Rachel Sarah Thurston portrait, events, travel and wedding photography and travel/lifestyle writing

Tales From Morocco I: "Post Traumatic Jetlag"

January 14th
A rainy night in Fez
North Central Morocco

After thirty hours of riding on airbuses, two international flights, a nine hour layover in Germany (without any euros), and a long interlude of being locked in the toilet by the flight attendant during bad turbulence.....Mom and I landed in Casablanca at 1 in the morning. For the first 48 hours of our trip (while Mama was delightfully, if not gratingly, cheery), I really couldn't bring myself to remember what it is about travel that I like so much.

First Day In Casablanca (after nearly two days of travel):

-Sleep until 11:30 am
-Decide to go back to sleep
-Wake up at 2 pm and decide to go back to sleep
-Wake up, rise, and shower at 4:30 pm
-Scrutinize mother's makeup until 5:30 so she doesn't look like a baby sharpei
-Approve of each other's outfits as appropriately befitting of a Muslim country
-Head down the street in the dark as the city lights are coming on
-Stroll the streets and check out young men and women wearing camo, hot pink, and leopard printed jellabas
-Find restaurant as close as possible to hotel
-Order tagine, salad (yes, with fresh vegetables.....life is short), and drink four pots of Moroccan mint tea without receiving the wise travel wisdom that Moroccan tea is notoriously caffeinated
-Soon, a little bird has let it slip that Mama Chihuahua is a middle eastern dance teacher and drummer
The oud player is singing, I am dancing, and MC is resourcefully using the serving tray as a makeshift drum and the hotel staff has gathered round us
-Go to bed at 1 am
-Take two doses of Benadryl
-Lie in bed twiddling our thumbs and cursing Moroccan tea for the next three hours with absolutely no help whatsoever from the Benadryl

Day Two:

-Breakfast of bread, yogurt, and more tea
-Much to mother's objections, take nap around noon
-Wander the streets in a fog of low blood sugar, jet lag, and surreptitious Lonely Planet map reading while no one is looking (as if our tennis shoes, sunglasses, and bags don't completely give us away)
-Try as hard as we can to stay awake until 9 pm
-Wake up at 4 am and take a couple of tabs of Benadryl

Day Three:

-Ready to see Morocco!

Will write more after I recover from post traumatic typing in Morocco stress.....

*This country hands down wins for the most frustrating keyboard of all the computers we have used around the world.....the following email has taken me 40 minutes to write...mother has been cursing away on a neighboring computer. We shouted for glee when we found the apostrophe button!

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