Out From Under the Clouds

I'm sure you've already guessed that this post will have better news, the title kind of gives it away but I couldn't pass up the double entendre, and not in the dirty way.
The next morning, I woke up, got packed, and was all ready to go.  I waited in the lobby until someone came over and put me in the shuttle.  I sat in the back with a man from Denmark whose flight was leaving at 7:10 and was afraid he might be cutting it a little close.  My flight left at 7:50 but I was nevertheless nervous, if there's one thing I'd learned it was never get too comfortable, just when you're feeling confident and comfortable, the whole jenga tower comes crashing down around your ears.  The driver came and informed me I had forgotten to turn in my key, which made me panic, but he just took it and said it wasn't a problem.  The whole thing really went off without a hiccup.  Hahaha, it's nice to be able to say that!  I arrived in the Fez airport, which is really cool, lots of tile work and you go down the stairs of your plane and walk across the sweltering tarmack into what looks like the front of the building. 

I was met immediately after customs by a girl from the school who had been sent to pick me up.  We got in the van with the driver and took off to Ifrane.  There was a brief scene that I accidentally caused, I seem to be prone to them.  I was trying to get my seatbelt on because I'd heard terrible things about driving in Morocco and I had actually been warned that this driver was especially fast.  My seatbelt was incredibly stubborn and was stuck underneath my seat somehow.  I just thought that I would quietly work on extracating in, possibly with my pen, the whole was to Ifrane.  Unfortunately, that wasn't the case.  The driver saw me struggling and tried to help by reaching backwards.  This was not effective.  He then proceded to pull over in the middle of a roundabout and get out of the car, come around the side, and do exactly the same thing that I had been trying with my seatbelt.  After a very embarrassing period, he managed to get it out and we continued driving.
Along the way, there were many groups of people taking naps in the shade.  I was told that they were harvesting peaches which obviously got me excited.  A car had broken down by the side of the road and our driver pulled over to see what he could do to help.  It turns out it was a freshman on her way to Al Akhawayn with her family and they had a flat tire.  The driver (I feel incredibly orientalist not remembering his name, sorry) changed their tire for them and we were back on our way.  I was eagerly scanning the countryside for the opportunity to see the thing that I am most looking forward to seeing.  Discaimer: this is not my picture, but I really really really hope to be able to take one like it someday soon.

!!!!!!!

I'm sorry it's not great quality, but how cool is that? It's like an Easter tree with goat decorations!  Anyways, the girl from the school just kind of looked at me like I was crazy when I told her that was what I really wanted to see.

I should tell you a little about the school.  It's a very beautiful campus design, I just learned today, by a French architect.  The translation means the two brothers.  If you want to be super groovy and get the pronounciation right it's (al-ach-a-win) with the emphasis on the ach which means brother.

 Anyways, I got to my room which happens to be on the opposite side of campus from everything and my room is on the third floor.  I was bemoaning this fact in the cafeteria the other day and several of the less permanent students said that they didn't live on campus, they lived in the annex in Ifrane which was much worse.  I just had to point out my broken leg and then they stopped. :)

I have a fox outside of my window that I say goodnight to everynight.  I feel like I have privledged knowledge because everyone around campus always says thing like, "did you hear we have a fox? I've never seen it but my friend's older brother's second cousin swears he saw it's tail flit around a corner once."

This is where he lives.

I was in the shower when my roommate arrived.  I was very lucky that I heard voices because I was preparing to make my usual entrance into my normally deserted room by hopping through the door in my underwear.  I quickly rethought this plan of action and put my pants back on.  I was incredibly relieved that I had because when I actually opened the door, her mother, her two aunts and two cousins turned to look at me from the bed.  I tried to salvage my shattered poise and basically stammered out that it was nice to meet them in Arabic before I was even introduced.  Later, once everyone had left, Amal (that is her name, it means hope and she is one of the sweetest and most helpful people I have ever had the pleasure of meeting.  Not to mention she's lovely, like most Moroccan girls I've met with their olive skin, dark hair, and liquidy brown eyes next to whom I feel like the pasty duckling) came back in and said that her dad wanted to tell me hello and that I am welcome here in Morocco.  I was already in bed at this time, having lost the aforementioned pants in preparation for sleeping.  I thought that that was a very nice thing to say and asked her if she could tell him hi back for me or something equally eloquent.  She walked out into the hall and brought her father from where he had been outside our door into the room.

