September 14 2010 / Casablanca, Morocco

Uploaded a couple days' entries in bulk, so start at the entries that are lower than this in order to read chronologically. 

Woke up in the morning feeling like death personified.  My runny nose/sore throat combo had definitely stepped its game up, and because I hadn’t gone to sleep until 12:30 and woke up automatically at 6:00 without being able to fall back asleep again.  I felt horrible but went over to Julie’s room and told her that there was no way I would be able to make it today to the spa/massage place, and felt really bad about it.  I just felt completely sapped of energy and emotion.  It was kind of a downer mood where I didn’t really want to do anything and felt really energyless to begin with. 

Around lunchtime I went up and grabbed some food.  I saw Lorelei and Dasha and sat with them, talking about our trips.  I realized that I needed more stamps for my post cards (these stamps required there to be two on a post card to get to the states) so I agreed to go out, even though I really didn’t want to.  Dasha gave me some weird three-dose capsule thing to take for my cold, though thus far it’s only intensified my runny nose.  On the way off the ship we walked by Julie, and I felt really guilty because I felt like it was like I hadn’t wanted to go out with her but now I was going out with these other girls, which wasn’t at all what it was.

We went to the medina in Casablanca, which was infinitely more cramped than the Marrakech one.  The people there really didn’t want to barter for some reason, probably because it was such a tourist area, and we got catcalled at us a lot (when we were walking through the port, a guy drove by us whistling and Lorelei and I flipped him off at the same time).  Otherwise it wasn’t too bad—no one had “grabby hands.”  But my god, what a dirty city.  I bought an ice cream at some point and ended up having to throw the wrapper on the ground—there were just no trash cans or anything for blocks and blocks.  I did, however, find some Aladdin-esque parachute green pants for 90 dirham, which I thought was reasonable.  When we left we got orange juices, and Lorelei, who had had a stomach ache the entire time, promptly got sick everywhere.  Yes—we were those awkward tourists.  I was sniffling, Lorelei was sick, and Dasha was trying far too hard to barter with people who had fixed prices.  I was all too happy to buy some stamps and cookies with the last of my dirham and get back to the ship.  The medina in Marrakech was much more of my thing, where it was a game to the shop owners and you had to play the game too, and win respect by playing it well.  All in all, Casablanca was sketchy and blah, while Marrakech and the Berber villages I visited seemed far more genuine and amazing. 

On the ship I mostly just hung out writing blogs—SO much happened over the past couple of days that it’s hard remembering it all and writing it down.  With other overnights I’m definitely going to have to bring my laptop so I can at least take notes well.  I ate dinner with Sarah, a girl from my post-port group, and some of her friends.  Then I kind of just wrote more blogs waiting for post-port discussion groups to start up.  The post-port groups were pretty fun because although most people had positive experiences about Morocco, some didn’t, and others didn’t like the same things that I liked.  For example, a lot of people felt really uncomfortable in the marketplaces, while I had felt like I was thriving in playing that game of trying to get a price where you’re not getting ripped off and the shopkeeper is still making money.  I also hadn’t had any horrible experiences happen to me as a woman, while many of the other women felt violated.  So it was pretty interesting hearing other people’s sides to their trip.

I’m pretty glad that I have this… ahem, “time off,” to work on classes and just relax from not running around all over everywhere.  I don’t know what I’m going to do in Takoradi, Ghana, yet.  But Morocco definitely exceeded my expectations greatly—I didn’t feel attacked as an American or as a woman any more than I really would have in the states, and the people had this friendliness that in most instances (outside the market, anyway) was incredibly genuine.