The Bled Life

Had a rather rough start to the day... Host dad told me that the tranzit was coming at 6 in the morning to go to the Gandarme station where I needed to submit some paperwork. So I wake up at 5:45, groan my way out of bed and into some clothes, pack my bag, skip breakfast and head out the door. I figure that I'll get some food in the souk town. My host dad comes out with me and waits by the side of the road. 15 minutes, then a half hour roll by. This is perfectly normal by the way. I put in my headphones and try and feel better about the situation by listening to some music. By the way: music of the week is this interesting electronic sounding band by the name of La Roux. Check em' out (this means you Brooke) By the time an hour has rolled around, I'm getting tired of waiting and head back to the house for some food. No sooner than I sit down for some coffee and bread than my little brother comes running in the house saying that the ride is here, and I need to go now. Argh! I slurp down some coffee, grab a handful of bread with some laughing cow cheese spread (about the only cheese anyone eats in Morocco), and run to the spot where I'm supposed to be picked up. This tranizit is already pretty full. If you want a good idea of what it looked like, think Mexican Coyote vans (the ones they use to smuggle people across the border). Granted it was a pretty big van, with some bench seats on the walls and a single bar to hang on to if you were standing up, but by the time we were really on our way there were about 30 people in the van itself and a couple on the roof. After being crammed into the van, the roof looked rather appealing, but alas, peace corps policy says no to roof riding (way to ruin all the dangerous and fun things in life Peace Corps). The transit zoomed along at a stunning 30kph average, about 20 MPH for those who can't convert. I don't know this from the speedometers, which are for some reason always broken in this country, but by the fact that I was standing up for an hour on the 30KM ride to the souk town. I was a little ticked off with the whole situation until I realized the ridiculous nature of it all. The men were all joking around with each other like little kids, I was crammed in a vehicle full of people shouting stuff I couldn't understand very well at all, and to make things better, the old woman (who looked a bit like baba yaga) sitting on the bench next to me decided to cling to my pants and use them as a stabilizing device. This turned into her pretty much hugging my leg, and then letting go a couple minutes later to pick her nose. We arrived at our destination without too much more trouble, and I got out, shopped around at souk, did my paperwork and got some 25 cent coffee. That's the bled life for you...

Funniest thing I saw today: 12-13 year old boy wearing a Spice Girls baseball hat.