Day 40: The Pain Ingredient

Wednesday, July 31

Disclaimer: If you prefer the happier blogs, please skip this one, as it is not very happy at all.

Well, I started to the feel the effects of the horse-fall more on Wednesday. I didn't want to tell the teachers what happened, for fear that they might ban horse-back riding for everyone ever due to the fact that one student fell and got hurt that one time. That would be selfish.

So, it was obvious something happened (my arm clearly had a run in with prickly bushes or an overly ferocious street cat), so I just told them I fell while I was running. And I hit my head on the ground too, because it was killing me, and I took a lot of Exedrin that day.

Fortunately, there's a couch (er... a large cushion on the ground) in the classroom, which students can use if they are feeling ill, so I definitely used it during the last third of class, and I just laid there like the useless student I was. 

Unfortunately, that night was the evening that I had to go out with my language partner, so after dinner, I went to meet her and the two other girls who she meets with, and we all walked through the market for a bit, because that's what I wanted to do. Then, because many of the stores were not open yet, our language partner asked us what we wanted to do: sit in a coffee shop and wait for everything to open, or walk to the reservoir and then come back when everything was open.

Of course, I was like, "Um. Sit. Because, you know, I fell off a horse yesterday, and I don't want to walk."

But then we met up with our language partner's cousin, (who is also a language partner at our school), and her three students, and they wanted to go to the reservoir. So what did we do? We made that 30 minute walk out there, even though we'd already been once before and there was nothing new to do, and I felt like dying and I told them so, but that didn't change anything.

Then there was nothing to do once we got there, and it was really hot, and there was a bunch of creepy dude's, and I was in so much pain and nobody was listening to me, and we were walking, and then there were these little boys that started pestering me (just me, nobody else), and they were tugging on my shirt and giggling and trying to talk to me in French, and no matter what their intentions were (whether it was trying to get a sweet piece of ass or trying to get money from me), they weren't good. By this point in time, I had reached my stress limit, because I also had homework in addition to a presentation the next day, and I was so tired and in pain, that when that child touched my back one more time he crossed that invisible line and I rounded on him so fast and threw my fist inches in front of his fact, and said in deadly calm, "I will punch you so hard right now." The group flew back from my fist in surprise, and I rounded on my heel and left them there.

I should have punched him, despite him being like 9. I lament not punching him, because he really deserved it. And he was so not ready for my fist. I probably would have broken his nose, but that would've learned the lot of them not to pester foreigners. But instead I spared him. I spared him from my fury, and he has no idea how lucky he was that I was feeling generous.

But I was done for the night. I immediately grabbed a cab with my two classmates, and I went home. Then I spent the rest of the night complaining about everything I hate in Morocco because I needed to get it out. I was too stressed and tired and in pain to be able to focus on homework or presentations.

Sometimes it's just healthier to get everything off your chest, and that's all I could do at the time.

So, that was my day. 

And because this was a very unhappy post, despite me warning you to keep going and you didn't for some reason, here's a video of an adorable eel. You heard me. An eel.