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At least I think it was a strike. There was a BIG march today in Meknes, right in front of my apartment–people chanting, carrying banners, and escorted by police, with all vehicle traffic closed off. The apartment concierge told me that it was a strike of government offices, schools, etc. nation-wide, though I couldn’t understand the reason. I’ll have to check the newspapers to see what was going on. It was very peaceful, if noisy. Here’s one photo of it.
Now, look carefully at this second photo. Notice the yellow arrow in the middle on the extreme right hand side? What’s it pointing at? Yes, a Yankee logo on a baseball cap! Though it’s not an official-looking Yankee hat, it does have the MLB logo on it also. Again, another Yankee hat, and I didn’t see any other baseball team represented on any hat. Truly, the World’s Baseball Team!
So, what will I be doing tonight? Since my students, who were probably out there marching today, are out on practicum for two weeks, I’m going to stay up to watch the first game of the Red Sox-Yankee series. It doesn’t get started until 7:05 p.m. Eastern Time, which means 11:05 p.m. in Morocco at MLB.com. I’ll be interested to see the reaction Johnny Damon gets from his old team’s fans.
I’ve been busy today sending out applications for jobs in Korea. I sent out 4, with more to come as the month goes by. Most of the major universities will post their job needs on Dave’s ESL Cafe beginning the middle of May on toward the end of the month and into June. I should be able to find something, and the ones I applied to today look pretty good. More later (including the Luang Prabang photos).
No, not me, though I am back safe and sound in Meknes, though desperately missing Southeast Asia. As I pedaled to work yesterday morning, I noticed an unusually large amount of police at most of the intersections. I asked my students what was going on and they told me that an International Agricultural Conference was meeting in Meknes for the next week. The King of Morocco would be in town today to open the proceedings. There are cops everywhere today! And soldiers. So, yes, the King is back in town. He’ll be here until Monday, staying at his palace (he has one in all the major cities), so maybe I’ll stake out a discreet position and try to get a photo.
Speaking of photos, I finally have a little breathing room to start going through my vacation shots. Hopefully, I’ll post them, along with commentary, to the blog and to the photo gallery sometime this weekend. (Or, I’ll watch my downloaded episodes of “Lost” that I missed watching while I was away.)
It’s a beautiful day–almost hot and very clear. I walked back from my university gig, about 40 minutes, and was sweating pretty good by the time I got home. A nice, juicy orange (for which Morocco is justifiably famous) sure hit the spot. Also, you’ve heard me complain of my cold, sunless apartment in winter. But, the flip side of that coin is that it should stay reasonably mild in the summer. More later.
Well, I’m back in Bangkok, trying to avoid getting soaked by participants in the Songkran Festival. I went to one such water throwing ceremony in Vientiane at the home of Suwon, one of Nai’s friends. Everybody there got drenched by small pails of water being tossed around and got either a face blackened by soot from one of the cooking pots or got “lipsticked” with colorful patterns. Most of us opted for the lipstick, since the soot looked very difficult to remove. Quite a lot of fun, really. Yesterday, though, I went back to Nongkhai with the intention of staying dry. The only clean clothes I had were the ones I was wearing, plus I had my baggage, including my digitial camera bag. Unfortunately, and somewhat to my anger, we got doused quite heavily by the mostly well-meaning Thais. I think some people carry this ceremony to the extreme and there have been calls for moderation. I’ve read, and Nai has told me, that quite a number of accidents happen, and deaths occur, when motorbike riders get whapped with waves of water coming at them. It’s all in good fun, but, unfortunately, many people get carried away. Hence, I’m avoiding the water in Bangkok by riding the subway, skytrain or taxi, instead of taking a motorbike.
My flight back to Africa leaves on the morning of the 16th, but I don’t land in Casablanca until the morning of the 17th. I’ve got a 13-hour layover in Doha, something I’m not looking forward to. Knowing beforehand that I’d have this long wait, I brought along some texts with me to work on a few lesson plans for the classes I have in the week of my return. Amazingly, it seems, I’ll have two weeks of lessons when I get back, then the students go into the schools for 2 weeks, then come back for the final two weeks of lessons with me, if my memory of the schedule is correct. I’ll be finished in Morocco about the middle of June. I’ll be plenty busy looking for a new job, and if I get one in Korea (very possible), I’m going to try to get my return flight back to the States changed to go back to Thailand instead, spending time on the beach, which I didn’t do this time around. Hopefully, if I can get it changed, it might mean a free flight to Thailand and then a short and fairly cheap journey on to Korea, if that’s what pans out. But, everything is subject to change, so I don’t really know where I’ll be in a few months.
Meanwhile, after I return, I’ll write a more extensive journal of my travels recently, including photos. More later.
P.S. I wrote earlier that my webhost service was going to shut down my photo gallery until I could get it updated, but I just noticed that I can still access it, so perhaps I won’t have to upgrade after all, at least not right away.
