I'm home.

8 Hours

Well I lied. I said the last post was going to be my last but that was simply not true. Nope, as it turns out the motivation for writing a blog post increases inversely to the amount time I have to pack. But that just means I have some time for a couple more stories about Egypt.

The first is about my takdeem for armeeia class. That sentence was just in my shitty transliteration so I'm pretty sure that even if you do know Arabic you still have no idea what I'm talking about (the oral presentation for my Egyptian dialect class). This may have been a "you had to be there" story but I'll try to explain it and if it gets convoluted and confusing just skip over it and go on the story about the sleeping pills that I bought.

So we all had to give an oral presentation. The teacher asked us to do a little prep work and be ready to talk for 4 or 5 minutes about family, what you do every day and what you want to be doing in 5 years. Then we were supposed to have a dialogue planned about going to the store or renting an apartment, something like that. So our class has this one Korean guy who doesn't really speak a lot of English and didn't want to prep for the presentations. He got up and did a fine job with his family and his everyday things but then he forgot about the 5 years in the future. The teacher prompted him by asking the question in armeeia. The guy replied that he would go to the store, buy two kilos of fish and his wife would be very happy. We all kinda let this slide, an honest mistake, mixing up this afternoon with 5 years from now. But then he had to start his dialogue, which went something like this (translated)

To person 1: Whats your name?

Person 1: My name is Will

Korean guy tuns to person 2 and says: His name is Will, what is your name

Person 2: My name is Graham

Korean guy turns to person 1 and says: His name is Graham

This back and forth goes on for about 3 minutes before the teacher has to cut the dialogue off because everyone is laughing so hard that no one can hear what is being said. It was genius.

Pretend like there is a segway here. Yesterday my classes went out to dinner, it was nice and on the way back to the apartment I stopped by the drugstore to see if I could get something to help me sleep on the plane tomorrow. The long flight leaves Amsterdam at 10:00 AM Egypt time and lasts 10 hours. I usually have a pretty hard time sleeping between 10:00 AM and 8:00 PM so I decided that a sleeping pill would be helpful. I asked the pharmacist for a pill to sleep and he went to the back room, rummaged around a locked cabinet and came back with a box of pills. I asked how much they were, he said 7 LE which is like $1.16 I paid the man and walked away.

When I got back to the room I examined the package closer to discover that the tamper seal was broken but the pills were still in the box (which means that they are probably either counterfeit pills or past their expiration). Then I decided to look them up online. Turns out this particular drug is basically ambien, however, it has yet to be cleared by the FDA and is currently a schedule IV narcotic. So what I'm trying to say is these pills may not be making the trip back to the states with me.

Well my flight leave Cairo in 8 hours and I should be in the airport in like 6 so I guess its time to start packing up and saying my goodbyes to this convenient, this country and all of my friends here. Have a nice night everyone and I'll be back in bend at 3:00 Friday afternoon (local time). If I can sleep on my flights I might call someone for a beer, whiskey and bacon.

Ben

4 days and 15 hours

To start I just want to let everyone on the West Coast of America know that while you slept from Saturday to Sunday night I attended about 5 hours of Arabic classes. I've had, and continue to have, a tough time accepting the new definition of the weekend here in Egypt. I really don't like the idea that I have school on Sunday, for some reason it has made it really difficult to remember what day it is.


But, Sunday it is, and today marks the start of my last week here on the other side of the world. I have a flight that leaves Thursday night and I get back to the US on Friday morning. And get this, the second leg of my trip back leaves Amsterdam at 9:15 AM and I land in Portland at 11:15 AM. I find it hard to believe that anyone can hear that and not think of how amazing it is to fly around the world. I mean, I will fly 5000 miles and during that time, the sun will only move (for me) two hours. I get giddy just thinking about that.


But I guess stories about my flight back will have to wait until I actually fly back. (Spoiler alert, 5 hours in the Amsterdam Airport, I bet I can get in trouble). Instead, I want to talk about thanksgiving, an election and the Pyramids, also known as Thanksgiving weekend in Egypt.


I was pretty bummed about my missing thanksgiving this year. It's, by far, my favorite holiday. Someone once told me that the beauty of Thanksgiving was the low expectations. All that is expected is that you eat until it hurts and then you go to bed. It's elegant in that way, really the only thing that you can do to fuck it up is not make enough food and, in my experience, that isn't often a problem that us Brinich's have.


So I was a little peeved about missing the most amazing holiday ever, especially since my dad was going to Chicago and that meant that there would be no leftovers for me in Bend when I got there. But rest assured American's abroad rally together and I was invited to a dinner at the house of a friend/classmate. Turned out it was a lot of people who work in various aid agencies and other interesting places including a couple of election observers (they call themselves election witnesses). But none of them had good things to say about the elections. They explained (I use this term loosely, you'll figure out why in a sec) how the ballots are put together.


But before you hear about that you have to hear about how they set up the polling places. It's based on ID cards, which generally carry the location where you were born. That means that people have to go back to hometowns to vote. Moreover they also have a number system, which means that even after you go to the correct district you still have to go to a specific polling place. That is, you and your brother could have the same location on an ID card but he would have a different number so he would go to a different polling place. This doesn't seem like a huge deal until you hear about the average 5 person family having to go to five different schools at 5 different times, with one car, so that they can vote. It's unreasonable.


Then there are the ballots. I say ballots because each voter gets two. On the first there are some 140+ parties which everyone gets (i  think) two votes on. This means that the 4 parties that win a district gets to place their listed top tier candidate into the Parliament. However, as a throwback to the old commie days, there has to be as many "workers" in Parliament as politicians. The definition of worker is kinda vague but it seems to be someone who started their professional career by not going to college (although, they could go to college afterwards). Now here comes the tricky part. If all of the winners of a certain district have their top listed candidates as politicians then some overly complicated math equation is implemented to decided which two parties have to choose a worker as their new top tier candidate.


