ok, this day has been sooo overwhelming, like nothing i've ever experienced before. kind of scary, terrifying at times. The language differences surprisingly haven't made it more challenging, unlike being in spain. so much has happened, i'll update in list form:
-we have many obstacles at the airport. it is SO crowded. we have to show our passports, between madrid and morocco, like 12 times. we just make our flight
-we arrive in marrakech. easy. i go to use the bathroom, and my first encounter avec le francais- there are like four women in the tiny bathroom changing their clothes. one yells at me: Fermer la porte! (shut the door). i freeze, with the door open, just staring at her. i think her pants were down. then i pee.
-we take a taxi to our riad (a riad is like a bed and breakfast. ) in the medina (square), cars are not allowed. so the taxi driver lets us off outside the medina and flags down this (later we find out) ILLITERATE moroccan who is pulling an old metal cart lined with cardboard boxes. he takes all our luggage and fills up his cart. we follow him like he's our mule. except one thing: he has no idea where he's going. and we show him the address several times, the taxi driver verbally goes over the directions to the riad with him before leaving. so we walk a bit into the square, only to have him tell us to hold on, watch his cart. he disappears into a store, with the paper with the directions, and comes out five minutes later with a cell phone. About 15 minutes later, we are getting no where. I think he's spoken to someone else, and he decides we need to take a taxi to get there because it's too far away to walk. SO we walk towards the taxis and this guy approaches us asking where we're going. He finally ends up driving us in his taxi, but not until we all almost get run over trying to cross the street, and after he leaves us at his taxi for five minutes while he goes and makes a call. We get to the riad and sit down in the lobby. and wait.
to be continued...
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