I just returned from Morocco, and these past two weeks have been some of the best of my entire life. It was two weeks of spending time with amazing new friends, traveling around Morocco, avoiding “The Souqs and Service Plague”, state debates, and endless gumpsh games. I learned so much about the world, Muslim culture, Arabic culture, northern Africa, and I even learned some things about myself that I wouldn't have learned otherwise. This post is going to be more of a general trip post and I will go more into depth with future posts. There is so much I want to share, I couldn't possibly fit it all into one without it being an entire novel.
My grand adventure started on June 25, 2018. Barely, but it was technically the 25th. My flight from Denver International Airport left at 11:59 PM to New York City’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, so like I said, just barely. And I'll admit, I was a little scared that day. I was flying across the country alone to an airport I'd never been to before, with a very long layover, knowing that nobody would be at JFK until several hours after I got there, and just going to a completely different continent with a group of complete strangers. Seeing the Rustic Pathways staff at the airport only about 3 hours after I landed gave me reassurance and I immediately felt less afraid. Unfortunately my body decided to let the stress and nerves go by vomiting. So, my first full day of travel, actually was pretty bad. I went back and forth between sick and sleeping in the international terminal at JFK. It was so fun, note my sarcasm. But when people on my trip started arriving at the airport, I was normal again and ready to have the time of my life!
One of the worries I had for this trip was traveling internationally, not being in another country, or the potential risks with that, but solely going through customs and security. Airport security makes me uneasy as it is, I don’t know why, it just always has, but I was a little bit worried to go through customs. I’d been through it before, but it was so long ago, I don't remember it and my dad usually just took care of it anyway. So I had no idea what to expect. It was nothing. As usual, I freak out over little things only to find that everything turns out to be just fine.
Travel days are honestly the least exciting part of the whole trip. I had a pretty typical experience so I don't have much to say here, but I did definitely have an interesting experience on my way home from Casablanca to New York. Particularly in the fact that I didn't know I had gone through airport security until the gate. So it’s set up like this. You go through security to enter the airport. All the waiting areas for the public are outside, so if you need to pick someone up from or drop someone off at the airport, it’s outside. You can’t even walk them to check in. You go through security, a metal detector for you and a conveyor belt for your bags. You have all of your bags, including your checked one, so the liquids rule thing, isn't even really a thing right now. It is obviously the type of liquids and all that but yeah, you know what I mean. Then you go to check in like usual. After that you have customs, which is much more like the airport security we have in the United States. Almost exactly the same, actually, except that there is the customs officers checking passports at the beginning and end. The rest was pretty straight forward traditional airport travel EXCEPT right at my gate. Another security-like checkpoint, this time it was checking for liquids except under the 3.4 ounce or whatever. We didn't know about this rule because typically you can buy drinks and stuff after security and bring them on the plane, right? Well they weren't allowing it here, so I had to chug my entire bottle of Oulmés I just bought for the plane ride (one of my new addictions, it’s a Moroccan Sparkling Water brand, yeah there is La Croix in the US, but it’s just not the same… Oulmés is better) in one minute. Not easy. Anyways, airport security, it was actually kind of funny, I thought the security checkpoint at the door was just a way to control the number of people in the airport, and customs was very clearly labeled as customs, so it was easy, but I was so confused on where the airport security was. And just the fact that it took me so long to figure it out because there was apparently a huge sign in front of the door saying security… oops. I missed that. I was distracted trying not to cry from saying goodbye to my program leaders (aka my moroccan parents) from the past two weeks.
I was so lucky to have the group I did for this experience, both my program leaders, and the other students on my program quickly became some of the best friends I've ever had. Typically at home I don't have many friends (which I am okay with, it’s about quality not quantity and I have great friends at home) but to be part of a group where I am super close to everyone, was something really special that I'd never experienced before. On day one I remember our program leaders being “frustrated” for lack of a better word with us for not speaking but it quickly changed to us all becoming very close. We never had a bad time with all 14 (11 students, 3 leaders) of us, especially when it came to our “ state debates” at dinner, our trip-long competition of “gumpsh”, or ranking ourselves on how sick we got (I won). When it came time to say goodbye to my program leaders at the airport and my 10 new best friends when we parted separate ways at JFK, I couldn’t contain myself. It was hard to say goodbye to all the people I grew so close to. I was really upset to leave Morocco, but Morocco will always be there waiting for my next turn, this group was much harder to part with. Even if we worked super hard for a reunion, we all knew that these two week would be the only time that all fourteen of us would be together at the same time. My program leaders, Addie, Jessica, and Nael were some of the sweetest people I have ever met.
I will be posting more about the incredible things I saw in Morocco over the next coming weeks. This is just part one, so stay tuned for the coming stories in the future!!! I will have photos of my trip on my photos tab soon. In the meantime, I have an album on my facebook page if you would like to view a selection of them there (If we aren't friends, or you don't have facebook, feel free to contact me, and I can show you them). I should get to uploading them to the photos tab soon though, so just hang tight!
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