Surfing in the bright blue ocean, and surfing the information super highway: My first day at the office

Getting ready for my 1st day at work

Dinner at the Lebanese place

Downtown Agdal

The Mosque in Agdal

Apparently everyone at my office is extremely busy and it is difficult to get face time with anyone, but that’s OK. I don’t mind a slow start, as long as I get some substantive work soon. But if I have to wait, I am lucky because I share my air conditioned office (it took us a good 45 minutes to figure out how to turn it on) with Rachel. Rachel is amazing. She has been living here in Rabat since Sept 2008, speaks fluent Arabic, and is an all around awesome person. She took me out to lunch with her and a couple of ladies from the office to a bougie French restaurant where I had a delicious salad with grilled veggies, mmm mmm good! While I may not have hot water at my house, at least I can eat well!

Yesterday I woke up and attempted to scrub the terrace, it worked- sort of. It’s not that I am a complete bozo, it’s that the terrace is massive and there were no proper mops, so I had to do it with a broom and a squigee the best I could. After hitting up the internet café and wandering around the city some more, I met up with some expats to go surfing. It was my first time surfing and I was terrible. I had a great time, but I was only able to stand up about 4 times, and that was on the weenie waves near the shore. I am by no means going to become the next Kelly Slater, but I would give it another go. Surfing with a beautiful Moroccan backdrop in the teal blue sea is pretty amazing.

After surfing we walked up to the Medina for lunch. It was my first time into the Medina and it was amazing. It gave me a whole new perspective on Rabat. I had only really seen Agdal and High Ryad, two neighborhoods that are fairly rich and quite blasé, but down by the ocean and the medina, there were all sorts of beautiful Arabian architecture, deep browns and blues and whites, lots of people hustling about and activity on the street- this finally felt like I was in Morocco.

Eating in the medina was an interesting experience. The boys first ordered a scrambled meat and egg sandwich and halfway through, decided it was too pink to keep eating. Sometimes being a vegetarian is a good thing. Then we attempted to eat some grilled corn. While it looked delicious, don’t be fooled- it was starchy and tasteless and tasted more like corn jerky then the sweet succulent corn I was imagining in my head. They ask if I wanted salt and then dipped it into a brine solution, which didn’t help to give it much flavor. The corn jerky was bad- attempt number two had also been a crap out. However, attempt number three was brilliant! We went to the fruit juice stand (Morocco is known for delicious, fresh juices) where everyone ordered avocado smoothies and I went with the “fruit boat”. The fruit boat was a semi-indistinguishable mess of fruity, sugary goodness. It consisted of chunks of fruit- apple, cherries, papaya, banana, and melon, floating in yogurt and doused in syrup. My glycemic index shot up about 100 points but my belly was happy.

I headed home for a few hours where I was greeted with a French shouting match between the landlord and the old roommate who was moving out. After a good hour they finally left, leaving a trail of leaky water faucets and muddy feet behind. I realized that I had left my wallet, cell phone, and camera at my friends house and had to go back over to get it, and figured I might as well get in a hot shower while I was at it. The house full of expats was going out to a Lebanese restaurant and insisted I come as it was one of the few restaurants in Rabat that served alcohol. Red wine and hummus? I couldn’t resist.

We ate falafel and told jokes over several bottles of Moroccan wine (not great, but not terrible..good enough for me to consider going wine tasting in Meknes. When in Rome, or Morocco for that matter…). Then my expat friends decided it was a good idea to go to the bar across the street. It was notoriously shady, but apparently an experience not to be missed. It was 11:30 and they were closing so the bar suggested we try the bootleg bar around the corner. I was exhausted but got suckered in to having one drink. This bar we walked into was the craziest, most bizarre bar I have ever been to. It was definitely an interesting experience but one that needed to be had only once.

According to Islam, alcohol is forbidden to drink. As there are a lot of tourists that come through Morocco, it is permitted for foreigners to drink but not for Moroccans, at least in public anyway. If a Moroccan wants to drink they must do it hush-hush or at a fancy restaurant (which are aimed at tourists and the well to do). This sketchy, smoke-filled place that we wandered into was quite a sight to be seen. I couldn’t stop staring at all the strange creatures that had amassed in this hole in the wall to indulge in sin. It was filled with extremely drunk Moroccan men and oddly dressed prostitutes, half of which were wearing djellabas. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Djellaba)People were chain smoking, drinking beer and cheap wine, laughing, and speaking in indistinguishable tongues.

While the customers were extremely bizarre, the service was the best that I have received in Morocco thus far. The waiter was a cute little old, bald man in a bow tie and red smoking jacket, who brought out our beers promptly and even wiped up a spill within 30 seconds of a bottle being knocked over. I was mildly disturbed at the whole scene, but was an experience none the less.

The bar closed around 1 and we all hopped in cabs and headed back home. I woke up briefly at 5 am with the Muslim call to prayer blaring loudly out my window, but I am a very deep sleeper and easily conked back asleep. I woke up this morning and put on my slightly wrinkled suit (my suitcase was not kind) and headed off to work.