He had been a professor of French in Azrue, the largest nearby city and spoke English very well.  We had a long conversation about the medical system as he is now the head secretary for the Juvenille Diabetes Association in this part of Morocco.  Amal's whole family was very welcoming, as is every Moroccan I have met so far.  Most people, including the gardeners and maintenance men stop me as I walk by and say bless you and I hope you get better.  Much better than the United States from what I remember :)  I utterly reject what people say about Morocco being a sketchy and upsetting place to travel.  It must just be in really touristy places because Ifrane has been wonderful.  This campus is beautiful and I feel safer walking around at night by myself here than in Bozeman, that might also be because of Idris, my new friend who is a security guard.  He is the first person I have ever had a successful spontaneous Arabic conversation with and I will always remember him for that.

English Extravaganza Part 2

I had ordered a shuttle from the hostel to the airport for six o clock the next morning.  I woke up at 5:30 and brought my bags out in front of the building to wait.  It was a very beautiful morning and I was feeling pretty optomistic about this stage of the trip.

I waited..... and I waited..... and I waited, feeling increasingly nervous.  At 6:30, the family came out of the house that had been heretofore dark and locked and piled into the car.  This, apparently, was the shuttle.  The mother of the house carried my bag in and set it down at the baggage check and left saying I should be fine.  I got up to the baggage check where this snide and unhelpful man informed me that I could get on the plane but it was too late to check my bag.  I asked if they could send the bag along on the next flight to Fez but he said that if I wasn't on the plane, my bag couldn't be.  I am here in Morocco for a whole semester, I was not about to just leave my bag to the whim of these foul ryanair employees.  He directed me to a counter where they said they would help me reschedule my flight.  It was only when I began talking to them that I realized it was there that they would make snide remarks and ask me why I had done that and that it would have been better if I had done such and such.  Evil evil woman, I again burst into frustrated and paniced tears and she watched me impassively, a bit like a lizard.
I decided I just needed to sit down and weigh my options so I limped towards some chairs.  A very nice man came over and pulled my suitcase for me and sat down next to me as I cried.  After awhile, he timidly asked when my flight was. This caused me to go into yet another and more violent, paroxysm of grief.  Bear in mind, this was an older English gentleman who, I don't believe felt quite in his element dealing with hysterical young females.  He awkwardly patted my hand, quickly said he was sorry and left me in the company of a motherly older woman.  This woman kept nervously glancing in my direction, and after what seemed like half an hour of unabated weeping, she just kind of touched my leg and asked if there was anything she could do for me.  Yet again, I was shaken out of my self absorbed state of mourning and realized that I was making people uncomfortable.  I knew she couldn't help so I went and got on the computer and booked yet another flight and another hotel for the night.  It was about 8:00 in the morning by this time and I couldn't check into my hotel until 4:00 pm so I spent the day in the airport reading in the airport and having a very long conversation with a very nice Italian man about the murder capitals of the world and all of the grisly things that happens in them.  This was a suffient distraction for me and I was starting to feel like I really didn't have it all that bad after all.
I had read that the Desalis Hotel, where I was staying, had an airport shuttle so I trudged down to the shuttle terminal.  There was a wonderful young Spanish couple who were perfect in everyway who helped me carry my suitcase to gate 36 for me.  I say that they were perfect in everyway not in a sarcastic or snide way, they will just be forever idealized in my mind, our lack of continued correspondence will never open them up to folly of human weaknesses.  They were just both beautiful, athletic, happy, intelligent, and sweet.  As I was waiting for the shuttle, as is England's wont, it started pouring.  The girl came and stood next to me with an umbrella while her boyfriend stood by their bags with another umbrella.  Their shuttle came and they insisted on leaving one of the umbrellas with me.  I thanked them profusely and they drove off into the rain.

