Fuck sleeping

Um, first of all, I’M GOING TO BE IN MOROCCO TOMORROW. WHAT. THE FUCK?!

The past two days have been kind of crazy, which is why I have not updated this in what seems like forever. It’s going to be a while before my next updated, because I’m doing a two days camel trek in Morocco and I’m not bringing my computer with me. We’re traveling through the Atlas mountains and going through the Zangora desert. A small group of us is going from Casablanca to Marrakech early tomorrow so we can spend the night there, which I’m incredibly excited about doing.

So two days ago (9/1) was a pretty good day. I had lunch with Ali, Sam and Ionna then went to work, which was of course really easy and mainly consisted of folding a copious amount of tshirts. I went outside to try to study, but it was absolutely freezing so I only lasted about 20 minutes. It worked out ok, because when I came inside Joe was there and I sat with him. Somehow it transformed into Joe, Lou, Kevin, Liz, Evan, and Nate. Throughout the day there were more or less people sprinkled in, but that’s pretty much how it remained for the evening. We all went to diner together (one of which being my new friend, Alden) Kevin taught us how to play our wine glasses, which was a lot more difficult than one would assume, but it was pretty awesome and we were doing it fr a solid 45 minutes.

After dinner we went to Evans room and decided to watch a movie. We started watching some Mary-Kate and Ashley movie but quickly decided that was a piss poor choice and Evan suggested we watch a movie called Marci X, which none of us had seen. It is AMAZINGLY RIDICULOUS. The cast includes Lisa Kudrow, Ice-T, and Damon Wayans. There is no way to explain it... you just have to stumble across it at some point in your life.

We went to the acapella group meeting which was awesome. I suggested we put together a disney medley which a lot of people liked the idea of. After that, I went to trivia night which was also hilarious. We had that really obnoxious group that most other people were probably secretly jealous of... or I’m just completely delusional. But either way, I had fun!

We went downstairs with the intentions of making a fort, which wound up turning into a pretty big game of Indian chief in the hallway. I went inside Tracy’s room with ionna and Ali to talk about some logistical things, and when I came out everyone had left. Ali and I went back to Kevins room, and we all hung out in there for a while. When Kevins room mate came back and wanted to go to bed, we went up to the sixth floor. I saw Ryan and Moobushair, who I had never met before but he was pretty cool. We all hung out and said many ridiculous things, including Joe knowing a lot about Chinese astrology off the top of his head, “fuck goats!” Kevin and Liz went to bed and I stayed up talking with Sam and joe, and after Sam left I stayed up with joe talking until about 4 AM. I went back to my room and Farrah was ACTUALLY awake, which was something we both weren’t expecting out of one another, so we stayed up until like 5:30.

Yesterday I woke up completely exhausted at 7 AM to go to work. I made the decision almost immediately that I was going to skip global studies to nap. Work was fun, I work with Mallory in the mornings and she’s pretty awesome. I went back to my room with the intention of sleeping through Global Studies. I wound up sleeping through that AND history of musical theater, which was shitty just because I love my professor for that class. I went to work at noon and (surprise!) folded some more shirts. After that I ran into Nate, Lou, Kevin and Sam. Kevin made a funny comment about liking the group of friends we were forming, which was pretty cool to hear because i definitely agree with it. I grabbed lunch and then hung out with Nate until I had to go to class. Global music was pretty ridiculous, which is pretty much par for the course. World theater and performance was amazing, which is also pretty much par for the course.

After classes I had a meeting with ym LLC (sort of like an RA) Christy because I’m on the Yellow Sea Spirit Committee. We discussed some cool things that we could do as a sea to form a bond and get to know one another better. There were a lot of great ideas thrown around, and I’m actually pretty pumped to be on the committee. It’s just me, Farrah, and this girl Wendy who’s super nice.