Ok, I’ve got some time now to fill you in on my journey so far. Once reaching Casablanca, I went over to the air cargo airport to pick up some teaching books I ordered that have been sitting there for 3 months. John in Rabat said that he thought FedEx would charge me for the storage, but they didn’t. The only problem was tracking down the customs agent to release the box to me. It took them two hours to find the guy, who was ready to call it a day at 3 in the afternoon. The FedEx guy said “The customs agents here are so bad, they want to make me kill myself.”
The other fellow there (these guys are both Moroccans) told me he was answering email from a customer in Ifrane. Because FedEx has to send out documents to anyone whose package they have to hold at the airport, frequently customers don’t get exactly what they are looking for. They also subcontract out the delivery of these documents. The company they use for the Ifrane area won’t deliver anything less than 1 kilogram (2.2 pounds). So, in order to fulfill the weight requirements, they put salt in the envelope along with the documents. The customer wrote in his email that he was expecting a computer, but all he got were some documents and a lot of salt. Why, he wondered? Quite amusing.
This may be my last entry for awhile. Tomorrow I’m going to Casablanca and then, the day after, my flight leaves for Bangkok. I’m quite excited to be going back to the Land of Smiles, Thailand, and the Land of a Million Elephants, Laos (though there are very few elephants remaining in Laos). I’m just about packed and ready to go.
It’s a good time to leave for warmer climes. It’s been blustery, cool and rainy the last few days. Last night we had a real rip-snorter of a storm, with thunder and lightning, high winds and enough hail to turn the streets white for a brief while. I’ll be glad to soak up the heat of Southeast Asia, though I’m sure I’ll be hankering for cooler temperatures after a few weeks in the simmering tropics. More later.
Geez, I’m getting antsy to go to Thailand. Right now, this late at night (no classes tomorrow), I’m sitting here making out my packing list for Thailand/Laos. One thing I have to do is to buy some souvenirs for Nai and his family and for Eugene and Tyra. Then, in Thailand and Laos, I want to get some stuff to bring back for my friends and students (the two are mutually interchangeable) in Meknes. I also have to buy some Lao coffee for myself and for John in Rabat, who is currently attending the 40th Annual TESOL conference in Tampa.
Let’s see . . . I’ll be sure to pack my camera for lots of photos, but I’m gonna pack light. Right now, the daily high temperature in Vientiane is hovering near the 100 degree mark and it’s quite humid. I’ll definitely pack my swim trunks, either for floating the Nam Song river in Vang Vieng or swimming in the Mekong. However, I don’t think it will be too comfortable hauling around a couple of heavy bags.
I’ll try to keep up this blog while I’m on the road, but traveling in the hinterlands of Laos might not lend itself to posting too often, so be patient. I’ll do the best I can. Photos optional, but eventually posted. More later.
If you’ve been reading this for any length of time, you will probably remember that I was debating whether or not to go to Casablanca the day before my flight for Thailand leaves. For a couple of reasons, I decided to go up a day early. First, I don’t want to walk the streets of Meknes (or any other large city, with the exceptions of Bangkok or Las Vegas, which seem never to close) at 2:30 in the morning. And second, I’d like to get a good night’s sleep before the long flight to Thailand. So, I reserved a room at the Hotel Ibis in Casa. The nice thing about it is that it’s right next to the station from which the airport train departs. Very convenient and pretty cheap–about $45 a night.
I’ve also reserved a room at the New Siam II Guesthouse in Bangkok for the night of the 24th. Hopefully, I’ll be able to get a train ticket for the overnighter to Nong Khai leaving the evening of the 25th. If not, I’ll stay an extra day or two in Bangkok. It, too, is cheap–less than $25 per night. When I get to Laos, I’ll spend a little time with Nai’s family, but most of the time I’ll stay in a guesthouse. We’re talking cheap cheap in Laos–on the order of less than $10 per night, maybe a bit more in Vang Vieng and Luang Prabang. I’m gettin’ antsy to go! More later.
It sure seemed like it today, anyway, though I’m sure the high temperature was probably only a tad over 70. So, I thought I’d get out and let the bicycle take me for a ride, and I was sweating quite a bit and may have gotten a small sunburn. Love it! I wasn’t sure where my trusty transport would take me, but we ended up riding around the medina, across the wadi from my side of town. This is the first occasion that I’ve spent any amount of time there, and I ended up in places I haven’t been before.
What’s behind the door?
Sunday is great for riding around, as the traffic is usually very light, compared to weekdays. Many of the pedestrians are tourists, mostly French from the conversations I overheard. I think sightseeing in the medina is more properly done by walking. There are a lot of things to see, and stopping every 5 minutes on the bike to take a photo gets old. It’s not that far from my apartment, though a complete walk around the old city would take a while. I want to get some souvenir shopping done before I leave for Thailand and Laos, so I’m sure I’ll make that walk soon.