Then there is the second ballot. On it they get to strait up vote for someone, however, because so many people are coming from different districts to vote in their "home" district, there is no way for these candidates to share their message with the voters, so this will basically be another vote along either party lines or will end up being a random amount of check boxes.


All in all, I am super glad that I don't have to monitor these elections because there is no way I would have any idea when people started cheating because the system is so fucked up already.


After, a great meal, with really interesting company (I wish I could just steal some of the stories I heard) I headed home. On Friday I didn't do a whole lot. I walked around Cairo, saw a couple of districts, tried to buy stuff and failed (I'm really bad at buying junk apparently) and saw a lot of the Friday morning mosque services that were so full that people were praying on the street outside.


On Saturday I went to the Pyramids. They were cool, but more interesting than the pyramids was the total lack of tourists. I found an article that said 8 million people visited them in 2004, that's almost 22,000 people a day. When I went there were about 400 of us and the majority of the people there were Egyptian, it was wild. I posted a bunch of pictures but here are my favorites.


I hope to see a lot of you real soon.


Ben

Luxor and a touch with Tahrir

Well this weekend has brought some interesting events to Cairo, and I'll talk about what I did get to see, but instead of starting at the end, lets start in the middle. And the middle is this, In Luxor my dad and I hired a taxi for the day to see all the temples. At the end of the day the driver basically forced us to stop at his friends shop and drink a beer with him. It was awesome.

Okay, Okay this is going to work better if I start from the beginning. I went to Luxor on Friday morning. Well, that's kind of a lie I left for Luxor on Friday (late) morning and arrived on Friday afternoon. I took a taxi to the hotel where my dad was staying. It was a nice, really cheap place and, if you ever find yourself in Luxor, I suggest you stay there. The first day we went out to Karnack Temple which is a really really old Egyptian temple. Lots of hieroglyphs but the truly amazing thing is the size. These ancient temples built 3000 years ago are just giant, really, really big. 

So after that we headed back to the hotel. Found a restaurant and ate out (again thanks for coming to Egypt and buying me food dad).

Saturday we went to the east bank of Luxor. This brings me to an interesting fact about Luxor. It's a city of over a million people in it and it has almost no bridges across the Nile. The closest one to the center of the town in 12km south. So we took a ferry across the Nile in the morning. I hear about ferries in the north aftican countries sinking every once-in-awhile but I always think, geeze how shitty do those ferries have to be to sink? The answer is about as shitty as the one we rode on.

Also, I have noticed something about the egyptians, and because I'm american I'm going to attribute this to all north africans, they have a weird mentality about waiting. On the ferry we had people jumping off of it before it even got to the dock. THey would just get within jumping distance and people would take off. Its a little like the queuing situation. That is, no one gets in lines, they just jam towards the front and, eventually, it works out. But, the crazy part is these people are totally okay with sitting in a coffee shop or at an airport for 4 hours and doing nothing. They just sit there, I would be bored sick.

Anyways, on the other side of the Nile we ran into the usual onslaught of people offering to sell us shit. What we needed was a taxi but, usually, as you know, its better to walk away from the train stations, airports and ferries and get a taxi further on the road. We tried to do this but there was one particularly insistent driver who just drove alongside us until we relented and hopped in his cab. He drove us to these two statues that are just sitting in the middle of a field. The guide book said to get there early, "in order to avoid the army of tourists" there was no army and I don't think that there had been any for some time. For about 15 minutes at 10:30 on a Saturday morning my dad and I were the only people out there. 

Then we hopped back into the cab, negotiated with the driver to drive us around all day. It ended up being $24 and this guy just drove us all over the place and waited for hours while we explored, so that was money well spent (it also wasn't my money so its really easy for me to say that). We ended up going to the Valley of the Kings, The workers city and some temple that was just covered in hieroglyphs. It was really cool. Then Mahmoud, our driver, insisted that we go to one last temple. We tried to tell him that we were done but he really really wanted us to go. So far that day he hadn't let us down so we said, "okay." When we got there he told us to walk around for a while and to go to the cafeteria when we were done. The cafeteria was really just some old cafe like thing next to the temple. So we walked for a bit and then went to the cafeteria and Mahmoud sitting with his friends drinking a beer. We decided to get some beers as well and Mahmoud came out and joined us. Then we got the ferry back across the river and headed back to hotel after a long day of seeing ruins that were older than I can believe.

Today we went to one last temple before finding a taxi, going to the airport and catching our hour long flight back to Cairo. When we got in we grabbed a taxi and tried to get to my dad's hotel. It's about a 30 minute ride into downtown Cairo so we wern't really paying attention until the driver basically drives us to Tahrir square and asks where to go. At about that point there is some kid with a surgical mask who is trying to get the taxi to turn around because the Shabab (youth) had occupied the square (which is really just a big roundabout). We eventually worked out how to get to the hotel where we found Bob and Shannon. We all headed out to dinner at this place dangerously close to Tahrir. We got there, ordered and ate what was a really nice dinner. 

After we had mostly finished and were just talking the waiter came over to our table and said, "The kitchen and the bar are going to be closed, now." We looked at him like, what?, why? and he said "They are demonstrating in the square." That's about when we started to hear the chants. The waiter told us that we could wait in the restaurant for as long as we wanted so we waited for about a half hour and then braved the streets. It was mostly fine. there were a couple of streets that we walked by and just saw a cloud of tear gas and a couple other you could hear what sounded like flash bangs going off but all in all a relatively safe walk to the nearest metro station where I took the train across the river (because I couldn't talk any taxis into driving across). My dad, Bob, and Shannon went back to their hotel. And eventually we all made it home safe. Alhumdulala. 

