Tag: Travel Plans

My Bus Station Friend

Arabic yesterday was just abysmal. I am so grateful that today is my last session (except for the final tomorrow). I don’t think I’m going to continue it when I get back to the US, and I am very OK with that. Whenever school ends, regardless of whether it was a good semester or a bad semester, its always a good feeling.

On a happier note, I have my hostel all booked in Rome!! Now I just have to find a way to get to the airport on Saturday. Apparently if I take a taxi its going to cost me 600DH. That’s almost a hundred bucks! No way. There must be a cheaper way. CTM bus? Get my host dad to drive me? The problem is that Casablance is a little more than an hour from Rabat. I don’t want him going out of his way, especially when he a) picked me up from the bus station at 5AM on Sunday and b) already went to Casablanca once this week to pick up a relative visiting from Canada. I know how unpleasant that many hours on the road in a week can be.

Oh yeah, also, speaking of the bus station at 5am. So, I asked my host dad to pick me up at five, and since Pete is staying with my host dad’s brother, he usually gets a ride as well. So anyway, the bus got in at 4:30 instead of 5 so we had a good half hour to kill waiting for our ride… Some Moroccan guy nonchalantly asked for the time, in French, so I showed him what time it was on my phone, and he asked if I spoke French, and unfortunately I said yes… so, for the next half hour, this guy talked “our” ears off (really, just mine because Pete couldn’t understand) about every topic under the sun. I couldn’t tell if he was drunk, because he didn’t smell like alcohol, but the way he was jumping from topic to topic was so strange that I didn’t think he was thinking normally. Anyway, first, he said that his dad was in Europe (or something; I couldn’t really understand) and asked Pete and I over to his place to hang out. So awkward. I told him we were waiting for our uncle. He asked if I was married to Pete. Again, I should have said yes, because then he might have left us alone. When he found out I was single, he was like half-hitting on me, half-asking me to convert to Islam. The whole conversation was just very strange. He told me all about how he smokes and he knows he shouldn’t, but when he dies he’s getting a new body and it all won’t matter. Then he started talking about how Nicolas Sarkozy is nothing more than a janitor who picks up the trash off the street. Stream of conciousness. FINALLY after, again, half an hour of listening to this guy talk about nothing in particular, he went off to his apartment which was “really, just two blocks from here, I swear,” and left us in peace. We were finally picked up and made it home. This guy was just really strange.

Weekend Trip #1

So, I’m the only one that has school tomorrow morning, and really I’m not sure why I do and the others don’t… but I’m not asking questions because I want to get full credit… so yeah. I’m bringing my bag with me to school in the morning and the others are meeting me at 12 after I get out of class and we’re heading over to the train station. I’m taking a train! How exciting, right?

Now readers, you know I’m just stringing you along, because the train may be part of the trip but you clearly don’t know the destination yet. So, our train ride should be a few hours, and we’ll get into Tangiers (the top, pointy part of morocco where the Mediterranean Sea and Atlantic Ocean meet) around like six PM…

Then…. we’re going to take a ferry to SPAIN! That’s right, sail across the glorious Strait of Gibraltar and spend a day basking in the delightful sun of l’Espana! I mean, we’re only going to be there for a day, it will probably be pretty similar to Morocco… and its going to be ungodly expensive compared to our past two weeks but… you know what… I get to add another country to my map!  I’m excited. I want to buy a souvenir with a bull on it or something :D

I’ve never done something this spontaneous… I mean there was that spontaneous trip to Las Vegas, but I definitely had a place to stay when I got there. We have no place to stay so this should be rather interesting! Adventure, right?

That said, I’m leaving my computer at home so it doesn’t get stolen on our journey. So I will be incommunicado until Sunday evening. :) Leave me lots of lovely commentsto read and smile at when I get back! Hopefully I’ll come back with an interesting story or gorgeous pictures!

Note that the #1 in the title implies that there will be subsequent weekend trips! Probably not to other countries but hopefully just as exciting :)

The Open Road

airports... i know them well
airports... i know them well

Alright readers, here’s the scoop… This is, and should be for a couple  years to come at least, my travel journal! There is something romantic about keeping a journal of your times in faraway locations, and there’s something even more romantic than that about keeping it in some tattered and dusty journal you roll up under your pillow at night. The thing is, I’m not so good and keeping something like that going without any kind of positive reinforcement so I decided that it would be a better idea to blog about it instead–that’s where the positive reinforcement comes into play with reader comments and whatnot. (So be sure to comment.)

La Route Libre means The Open Road… I was going for something Kerouac-esque and decided to just kind of take it and make it French. I didn’t want to do something location-specific, because I plan on using this for other travels at later times down the [open] road.

In the immediate future, this blog will contain the life and times of Staci in Morocco, with a couple of bonus days thrown in of Staci in Rome and Paris. Please let me know if there’s anything specific you would like to know about these travels, I will be happy to oblige! If not, I gave you the chance, and now you will be subjected to whatever I feel the need to write about that day, even if it’s mundane. I will try to keep it as interesting as possible.

(Also, writing this also provided the content for my “about” page so if you read this far, don’t feel the need to go over there because it is identical. But feel free to refer back to that page…. if you ever feel so inclined.)

This time tomorrow I will be somewhere over the Rocky Mountains on my way to Chicago. From Chicago I will sneak my way onto a plane to Madrid (okay, okay, i have a ticket so there will be less sneakines and more… just walking onto the plane.) From Madrid I will swim the Strait of Gibraltar and find myself in Casablanca. This ordeal will take me the better part of an entire 24 hour period. Its going to be long, but good. I already got my annual “problems at the airport” quota filled for the year (see: Denver) so I am really crossing my fingers that everything will go as smoothly as possible.