NOTE: THIS POST INVOLVES IN-DEPTH DEPICTIONS OF UNFORTUNATE BODILY FUNCTIONS
First, I have to be completely honest. Last Thursday, a mere 15 hours before I am scheduled to leave, I have to go to my physician's office in Palmer because my first ever hemorrhoid flared up. If you've stopped reading, I don't really blame you, but in the case that I didn't turn you off completely, here we go.
In Transit:
I left Anchorage early on Friday morning without getting any sleep because I was so butt-hurt. Then my wonderful mother dropped me off at the airport and I flew to Seattle, finally being able to fall asleep. In Seattle I get an order of chicken fingers and fries, which I can't finish and I feel like puking. I board the flight to Amsterdam with thirteen hours ahead of me. At least I can make snarky comments about dumb American travelers like this girl sitting in front of me who takes no less than 6 minutes putting her crap away, taking it out again, putting it back up, and taking off her shoes IN THE AISLE THE WHOLE TIME.
First, I have to be completely honest. Last Thursday, a mere 15 hours before I am scheduled to leave, I have to go to my physician's office in Palmer because my first ever hemorrhoid flared up. If you've stopped reading, I don't really blame you, but in the case that I didn't turn you off completely, here we go.
In Transit:
I left Anchorage early on Friday morning without getting any sleep because I was so butt-hurt. Then my wonderful mother dropped me off at the airport and I flew to Seattle, finally being able to fall asleep. In Seattle I get an order of chicken fingers and fries, which I can't finish and I feel like puking. I board the flight to Amsterdam with thirteen hours ahead of me. At least I can make snarky comments about dumb American travelers like this girl sitting in front of me who takes no less than 6 minutes putting her crap away, taking it out again, putting it back up, and taking off her shoes IN THE AISLE THE WHOLE TIME.
Luckily, there is a cool Indian dude sitting next to me from Seattle by way of Chicago. After making small talk for about half an hour with him, I plug in headphones and start to watch movies. How people flew internationally before in-headrest video screens, I just don't know.
The movies went like this:
Moneyball: Good!
Bad Teacher: Surprising.
Colombiana: Fell asleep...
The downside is that there's this awful child behind me who cries the entire time. Just when I'm about to fall into plane-coma, she starts up again. Ten hours of crying!!!! What child does that? Who takes their child to Amsterdam? Between trips to coffeeshops and the red light district, where does time for a child and the Anne Frank Haus fit in?
Once I got to Amsterdam I learned that I had a seven-hour layover. There is no way I'm staying in Schipol for seven hours. Luckily, Amdam has cool storage lockers where you can keep your stuff before exiting security. Soon thereafter, I find myself in front of the train ticket kiosk, with no clue how to use it. I put my credit card in what I think is the credit card slot. Then the kiosk resets. Then I try again and hit a wrong button, and it resets. By this time, Amsterdonians are queuing in the other line behind me. Stupid American, I can hear them all say.
I ask the girl behind me if she knows how to use it, but she's just as hopeless as I am. I try once again to get the credit card to work, this time with her help, but we take too much time and the kiosk resets. Long story short, Monica and I (that's her name) exit through customs and find a place to purchase tickets from humans, even though we both have credit cards that lack a required chip to buy a ticket. Finally after finding an ATM we're able to buy a roundtrip train ticket, and we board the train to Amsterdam Centraal. Only we don't go to Amsterdam Centraal. We end up fifteen minutes outside the city before we realize our mistake. We get on another train, and despite our guts telling us to get off at various stops along the way, we finally make it into the city.
Walking around Amdam is a trip. I can only imagine how kooky it gets at night. We decide to wander around, eventually ending up in the red light district. Through a street-level window there's a gross hooker in a tight blue onesie showing herself off. We quickly walk past and I notice through the window on the cross-street a fat hooker with a hairy upper lip omnoming a hoagie. ugh. We walk around the rest of the time, stopping shortly in a bar to get a beer. It's nice to get away from the airport, to stretch my legs. We made it back in time to board our respective flights, Monica back home to Mexico City, and myself to Paris before my final destination of Rabat. The rest of the trip is a haze of jetlagged fatigue, and by the time I get to Rabat, I can barely speak English, let alone French. I made it to my first hotel, showered, and crashed.
The Days Since
My first day in Rabat I wake to the sunrise. I go downstairs onto the street after a delicious petit dejuner. Its my first sighting of a man pulling a hand cart. I go back to my room, grab my things, check out, and head down the street to catch a petit taxi to the centre-ville of Rabat. The cabbie drops me off on a side street telling me that there are three hotels in the area, "One here, one there, and one over there" pointing at each in passing. I leave the cab, disoriented, and head toward one of the hotels to get directions to the Hotel Majestic. Although I'm pretty sure the man at the front desk gives me good directions, I can't for my life find the Majestic. I stroll around the block, my giant backpack strapped to me, wheeling my small suitcase. I feel as though I've gone too far, and I turn up the next block, finding myself in front of the Department of Justice. Severely lost, I go into another hotel, and the man at the desk gives me very good directions. The next time around, a boy whom I had earlier passed recognizes me and tries to stop me to buy shoes. Obviously being lost in the capital of Morocco I don't want shoes.
