scattered about the airport, for those forgetful few who just realized it's their [important family member's] [holiday/celebration].

"The airplane pendant reminded me of your eyes."

But they did have some pretty sweet cars around the airport, y'know, for those people who are about to get on a plane and are like, "Oh! I knew I was forgetting to bring something."

Dat color.

Then we left Germany some 5ish hours later, and boarded the tiny, sketchy, plane to Morocco. They promptly served us the worst plane-dinner ever after being in the air for an hour. There was "beef", a lime slice, and sealed tightly within a small plastic bag (about the size of one of those moist-towelettes) was a thin slice of raw fish. I'm pretty sure nobody even opened those packages, let alone ate them. But I did have some Coca-Cola, which tastes exactly the same, by the way. I was worried the different bottling company would result in a different taste. WRONG. 

Bottled with love and stimulants.

Then -- I don't know how long the flight was, at this point our internal clocks were pretty skewed -- we got to AFRICA. The plane came into Casablanca, Morocco at 11-12pm Moroccan time. We waited around that airport for a few hours, something about there being a miscommunication with the bus that was supposed to pick us up, and they finally showed up at 1ish. Then we piled on and drove to Meknes. Admittedly, the drive looked a lot like west Texas: dry bushes, flatness, brownness, etc. But something about the bushes were different, and we came upon more hills that were whiter and taller. And the gas station signs were written in Arabic. Anyway, I couldn't sleep on the bus. Being in Africa for the first time was just too damn neat.

We didn't get to Meknes until 4-4:30ish in the morning. Our host families were supposed to pick us up from the school, but it was so late... So we went to a hotel near the school for very brief night.

And that is how I got here!! That was long-winded, but I'm documenting this for myself, as much as for anyone else. :)