There are some pictures but because I suck at using picasa you have to view them here.

Dad just took off the the airport. He'll be back early tomorrow and I will be sticking around for another 10 days.

waladee fee misar (Dad in Egypt)

Food

So my dad got into Cairo last week on the 9th. His plane came in at about 7:30 and with all of the customs checks, visa and crazy taxi ride from the airport to his hotel he didn't check in until about 9:45. That was after I wanted to try and explore Cairo for a hotel that it took him about an hour and a half to find so we decided that we would meet up the next night for dinner.

It was a good meal at a Lebanese restaurant that was suggested by trip adviser. I also got to see Bob and Shannon who where among the last people I saw before leaving the US on this trip. The food was excellent and not paying was excellenter (pretty sure that's not a word, but defiantly a feeling). We decided to meet the next morning to go to the Pyramids.

The next morning rolled around and I woke up to a phone call from the father in which he informed me that the pyramids were closed because of something or other (we later learned that it was 11-11-11 and apparently all of the crazies come out of the woodwork on that day). Instead we went to Coptic Cairo. It was nice, and by nice I mean it was really, really boring. I'm usually a fan of seeing old churches but these didn't do it for me. Couple that with, what can be described as, the worst audio tour of all time, and we were ready to leave Coptic Cairo awful quick. 

So we all piled into a taxi and told the driver to take us to the Islamic section. The driver immediately noticed that he had a car with 4 white people in it and decided to rack up his meter by giving us a, rather long, tour of Cairo. We spent about 45 minutes in the car and drove around the city of the dead (really poor section of Cairo) as well as a good bit of highway driving. At the end of it all the meter read 25 LE ($5) so we paid got out and went in search of the coffee shop we had just waited about an hour for. We found it pretty quickly but, unfortunately they only served coffee, so we had to find somewhere else for lunch. After walking around Islamic Cairo for a while (Dad and Bob wanted beer) we gave up and ate at a GAD (a chain type restaurant). 

Church

The "I'm not a guide" guide

View from the top of a Mosque

During lunch we read the guidebook, it seemed to indicate that going to a mosque nearby and heading to the roof would be a good idea. We weren't exactly sure where we were so we stopped to ask for direction and picked up an unofficial tour guide. He kept assuring us that he was a student and he was just being helpful and didn't want to get paid, but then he stuck around for a really long time and eventually asked for money so, he lied. But, whatever, I got to go to the top of a mosque that I wouldn't have been able to get to otherwise so, it was probably money well spent. 

After getting scammed a bit we went back to the hotel where Bob, Shannon and Dad were staying and hung out for an hour or two. Dad and Bob slept. Shannon left without telling me, and I goofed around on the computer. After the nap Bob came into the room holding a bottle of Bourbon, one of the items on my "doing as soon as I get back into the US list" so we all had a delicious helping of good Bourbon and headed out to the restaurant. I, again, got a great meal and didn't have to pay, so what I'm trying to say is, "Thanks for coming to Cairo so you could buy me some dinners, dad." 

He took off to Luxor to look at really old things for a couple of days while I work on my Arabic for the week. I think I might try to pull of Alexandria this weekend, I just have to get some people to join me.

Have a great week. I'll see many of you pretty soon. 

Egypt and a bit of Tunisia

 Good news everyone, I made it to Egypt and I have a place to sleep. So that is fantastic. The next time I board a plane I will likely be headed back to Oregon where I can shamelessly eat bacon and drink whiskey at the same time. 


My last couple of days in Tunis were fine. I got to walk around the city a ton, often for several hours at a time, I didn't really have anything else to do so I got to explore a lot. Unfortunately, an unforseen consequence of a country not having a government is all of the national museums/parks are closed. For example, today I went to the Bardo Museum to look around the front gate had a ton of razor wire around it and some APCs were parked out front so I walked around back, found an open gate and walked into the compound. I made it all the way to the back entrance, a couple hundred meters, before a soldier saw me and yelled "NO ENTREE" he had an automatic weapon of some sort so I decided not to push it. On my way out a cop saw me, made eye contact and just pointed at the exit without breaking eye contact. That was pretty par for the course around Tunis. All of the interesting places either were obviously closed or they had so much razor wire and army/police around that I decided it probably wasn't worth it to try and get in. 


My flight to Cairo was uneventful. As usual the plane out of the airport was about an hour late and I spent the time thinking about how I could have left the hotel so much later. When I checked my bag at the counter the check-in lady paged through my passport and then asked me where my Egypt visa was. I answered that I didn't have one yet and she handed me the passport back like it was no big deal. It turns out it really wasn't something that I needed to be worried about. At the Cairo airport you can walk up to a bank (interestingly that is an Arabic word) in the airport and buy a visa for $15 no questions asked. 


In Morocco the accommodations that the school had were broken up by sex. That is the boys had their own place that was far from the girls place. Here in Egypt they either don't care if guys and girls live together or they thought I was a girl because I am the only guy staying in an apartment with four other girls. I did this once before during my sophomore year of college and swore that it wouldn't happen again, so I kind of failed at that. But, it's only a month so I'll probably be fine. 


Anyways, its the Eid al-Adha which is a pretty big holy day in the Islamic culture so I don't have any school until Tuesday. That means I should study for my placement exam, but I probably won't.

How to tell when you land in Tunisia.

“Good evening, I have a room for tonight.”

“Sorry no rooms tonight.”