In retrospect, I can't believe I missed the green marble entrance and gold lettering. I walk upstairs, telling the man at the front desk I'm with the CCCL and he gives me a room key and takes my passport. I get to my room, tiled floor, a toilet that looks like an old British WC, and I plop my things down on the farthest of the two twin-sized beds. Forgetting that I gave the man at the desk my passport, I freak out tossing everything across my room, pulling apart my backpack, looking under the untouched bed covers. Then, my temporary roommate Asif knocks on the door, and reminds me that I gave my passport to the man at the front desk. In order to get my passport back, I have to give him a copy of my passport, and he directs me to a photocopying shop a couple doors down. The shop is located on the first floor (as opposed to the rez) so I walk upstairs to a closed door with a sign reading "Photocopies" pointing at it. I try and open the door, but the handle doesn't work. Then I knock. No answer. A bit confused, I try to turn the handle again, but it is broken. I walk back to the hotel, remembering that I had a copy in my things. After running up and down the stairs a few times, Asif and I go to a Moroccan cafe in the Medina for my first Moroccan meal of vegitarian couscous, fries, and yogurt. Moroccan yogurt is delicious, by the way. Then, the entire group of students meet in the hotel lobby and one of the program directors leads us to the CCCL, located in an 18th century riad in the Medina.
After meeting too many people to remember, I get back to my room and crash. Somewhere along the way, as you will enjoy knowing, my hemorrhoid burst, and dealing with that all night is nothing but bloody happiness.
The Doctor Gives Me the News (This is where it gets gross)
Today I wake up at 6:00am promptly to the resonance of the call to prayer. "Alla-hu Akbar" trumpets the speakers across the Avenue Hassan II. If you haven't heard it, it is one of the most beautifully haunting sounds in all the world, asking men and women to wake and join in salah (roughly translated to "prayer"). I walk to the shower and press the button. Ice cold water. I turn it the direction the shower tells me to get warm water. Ice cold. I splash water under my armpits and in my hair and I walk, freezing, back into my room where I get dressed, deal with my bleeding buttocks, and begin my first day of school. Boring syllabus and ways to stay safe day. I talk with Souad, the program director, after our second lecture finishes, and I begin on my way, in her car, to the recommended gastrologist. In what would be the weirdest afternoon of my life, I go into his office (thankfully Souad was with me the whole time) and we talk about my problem.
Then his assistant takes me into an operating room where, after some problems with directions, she tells me to mount a four-feet high table that's only about four feet long and two feet wide. I realize that medical equipment is outdated in places like Morocco, but the equipment in the room looked like a stereo amplifier from the 70s. I'm told to prostrate, butt proudly in the air, on top of the table. The doc comes in and gets to work. Let me say, if you've never experienced a man with whom you can't communicate insert medical instruments in and around your rectum, you've never lived. I'm told I have a thrombosis, and he shows me a small blood clot in the surgical pan when he's finished. I've never been more relieved than I was with a wad of gauze bandaged to the inside of my butt cheeks. I go back into his office where he writes me a script for medication to go along with the medication I'm already taking. Something that's true of doctors everywhere is their apparent lack of penmanship, and if you thought that a script was hard to read in English, you've never seen one in French written by a man who is used to Arabic calligraphy. Naturally, I didn't have sufficient funds on me, so I had to walk down the street to the bank (a recurring theme) to take out money before I could pay for the operation. I eventually make it back to the CCCL in time for dinner.
I arrive to the pharmacy as a man is boarding the windows for the night. The woman takes my script, gets me the medication, and rings me up at the register. Only once again, I lack the sufficient funds. After some arguing in French, and my inability to communicate has become all to shockingly clear, I am dragged by a man to a bank where the ATM is broken. We are more or less running through the crowded streets, past the vendors with cheap towels and shoes, to another bank around the corner. Thankfully this one works properly, and I get out enough dirhams to survive for a few days (or until I desperately need it). To add to my incompetence, I'm trying to leave the pharmacy but I can't figure out the damn door. By this time, everyone in the pharmacy is laughing at me, and I can only laugh at myself. I even need help opening doors here! What is my life?
So that, in as long as I could have possibly written it, has been my first two days in the Moroccan capital city of Rabat. It can only get better from here.
P.S. For those who wish to see more pictures, my web album is here.
