Goodbye Dakar, Hello Casablanca

Posted by Emily

It's hard to believe that my 3 months in Senegal are already and I am sitting in a cyber café in Casablanca. As we all know too well, time goes too fast.

As you know from the previous posts, Nicki has now joined me and spent the last 2 weeks with me in Dakar. I haven't been updating much myself because a) I have been obsessively reading about grad schools (mostly Berkeley) and b) I thought it would be more interesting to get the information from someone who was experiencing it for the first time. Overall, I had a very good time showing Nicki around and she says she had fun too!

Yesterday and today have not been the best days for a few reasons. First, I was having troubles packing (I seem to haveacquiredd more things than I realized). So far this has resulted in Nicki being dragged along with me to DHL in Dakar and now FedEx in Casablanca, each time finding out that it would cost me about 800 dollars to send home all the stuff that I wanted. I don't think so. Second, I had to say goodbye to all my friends in Dakar, which will put anyone in a bad mood. Also today I somehow managed to lose my wallet and I suspect it either fell out of my backpack on the plane or was taken by the man sitting next to me when I went to the bathroom. Either that or I will find it tomorrow and have a few useless credit cards.

So yes, I am sad and frustrated but I really like Morocco. So far all the bad stuff has been set off by people being really really nice. What a nice relief otherwise I might have started crying for no good reason in front of some random people. I have been very surprised by the lack of hussle here (although that could be because it's Saturday). I was expecting to be hassled much more, probably because of what I'm used to in downtown Dakar! Flying in was an amazing sight. Near Marrakesh there weremountains outt one side of the plane and ocean out the other. Closer to Casablanca everything is so GREEN. It's actually spring here and there are yellow and orange flowers blossoming in fields all over the place. It seems very much like Europe to me in comparison to Senegal.

Also, the guy at the hotel said that I can keep my massive amounts of luggage there for free while we travel and until I can find a cheaper way to send it. Hurray§

Ciao.