The worst trip home EVER

So I didn’t even want to go home, right? Well after a night of goodbye and happy birthday (to Ann, another trainee) revelry, I woke up with all the people who’d have to leave for work well before 9am. I had kind of packed the night before, but I still had quite a bit more packing to do. I also had to check my flight times on the computer. Amine was taking off work and taking me to the airport at 10:30. Four of the trainees ended up staying at the apartment later (Due to Nick forgetting his shoes, and NEEDING brown dress shoes? Or the door to the other trainee apartment not working? -I’m still not exactly sure why they didn’t go to work on time, or at least why everyone but Nick didn’t go, but I wasn’t complaining since it meant buying me a little more time with my friends) and we went to breakfast. It was 10AM. After saying our goodbyes, I promptly got a terrible stomachache and spent the next 20 minutes miserably in the bathroom. I got out and tried to shove my things into my suitcase. Amine arrives at 10:30--I am not done. I hadn’t checked my flight times, couldn’t find my dvds, or other important items. So I throw all my stuff pretty much indiscriminately into either my luggage that would be checked or one of 3 carry-ons. As we are rushing out of the apartment, a strap on my plastic bag that held 2 big serving dishes breaks. Off to a great start.

We taped the bag back together in the car, but it wasn’t long lasting to say the least. At the airport Melissa, Amine, Youssef, and the airline check in lady watch in amazement as I'm kneeling on the ground and can’t find my tickets (They were E-tix. What an idiot!) or my passport (not excuse...). The bag weighed too much, so we had to undo my luggage and try putting various things with the carry-ons. As soon as my friends say goodbye, my plastic carry-on breaks again.

Apparently Air France is full of ASSHOLES, and they won’t let you take a full huka on board the plane. Well I find this out after I had already sent my bags under the plane. I had to take the vase out from the carrying case and carry it with me (by this time I am a walking circus. I had: royal air maroc’s in flight catalogue, tagines, jewelry, carpet, a dead cell phone, Cocktail and American History X, a camera charger, Egyptian pounds, Czech money, underwear, the Torah, my Salaam binder, tickets to a jazz festival, facewash, and photo albums to start) and leave the metal parts of the shisha to chance unprotected under the plane. Fine, Air France, fine.

Next as we are boarding (20 minutes late, might I add), and they discover that they hadn’t really printed me a ticket. I go over and get it printed. Of course they had to hold my passport and check me through all over again. (it’s the 3rd time). Thanks Air France.

So since I didn’t have a chance to check my email at the apartment (the stomach pills Melissa gave me are working, for the moment), as soon as I got to Paris I ran to the nearest phone to call my mom to have her check my email and my flight itinerary. Oh, and France won’t let me exchange dirhams. So I am out 200DH aka about $20. Thanks French Currency Exchange. Anyway, I finally do get a hold of my mom collect.

Turns out there is no fire. I don’t fly out till 10:30 the next morning. It is 5:45 PM. I buy a book and drag all my belongings from café to café for a few hours. I got to talk to this guy (I think he was pretty coked out. He was something) about Bush. Mostly I got to listen to him rant about the US and the government and about how we are killing everyone and how I shouldn’t go there. “I don’t really want to right now,” was all I could really say. At about 11PM, I am dying of boredom and exhaustion when a policeman comes over and tells me that there are dangerous people staying in this terminal and I should move because “they’ll do anything to get your money….or even worse.” I didn’t have any money (I would disappoint any bum), but I didn’t like the sound of the “even worse,” so I hauled my crap about a mile to another terminal where a bunch of ppl were sleeping. I basically alternated between staring into space, staring into space while listening to dance music on my iPod, reading, and trying to sleep with no blanket, no socks, on a hard airport chair.

Finally finally finally the place starts to come back to life. (Oh, btw, the bag with no handles, yeah, every time I used the bathroom I had to set it on the floor of the stall. Then I’d have to hoist it back up—it probably weighed 20 lbs and it was huge—and hug it to my chest to carry it. Mmmmm public bathroom floor). Finally I am on the plane to DC.

