So, the rough seas were not too bad last night – we were definitely rocking more than we normally would, but it wasn’t too bad at all. False alarm…whew!
Early this morning, we docked in Casablanca. After a diplomatic briefing, my friend Christine, and a few other students from the ship (Sarah, Rochelle, and Denny) rushed down the gangway and jumped on a train to get to Rabat, the capital of Morocco. It was about an hour train ride away and only cost about 70 dirham ($9) round trip! Rabat was an interesting city – not necessarily a tourist destination – but it was a nice way to ease into the Moroccan culture. We walked around inside the Medina, went to the Kasbuh Café overlooking the ocean for our first mint tea of the trip! It was really hot outside, but the hot tea actually seemed to stabilize my body temperature somehow…I’m still not really sure how that works…
We spent the afternoon walking through the Souks – there are so many stores and everything is for sale everywhere you look. The people in Rabat were much more laid back than the people at other markets we’ve been to this summer – we could look around at the goods without being mobbed by sales people (or hit on, to tell you the truth)! It was nice! It got busy around 3pm, so we had lunch in a restaurant that looked like a hole in the wall, but actually had some delicious Moroccan food – I had a tajine (a special Moroccan cooking thing – basically a clay platter with a cone lid). My tajine had chicken, vegetables, and lemon…YUM.
Christine and I had to leave Rabat far too soon to get back to Casa (that’s what we call Casablanca now…it makes me feel like a local!) for our evening FDP trip to meet with Moroccan university students. We got on these scary little vans/buses and drove about 45 minutes through the city. The reception took place at a country/tennis club outside of the city. We sat down at big tables and had mint tea, cookies, freshly squeezed orange juice, and this special spicy Moroccan soup (it had big chunks of chicken and meat and plenty of chickpeas – mmmmm….). It was a nice, chill evening because we got to sit down and chat with a few local students. It was funny – I ended up sitting with Kathy, my professor, along with Greg, Kestral, and Christine from my Student Affairs at Sea program. We were so interested in asking about the student’s education and their experience in college, I think we may have overwhelmed them just a bit. The conversation was interesting and at one point, we found out that one of the students we had been talking to was a poet so she read us one of her pieces. Kinda random, but cool, I guess. : ) Headed back to the ship afterward around 10 PM for an unusually early night in port.
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