“Oh, no, no, I have a reservation.”

“No rooms for tonight.”

“No, see this says I have a room here tonight.” I show the counter guy the reservation.

“Yes you have a reservation for tonight, but there are no rooms.”

“Well where should I stay then?”

Guy behind counter shrugs.

“Okay but when I booked I paid for tonight.”

Guy behind counter shrugs.

“Who should I talk to about this?”

“Tomorrow the manager will be here in the morning.”

I look down at my feet, take a deep breath, look back at him and say, “Okay”

Then I proceed to walk down the street and find a shady ass hotel for $10 a night. Pay, leave my shit in the room while I go eat dinner and about halfway though the meal, get a little freaked out that I left all of my clothes in a hotel that costs $10 a night. Even if they aren't stolen, I'm pretty sure that I will bring Tunisian bedbugs with me to Egypt.

This story ends with a long night being eaten alive by misquotes in a cheap hotel. But, thats okay because nothing bad ever happened with misquotes and Africa, right?

One got me on the eyelid while I was sleeping and now I look funny because one eye opens only part of the way.

We'll see if they have a room for me today.

WTF Tunisia. I was told that you were beautiful and sandy and that the Mediterranean would be lovely. Instead you're just rainy. I can see the beauty, but I can't experience it without a rain jacket, and even then I get pretty soaked. The bigger problem is that you keep teasing me with good weather so that I go out without enough clothing and then as soon as I spend 10 minutes outside you start to rain again. Really, this vacation would be much happier if you would just stop raining.  

Conviction

So I have a shit ton of free time right now. I know no one here, have no major plans and it is very stormy so as of now there isn't much swimming going on. Instead I'm writing posts and emails and reading a couple of books (God help me when the books run out). If you wanted to hear from me, skype with me or call me (which is free) just email and I will set it up because I really am that bored.

This entire post wasn't just a cry for social contact though. I do have an interesting Tunisia story. Yesterday during my excruciating several hour wait for a train I was talking to a Tunisian guy in a mixture of Arabic and English. We somehow ended up on the topic of religion and he asked me what I thought of the Islamic man. I told him that it was an interesting religion and it is certainly something I would like to learn more about. He took his as a cue to try to explain why it is better than the other religions. His rational was that when you become a Muslim you feel things that you have never felt before.

There is really no way for me to argue with that logic, I tried to explain that I had no interest in converting but the message wouldn't quite get through. Instead he tried to teach me some new Arabic words. In particular he tried to have me repeat after him, “There is no God but God and Mohammad is his prophet.” I caught on after about 4 or 5 words and asked him, “Aren't Muslims the only ones who are allowed to say that.”

His reply, “Yes after you say it you will be a Muslim man.”

It was at this point that I politely excused myself from the conversation and found a new place to wait for my train. But here is the thing, the conversation has stuck with me for the last day, and I'm still pissed off. The man was obviously educated and put together, he seemed bright and engaging, however he had no qualms about taking away my right to believe, or not believe, in the God of my choice. A choice that, as far as I understand, most religions grant all people (though they all believe that if it is not their god you are an idiot). Move over, if there is one thing I would think a Tunisian would understand it would be the natural right to choice whether it be governments, or God.

Well I'm glad I got that off my chest. I'm sure ya'll will hear from me again the the next couple of days as I continue watching the rain fall outside my room.

First views of Tunis

I left the Qalam wa Lawh apartment at 4:00 this morning and took a drive down to Casablanca to catch my plane to Tunis. I haven't yet come to a decision on whether going to Tunisia was a good idea or not. I'm not afraid for my safety or anything, rather I just really miss the people with whom I was able to spend the last seven weeks. I honestly can't imagine what my life was like before I knew all of them. It just seems so much like they are the friends that I have always had. While, I'm sure I will see some of them again (hopefully soon) it still seems so daunting to leave people who have been so instrumental in what has been some of the best weeks of my life.

But now I'm sitting in a train station in Tunisia waiting for a train to take me down the coast so I can sit on a beach alone for a week and perhaps come up with some kind of plan for, if not the rest of my life, at least the next couple of months. I'll be on a plane to Egypt in 6 days, I'll see my dad in about 2 weeks when he visits me in Cairo and, inshallah, I will be back home in 5 weeks.  

Asilah, also know as the best weekend trip

Last weekend we headed up the coast towards Tanger until we met the city of Tanger, (and when I say we, I mean Sam, Anna, Shanna, Frenchy aka Justin, Libby and I.) We were all supposed to meet at the train station for the 8:30ish train of course when there are 6 people coming from several locations it is rather difficult to show up places on time. Shanna and I were the first to show, we waited about 15 minutes and Frenchy showed and he proceeded to buy tickets for himself, Libby and Sam who all showed up just as the train was supposed to leave. Shanna and I were still waiting around for Anna. We finally got a hold of her and she told us she was probably going to make it so we ran down to buy tickets. As it turns out Anna miscalculated the amount of time it was going to take her and she showed up a couple minutes after the train was scheduled to depart.

Luckly, we were in Morocco so nothing ever happens when the schedule says it will and the train was about 30 minutes late. We all got on and took off to the beach. It was about a 3 hour train ride and when we arrived it was just about 12:00. We walked around Asilah a bit before finding a place to eat lunch. During which, it turned out that my math major might have been helpful after all. We were given the bill and it was for considerably more than we had ordered. A bit of quick math showed that for some unknown reason our waiter had just added about 150 (almost $20) to our bill. An argument was started which after about 10 minutes we won and we were on our merry way having avoided another white tax.