Well the plane gets to the US about an hour late. Baggage claim takes forever. I RUN to the AirTran ticket counter to be told they stopped checking in for my flight to GA 10 minutes earlier. I beg, I plead. Nothing. The crabby lady tells me that I can maybe fly standby for the 6:30PM flight (it’s currently 1PM). My eyes start to tear up, “but, I have to make another flight from GA to MN…” “Sorry.” CRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Just at that moment, my purse dislodges itself from the cart, shattering my shisha vase.
“FUCK.” I yell loudly enough for several parents to shoot me disapproving glances. I glare back. My beautiful pink shisha vase from Egypt is in a million pieces and my foot is all bloody. The crabby AirTran lady stops talking and looks sour. So anyway, she books me standby tickets, and I go clean out my purse.

6 hours later (and another collect call to Mom) I am on a flight with no food or drink to Georgia. I don’t live in Georgia. I wait another 3 ½ hrs for my next flight.

Oh, and since AirTran is such a class act, they are always at the farthest littlest shittiest corner of the airport which always requires a tram ride 5 escalators and shlepping all your belongings through the part of the airport that is under construction. Thanks AirTran.

By this time I am practically unconscious from the lack of sleep. It is July 12, and I have not had more than 3 hours of sleep since the night of July 3rd. Most of those nights—though not all-- were my fault, but that didn’t help my delirium at all. The airport was freezing and I was bleeding. Hadn’t showered in 2 countries. Ugh.

Of course on both of the standby flights I had to sit in the way back next to the bathroom in the seats that don't recline.

On the last flight a fat old man next to me wants to chat it up. Do I look like I wanna shoot the shit when I am passed out and have headphones on? Apparently. All I could think of was suppressing the intense desire to tell him how much I hate it when people spill over into my seat and invade my personal space and that he should lose 75 pounds and stop gesturing so wildly with his flabby arm that it hits me on my leg, on my stomach on my left breast. I didn’t tell him, though I may have an ulcer now.

Then I got into Minneapolis at 1:15AM. Mom snaps photo. Thanks Mom. We drive what is normally a 2 hour trip in 4 because it is raining and her one of her lights goes out making the road impossible. 4:15AM I get into shower and go to bed shortly there after.
Time changes taken into account, the whole ordeal was 44 hours.

And the worst part? When I woke up, I was no longer in Morocco.

The Sahara Trip

Jackson Bentley: What attracts you personally to the desert? T.E. Lawrence: It's clean.

It may be clean, but after sweating, riding camels and not showering, I was not. When I got back there was sand coming from my clothes and bags for days. Such a cool trip. We got back from the Sahara (at 6 this morning). It was incredible. We rode camels through the Sahara (ouch!), ate delicious Friday couscous at Hassan’s ( Hassan=a palace worker/desert marathon runner), went off-roading in the desert, danced with our Berber guides to Berber music, slept under the stars, witnessed rain (!), witnessed a sandstorm (!), played marco polo at a hotel pool, climbed a huge sand dune (Well, some of us did. Of course I was there….), took a horse carriage ride out to a "forest" where we ate rabbit, enjoyed a backrub train, and practically bathed in a cold well, and finally, last but certainly not least, we saw Youssef “lose his cool” (FUNNY). I’ll tell you that story:

So we are at the very end of our trip, pretty much just waiting to embark on the 9 hour ride back to Rabat. Now, you have to consider that Youssef, our Moroccan friend who was leading all of us helpless and hapless trainees, had not slept in two nights and led us around and arranged EVERYTHING for us. He was loosely nicknamed the Moroccan Kramer bc he would always be popping up somewhat unexpectedly and he always had amazing amounts of excess positive energy even when the rest of us were wilting under the heat. We left for the desert on Friday night around 9PM and arrived in the morning at 6ish, and it was really tough to sleep on the bus. I sat by Youssef. He didn’t sleep (unfortunately I know). Then the next night we spent in the 110 degree heat. At night when everyone else was absolutely exhausted, Youssef couldn’t sleep. We were all lying on carpets laid out on the sand, and there were cats all over the place allegedly protecting us from alleged desert animals (scorpions, spiders…ick), and they were meowing and playing all night. As we were trying to fall asleep, every two minutes we’d hear, “Sssshhh! Get away from me! Fuck! Get! Shoo! I HATE them!” and something would be thrown or bug spray would be dispersed at a cat. After this went on for an hour or so, Michel and I invited Youssef to sleep in the middle, away from the edge of the carpet so that cats wouldn’t bother him. He did, but he kept up the anti-cat rally pretty much all night. When I went to bed he was sitting up shooing the cats. When I woke up, he was shooing the cats. He says he didn’t sleep because they were “crawling all over him” (they weren’t crawling on me, but hey). I have no reason to doubt that he didn’t sleep. So anyway, we’re getting ready to board the bus. Youssef says we are in a super shady area in Erfoud and we should stay in a group. He asked who needed to use a bathroom. No one said anything, but there were some people who wanted water. Youssef led some people to get water, but then (and I am one of these people, I admit it) some people realized they did, in fact, need to go to the bathroom and should go before the long bus ride back began in about 13 minutes (much searching, Turkish toilette, no lights, Michel buckled under the pressure of the decision. We had to hold it)…So we left. We didn’t get to go to the bathroom, but we did meet a frazzled Youssef who couldn’t find a trainee and his friend. They too had wandered off, and he had expected the worst. When they showed up mere moments before the bus left, Youssef said something along the lines of, “Where the hell were you guys? Don’t you know you can’t wander off like that?” He apologized the rest of the night for being so harsh with them. Hilarious. I seriously admire his patience. Even when he gets impatient, he is a model of togetherness. I sat next to him on the bus ride back. I am happy to report that he did eventually doze off.

The Cave of Alcohol

I don’t speak French. I know this is stupid—and PEN 15 club immature, but it is one of those things I see on an almost daily basis and always cracks me up. The grocery store a few blocks from the apartment has a basement where they sell alcohol in opaque black bags to really shady looking characters. In French “Cave d’Alcool” translates roughly to “Alcohol/Spirits Cellar” but I feel like I am going into the “Cave of Alcohol (and Iniquity).” Every time I pass it, I crack up.

Shabbat in Rabat

The service itself was really tough to follow. It's a Sephardic community, and I have only been to one other Sephardic service (before the Lubabitchers came, I imagine it was considerably more chaotic, knowing what I know about Morocco), and everything was a little different. Different words, rhythms, motions, orders of events. My favorite part was the melodies. The way they read from the Siddur was really uniquely Moroccan, lots of fluctuation of the voice on a particular note. It was lovely.
Afterwards I was invited to dinner with a family. I went and had a great time. The man who invited me is from here but living in Andorra with his mom and dad now. He was back here for a wedding and was staying with his grandmother for the week. It was so cool to see how a Jewish family here has Shabbat. We ate a spinach dish, spicey eggplant, a Moroccan fish dish, palm hearts, beets, fruit and this interesting spicy challa-like bread. It was great. I got to speak in Spanish with the grandmother bc she only spoke Spanish and Arabic. I talked to him a lot about the Jewish community in Morocco and he was really insightful. He is really sad that everyone is moving away. They have seen several synagogues close down. He also talked about how attached the Moroccan Jews are to Morocco. All the kings of Morocco have alway been really good to the Jews--protecting them from the Nazis, condemning terrorism, etc (currently one of the kings most important advisors is Jewish) but that Jews here have to worry about uneducated people damaging their shops or making comments or discriminating. He says that is why people are moving, because in other places that just doesn't have to be a daily concern.

I attached a few photos from the Jewish Museum in Casablanca.