A very happy new year to all of our readers! 2012 is finally upon us, the moment we have all been waiting for/Wikipedia-ing since May 21 last year. How did you celebrate the holiday? Did you disobey your parents and walk through Times Square? Did you watch Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve and stare in disgust at bands with no integrity performing to ululating, soulless teenagers? Did you rediscover your love for André California Champagne?
Not me, no sir. I counted down with a cup full of Veuve Clicquot and a hand full of Wheat Thins at a swanky party in Alphabet City, Manhattan. Everyone except me was an alum of either Vassar or Wesleyan, aka the only people I will ever meet from now on for the rest of my life. It was weird being the lone undergrad, though honestly everybody was mad jealous that I was still in school; it was like being in a room with people from the Matrix, all regretting the crushing disillusionment of reality. (I may not have understood that movie.) One of the partygoers took me aside and menacingly whispered, "You. Are. So. Lucky." I didn't know whether to laugh or give him my lunch money.
Another thing that was so nice about the fête, the hostesses allowed me to take a nap in an unoccupied bedroom from about 10:30 to 11:30, a crucial period that restored me enough to make it well past the ball dropping and other activities. You're probably thinking, "this guy napped on New Year's Eve? What a total square." Well square this, Judge Reinhold: one day previously I was on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. Lest ye forget the original reason for LVEB, we've been on Berlin Time (that's what my phone called it) for the last four and a half months. Cut me some fucking slack. And for your information, Encyclopedia Brown, I was wrapping up a whole bunch of transcontinental travel, going from Morocco to France to New York in 30 hours. Which brings me to the crux of this post.
Spending a week in Morocco at the tail end of my semester abroad was the perfect de-orientation: just enough French speakers to smooth the transition out of l'Héxagone, but thankfully so many more English speakers so I felt like people were understanding me for the first time in months. Moroccan Arabic was harder to understand than my host mother's obsession with Gary Sinise, but I did learn some valuable things in Marrakech. Here are a few:
-When a man walks by you in the square muttering "sheesh" under his breath, he is not expressing exasperation after a long day's work; he is trying to sell you hashish on the DL.
-If you buy hashish from a man walking by you in the square, chances are good that you are in fact buying caramel.
-Hashish is completely distinct from "shisha", which is flavored tobacco--yeah, I thought it was called hookah, too--that young Moroccans smoke all day.
-Do not ask the organizer of your desert excursion for hashish. Even if it was...I mean is...an accident.
-When you are shopping in the souk, and the asking price is X dirham, do not pay more than one hundredth X dirham. (Babouches cost 100? My foot! (Literally.) Here's a penny.) (That is an example of a conversation the wise tourist has with the even wiser merchant.) You may be wondering, "Isn't it exploitative for us to lowball these people who survive on the selling of these goods?" Here's the answer: kind of, but not really, because there are millions of tourists who come to Marrakech every year and pay exorbitant amounts of money for low-quality lamps, leather jackets (not me, no sir), and Pittsburgh Steelers Super Bowl XLV Champions memorabilia. So go ahead; break the cycle of ignorant Westerners!
-If a merchant simply says to you, "I don't have snakes," he would like you to enter his store and not for one minute fear that he has snakes.
-Negotiating prices in French will not impress the merchant. It's actually still cool to be American here. So revel in your patriotism, talk loudly, and get a free Rolex*.
-Ladies: unless you want to get "hennattacked" (from Eng., literally "attacked with henna"), I advise you to keep your arms sleeved while you shop in the open-air markets. If you're not careful, you're getting ambushed by amateur beauticians and then can't really use your hands for a couple hours. This means no tea.
-Mint tea is the national drink of Morocco.* Mint Tea is also the mascot of Morocco's national soccer team.* Mint tea is also Moroccans' favorite flavor of shisha.*
What's this you read about a "desert excursion", huh? Yeah, guess what? My friend, VWPP legend Kalei "Both My First And Last Name Sound Like Places In France And Literally Are" Talwar, booked us on a trip to the edge of the Sahara, to spend Christmas Eve night at a Berber campsite. (Suffice it to say that, between me and the Berbers, the nativity scene Kalei hoped to stage wasn't a very popular idea.) There was only one way to get there: a van. A nine-hour drive across terrains and roads that heavily influenced the movie "Death Race", and twelve of us packed into an unmarked white van. Mohammed, our rather aged driver, seemed reliable (read: not senile) enough to take us all the way, but it was nonetheless a relief when Kalei faked motion sickness and we got to ride in the front seat, free of all the bumpin' and grindin' going on several rows behind; that is, until a Catalan kid out-motion-sickness'ed Kalei and maneuvered his way into the front. At this point, KT and I were forced to sit in the penultimate row, right in front of a visibly unwell Spanish woman and her doting boyfriend. If I may, just for a moment, I'd like to just say that, despite the sickness, this was the best-looking couple I have ever seen. He was the Iberian version of David Beckham, and she was like Penelope Cruz multiplied by Vicky multiplied by Cristina multiplied by Barcelona. That's why it perplexed me so when she threw up partially on me, after about three hours in this stiflingly hot wagon: I felt instinctively repulsed, yet, at the same time, fortunate for her having chosen me as the recipient of her desayuno. Quite an interesting predicament, and even though I did finally get my sweater back from the dry cleaner today, I still haven't forgotten that beautiful, if retching, face.
