In which all plans are defenestrated

Madrid, Spain

It's been rather a long time since I last posted, and much has happened, so I'll stick to the highlights. Defenestrated, a word I love, means to throw out the window.

After Fes we went to Rabat, the capital of Morocco. Our hotel was accross the street from this amazing french cafe named Green Cafe complete with amazing french pastries. So instead of eating breakfast at the hotel, we ate their. They seem to be the only place in morocco that actually puts chocolate in their chocolate croussants. We walked everywhere in Rabat I think, and my knock off converse allstars were dying, so now I have some snazzy new purple euroshoes. After trying many shoes stores and finding no arch support in shoes, I started looking at people's feet, and have concluded that morocco is full of flat footed people.

One of the more outrageous experiences was meeting up with the couchsurfers of Rabat and Sale. If you want to know about couch surfing their website is www.couchsurfing.com, but the idea is so people can travel and meet other people and stay on their couches. One guy named Nabil walked mom and I to the tomb of Muhammed V, the king who liberated morocco from the French. It's a very impressive mosoleum, built in the ruins of the mosque that was intended to have the highest minaret in the muslim world, but was never finished. Then, the rest of the couch surfers showed up. They gave everyone, including me, a diploma for having attended the first couch surfing meeting of Rabab-Sale (although I was now attending the second meeting) and then had us take a lot of photos together.

We had heard that boats crossed the river to Sale from Rabat - they don't. So we walked a lot, took petit taxis and then smushed into a grand taxi to get to sale. We ate lunch at this lunch counter sort of place, and had sardine ball sandwhiches. It was very good, but perhaps one of the stranger things that I ate in morocco. Miraculously, none of us got sick from the lunch. This further validates the theory mom and I have discovered of food in morocco - the smaller and cheaper the place, the better the food will be. This holds except for very very nice resturants, where the food is indeed worth the money.

In Sale we also visited the exotic gardens. There are sections of the gardens from peru, china, congo, japan, pacific islands, arid mexico, etc. It's an amazing place. The paths wind through it in such a way that it feels much larger than it is. There are bridges, stairs, stone archways, and a waterfall. And it was nice and cool. We got there an away using the bus, our first public intracity transport. It felt a bit like the bus was falling apart.

We took the train from Rabat to Casablanca, and there bought a new suitcase, so Ian could take lots of things home for all of us. The day was spent repacking for the most part. The next morning, we all took a taxi with him to the airport. He had to spend the night in JFK, but got home okay. The rest of that day and half of the next rather angst filled day was spent deciding what I was going to do after morocco. That afternoon I bought a bus ticket to Madrid. I've decided to throw any plans out the window (unless I get into JET). And I will find that english teaching job when I run out of Money.

The bus ride from Madrid to Casablanca was 24 hours, although not all of that was driving time. The woman behind me on the bus, named Fatih, decided to sort of adopt me, and made sure I got through the whole thing okay. She's from morocco, but has been living in spain for 6 or so years. She didn't speak any english, so I drug out my high school spanish, and we sort of managed to talk. Spanish does seem to be coming back to me, which is nice, although I sound like a three year old.

We drove to Tangiers, then had to take all our stuff off the bus, go through passport control (moroccans aren't too fond of orderly lines) and have our bags scanned. Then we walked to the dock where the boats was, hauled our stuff up the gangplank, and waited an hour and a half for the ferry to go. The ride accross to algecieras was two and half hours. For some reason I thought it was going to be about 30 minutes. Then we did the whole pasport control and customs again, and got back on the bus about 1:30 am. We arrived in Madrid at about 11.

Madrid is beautiful, and seems so calm after morocco. The cars stay in their lanes, there are cross walks and lights telling you when you can cross. The sidewalks are wide and in good repair, and the metro is great. It also seems less poluted on the whole. I've found a hostel and harry potter, and am taking a couple of days to just hang out and not do too much. I have no idea what I'm doing next. If anyone has any friends I could visit or suggestions of places to go, I'm all ears. And now, back to harry potter!