We looked through a guide book to find a cheap hotel for all of us. After finding one close by we walked over to it only to find that the hotel was closed for the season. However, next door there was another hotel. It was rather nice and when we walked in the owner told us that each room was 450 Dirham. Sam, using her amazing dareja skills, was able to talk the guy down to 350. That meant that we each spent 175 for the hotel for the night. After dropping off all of our stuff we took off to the beach and played in the water and sand. We stuck around long enough to watch the sunset over the Atlantic ocean, a first for me.

After, we headed back to the hotel to get ready to eat. When we got there we explored the hotel a bit more and discovered a beautiful roof to sit on. Instead of going out, a couple of us went down the street and bought 5 bottles of wine and a good amount of bread, cheese and avocado. The wine cost 250 Dirham while the food for all six of us cost 80 Dirham. Needless to say it was an excellent night.

The next day we walked around the old city and stared at all of the beautiful artwork that is apparently commonplace around the city, unfortunately I forgot my camera so ya'll don't get to see the amazingness of Asilah until someone sends me some pictures.   

Pissing off some Moroccans

Last weekend I went to Fes. It was the last big city in Morocco that I really wanted to see and I had a really nice trip with a couple of friends. Anna, Shanna and B3 (Ben number 3, apparently its a very common name with the guys in this school.)

We took off on Friday night after saying goodbye to a couple of German friends that were just finishing up school. We got on a train at 9:00 and arrived in Fes around midnight. We were greeted by a Riad owner named Max who was an expat from Australia.

Saturday morning I woke up and found breakfast waiting for us on the roof. After eating until we were ready to explode we headed out to the souks. Fes has the largest car free city center in the world so get to walk down crowed streets dodging donkeys who carry all the shit that the store owners sell to tourists. We stopped by a couple of shops, my favorite being the apothecary who sold Anna and Shanna some perfumes and Argan oil. This shop had a plethora of animal skins including A lion, cheetah and jaguar, so now when I tell people that I went to Africa and they ask if I have seen a lion I can say yes.

Sad Cheetah

Anna and Shanna with the awesome shopkeeper (he was about 16 years old)

Then we found a little kid who insisted on showing us a tannery. We went with him and he brought us to this shop where they took us up to the roof and showed us the tannery and described how it worked. Then we were brought back to the shop where they showed us some of their jackets. Anna found one she really liked but was hesitant to pay the 800 diram price that the shopkeeper quoted. So instead we went to a restaurant to eat lunch. Anna decided that she want to get the jacket so we went back to the store. When we asked for the price again the guy told the jacket was 1800 diram and claimed that his was the price he originally quoted (which to be fair, might have been true, it was in Arabic). Needless to say we didn't buy the jacket, and tried to walk out but the guy got a little confrontational about not bargaining with him for it (there was no way he would take anywhere close to the 800 diram, we tried). We eventually got out and took off down the the street, got lost (which is what you should do in Fes) and then made it back to the Reid in time to follow the Reid owners directions to the nearby cafe where we had dinner and watched some great live music.

The tannery

the tannery smells bad so they gave us some mint to smell instead

After, we headed back to the riad and drank a couple bottles of wine on the roof and stayed up late. The next day we were greeted, again, with a delicious breakfast. We walked around for a while and went back to the same cafe to eat berber pizza for lunch. Then we got in taxi's and went to the train station. My taxi diver decided to charge me a tax for being white, which I'm getting tired of paying, but I was too tired to argue. We got on the train and headed back to Rabat for another week of school.

Me enjoying berber pizza

Mopeds in Rabat

Come round kiddies and let me tell you a story about my friends Anna and Rebecca and their awesome moped in Morocco.

You see Anna was a totally fearless American who had spent her mere 24 years on this earth convincing herself that she was invincible. After stints in Afghanistan and Iraq Anna decided that she wanted to go back to school to learn about chemistry so she could become a doctor. Unfortunately, she decided to take physical chemistry during her last year and it filled her head with chemistry nonsense. Therefor, she decided to leave the US and spend some time in Morocco learning Arabic. When she arrived she decided that she didn't like walking around and she didn't want to spend money on taxis for three months. Instead, she bought a 1985 moped.

Rebecca was an army brat for Canada. She went to college and spent a couple of years trying to learn Arabic. When she graduated college she couldn't find the job she wanted and instead decided to further her Arabic studies by traveling to Morocco.

Anna and Rebecca met in Morocco and instantly became friends, Anna would even drive them together on the moped all around the city.

Then one dark (actually rather sunny) Monday afternoon, Anna and Rebecca were driving to the souk when an evil (I have no data to support that claim) taxi driver pulled into a bus stop without signalling to pick up some fares. Anna did her level best to swerve around the taxi and successfully navigated the moped and herself away from the hazard. Unfortunately Rebecca's knee didn't quite miss the taxi. In fact, her knee blew through the tail light and bumper of the taxi. This sent her heel into the spokes of the moped rapidly followed by Rebecca into the air. She landed on the street and skidded for a bit before coming to a complete stop.

Now Anna managed to pull Rebecca to the side of the street and together they called the school that they were attending. Then they waited for about an two hours.

They, and the school helper (and me), grew tired of waiting for an ambulance and decided to drive to the hospital by themselves. When they arrived they were squished into an examination room and told that the doctor would be with them in a minute. Three hours later the doctor showed up. He looked the deep gash in Rebecca's knee and the piece of skin missing from her heel and said, "It's not so bad."

Then Rebecca and Anna were brought into the operating room where the doctor proceeded to root around in Rebecca's knee before giving her any local anesthesia. When he was sure she hadn't fucked up her knee too much he gave her local anesthesia for the knee and sewed her up.

