As you can probably imagine, lots of stuff happened and I took notes on the important things. Let's go to the scribble pad!
Fourth of July in my province capitol: awesome. Two volunteers live there, giving us ample space to prepare the feast and eat it, too. Lots of merry was made, bubbles were blown, pictures taken. We even made s'mores, because I am lucky enough to have an incredibly talented cook in my province who made graham crackers and marshmallows from scratch. I didn't even know you could make marshmallows, I thought there was a special Jiffy cloud in the sky and NASA had a top secret multi-billion dollar program that sent shuttles to and from. I guess the marshmallow recipe makes more sense.
I hung around the capitol on Monday morning with David because we both had some business to see to. I still have an issue with my carte sejour (I'm still not French) and he needed to open a post office box because the post office in his actual town is a small room that never seems to open. The man I talked to about my carte sejour was very nice, but I still had to pay 100 dirham to get it fixed. And I still don't have the fixed carte in my possession, so it may not be over yet.
After TCOB in the capitol, David and I procured transport to Fes, where we'd be reuniting briefly with our dear friend Pete. Fun points about Fes:
-I started having ridiculous hot flashes and was walking around the city dripping in sweat. I think this was related to the 102 fever I woke up with later that week, but at the time it was just gross and weird.
-Speaking of sweat, the hostel David and I stayed in was really humid and when we woke up in the morning the first thing he said was "your hair is either really sweaty or really oily. Either way....hot." Watch out, Andy, we have a charmer.
-Pete has a girlfriend in Fes. She's an American student doing research with Fulbright money. Our second night in Fes, we stayed at her house and OH MY GOD. It's right in the old medina, three stories, skylight, the works. Absolutely gorgeous. I wanted to take pictures of it but felt like it would be weird.
Moving on...I got a train out to Oujda on Wednesday morning and spent six hours sandwiched in between a group of lively Moroccans who had never met each other before, but all became fast friends on the train. I think they are planning to go into the Biz (that's show business) together. Some sort of family-style variety show, but with less singing and dancing and more tired, over-acted skits about marriage, weddings, disrespectful children, lazy husbands etc.
After that gem of a train ride, I was denied a bus ticket to Erika's town. I was two hours early! The man said it was completely full. I pleaded that I didn't mind standing the whole time but got completely shut down.
Plan B! Taxied to a closer town where one of the newbie Environment volunteers lives and basically invited myself to his house for the night, until I could make moves to Erika the next day. He was very welcoming, hamdullah.
Interesting plot twist: I woke up the next morning running a really high fever. OUT OF NOWHERE. I had been totally fine, and all of a sudden I can't move without searing pains shooting through my head. Great day for traveling, yek?
After chugging water and feasting on ibuprofen, I started on my way to Erika. I just kept thinking, "as soon as I get to Erika's house I can take my pants off and go to sleep." (More or less what actually happened). Hamdullah travel was much easier this time around. I would have had an issue in one random town midway between Joe (Environment volunteer) and Erika, but there was luckily a stressed-out man trying to get to the same place I was. I just followed him around until he solved both our problems by finagling a taxi going directly to Erika's town.
The next two days at Erika's were kind of uneventful. I was too sick to leave her house so I only really saw one block of her entire town. The only thing worth blogging about is this:
I was sprawled out in my underwear, fast asleep, when I heard banging on Erika's door. Half-conscious, I figured Erika would handle it, but then I realized that the shouts accompanying the banging were coming FROM Erika. She locked herself out, I guess? With unexpected vigor I leapt up and ran to open the door. As I pulled it open I started thinking "you're not wearing pants you're not wearing pants you're not wearing pants" but it was too late to do anything about that. Erika--and her young (thank heaven, female) Moroccan friend were standing there, gazing at me in all my pantsless, slightly delirious glory.
I answered SOMEONE ELSE'S door without pants on. That's not even okay in America. It's even taboo to answer your own door without pants on. Just think of that time on the Simpsons when Homer answered the door wearing a grocery bag.
So anyway, the ensuing conversation with the Moroccan girl was just a barrel of awkward. I have a lot of trouble understanding people out East when I'm healthy, and in this situation I was totally sick. I came off pretty rude, but I mostly just wanted her to leave me alone (she kept suggesting things to make me better).
After a day and a half or so of being a really gracious houseguest at Erika's (ie, barely talking to her and sleeping the whole time) I started to rally and by the evening of the last day I was there we were back to normal Erika/Alli shenanigans. We baked a cake, talked in weird accents, bitched about Morocco and binge-watched "Weeds." We got down to Melanie the next day, did more or less the same thing with her (insert cookies for cake and "Eastern Promises" for "Weeds") then got back up to Oujda.
Transport continues to be a bitch and we got, literally, the LAST three tickets out of Oujda on the sleeper train to Rabat.
Possibly the best part of the trip: we were killing time at a hotel cafe near the train station and they had a pool. After about an hour, Melanie and I couldn't stand it anymore and went swimming. I think the pool employee got in trouble for letting us swim since we weren't staying at the hotel, but I kind of don't care.
The train, once we figured out what compartment we were in (a seemingly simple task that came very close to being catastrophic) was really nice and AIR-CONDITIONED. We went to sleep almost immediately, but I have to admit I laid awake for a bit, wistfully imagining myself in the train with my sister. Having just screwed Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye out of their room, we decided to go down to the club car to keep them compnay and sing borderline creepy tunes about washing our hands, feet and hair with snow.
Not much interesting happened after that. We arrived in Rabat around 6:30 am, got breakfast, then parted ways. Melanie and Erika were traveling to summer camp and I was going home, finally. I got back to town just in time to watch some of my kids compete in a ping png tournament.
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