Back to Arabic…sort of!

The impressive Hassan II Mosque.

We are back in the Arab world! After a quick red-eye flight we find ourselves now in Morocco. Everything is a fascinating mix of French, Arabic, and Spanish. As if I wasn’t already confused with the 3 languages as it was, now here they all are jumbled into one. I have had a hard time keeping my French and Arabic straight but ironically it makes me sound quite local by switching it up. We’ve heard many people switch every 3rd word between the two languages. I ordered my tea saying “je voudrais thé ma nana”…and it worked very well!

We are both exhausted, the flight was too short to sleep well. We have twelve hours or so to kill but are glad we are in Casablanca. It has a good vibe to it. People are very nice and it has a much slower pace than anywhere in Egypt. There are so many different kinds of people here also. It is a mix of European, Arab, and African. We’ve seen some men wearing flip flops and shorts and others wearing gelabayyia robes. Seeing moms in hijab walking with their daughters uncovered is also common.

The airport in Casablanca conveniently has a train terminal in the basement that connects it to a main terminal from which you can hop on a train anywhere. We got into town easily and visited some of the sights. We also had the best schawarma outside of Damascus (ironically with a picture of Assad hanging so they must be Syrian!). Jet lag caught up with us pretty quickly so we returned to the airport to try to find a spot to camp. We luckily were permitted to enter the VIP lounge and got some couches to sleep on. Only a few more hours until we are in Sub-Saharan Africa.