Then he moved to the heel. He again, without anesthesia, pulled back the skin and cleaned the wound out. Now, I'm not sure if there is some sort of anesthesia shortage in Morocco, but the doctor decided to stitch up the heel without any anesthesia. Rebecca's yells of pain followed by crazy laughter could be heard several doors down the hall.

But Rebecca is a champ and she struggled through it all. The doctor discharged her with some over the counter pain meds and, inshallah Rebecca will catch her flight back to Canada on Wednesday.

Here is too wishing Rebecca a quick and safe recovery.

-Ben

You will get sand EVERYWHERE

I went to the Sahara, which incidentally is both the name of the desert I visited and the Arabic word for desert. Before we left we were given a briefing by the school's Debbie Downer. The most memorable part of it was the phrase "You will get sand everywhere." Turns out this is true, when I finally made it back to Rabat I took my pants off and turned them upside down and found that I had brought a couple grams of the Sahara back with me.

They really liked the peanuts

It really was a great trip. We spent the first day driving to Midelt which is basically a city in the middle of no where about halfway between Rabat and the Algerian border. On out way we got to stop and, as the schedule so eloquently put it, "pet Monkeys!" I spent 5 diram (about 60 cents) on peanuts when we got there to feed the monkeys. I know that someone out there is probably thinking, "You shouldn't feed them, its not natural." All I have to say is, you're right. Its not natural, but I got to feed cute monkeys and in return they let me take some awesome pictures with them, so i really don't care that much about whether it was natural or not, because it was awesome.

Anna hanging out with her new friend

We spent the night in a really creepy hotel. There was an attached restaurant where we were served by a man who I am pretty sure is a vampire. He was pale (frighteningly so for a Moroccan)  and had exceptional manners, also he looked like he enjoyed the taste of blood.

On Saturday we drove the rest of the way to the desert. We had to switch to jeeps at one point because there wasn't really any roads across the desert. Our group was split between three jeeps and I'm pretty sure that we got the best driver. When we started off on roads he drove pretty conservatively, probably between 40-50 mph. When we hit the desert he sped up to about 75 mph and payed significantly less attention the where he was going.  At one point he was trying to fix his mp3 player and had both hands off the wheel and was looking in his lap while the car was speeding at about 65 mph through the desert. After he fixed the mp3 player he would spend about 5 seconds of every minute looking out the rear view mirror. At first this really confused everyone in the car until someone thought to ask if he was in a race with the other drivers. All he said was naam (Arabic for yes) and slightly nod his head before pressing on the accelerator harder. In case you are wondering, we won by a considerable margin.

When we finished with the jeeps we got on camels. What you have to know about camels is they are a once in a lifetime experience. As in you will do it once in your lifetime and never want to ride them again. They were fun for about 15 minutes and then just really, really uncomfortable. We started our camel trek right around sunset and got some pretty nice views before arriving at the camp about 2 hours later (2 hours is a long time to sit on a camel). It took the guides about 3 hours to make dinner. so we at at about 10 and then hiked to the top of a sand dune and looked that the stars until 2 in the morning. I finally went to sleep at about 3 and had to wake up at 5:15 for the 2 hour camel ride back to the jeeps.

Sunrise in the Sahara

Sunday was spent sitting in a minibus for about 10 hours during the ride back to Rabat. I sat next to a sick person for about 6 hours so inevitably I also got sick. That's not to say I blame Anna for my getting sick rather, I'm trying to use it as an excuse for my very late blog post.

Ben

School's out for summer. School's out forever

Well, since I'm in class five days a week for 6 hours a day I thought that it was about time that I wrote a blog entry about school.

First things first. If you know be from Qalam wa Lawh know that I tried my damnedest to keep you from learning about this blog. Second, if I know you from Qalam wa Lawh, you are pretty awesome. That goes for all of the students.

I am so out of my league. Everyone at this school is at a minimum bilingual, and probably over half the time can speak upwards of four or five languages. If you have read any of the other blog posts, you'll know that I can barely write in one (American English).  So while I have been able to tell other people what will happen to an egg if you drop it in everclear (it will turn white because the proteins are denatured) everyone else can tell the taxi driver how to get back to the apartment. I'll let you all decide which is the more important skill.

 

Anyways I'm headed off to the desert on Friday to go sleep under the stars and watch the sun rise on the sand dunes. It's a major box that I get to tick off of what I wanted to do this trip. I'll post pictures as soon as I get back.

-Ben

Fuck it. Lets go!

One of my high school English teachers told me that everyone has seven exclamation points that they get to use in their life. Any more and their emphasis is watered down to the point of mere periods. I'm happy to use one of my seven in this title.

I went to Marrakesh this weekend. While the trip is a story in and of itself, the fact that I went to Marrakesh is also deserving of a story.

Nina

All week I had been getting invitations to go places with students from the school. I could have gone to Maknes or Marrakesh or Casablanca or just drive up the coast to a nice beach. Everything sounded fun but it also meant that I had to plan and put together my weekend on Wednesday, well before I was ready to think about such things. So Friday came around, I hadn't put together a plan and the beach was looking awful tempting (mainly because it took the least thinking). A couple of classmates were sitting around the school saying goodbye to Nina. She had been the reason a lot of us were hanging out together and it was really pretty sad to see her leave. The Austrian and German girls, who were going to Marrakesh, were all packed and ready to go buy their train tickets after they said goodbye. And then they made their mistake, offhandedly one of the offered that this was my last chance to go to Marrakesh with them. After carefully considering what I had packed in my daypack (1 binder, 1 wallet, 1 camera, 3 pens, 1 journal, and a Moroccan cell phone)  I told them I was in.

We went to the train station, bought the tickets and I was off to Marrakesh for three days (note that the bag didn't contain a change of clothes, I smell really bad right now).