Oh, right, the desert. OK, so we finally pull up to this spot in the middle of nowhere and it's dark as hell and Mohammed turns the spaceship off and tells us, "Please only bring light bags." After we unload our knapsacks and backpacks and stuff, not exactly sure where we are or what we're doing, Mohammed gets back in and drives away, casting headlights over what now appears to us as a field of seated camels. (They were just chilling there. It was fucking creepy. As shit.) One by one, each of us was directed to a camel and, after a couple magic words and magic kicks to the butt, we rose to towering heights. Off to the campsite!, I guessed. The camels were all yoked together, walking in a line, each shitting on the ground that the next one had to walk through. 'Twas an ugly scene for the camels, but a tremendous expanse of sky, replete with shooting stars, kept me in awe for what seemed like an hour, thankfully diverting me from the gluteal excruciation that is a dromedary ride. (What I mean is, ya get sore.) Finally, we arrived somewhere, and I said goodbye to my new friend Camelbert. (Get it? Cheesy, I know. (Get it?))
Dinner with the Berbers. Just your basic delicious tagine, pillowy bread, and camel-esque amounts of tea. We had made friends with a delightful British couple and their four year-old legitimate angel of a son named Rowan. The five of us (Rowan less so) discussed the trials and tribulations of studying the arts in today's world and the perils of the English education system. I exchanged glances with my Spanish Vomit Queen. She hadn't even apologized for her revolting actions: how sexy is that?
Something about Morocco, or maybe just Marrakech and the desert, but it seems to be pretty ubiquitous: in December, cloudless skies mean wonderfully warm days (yay!) and debilitatingly freezing nights (boo!). After some music, dancing, and quality comet-spotting--KT and I collectively counted about 250 shooters,* and she informed me that we were near the second-best place in the world to stargaze (the first obviously being New York City (ha! AM I RIGHT!))--we adjourned to our group tent, where the sick Catalan kid, his mysterious octolingual sister and the father were snoring in three-part harmony. It was probably 4 degrees, and no, that's not in Celsius. (OK, but still like even if it were in Celsius that's still like 39.2 degrees which is still like really cold.)
So after my brief bout with hypothermia, we all awoke at 6:30 to watch the sun come up over the Sahara. It was a truly awesome sight, and for the first time in several hours we could actually see where we were and take note of our surroundings. At this time, I would just like to mention that the Berbers woke up most of the girls in time for dawn, but neglected to rouse the guys. I see how it is, Berbs. I snapped a few pictures on my Kodak disposable camera that I bought for a song in Marrakech. Literally, it wasn't even worth money, I just sang the guy a song. Marrakech Express never sounded so good.
Another trek on man's best humpbacked friend led us to the loving arms of Mohammed, and we started out on the nine-hour quest to make it back to civilization without everyone just vomming all over everyone and everything. This was briefly successful, but soon enough little Rowan would prove too weak to handle the Ouarzazate Expressway, and he finally out and said what we were all thinking: [barf]. Don't worry, he ended up fine. Everyone's hungover on Christmas.
So that was our encounter with the sands of the Sahara. To be honest, on some level, I'm a little confused as to whether or not we were actually in the Sahara Desert, because the hostel did call it a "Sahara Desert Excursion" but also it seemed like we stopped just beyond Zagora, which is... okay, whatever, I'm on Google Earth and it's pretty clear that we were in the desert. I mean, I was walking on legitimate sand. It was very desert-y. Conditions were right. I refuse to listen to what that cynical Canadian guy said to me afterward. No, definitely Sahara. Yeah, because we were on the road forever, and it wouldn't have taken us that long otherwise. Yeah...yeahhhh.
We met a ton of awesome people at the hostel, the Riad Marrakech Rouge. Really 'doe, every single guest was either interesting or German, so there was always something to talk about around the shisha table. We found ourselves mostly hanging out with Swedish engineering students, these awesome kids who spoke flawless English and taught us useful words and phrases in Swedish, such as "here is a good guy!", and "awkward underbite". We ate cheap food, played chess, and drank the national mascot. It was a blast.
The morning of my departure, I got a glass of orange juice from the square. They don't really wash their glasses. I was sick for about a week after that.
That's all for now! Thanks for reading, and stay tuned as we continue to keep you abreast of our activities en bros, even though we're stateside...for the time being.
