Morocco, Part 2: When Wine Replaced Water in the Sahara

The best part about the camp…it had a BAR. Yep. A well-stocked bar…in the middle of the Sahara. Do these nomads know how to cater to college students, or what? Before we got off the bus, they told us that under no circumstances were we allowed to bring alcohol to the camp because apparently some crazy shit went down last year when people snuck alcohol in. Apparently, though, we were allowed to drink if the alcohol was from the nomad bar. Woohoo! 

Despite the bar, I got a coke while everyone else was getting beer and bottles of wine to split. I’m not a fan of either, and the only other options were buying an entire bottle of gin or tequila. 1) Ew. 2) How the hell do I drink an ENTIRE BOTTLE by myself? Bad idea. So, responsibly again, I stayed away from the bar.

As the night progressed, though, and my friends were getting happier and happier by the sip, my coke was looking less and less appealing. Everyone seemed to be enjoying their wine… so I figured, why not? Besides, if I was gonna be sleeping with bugs and sand and God knows what else, it’d probably be best if I was knocked out. So, I manned up and split a bottle of wine with a friend of mine. Half a bottle and many disgusted faces later, I was good to go.

As we were sitting out by the bonfire area nursing our nomad alcohol, all of a sudden, techno music starts blasting and strobe lights turn on. No joke. COOLEST NOMAD CAMP EVER! Who knew that when we all signed up for “Nomad Camp and Camel Trek in the Sahara” that we were gonna get “Booze and a Dance Party in the Middle of the Nowhere.” I had to give myself a little pat on the back for picking this trip.
 
None of us had eaten since about 1, so we didn’t have much in our stomachs. At about 9:30, they told us it was time for dinner. Perfect timing for drunken munchies. Like I mentioned before, there were two dining tents. One was huge with tons of tables…the other was a tiny little thing on the other side of the bonfire area that was essentially a sleeping tent, but with two tables in it. We slowly sauntered over to the main dining tent, but found that we were too slow…so we got the boot and were sent to the tiny one. The 9 of us grabbed one of the tables and dug into the bread within seconds. Halfway through our desert meal, the lone light bulb that was hanging in our tent went out. Thankfully, one of my friends had deemed her two glow-sticks a nomad camp necessity, so we made do.

After dinner, we all went to our tents and dragged our mattress pads out by the bonfire because we decided to sleep out there. Before we knew it, everyone was dragging theirs out of their tents too. Hell yea. SAS sleepover under the stars. It was so beautiful out! A little cloudy, unfortunately, but such a cool experience to be sleeping outside, under the stars, in the Sahara. That, alone, made the uncomfortable 12 hour bus-ride and obnoxious tour guide 100% worth it. 

We all settled down for the night, and, just as I’d hoped, the wine put me out. I woke up the next morning after a good night’s sleep, bug-free, to the sunrise and the loud snoring of the kid sleeping above my head. I was so tempted to throw my pillow at him, so he’d shut up, but I was in a good mood, so my pillow stayed under my head. I seriously don’t know what the hell I’m gonna do if I get a snorer as “The One.”  Please, fate, don’t do that to me. Even I don’t deserve that kind of punishment. 

So I’ll fill ya in on days 3 and 4 tomorrow!

Morocco, Part 1: Palm Trees in the Desert?

Hi all!

I’m back on the ship and sailing for home! I still can’t believe that I’m done with my last port!

Anyways, I have four days of stories to tell from Morocco. Here goes…

On the first day, I headed out on my trip to Marrakech and the nomad camp. It took us four hours to get from Casablanca to Marrakech by bus. As we were driving through Casablanca, I realized there wasn’t much there, so I was glad I wasn’t going to be spending any time there. I do wish that I’d been able to go to Rick’s Café, though! Yep. It exists. Apparently some woman who used to work for the US Embassy in Morocco quit her job and opened it.  Pretty cool.  Some of my friends went and said it was awesome, so I was pretty jealous.

When we got to Marrakech, I was so surprised by how gorgeous it was! There are palm trees everywhere and all the buildings are painted this pretty pinkish-red color. And unlike Alexandria and Cairo, it was so clean! That sounds like a really weird thing to notice, but after seeing how congested and dirty Egypt was, I was expecting Morocco to be similar. Not one bit, though. Most Moroccans can read and speak both Arabic and French because France occupied Morocco for a period of about 50 years in the 1900s. Also, the culture is so much more liberal than I expected! After Egypt, I figured that Morocco would be super conservative, but they’re not nearly as conservative as the Egyptians. I mean, some of the women were covered up fully, but for the most part, we all felt comfortable wearing whatever we wanted.

Our first night, we went to dinner and got to see a belly-dancing show, which was cool. After that, a lot of SAS-ers went out to this club called Pasha, which was supposedly the biggest club in Africa.  My friend Kallyn (who I met/hung out with in Mykonos) and I thought about joining them…but then opted to drink a couple of cokes and hit the sack early, forgoing the possibility of a hangover on the next morning’s 7-8 hour bus ride to the nomad camp. I felt lame at time…but was grateful for my brief lapse of responsibility the next morning when half of the people on the bus felt like shit.

