Day Ninety Nine - Quick Update

Recent happenings as of late:

I came to the coast to celebrate my birthday which is in three days. Instead of partying I got food poisoning and spent most of yesterday either hating my life or sleeping. Gotta love Morocco!

Got my wallet stolen in Marrakech the other day. I was boarding a bus, an activity not at all similar to getting on a bus in the states. Basically you need to shove and push everyone out of the way in order to actually get on the bus because there is not enough space for everyone. So while I was doing my best to push every mother, child, and elderly man out of my way some crafty bugger got away with my wallet! Not a big deal though considering it only had 200 Dirhams in it, the equivalant of 24 bucks.

I've been hanging out with a lot of Peace Corps volunteers lately. Morocco has the second largest number of Peace Corps members in the world, after Ukraine. I CSed with one and then she gave me the number of another that was nearby. He's from Berkeley! I come all the way around the globe and stay with a guy from Berkeley. Crazy business. Here in Essaouira, the town on the coast that we came to in order to celebrate, I'm hanging out with 8 other Peace Corps volunteers, all mostly from California. Good people.

I've been learning some phrases in the native language of Morocco, Berber. It's really fun to speak with the people here in their own language. But there are so many dialects that some people don't even sound like they are speaking the same words as me.

We were detained by the police in a small village in the mountains because Daniel is from Mexico and the Moroccan government thought he might have the swine flu. Although they didn't tell us this until the ordeal was over. So we sat in the custody of the police for three hours with no idea as to why this was happening. Finally they summon Daniel into this hotel and give him a quick physical to make sure he is clean.

That's a quick rundown on some of the more interesting events as of late. I'll try and write more details some other time.