rough seas ahead...

Well I have a confession to make. I did not make it to Rick’s. But here is why that is not so bad… It was built after the movie was made, so it is purely for tourism. You have to have a reservation to eat there, and it is really expensive. And it was really, really far away from the pier. Since I only had one day in Casablanca (because I went to Fes ) I saw the cultural things that make Casablanca special, and really I think that Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman would be proud of that.

Now that we have gotten that out of the way, on with what I did do in Morocco. As you all probably now we lost a day in Morocco due to weather and rough seas. But it was still amazing. I had to be on the pier at 7:15am for the bus to leave to take is to Fes. There were only 22 students on the bus, so we all really got to know each other, which was really nice. We went to Volubilis, which is a site of Roman ruins. It was amazing. We were there an hourish and I took probably 200 photos. Unfortunately I can’t post them cause of the Internet situation, and when I do get wireless in port it just takes too long. But once I am back in the States I will post them! Well back to Illinois or Iowa, cause I will be in Hawaii but the Internet situation then will still exist (by the way the computer automatically capitalized Illinois and Hawaii but not Iowa, it just said it was spelled wrong…). After Volubilis we continued to Fes, which in total is about 4 hours from Casablanca. We stayed in Fes that night, and got up early in the morning to tour Fes. We drove around and saw the sites and then did a walking tour of the old Medina, which is a market place. It was amazing. We stopped in all these different areas that belonged to different artisans, kind of like the guilds of the middle ages. We learned how many of the famous Moroccan crafts are made and then were pressured to buy them. It was awesome. After a long day of walking, bartering, and buying, we returned to Casablanca after a very long bus ride. Then today I traveled around Casablanca with some of the people that were on the Fes trip. We went to the Mosque of Hassan II, and to the old medina. It rained on and off all day.

The captain came on the loudspeaker to warn us about rolling, cause we have to make a very sharp turn out of the port, and said that “the safest way to survive the rolling is to be seated”. So now you know, if you experience the rolling while at sea, take a seat and you will survive.

Well just so you know before this line, I wrote all of that yesterday. As I was writing to post, the ship began to roll. Now it rolled on our way in and it wasn’t so bad, the things in the bathroom fell into the sink and my roommate’s alarm clock and mine kept sliding. This time it was much worse. I went into the bathroom to make sure everything was ok and to put it in the sink as we started to roll. As I was in there our bedside stands which each have three drawers came off of the wall and barreling to the other end of the cabin. Our possessions in these nightstands went all over the cabin floor. Henna that my roommate bought in Morocco went everywhere. And we both got sick. I got motion sickness and could do nothing but lay in bed. The smell of the henna got to her and she got sick. We were both asleep around 10:30pm. Also someone hit their head and the medical team had to go to their room after the purser called a code blue. One of the av tech guys has his arm in a sling and I heard rumors that someone broke their arm and someone else broke a rib or two. The captain had very good advice. Sitting down is the best way to survive rolling. And the sea is rough and probably will be until we get to India. Needless to say I have a patch on and I still don’t feel one hundred percent. Hopefully it won’t get worse.

For those of you reading this who don’t know, I have very limited Internet on the ship. I do however have a free email, which does not use my Internet time to check. If you are interested it is rskirshenbaum@semesteratsea.net. Next port is Dakar, probably to refuel. We are not getting off the ship there. We cross the equator on Monday! Ciao.