Marrakesh was amazing (as are most things Moroccan). The Austrian girl I went with knew a Berber mountain guide who was going to meet us in Marrakesh and then take us hiking on Saturday, followed by going to the Souks on Sunday. The guide was one of the nicest guys I have met on the trip. He came out to pick us up at the train station at midnight on Friday and when we got back to his place there was a meal waiting for us. We ate and drank some Moroccan wine (oddly enough that not a euphemism for anything, it really was just Moroccan wine) and went to sleep at about 3 am. We woke up at 9ish on Saturday and had breakfast before leaving the house for the hike at 12. Now if you have been doing the math you might have noticed that I'm recounting roughly three hour meals, that about correct. Zakki, the guide, told us a Moroccan saying while we were with him, " The Europeans have the clocks but the Moroccans have the time."

Anyways, we went hiking in the High Atlas Mountains. We started in a tiny little city called Imlil and hiked for about three hours to a sacred place where the is a giant white rock that entombs important person. What I didn't understand (the entire weekend was basically in German) was certainly made up for with some astounding views. This trip made my last minute gamble on Marrakesh pay off in spades.

Today, we spent the morning in Marrakesh, around the giant souk and the girls had a blast shopping. Seeing as I have another two and a half months in North Africa I decided not to buy anything that I would have to haul around Tunisia and Egypt with me. I also got to see first hand why Morocco still has a state department advisory.

This used to be a cafe in the Souks of Marrakesh. A bomb went here last may killing several people.
Seems safe now though.

Have a lovely day wa ma'a salaama.

Ben

Rock the Casbah

First, I wanted to give a shout out to the Childs. It turns out that you guys should move to Morocco. It's an entire country that runs on Child time. 

Last weekend I took a school trip up to Chefchaouen and Tangier. Chefchaoen is one of the most amazing places I have ever seen. It is a city built in the Northern mountains of Morocco and the entire thing is painted blue. We had an amazing guide who showed us around the city and had dinner on a roof top. There were 14 students who ended up going (and I was the only guy). The dinner cost about $120 for all 14 of us, it was three courses and amazing. I bought Annie a birthday gift (its only a month late right now). On Sunday ate a large breakfast of bread and egg and then drove about two hours through some mountain roads to Tangier. The entire time I was thinking, "Annie would have puked all over the place."    

Tangier was okay. I saw the Mediterranean for the first time and really wanted to go sailing but had to settle for walking in the water across a beach. We had some pretty good seafood at a restaurant on the beach, I split some Marlin (I think) with one of the girls. After, we went to the Medina with a guide the school had arranged.  He was pretty awful. I'm pretty sure that he was telling the street vendors what language to speak to us in and then sending them after us. After the group got fed up with him he stopped guiding us around and at one point just left us in the middle of a Medina. 

Today the school took a group of us to the Casbah in Rabat which was nice (and also blue). I made some pasta for dinner and now I'm off to review my vocab sheet. 

Masa Salaama,

-Ben

Chefchaouen

The laundrymat in Chefchaouen

It was like walking through a glacier

Our blue hotel

View from the Hotel roof

The Med with Moroccan Mint Tea

Casbah in Tangier

Casbah in Rabat

Ben and the Atlantic Ocean

New friend Sam (she went to school at Lewis and Clark)

Al Maghrib

Morocco is a fascinating country. For example, yesterday I learned that they were the first country to recognize the United States as an independent nation. Today one of my school mates asked me if Morocco was what I expected. My reply was that it was...ish. The closest comparison is really central mexico without the drug violence. It is very much a developing nation and it seems that they have a predilection for building walls around everything. The traffic is anything but safe and there are stray cats everywhere. However, it is so much fun. Every time I get into a taxi I know that it will be a roller coaster ride to wherever I'm going and when I get there it will be something entirely new. Today I visited the souk (central market) where you can buy everything. They had DVDs for 5 dirham (75 cents) and I bought, what is most likely, a stolen cell phone for 20 bucks. I visited the meat market which had a smell like a mix between pike street market in Seattle and the meat markets of Mexico. The school has been fantastic. I really can't recommend it enough, and I have to say I have had more fun in a week than I imagined I would have over the entire three months. Really, if someone forced me to come home right now I would feel like this entire trip had been successful. Inshallah, no one will take me up on that. Also, I feel that I have to mention the mint tea that they serve here in case anyone is thinking of visiting Morocco in the future. Beware, the mint tea is less mint tea and waaaay more hot sugar water with added caffeine, right now I haven't become accustomed to it but maybe by the time I leave I'll like it.

This weekend I'm off to Tangier and Chefchaouen. Two cities about two and a half hours North of Rabat. I'm pretty excited.

Masa Salaama

-Ben

P.S. (This part might be a bit crude) We were given the worlds greatest worksheet. It has several phrases in Arabic Letters that we have to connect and then gives the English translation. The English is as follows:

1. He withdrew, pulled out
2. It was short
3. It was numerous
4. He emptied; he finished
5. He endowed with
6. He demanded, requested
7. He matured, it ripened
8. He triumphed
9. He spent the night awake
10. He was quick, fast
11. He was sorry, regretted
12. He abstained from
13. He was ill, unwell
14. He gathered, assembled
15. He passed
16. He was angry

At then end of it I was laughing so hard I was crying.

Pictures

I added a link to my photos so far on the right side of the blog also here Take a look. Longer blog entry coming tomorrow.

Ben

Rabat after 2 days

New friends Rebecca (left) and Nina (Right)

There have been a couple of things that I have found really fun, and a couple of

Two of the cats that seems to have taken over this country
things that I have found really funny, in Morocco so far.

