I never thought one could have so many adventures in less than 24 hours! For starters, our flight from Atlanta was delayed, which left us with a very tight layover in Paris to get our connection to Casablanca. Once we landed at Charles de Gaulle airport, things slowed down to a “French” pace. The bus took forever to go from one terminal to the next, under freezing tempratures & passengers packed in like sardines. We ran with all our might while it was way past our boarding time, only for me to be held up by the security for my tiny bottle of Purell hand sanitizer! Surely, it would have been a pity if that made us miss our flight but we made it.Along the way, we also met a lady quite randomly & started talking, only to find out that she had also done a volunteer abroad trip through CCS in Russia couple of years ago. What a small world! In case you didn’t know, I went to Russia summer of 2009 for this same trip.
Once we made in into Casablanca after 13 hours of travel time, the adrenaline kept us going for the rest of
the day. We checked into our modest hotel just outside of the Medina, freshened up & got out into the city. We had only walked a couple of blocks from our hotel to find police barracades, high speed cars & a sea of people gathered on the streets watching. Leslie tried to find out from one of the spectators about what was going on & his only response perhaps due to his lack of English was “danger.” Should we stay & watch danger or continue to walk to the Hasan II Mosque, we thought to ourselves. Then I found out that the King of Morocco, Mohammed VI was due to pass by any minute, on his way to the same mosque we were headed to. We stood there & watched his motorcade & it wasn’t dangerous by any means!
dàn de 36 số nuôi khung – lô kép khung 2 ngày – dự đoán miền nam trúng thưởng -DÀN ĐỀ 72 SỐ ket qua xo so mien nam dàn đề bất tử hôm nay – cách tính xỉu chủ miền nam – soi cau lo xien mn -đề về đầu 2 hôm sau đánh con gì
Because the King needed to pray byhimself, we had to postpone our visit to the mosque till after lunch (which is a seperate blog entry in itself). My first glimpse of the city of Casablanca is polluted! I am quite sensitive to dust & smoke, so this is not the ideal city for me. There are tons of cars everywhere.
Most of them are old & release a lot of exhaust. Men smoke in cafes, restaurants, parks, sitting & standing on the streets. A lot of them don’t seem to working it seems. Once the sun set at 6pm, I saw a distant round ball in the sky (the moon), barely visible due to the extent of smog in this city.
On the bright side, people seem to be very friendly & willing to help you no matter how linguistically challenged they are, or we are. I ended up speaking in Spanish to one of the King’s security guards as he couldn’t speak English & I barely understand a few words in French.