After that, I went down to deck 5 and found Kevin and joe, who I wound up spending most of dinner with. We went down to Kevins room to start writing our film, which was really fun. There were a lot of good ideas thrown around. We had to leave around 2000 hours to go to a pre-port cultural meeting, which is basically when the whole ship gets together and talks about cultural considerations for in port, so we don’t do anything terribly offensive, and we got to learn a few phrases in Arabic (which I may have already forgotten) most of the meeting was relatively preposterous, including learning what the dean decided was the origins of “planking” (which was really more of a coincidence than where the idea came from), and basically said “I’m not telling you what to do... but if you plank, you’re racist”. It was pretty silly.

We went to late night snack and met up with Liz. We wound up going down to Joes room to hang out, and we then moved to Liz’s room. We randomly started doing some improvised scenes for the film we’re making, which was pretty cool. From that we came up with a pretty cool idea: Why not just go play some improv games? We headed up to the union and recruited a few people, and we started playing games! Kevin and I kind of lead the whole thing which was cool. We had to move from the union, and we went into a classroom on the side of the garden lounge. We had a solid group of people there, and we had a LOT of fun playing. we wound up playing until about 4 AM. A few people had left by then and it was Kevin, Ryan, Liz, and then Ace, Chris, and Jeff. I knew Ace because he lives across the hall from me, but I had never met the other two. Ace and Chris left to go to bed, and we went out to go star gazing. Jeff and I bonded over our mutual desire to see a dolphin or a whale. It was around 4:30 AM that we decided that there was absolutely no point in going to sleep. We got kicked off the deck because they were cleaning it, and we met this really awesome crew member named Vladimere. He let us go into the teachers lounge, which was actually really cool mostly because we’re not usually allowed in there.

We all grabbed some stuff from our rooms and met back upstairs to watch “I love you, man”, which was of course completely amazing. We saw the sun starting to come up, so we went outside to finish the movie and watch the sunrise. There were a lot of clouds, so at first it was kind of a let down, but it became absolutely beautiful. There was one point where the sun was just peaking out from behind the clouds and the rays were really prevalent, and it was just beautiful. At 7 Am we decided to go grab breakfast together, which was great because it was really, really fresh and my croissant was super warm and the chocolate was melted a little. I decided to go lay down around 8 AM, because I realized I was slowly going slightly insane. I power napped from about 8:30-11:30, and now I’m sitting at work typing this up and listening to my itunes while directing people to the other side of the campus store to make their purchases.

For anyone more interested in the details of my camel trek, here they are!



Travelling over the Atlas mountains, enjoying the magnificent views of the surrounding countryside below and we visit the Kasbah of Ait Benhaddou. This journey takes approx 2 and a half hours.
From there, after our break, we continue to Ouarzazate (approx 1 hour or so) for lunch break.

Lunch is available in the local cafe's.

After lunch, we continue along  the Drâa valley to reach our destination of Zagora.
After a break in Zagora, we meet our 4 legged friends, our Camels, who will take us on a 1 and half hour trek into the dunes to reach our desert camp at Erg Chegaga.

Each person rides their own Camel and additional Camels are provided to carry your luggage.
The Camel trek is usually just prior to sunset, so that you may enjoy the sun setting over the landscape from the top of the Dunes.
Once we arrive at the Desert camp, we are greeted with a cup of delicious hot minty tea and we spend the evening under the stars, on the dunes and beside the warmth of the fireside.
We enjoy a locally cooked meal of Tagine and couscous (vegetarians are catered for with vegetable tagine), a drum party and story swapping.
The camp does have washing and toilet facilities.
Those that wish to can sleep directly under the stars, but there are Bivouacs for everyone.
The stars in the desert are a great opportunity to see as their are no artificial lights around and you can fully appreciate the glory of the skies above.
For those that are unable to ride the Camels, we provide 4x4 transportation to the Desert camp.

Day 2 of this Morocco Desert tour
After a traditional Berber breakfast, just prior to sunrise, we have a Two hour camel ride at sunrise to explore the area further and we head back to Zagora on our Camels.
When we reach Zagora, we have the opportunity to wash and then we begin our journey through the Draa valley and over the Atlas mountains, with plenty of stops for photos and lunch, to Marrakech.
 We usually return to Marrakech, arriving at around 18:00hrs.


I literally can’t believe that I’m going to be there in less than 24 hours. It’s starting to actually hit me that I’m going to be seeing the world.