The first is Arabic class by far one of the best decisions I have made in a long time. The school is great, the teachers are very supportive and interactive. It has been a long time since I have had this much fun taking classes. Basically, I decided to embrace the idea that I will often make a fool of myself but perhaps I will learn more that way. Whether it helps or not I hope that everyone else in my class at least thinks its funny.

Funny thing one. As one of my suite mates likes to say, "Development seems to have taken Morocco by surprise." What he means is that I will hit a light switch expecting the light to go on and nothing will happen in the room I'm in, however, somewhere in the apartment a light will switch on or off. There is really no rhyme or reason to where light switches are place.

The pottery shop

Funny thing two. There are these propane tanks sitting around the apartment called budagas. (Its how you heat water or run a stove, apparently when the cities, and these are some new areas I'm talking about, were developed no one thought that there would be a need for gas lines). Now, budagas is different than propane tanks in the US. These tanks have absolutely no safety measures, there is no pressure release valve and no auto shutoff on them. What the Moroccans have basically done is create a series of little bombs that you put around your apartment if you ever want anything to be hot.

Two of the cats that seems to have taken over this country

Today we took a couple of trips off campus. The first was to a pottery studio, I'm pretty sure that we were brought there because to teacher wanted to go shopping but it was pretty cool anyways.

I have decided on a favorite arabic word. Inshallah, god willing, it is used all over the place but it mostly means hopefully.

With that, masa asalama.

Ben

New friend Alex

Where babies come from

At the challah (Roman/Moroccan ruins)

In Rabat

Not a ton to report today. I made it to Rabat, I'm super tired though I don't want to sleep before about 9 tonight (which is 1 pm for all you west coasters). The flight from Paris was really nice. I wasn't paying much attention but according to one my suite mates here at the Qalam (think Kalam) Center, we flew over the straights of Gibraltar and for a couple of minutes you could see both Spain and Morocco out of the window. We found an ATM got money then walked over to a restaurant and had what was the best meal I have had in at least a week, though the standards were pretty low because I haven't had a real meal for about 36 hours.

First Views of Africa

View from the Apartment

Leaving

Who knew you were allowed to have that much fun in Portland less than 10 hours before sitting in airports and airplanes for a day.

A quick disclaimer: I'm writing this on my iPod touch and I'm not feeling that hungover so there is the off chance that I'm still a bit tipsy.

 Back to the story.

 My dad and I left bend at about 4 on Friday. We waited till the afternoon because he had to go play with the bees and I was waiting for a credit card in the mail. After driving past the off ramp to the hotel, twice, I decided that it was a good idea to grab some food prior to going to the hotel. We drove downtown and ate at the northwest public house and started some drinks. After, we decided to forgo the hotel again and instead found some family friends at their condo downtown. It was mentioned that their daughter Jamie was going dancing for her birthday and asked if I wanted to go along. They talked me into it with the mention that it was Jamie's birthday and that I probably wouldn't be allowed to talk to girls for the next three months. What was not mentioned was where we were headed.

Turns out that it was CC Slaughter's. Now, if your are unschooled in the ways of Portland nightlife (as I am) that's a Gay club. It also turns out it wasn't a great place to talk to girls but the no cover for guys and dollar drinks were pretty awesome. About 1 am we decided to call it a night and headed back to the condo. I woke my dad up and he proceeded to ask if I was going to drive to the hotel. I was in no shape to do any such thing so he had to wake up enough to drive us out there.

We checked into the hotel at 2 am and asked for a wake-up call at 4:30. I wend to the room slept till 4 then laid in bed for a while waiting for the call. We made the 5 o'clock shuttle to the airport with no problems. About half way there Dad looks at me and says, "I hope this isn't what traveling with the moons is like."

I was still a little drunk when I showed up to the security area which was fortunate because it meant that I didn't have a hangover as the TSA agent searched through my luggage for a knife that I forgot to take out of a pair of pants.  The agent was really nice, we chatted as she searched my bag for a weapon, that was a little surreal.

 I made my plane in time and now it appears that we are just starring our flight over the rockies. I hope everyone has a great Saturday and GO DUCKS!

Packing

I was told my last post was a little dreary, thats not really what I was shooting for so I'm going liven this one up a bit.

I am excited to start this adventure. There is really nothing like spending a couple of weeks at home to make you want to do something exciting. So far that has meant I have spent my time hiking, running, biking, sailing, shooting and going back to Eugene to help some friends move into their new house. While all of those Bendy activities were fun I'm excited to start a new activity. Tomorrow my dad and I are driving up to P-town so that I can catch my early morning (7:00 am) flight off to Boston.

Me and Alex at the top of South Sister

Swimming at the false Summit

Lounging in the warm water

Earlier this week I received a nice email from a lady with the Qalam Center (where I'll be attempting to pick up some Arabic) she informed me that they were excited about my upcoming arrival and would have a driver waiting to pick me up at the airport. So I'm excited I won't have to navigate myself from the airport to the school. Knock on wood, but it looks like this trip is starting to come together.

I've been trying to pack up a bit today. I'm shooting for having about two weeks of clothes with me and I was hoping all of my shit would fit in one backpack that I could carry on. The plan might be coming apart at the edges as the backpack is pretty full and I'm not sure if the airlines are going to let me use it as a carry on. So now I have three choices, throw out a bunch of the clothes, check the bag and just carry a tiny extra bag, or carry two (carry on) bags around Africa for a couple of months. Option three is looking awful promising right know but who knows what I'll decide to do.

I hope everyone has a great fall. And if I havent yet got the chance to wish you luck in all of your endeavors over the next couple of months consider this that wish.