By this time, my walking cast was getting distinctly soggy and an unpleasant odor was rising from it.  I began to feel the sneaking suspicion that I was in the wrong spot.  I opened my mouth to inquire with several men in reflective vests as they passed into the control station behind me but they did not seem to notice me and continued walking and speaking in a very mysterious language.  Finally, a Bengali man in a suit came running out from the airport and asked if I was going to the Desalis hotel to which I replied yes and he got on his phone and talked to his friend and demanded where he was.  About ten minutes later, he pulled up in the shuttle van.  He was an incredibly friendly Bulgarian who was delighted to find out that I spoke a little bit of Russian.  He wanted to know if Montana was much like Chicago, he had a friend there and was hoping to visit him there soon.  At the hotel, the Bengali man checked me in and the Bulgarian told him to give me a good room.

The Desalis hotel was a very odd place.  There were murals, marble counter tops, and all sorts of flowers in vases around the lobby.  The main lighting came from huge round paper lanterns.  It was very nice and was the cheapest lodging anywhere around.  The odd thing was that it didn't seem entirely finished.  On the way to the room, there was some freshly applied spackling and hoses laying in the hall. 

The bathroom was magnificent, all mirrors and a fabulous blown glass bowl sink which I regret very much not having a picture of.  The odd thing about it is that, not even that hidden, are things like exposed rusty plumbing the the bathrooms, just behind the sink.  I was very pleased with it and settled down after my first glorious (or any kind for that matter) shower in five days.  After that I just kind of laid on the bed with a glazed expression, I'm assuming since I didn't actually get to see it, and watched a neurological case study about memory loss.  Then I drifted into sweet oblivion, hoping the next day would be better.

English Extravaganza

England. I have always had a bit of a romanticized idea of England in my head.  I guess it's from listening to Jim Dale read Harry Potter and reading about courtly manners in Jane Austen.  In my mind, England is full of well educated and beautifully speaking people.  However, I have come to the realization that England has just about as many course and grumpy people as the next country, who can blame them?  There are no mountains to speak of and it rains alot.

I woke up that next morning and went in search of Laura, a girl who was going to be on the same flight as me to Fez and was another exchange student to Al Akhawayn.  She was staying in the same hostel so I went to her room and kind of stood outside it.  I knocked but no one answered so I kind of awkwardly continued to stand there while I pondered my next course of action.  She came walking down the hall at the very moment I was contemlating the door and we were both quite relieved to have met up.  We checked our bags in for the morning and took the underground to trafalgar square just to have a look around.  We were there probably a grand total of about 15 minutes before we decided we should get a head start on getting to the airport.  Our flight was at 3:15 and this was about 11:00.  We got our bags from the hostel and headed to Victoria station.  The London underground is not what I would consider handicap accessible.  A very select stations are equipped with "lifts" and those are very descrete.  You have to ask someone where it is and they lead you behind some ticket desk and through a disguised door then do an elaborate secret knock.  Once the doors open, you are escorted into an elevator roughly the size of a broom closet where you and the attendant awkwardly squeeze and you suddenly become painfully aware that you forgot to put deodorant on that morning, or maybe you did and he didn't, you're too close to differentiate.  Ok, they're not that bad but close.  Anyways, that was fairly irrelevant since the only time I was lucky enough to find a lift was in the Heathrow station.  The other times consisted of standing in the flow of people right before the two staircases and two escalators hoping that someone would take pity and grab your bag for you and that no one would knock you over.  I had an ingenious idea of tying a rope around my waist and my bag and dragging it along but unfortunately, with so many people running about on incredibly important business, it would usually get knocked off of its wheels and I would drag it for a couple more yards, futilly hoping it would magically right itself.

