Morocco at last!

Hi everyone - Well, we finally made it. Only 48 hours crossing the Western Sahara. Seriously, it was a bitch. On the way from Mauritania to Dakhla we sat in the back of a truck on top of crates. It was insane - one lady got into a fight with these two guys - she was completely in the wrong and taking up a ton of space and got mad when one of them touched her foot, even though there was no where else to go! It really escalated and she threw her purse and it was just chaotic. We finally got to Dakhla at 3am, ready to fall apart. The next day we got up at 9am (whoa, it was actually just yesterday, but feels like a billion years ago) and we arrived in Essoauria today at 11am. Phew. Oh, and I'm spelling all those names wrong but don't want to look it up.

Anyway, Morocco is awesome! We are staying at this cheap place called The Cave, run by a guy named Biz Biz who smokes too much pot. But it's about $8 a night and central to the market and everything, so we are happy there. Today we just walked around and bought things and ate food. In the picture above I'm wearing new sunglasses and a new shirt! Yay! I'll post more pictures later, but for the moment we are just walking around (it's COLD here, but people are in tank tops!) and eating and finding souvenirs. Oh, my gosh. It's incredible. The blankets and bowls and woodwork and clothing and metalwork. And the market is kind of hassle-y, but not nearly like West Africa, so we are expert bargainers. The food options are delicious, we ate sausages and fries for lunch and had ice cream and now I'm eating Doritos with a Diet Coke. Goal for the next 5 weeks is to not turn into a beluga whale.

Still not sure what I'll be doing as far as Peace Corps is concerned. For the moment I won't stress about it, I'm sure it will all work out. They did get all our stuff, so now I just need to find out if it should be sent home to Wisconsin or kept in case the program opens or whatever. I did buy my ticket to Zach's wedding, so that's something to look forward to...hopefully I remember how to dress up!

I'll try and update again soon...