Our 7-8 hour bus ride turned into a 12 hour bus ride because our tour guide liked to stop what seemed like every half an hour for the bathroom or to take pictures. I appreciated the picture stops, but the bathroom breaks were unnecessary. If one person expressed their need to pee, we stopped. If, twenty minutes later, some asshole that didn’t get off the bus at the stop before expressed their need to pee, we stopped. Then, after about 8 hours, one chick told the guy she needed to find an ATM…so, obviously, we stopped. I honestly wanted to ask her if she realized that we were going to a NOMAD CAMP. Where the hell did she think she was going to spend it!? Little did I know…

The drive was beautiful.  There’s one road that goes down the entire country and weaves its way around the mountains, so the view was amazing the whole time. After the mountains, we went through a town called Ouarzazate which has a bunch of movie studios, including the biggest one in the world. It’s where Sex and the City 2 was filmed! (We also passed by the hotel that was in the movie back in Marrakech. So cool!)  Before we got to the nomad camp, they told us we’d have about a half hour walk through the desert to get there. Our 30 minute journey through the desert turned into a 5 minute walk down a sand dune.  Glad our tour-guide was so well-informed.

There were palm trees scattered everywhere in the desert too! Definitely not how I pictured the Sahara. The nomad camp was so awesome, though! There were tons of 6-person tents held up by big wooden poles and covered with brown cloth…and they had mattress pads!...kind of sandy and dirty but I was content. There were also two dining tents with a bunch of little tables and pillows to sit on. And the bathroom tent had TOILETS. I mean, we obviously didn’t sit on them…and there were basically just holes underneath them…but the shiny, white porcelain that we got to awkwardly hover over was comforting, nonetheless. Privacy was a slight issue, though. There were these weird flaps that covered the top half of your body, so you could remain anonymous, but left the rest of you for the world to see. And you couldn’t pull the flaps together to close it because that would leave your neighbor hanging. We pretty much just took turns standing in front of the flaps so we could all pee in peace.

Stay tuned for the interesting stuff...

Here's to looking at you, kid.

Tomorrow I’ll be in Morocco! Casablanca, to be exact. They’ve had that movie on TV all day for the occasion. Sadly, though, I won’t be spending much time in Casablanca. I’ve got a trip that lasts the whole time we’re in port. I’ll be in Marakech the first night, at a nomad camp the second night, and back in Marakech for the third night. It should be quite a hoot. Especially the nomad camp part. I’m not really sure what I was going through my mind when I signed up for this trip, but I’m starting to think that I might’ve overestimated my tolerance for the outdoors. I mean, let’s be honest…I’m not really the camping type. For me, a mediocre hotel is the equivalent of roughing it.  Camping is just so…ughhhh. Tents. And bugs. And sand since it’s the Sahara. And no showers. And I don’t even want to think about the toilet facilities. They told us to pack toilet paper. Real promising.

Oh well. Not much I can do about it now. I’m gonna toughen up. Maybe I’ll be a changed woman after this experience. Maybe I’ll become a camping freak and wanna go all the time. Perhaps I’ll want to trade in my comfy bed and clean ways for a sleeping bag and grungy lifestyle. Okay. Not likely. Mostly I’m just hoping I make it through. Without getting any weird diseases. Like West Nile. That’s a concern here, right? I mean, we are west of the Nile. Which I guess is true back home too…but doesn’t it count more since we’re closer to the Nile now? Who knows.
 
I’ll be sure to let you all know how it goes! Farewell for four days! Keep your fingers crossed for toilets!

Somewhere Above Africa...

We’ve been sailing for four days now! Only two more until we get to Morocco. I thought these six days would go by super slowly, but they’ve been surprisingly fast since I’ve been so busy!

I had an exam in both econ and bio yesterday. Then I went to the Talent Show last night, which was pretty good. It started off with our two deans singing along and dancing to ‘I’m on a Boat’ while the music video played behind them. After that there were some cool acts like an Indian dance, a rapping magician, and some of the professor’s kids doing a spoof of the captain.  There were also a few acts that were excruciatingly painful to watch. There’s always that one chick that clearly overestimates her singing skills and proceeds to butcher a great song. (Boston, anyone?) And because we’re so lucky, we had a few of them. Other than that though, we’ve got a talented-ish ship!

Today, I had classes, and then had a global studies exam after dinner. Since everyone on the ship takes it, you can imagine how frenzied these days are. You can always tell who the kids are that aren’t transferring their grades back to their school because they spend the day chilling while everyone else is cramming. I hate those kids.

Tomorrow is Crew Appreciation Day, so our hall made a big sign for our cabin stewards. Tonight at our ice cream social, we all signed it. I thought we were just signing our names…but most people were writing out long notes, so I figured I’d write a little something to Edwin too. Instead of the typical, ‘Thanks for cleaning my room everyday!’…I went with ‘Dear Edwin, Thanks for being the only guy to come within 5 feet of my bed!’ Good, right? Okay. So I didn’t actually write that. But I really wanted to! Instead, I went with something along the lines of ‘Thanks for cleaning up my mess’ or something lame like that. Oh well. I’m sure he knows he’s the only man in my life. He’s the only man in most of our lives these days. 