The whole process was made more difficult due to the fact that Laura had two bags which meant she ended up having to tend to three bags, two of which were 20kg.  The wonderful people who did help us would usually end up getting squashed by one or more of the bags as they fell down the escalator which would, understandably, rather put them off going any further with us.  Once we arrived in Victoria station, it started raining and everyone was gathering in inconvenient places so Laura decided it would be easiest for her to go get both of us tickets for the bus ride to Stansted which was about 45 minutes away.  I readily agreed to this because I was getting exhausted from dealing with my bag so I was instructed to come along at my own pace and meet her in the station.  I began my trip over there and then my heart dropped like a pair of wet shorts.  Victoria station was packed with people.  I could barely get through, conspicuous though I am on crutches dragging a bright red suitcase behind me attached with a bright yellow bit of rope.  I tried paging her both in the station and the bus loading terminal.  No answer, later, I heard that she had paged me as well but the whole thing was a disaster.  A kindly guard came over and asked if I needed help and I said that I've lost my friend and I have a plane to catch to Stansted.  He informed me that there are no buses that leave from Victoria to Stansted.  I would have to go to Liverpool Street and get on the train from there. 

I'm sure you can imagine my horror.  It was one by this point, the time that we were hoping to arrive at Stansted.  I had to change some money in order to get a bus ticket to Liverpool street then I hopped on the bus, expecting it to be about 20 minutes long.  An hour later, I got off of the bus and tried to drag my bag across the street.  It promptly fell over as a bus was headed my way.  A very nice Malaysian boy came running out and rescued me and took me down to the ticket people.  It was 2:05 at this time.  I was informed that I justed missed the train and would have to wait for the 2:10 one.  If you do the math, this clearly doesn't work.  The train ride takes 40 minutes and the check in closes at 2:45.  

After coming to this realization, I burst into tears and the Malaysian boy led me out and sat me down on a bench as I tried to tell him what was wrong since he seemed very worried and confused.  He ran off and got me coffee which I tried to get for him to thank him for his help but he just smiled and made me drink it, which really calmed me down and then he left.  I decided that crying wasn't going to get me to Morocco so I went in search of wi-fi.  I found it at the trusty McDonalds.  If you're every traveling with a computer, McDonalds is absolutely your friend because of its free wi-fi, I've used it numerous times this trip and have become quite fond of it, I believe it is called "the cloud" for the wireless connection. Unfortunately, they didn't have any outlets so I hiked the length of the train station and found a pub with a table right next to an outlet.  Amazingly enough, I got the McDonalds wi-fi from there as well so I spent the next four hours looking for a plane ticket to Fez as soon as possible.  This happened to be through Dusseldorf, leaving at 7:15 the next morning so I took it.  I hopped onto the train to stansted and then tried to figure out how to get to the hostel I had decided to stay at called Greenways.  No one had heard of it.  I was told by the bus driver to just take his bus to Little Haddington and then catch a cab from the pub there to Greater Haddington, where the website said the hostel was.

I was a little nervous to put my faith in a cab since I only had 4 pounds and some pence on me, they assured me it shouldn't be much more than that but who knew exactly?  By this time it was quite dark.  The bus dropped me off at this pub in the middle of no where and I drug my bag inside.  They were just closing.  It was a beautiful little pub with dark wood and white plaster walls and ceiling.  I asked how to get to Greenways and no one knew but they all got out their phones and started texting their friends to see if they knew.  The bar tender said he would take me as soon as he was done there.  I decided since they were being so nice to me, I should give them my patronage.  I had half a pint of guiness which was wonderful, especially since I had not eaten all day or most of the day before.  We drove around for awhile looking for the hostel and finally found it, it was actually just a couple of rooms in a prefab building behind someone's house but they had a nice kitty named Rosie who had a very squished face and was very fluffy.  We fought for awhile with the Ryanair site because you are required to print off the boarding pass four hours before the flight and the site wasn't working but the poor landlord who was suffering from gout had to come out and he got it to work. 

