(I was too tall for the doors in the sultan's palace at Dar Jamai)

Prepare yourselves, please, for what may be the longest blog entry yet recorded in history. I've been procrastinating setting this site up for the past two weeks, and consequently I have a lot of stories to tell. I apologize for my lack of brevity, but I do promise to be less long-winded in the future, should you ever be brave enough to venture back to this blog. In the meantime, sit back and adjust your internal clock to Moroccan time, where things happen just a bit more slowly....

Exactly two weeks ago today, I began my journey to the lovely land of Morocco. I hit the first proverbial bump in the road almost immediately upon arriving at the Dallas/Fort Worth airport, where I was asked to hand over my Moroccan residency VISA. This would have all been part of the routine, if only I'd had a VISA to give them. I stared open-mouthed at the woman helping me check in for my flight, uncertain about what to do next. I had been told by both the university in Morocco and by Ian Cosh--whom I consider master of all knowledge concerning global travel--that a VISA was unnecessary, but the folks at the airport had other ideas. Luckily, I had also booked a flight to France during Spring Break, which, since it split my stay in Morocco roughly in half, enabled me to squeeze past the VISA requirements and, somewhat shaky and much more nervous than before, I waved goodbye to my parents and passed through the security line.

Fast forward a day or so, past my loooong layover in Madrid, to my propeller-plane flight from Casablanca to Fez, where I met several other sleep-deprived but excited students traveling to Al Akhawayn. Despite our unreliable-looking airplane, we arrived without incident in Fez at about midnight. Well, almost without incident: my luggage took a detour at some point during my journey, but happily it, too, arrived safely in Fez several days later. From Fez, we rode with a group of student ambassadors to the university in Ifrane, about an hour away, then spent the next two days attempting to get over our jetlag. Thursday morning, our International Student Orientation began, and from Thursday until Sunday, we attended seminars and filled out paperwork, including the all-important residency forms which we all needed so as not to be deported. (Really.)

(the view from my dorm window in Ifrane)

Classes began Monday morning, and despite some hitches regarding the adding and dropping of courses, all went well. By this time, the exchange students had all become fairly close, and we were excited to meet new Moroccan friends as well. Culture differences aside, almost every person I've met here has been kind and hospitable, and in the first few days of school, I was invited to come visit multiple girls at their homes. In addition to the wonderful people, the food in Morocco has stolen my heart; I find myself wondering if it is possible to get tired of eating tajines or if I will continue to crave them every day for the rest of my life. Anyhow, classes have gone quite well--my Arabic professor in particular is excellent--and the town of Ifrane is beautiful, though cold. I am inexpressably thankful for long underwear during the wind and snow we've been having.

This past Saturday, I took a day trip with some friends to Meknes, a city located about an hour's drive northwest of Ifrane. The weather there was much nicer, and we had a great time exploring all the souks in the old medina, a sort of outdoor marketplace selling everything from slippers to strawberries. We also visited the Musee Dar Jamai, a sultan's palace-turned-museum, and the famous Mausoleum of Moulay Ismail. We also toured an underground prison which once housed Christian slaves, and drank Moroccan mint tea with the owner of a carpet souk. (It is a sign of hospitality here when shopkeepers offer you tea; this is not considered sketchy or inappropriate.) We concluded our Meknes adventure with a somewhat bewildering taxi ride home and a vow to come back and buy rugs later in the semester.

(the gates to the Mausoleum of Moulay Ismail)

(I really am almost done now, so bear with me...)

My final story to recount in this post is the only rough culture-shock experience I've had to date, which, oddly enough, occurred yesterday when I tried to do laundry. (First for the necessary background information...During our orientation, the OIP [Office of International Programs] gave us a student handbook, which apparently hasn't been updated in several key places, one of which is the info. about laundry services. There are two places on campus where you can do laundry, one self-service and one where they wash your clothes for you. There are separate tickets that you have to buy in order to do your laundry, and of course, since the self-service tickets were cheaper and the since the idea of someone else folding my laundry seemed strange, I bought them.) Yesterday afternoon, I lugged my laundry bag up to Building 36 to wash my clothes. Building 36 is a boys' dorm, and dorms are strictly segregated by sex (as in, I could be expelled just for going inside) so I was confused about the protocol for doing my laundry. I tried calling one of my friends who knew how the system worked, but she didn't answer, so I flagged down some boys who had their window open and interrogated them about where I could wash my stuff. Luckily, they very nicely directed me to the back of the building, where I could safely enter the laundry room without actually roaming the dorm halls, but the doors were locked. Apparently this was the room which was closed on Sundays, contrary to what I'd read in the handbook. Mildly put-out that I'd toted my heavy laundry bag around for ten minutes when the room that was open on that day was in the building I live in, I trudged back to Building 38.

Thoroughly confused about where I could actually use the tickets I'd bought, I asked the lady at the frond desk of my dorm where to go, and she made a call then kindly directed me downstairs. Relieved that I'd finally figured things out, I walked inside and handed over my tickets, only to find out that, contrary to what the woman at the front desk had been told, this was the place where they did your laundry for you, meaning I had the wrong tickets. The lady working in the laundry room, who spoke almost no English (and my French skills were unfortunately of zero help in terms of negotiating laundry services), directed me to two empty washing machines. After I shoved my clothes inside, she informed me (by a series of gestures with sporadic English words thrown in) that I had bought the wrong kind of laundry detergent. Of course, by this time the campus store was closing for the day, and my Moroccan cell phone conveniently chose that moment to run out of minutes, so I sprinted to a friend's room and borrowed her laundry detergent. The woman working in the laundry room laughed at me (I'm sure I seemed ridiculous and incompetent) and then proceeded to dump at least 1/3 of the box of detergent into each machine. (I am not exaggerating...it was literally spilling out the sides.) She accepted all six of the tickets I'd bought--almost $6 worth, which is VERY expensive considering that about $3.50 can buy you a nice meal--and told me to come back in the morning. (The handbook had listed the closing time as midnight, but it actually closed at 5, so my laundry had to stay overnight.) Embarrassed, sweating, and wondering whether I actually had a single clean pair of pants left to wear the next day, I headed back to my room nearly an hour after I'd originally left to wash my clothes. I was literally shaking, and had to lie down for a minute (which turned into half an hour, resulting in my missing the bus to church and consequently spending the rest of my evening doing homework in my room). Who would have thought washing clothes could be so difficult? At least the experience makes for a good story....more and more, I thank God for giving us all senses of humor.

Well, I think this post has been plenty long enough to satisfy any curiosity you may have had about my travels. I'll save the rest of my stories for later. :)