Off to write my global studies paper now! Woohoo! Be jealous!

Sea Olympics!

Hi all!

Today, we had the much-awaited Sea Olympics! I think I explained this before, but that was probably awhile ago, so I’ll explain again…The entire ship is split up into seas. My part of Deck 4 is the Red Sea, down the hall is the Bering Sea, on the other side is the Adriatic, and so on. There are 10 seas in all…including the faculty and staff sea, which they so aptly named the Diploma Sea (apparently, they’re usually called the Dead Sea, but that didn’t fly with this group). Throughout the voyage, we’ve had ice cream socials and whatnot with our seas, but today was the big day to show off your sea’s talent. Not only does the winner get bragging rights, but they also get the coveted First Off the Boat spot when we get to Virginia in a few weeks.

There was somewhere between 15 and 20 events including extreme musical chairs, tug-o-war, flip cup, synchronized swimming, and a lip-syncing competition. We all sported our sea’s designated color to distinguish us. Last night, we had a meeting to solidify who was signed up for what event, fill available spots, and come up with a cheer for opening ceremonies.  Our sea was less-than organized. Our Sea Captains couldn’t really seem to get their shit together, and it was looking bad. We nominated two Sea Captains earlier on in the voyage. The guy has a loud personality, but is really nice. The chick, on the other hand, was not exactly leadership material. She’s just got a bad attitude all around and her only words of encouragement were along the lines of, ‘If you guys don’t win this, I’m gonna be effing pissed.’ Does she know how to inspire people or what?

Anyways, it was clear that our sea was less than enthusiastic about today. We went to the opening ceremonies dressed in red, but all the other seas seemed to be 10x more spirited than any of us. To top it off, the cheer that we had come up with was not nearly as good as the others. It was clear that despite the fact that we had the largest sea with the highest proportion of guys, we were definitely not a force to be reckoned with.

After opening ceremonies, we all went off to our various games. In the first round, I was in extreme musical chairs. I was doing pretty well until some chick in the Yellow Sea body checked me off my seat. Damn ho. Overall, though, we got 2nd place for that event. As I was waiting for my next event to start, I walked around the ship to check out how we were doing...and from what I heard, we seemed to be doing surprisingly well. We’d won 1st in the free throw competition, 1st in the pull-ups competition, and 1st at donut-on-a-string (false advertising—it was actually a bagel). I went to my second event, tug-o-war, where we sadly didn’t place. After that, though, they announced how the seas were doing overall…and Red Sea was in first place! I was shocked! For a team that had zero spirit, poor leadership, and a crappy chant, we were kicking ass!

I went to the pie-eating contest after that. The first round was girls. They gave them a huge pie…which we thought was all whipped cream, but under the top layer, it turned out to be this gooey, gross lemon filling. I was definitely glad I hadn’t signed up for that one. Competing for us was our bitchy leader, who I did my best to be supportive of. The contest was no-hands…but during it, the judge told the girls that they could lift the crust on the bottom of the pan so they could get to it more easily. Our chick, though, had already managed to get the crust off the bottom with her mouth…and she was pissed that he let the other girls use their hands. Before I knew it, she was in the judge’s face yelling about how letting them do that was ‘bullshit’ and how he was ‘effing retarded.’ Real classy. After the judge just shrugged and said too bad, she went back to eating her pie…and a minute later, she made a beeline for the side of the boat and threw up. I guess that’s karma for ya. I mean, I wasn’t happy that we didn’t place…but I was secretly satisfied that all her hard work was for nothing.

When they announced how the seas were doing again, Red Sea was down to 4th, which was disappointing since we'd been winning not long ago. We still had one competition left, though, and winning it would put us back into 1st. We had a barbeque for dinner, and then we headed to the union to watch the lip-syncing competition. It was hilarious to watch, and especially funny to see some of the faculty and staff do an interpretive dance. Unfortunately, we didn’t win, and when they announced who won during the closing ceremonies, we learned that we got 4th overall. Not bad out of 10 seas…but not good enough to get us off the boat first.

Later on, I was talking to some people in my sea, and I found out something interesting. Our team leader’s little pie-eating bitch-out cost our sea a whopping 50 points. That’s the equivalent of winning two 1st places and a 3rd place in the events. And guess how much we lost to the other three teams by? Less than 50 points. Yep. If it hadn’t been for her, we would’ve WON! Suffice it to say, I’m a little bitter about it. Miss ‘I’ll be effing pissed if we don’t win’ only has herself to blame. Hmph. Oh well. At least I got the pleasure of watching her puke. 
I’m back to class tomorrow. These next 5 days at sea are gonna be rough. I’ve got an exam in every class, and two papers. Booo. I’ll be sure to update on anything interesting!