Morocco: Camels, Delicious Food, and HOT WEATHER!!

We made it to MOROCCO!!!! We have been in Morocco for 3 days and we leave tomorrow eventing around 7pm. I have had an amazing time here! Things are incedibly different from home, but it has been a great experience,

When we were pulling into Morocco on Sunday morning my roommate Julia and I decided to get up at 6am to watch the sunrise. It was beautiful. We decided that we wanted to do that for every port…..hopefully I'll still be excited about getting up so early! Later that morning I went on a Field Lab. A Field Lab is a required excursion planned by the professor of one of the classes you take. Each class I take has one Field Lab throughout the voyage. So Sunday I got on a bus with my classmates and professor and headed off the Rabat. Rabat is a city about an hour outside of Casablanca. When we got to Rabat we listened to a professor talk about urbanization in different Moroccan cities. After his lecture the professor took us on a tour of the city! That was a lot of fun because we got to see many of the major landmarks. He also took us to this restaurant that used to be a house. The food was amazing!!! After that we came back to Casablanca and I went out to explore the city for about an hour with my roommate.

The next morning I got up with a big group of people and took a train to Marrakech. This city is a 3 hour train ride south of Casablanca and it is HOT. When we stepped off the train at noon it was 104 degrees outside!! My big group broke into a few smaller groups to make it easier to travel in and then we went and found our Riad. This place was gorgeous. It was located on a side street off of the giant central square. The square is lined with markets and restaurants and so are all the side streets. We were able to drop off our stuff and then we ran to meet out camel guy,

Our camel guy drove us about 45 minutes outside of the city to this desert area with only a few huts. There were a group of 10 of us so we each got a camel. The guides took us on a camel trek for about an hour and 45 minutes and then we stopped at one of the huts to have tea. Afterwards we trekked back to where we started. It was so AWESOME to ride the camels!!! It was very hot, but they gave us this cover to wear to protect us from the sun.

For the rest of the evening we walked around the square and went out to eat. Once the sun went down the square was absolutley mobbed with people. I kid you not there had to be about 30,000 people there. We decided to head back to the Riad for the night. The next morning we finished up shopping and then we headed back on the train to Casablanca.

These past few days have been incredible and I still have one more day in Morocco to go. Tomorrow I will be gone all day on a service visit. I am going to a neighborhood to do some charity work. 

Got to give a shout out to my parents who videotaped the Blackhawks receiving the Stanley Cup last night!!! Go Hawks!! Even from thousands of miles away I'm still proud of my 2013 Stanley Cup Champs!!!! 

Talk to you all soon,

Kelly