It's Friday

[Sorry for the lack of updates...]

Life's a Beach

Well.

It's been more than 3 months now. 3 months and 2 weeks to be more precise. Last time we were only here for 8.5 weeks, or something like that. So, this is definitely the longest period of time I've ever been away from home -- or hell -- out of Texas. But hey! Every day after September 20th is more than halfway to Christmas break. Soooo... yep. 

I suppose I should wrap up the summer program for y'all, since I tooootally did not get around to writing anymore during those first two months (in sharp contrast, you may have noticed, to the excessive posting I did when I was here the first time). So here goes.

The summer was hot. The end.

No. I guess that wasn't all, though it was certainly a distinctly memorable factor. HOWEVER. It was not neeeearly as hot as it was when I was here the first time. We actually had a few nice days of summer where it didn't feel like your face was going to melt off all the time.

We did have a real 4th of July party this time (which was a Saturday this year, thank goodness). Our program booked this swanky hotel's pool for the day, and we spent the whole day there. 

Strangely, and I frankly don't understand this about people, everyone spent more time outside of the pool than in. Why are you at a pool party if you're not going to be in the pool? Oh, you're tanning. Right. Because you don't get enough sun in Morocco as it is.

Personally, I wore as big a hat as would fit in my suitcase, and darted deftly from shaded area to shaded area in order to avoid cooking my skin.

By the time evening finally rolled around, after being energy-sapped by the sun all day, everyone -- including myself -- felt suuuper hungry, and we all rushed towards dinner, so excited........ooooooonly to find out it was Moroccan food. On America Day, the ONE day we get to pretend like we're not in Morocco for a year. And we had Moroccan food.

Needless to say, there was much grumbling at dinner. I ate a roll.

Things picked back up again once the hotel bars opened and the drinks started flowing. That is until another group of American students showed up. They were from A&M, strangely enough, and they were carrying some sort of virus. Whatever it was, our party promptly died shortly after they got there.

Later the following week, I went to see a Moroccan play with my language partner. It was interesting, from the 30% that I understood. (That's not to say I'm that bad at Arabic. That is to say that it was veeery heavily buried beneath the Moroccan dialect. Even the Egyptian teachers who went to see it only understood 80%, and Arabic is their birth language). I got the gist of the story though, just not the details. Story was about some dick guy trying to juggle being in a relationship with three women-- all flight attendants-- who were never in town at the same time, until, well, they were all in town at the same time. [Insert ensuing shenanigans here]. There were some seeeriously stereotyped characters in there, too, namely the Italian, Spanish, and American flight attendants. The American girl said, "How sweet!" and "Oh my god!" in English every few seconds she was on stage (which has some truth in it, I'll admit).

On July 17th, our program had a 4-day weekend in which we took a beach trip!

We went to three different towns: Asilah, Tetouan, and Martil. Our hotel was in Asilah, and we traveled to Tetouan one day, and Martil the next.

Asilah is almost all beach, and it's probably the prettiest town I've been to in Morroco.

We spent time at the beach there on Thursday, then went out for a nice meal of, well, seafood that night. I'll have you know that I ate all kinds of fish that weekend. I ate calamari, clams, swordfish, and shrimp.

Friday we went to Tetouan. It's not actually a beach town, but a mountain town, and very very pretty IF you can actually make it to the top of the town. Which I did, thank you very much. 

[This is before I died of heat exhaustion.]

And here's some other pics from inside the town.

Saturday, we went to Martil, and it's liiiil' bitty. Just beach, and a few restaurants. We got there early enough that the beach was relatively empty, and the water was so, so clear. Also, there were jellyfish. And yes they stung, as someone so stupidly bravely tested. 

But again, I was basically the only one in the water. (See the note above about how no one is ever in the water because they're too concerned about altering their skin color). At least, I was the only one until the beach got super, super crowded with Moroccans. 

Moroccan beaches are not like American beaches.

Then I got out and sorta napped under a beach umbrella. Sand is not as comfortable as one might hope.

If I'm being perfectly honest here -- I think beaches are really, painfully boring. Unless you're swimming with someone else (which I wasn't), there is literally nothing to do but feel really, really hot and sweat a whole lot. I suppose in non-Muslim countries you could drink on the beach, but even then; it's so goddam boring. Peaceful, but boring.

Ramadan ended that weekend, which was good, at least. But that also meant that the time changed back. Aaaaaaand we lost an hour.

Because this post has gone on for as long as it has, I'll cut it short, and finish up the summer with my next one. Peace out, homes.