Now, I’ve been in the upper reaches of the atmosphere while backpacking in the mountains of Montana, where the sky can be as blue as imaginable, but I have to admit the skies here can be as deeply azure as those in Big Sky Country. The color lends a good contrast to the beige of the old walls found in the medina. Below is one of the old gates (“bab” in Arabic) leading into or out of the medina. I didn’t have my guide book with me, so I don’t know its name, but there are many more, some of which are very impressive; I’ll get photos of them eventually.
One of the favorite resting spots in Meknes is a small, man-made lake. It’s lined with benches and quite a few people (I’m told) pass the time here, though it was very quiet today. Joggers, mothers with baby strollers and older children in tow, and couples talking in the shade populate this quiet area. Ducks and golden fish inhabit the lake. At one end is this crenellated wall, part of the old fortifications built by Moulay Ismail dating back to the 17th century.
All in all, it was an enjoyable couple of hours under the Moroccan sun. Montanans, with your low temperatures dipping into the teens today, are you envious?  More later.
Time flies. Though I started March with a flurry of posts, it’s almost a week later that I write this next one. There are people I’ve talked with who think I lead an exotic life, being able to visit and live and work in countries that they can only dream of. That’s true for much of the time, but there are moments that I feel that I live a rather boring existence, and one day seems to flow into the next. So, the sometimes long intervals between postings do not seem that far apart to me. Still, living in Morocco usually provides me with enough interesting events to keep me writing, but lately I’ve settled into a rather monotonous routine. I guess I get lazy at times, but, for the most part, I feel like I lead a rather dull life. It’s all relative, I suppose, but sometimes there’s just nothing to say.
At any rate, I leave for Thailand and Laos in a few weeks, a three-week sojourn to my favorite part of the world, so far. Nothing dull about that. Cliched as it sounds, it IS a small world in which we (well, some of us) live. Just the other evening, Wednesday, I was fortunate enough to be part of a cultural presentation class for the students at the American Language Center here. One fellow, a Moroccan, had visited Texas a while back, so he gave a talk on the Lone Star State. Another, a young man from South Carolina who teaches at the ALC, spoke about his life and family heritage in the deep south. I gave a short presentation on Cajuns, an ethnic, cultural aspect of my father’s side of my family. It’s been years and years since I’ve been exposed to the people famous for jambalaya, gumbo and zydeco music, but it was a lot of fun talking about them. I think the 50 or so kids and adults who attended enjoyed hearing about our experiences in American culture.
Seriously, there’s not much to relate, from my point of view. I’m kind of bored. (I guess I should get out more) Perhaps I’m looking forward to my upcoming trip. But, the weather has been gorgeous; tomorrow and Sunday’s forecast is calling for sunny skies and temperatures in the 75-80 degrees F. range. Looks like a bike ride is in the forecast, too. I’ll probably also go shopping in the medinah for souvenirs for my friends in Thailand and Laos. Tyra and Eugene, former colleagues from Andong Univ. in Korea, are meeting me in Bangkok, so I’m looking forward to seeing them again. Eugene, an American, is working in Chanthaburi, a few hours from Bangkok and Tyra, Canadian, is slacking off (as Canadians tend to do)  in Southeast Asia after teaching in Korea for several years. Wow! Only a few more weeks and I’ll be in the “Land of Smiles” again. Hope I can wait that long. More later.
Since tomorrow’s forecast calls for a bit of rain, I thought I’d take a bike ride today. I didn’t really have a particular destination in mind, so I meandered out to Boufekrane, famed throughout Morocco for its quality beef. I’ve been through the small village a number of times as an automobile passenger, but I’ve never biked there. It’s about 10 miles out through rolling hills, and I’ve always thought doing a bike ride might be a bit tough. Actually, it wasn’t that bad; the most difficult stretch is just getting out of Meknes. It’s a pretty country, very green right now, dotted with vineyards (not yet in bloom) and fields devoted to growing onions and potatoes. Many of the farmers sell their produce along the road; on the way back I stopped and bought a couple of oranges from a couple of guys selling them out of their car. Very juicy and tart!
I’ve had a few people ask why I don’t feature more people in my photos. Today’s ride provides a good portion of the answer. I stopped along the way to take a photo and there was a fellow sitting well out of the shot I took. He was sitting under a tree and I didn’t even see him until he came wandering over. Then he demanded money. I asked why. He said because I took his photo. (We’re talking in French, of course.) I told him he wasn’t in my photo. He still wanted money. I refused. He was a bit of a rough looking character, so maybe I just should have given him a few dirham and let it go. However, I get tired of people asking for money whenever I take a photo of something that has nothing to do with them. If I want to take a shot with someone featured as the subject, I always ask first and give them a little money afterwards if they ask for it. Not much money, the equivalent of 10-20 cents. But I get more than a few people who figure they own the landscape or the sunset or whatever. I always refuse. This guy finally got the message that he wasn’t getting anything out of me, so he wandered away to go back to sitting under his tree. I should have snapped a quick shot of him and taken off on the bike. 
Anyway, it was still a pleasant ride, but the round trip total of 20 miles has me a tad tired–makes it easy to daydream about the upcoming trip to Thailand. Bwahahahahahah! More later.
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