The Journey

Since I broke my leg, I have thought that time was moving at a glacial pace.  I was thinking the time to head to Morocco would never come.  A little more than a week ago, it came and I wasn't ready!  I wasn't able to say goodbye to as many people as I would have liked or pack as carefully as I should have.  That fact aside, I left on my trip on the 20th of August.  It was very sad to say goodbye at the airport but luckily modern technology means you are still able to see and talk to your people when you're on the other side of the world! 
I arrived in LA and was taken down to the baggage claim in a wheelchair after being awkwardly set aside right outside of the arrivals gate.  Some of the new pilots who were taking over the next flight teased me by telling my chaufer to not forget me like the last one who had to spend the night in a wheelchair.  It's very awkward to be wheeled around by a complete stranger.  It's even more awkward when they don't speak English as was the case with the woman who helped me.  Once I had retrieved my bag, a very nice girl drug it outside for me and I sat down to wait.  I had just begun to get a little nervous and feel the absense of my cell phone keenly when my Aunt Diana pulled up with my two cousins.  We went back to their house in San Pedro then had a very nice dinner with homemade pesto made from fresh Basil.

The next day was Flugtag which means flying day in German.  It's sponsored by Red Bull and this one was taking place at Long Beach.  We arrived early enough to watch the people do the things the kinds of people who push paper mache flying machines off of high platforms into water do.  There was a group who had made a giant stork and all wore depends and pacifiers who called themselves the "Unexpected Delivery." 

 There was also a group who were cavemen in animal skins tearing into large hunks of meat and throwing bones at the audience who were going to see how far they could fly a large round rock. 

In order to get a suitable angle at which to watch the carnage, I had to crutch about half a mile around a crowded pier to a peninsula with a lighthouse but it was worth it.  I'm not sure how my cousins enjoyed it since it was about 90 degrees and very sunny with no chance of shade and once you've seen one, you've kind of seen them all, but I had a good time.  To get the crowd pumped up, they had some speed wings come out of a helicopter with smoke trails and do incredibly aggressive landings right on the launch pad, (my own accident flashed before my eyes) and they had what they called a skyaker which is what happens when you skydive in a kayak, you can just land pretty fast.  I thought it would have been pretty tough to keep your balance as you're landing but otherwise it was rather pointless since he had no paddle and he looked like a stranded water bug until the jet skis came to rescue him.

After Flugtag, the babysitter came and Uncle Jeffery, Aunt Diana, and I left for Laguna Beach for a classy evening at pageant of the Masters at the art festival.   The Art festival has such a cool outside venue!  There is a middle common area on which there was a jazz band playing and then artists with all sorts of mediums surrounding it.  We ate al fresco and then went to a huge outdoor amphitheatre.  The pageant consists of a narrator, full live orchestra, and almost a hundred great works of art presented in tableau by live actors.  You couldn't tell the difference between the original paintings, tile work, or sculptures and the people setting it up.  It was amazing the way the lighting made the whole scene incredibly one dimensional. 

We went for a drive the next day along the beach and then I caught my plane to London in the evening.  I was very nervous about London because my plans to meet my cousin had fallen through.  When I got off of the plane, there was a wheelchair waiting for me and they stuck me in a corner for awhile again, I think it's just protocol, then took me to baggage claim.  The wheelchair tender somehow managed to procure me a porter who took me to the underground station and helped me get a ticket and got them to take me down in a lift.  I thought this is cake!  The line took me straight to Picaddilly station where my hostel was and I got off there.  A very nice old man took my bag for me and carried it all the way up the many stairways and out onto the street.  He then asked directions and took me all the way to my hostel.  I tried to give him a postcard from Stillwater county as a thank you note, but I think he misunderstood me and ran off saying he didn't want it.  I shared a room with five German girls who all knew each other but I was too tired to care and just laid on my bunk and read.