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| Going Dutch |
I ask the girl behind me if she knows how to use it, but she's just as hopeless as I am. I try once again to get the credit card to work, this time with her help, but we take too much time and the kiosk resets. Long story short, Monica and I (that's her name) exit through customs and find a place to purchase tickets from humans, even though we both have credit cards that lack a required chip to buy a ticket. Finally after finding an ATM we're able to buy a roundtrip train ticket, and we board the train to Amsterdam Centraal. Only we don't go to Amsterdam Centraal. We end up fifteen minutes outside the city before we realize our mistake. We get on another train, and despite our guts telling us to get off at various stops along the way, we finally make it into the city.
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| Cafe Mac? |
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| First Moroccan Sunrise |
My first day in Rabat I wake to the sunrise. I go downstairs onto the street after a delicious petit dejuner. Its my first sighting of a man pulling a hand cart. I go back to my room, grab my things, check out, and head down the street to catch a petit taxi to the centre-ville of Rabat. The cabbie drops me off on a side street telling me that there are three hotels in the area, "One here, one there, and one over there" pointing at each in passing. I leave the cab, disoriented, and head toward one of the hotels to get directions to the Hotel Majestic. Although I'm pretty sure the man at the front desk gives me good directions, I can't for my life find the Majestic. I stroll around the block, my giant backpack strapped to me, wheeling my small suitcase. I feel as though I've gone too far, and I turn up the next block, finding myself in front of the Department of Justice. Severely lost, I go into another hotel, and the man at the desk gives me very good directions. The next time around, a boy whom I had earlier passed recognizes me and tries to stop me to buy shoes. Obviously being lost in the capital of Morocco I don't want shoes.
In retrospect, I can't believe I missed the green marble entrance and gold lettering. I walk upstairs, telling the man at the front desk I'm with the CCCL and he gives me a room key and takes my passport. I get to my room, tiled floor, a toilet that looks like an old British WC, and I plop my things down on the farthest of the two twin-sized beds. Forgetting that I gave the man at the desk my passport, I freak out tossing everything across my room, pulling apart my backpack, looking under the untouched bed covers. Then, my temporary roommate Asif knocks on the door, and reminds me that I gave my passport to the man at the front desk. In order to get my passport back, I have to give him a copy of my passport, and he directs me to a photocopying shop a couple doors down. The shop is located on the first floor (as opposed to the rez) so I walk upstairs to a closed door with a sign reading "Photocopies" pointing at it. I try and open the door, but the handle doesn't work. Then I knock. No answer. A bit confused, I try to turn the handle again, but it is broken. I walk back to the hotel, remembering that I had a copy in my things. After running up and down the stairs a few times, Asif and I go to a Moroccan cafe in the Medina for my first Moroccan meal of vegitarian couscous, fries, and yogurt. Moroccan yogurt is delicious, by the way. Then, the entire group of students meet in the hotel lobby and one of the program directors leads us to the CCCL, located in an 18th century riad in the Medina.
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| My school. |
After meeting too many people to remember, I get back to my room and crash. Somewhere along the way, as you will enjoy knowing, my hemorrhoid burst, and dealing with that all night is nothing but bloody happiness.
The Doctor Gives Me the News (This is where it gets gross)
Today I wake up at 6:00am promptly to the resonance of the call to prayer. "Alla-hu Akbar" trumpets the speakers across the Avenue Hassan II. If you haven't heard it, it is one of the most beautifully haunting sounds in all the world, asking men and women to wake and join in salah (roughly translated to "prayer"). I walk to the shower and press the button. Ice cold water. I turn it the direction the shower tells me to get warm water. Ice cold. I splash water under my armpits and in my hair and I walk, freezing, back into my room where I get dressed, deal with my bleeding buttocks, and begin my first day of school. Boring syllabus and ways to stay safe day. I talk with Souad, the program director, after our second lecture finishes, and I begin on my way, in her car, to the recommended gastrologist. In what would be the weirdest afternoon of my life, I go into his office (thankfully Souad was with me the whole time) and we talk about my problem.
 |
| Med equipment with dials. The blurriness represents how I felt. |
I arrive to the pharmacy as a man is boarding the windows for the night. The woman takes my script, gets me the medication, and rings me up at the register. Only once again, I lack the sufficient funds. After some arguing in French, and my inability to communicate has become all to shockingly clear, I am dragged by a man to a bank where the ATM is broken. We are more or less running through the crowded streets, past the vendors with cheap towels and shoes, to another bank around the corner. Thankfully this one works properly, and I get out enough dirhams to survive for a few days (or until I desperately need it). To add to my incompetence, I'm trying to leave the pharmacy but I can't figure out the damn door. By this time, everyone in the pharmacy is laughing at me, and I can only laugh at myself. I even need help opening doors here! What is my life?
So that, in as long as I could have possibly written it, has been my first two days in the Moroccan capital city of Rabat. It can only get better from here.
P.S. For those who wish to see more pictures, my web album is here.
