It feels nice to come home to Fes. I enjoy traveling, but I am just now beginning to enjoy the feeling of coming back to someplace familiar. Today, I am coming back from the capital city of Rabat, where many of the teachers spent the weekend for a 'conference' with the teachers of the big school in Casablanca. It was wonderful to get to see them again, or in some cases to meet them for the first time after hearing so many stories about them!
We stayed in a hotel right on the beach in a little town about 20 minutes outside of Rabat, and spent so much time out on the sand. Abdul and I were the only ocean-swimmers, but Gwen and Anna did get in the water! There was a lot of good quiet meditation and down time, and time for us all to build up one another and share our stories and experiences. It was relaxing, but felt very cut-off from my country.
We took the train home. I love the train. I also immediately connected with one of my local friends to plan a get-together for tomorrow night. Rabat proved highly helpful for the science classes in terms of samples gathered from the tidepools and coraline algae (which the students are drawing tomorrow), so a big thank you to Abdul who led the sample-gathering expedition.
It was fun to be on the beach on the western shore and think about Steve and family directly across the ocean in New Jersey.
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You are the only one in the immediate family to get to the seaside this year (except Naushon Island) and it was a really different sea! I remain land locked and raking leaves with all the crunching and rustling sounds. I love you! Patti
ReplyDeleteI love the train, too! We should lobby for more train travel in the States.
ReplyDeleteWhat were the Moroccan beaches like? From the pictures the sand looked pretty fine, but was it Jersey shore fine? Colder water without the Atlantic's jet stream? I also like how you referred to Fes as home hehe. You Moroccan you. Ok, lunch break is over, back to the grind. Love you!
ReplyDeleteAt this point, Mom, you would have to travel pretty far to find it warm enough to swim! The leaves, though, are something I do not have.
ReplyDeleteI'm always up for public transportation lobbying, but trains in particular! Busses are maybe a close second, but you just can't beat the efficiency of a train. It's a shame so few people rely on them; having trains get little buisiness just perpetuates the cycle of the death of public transportation.
Taxis count as public transport here. They're so cheap and SO prevalent, and every city has different coloured intre-city taxis. Mine are red. I think at the beach they were blue? I forgot already. The water was cold, and just HOW cold I was too numb to tell you. The sand was actually pretty comparable to Jersey Shore sand, but the beach wasn't as flat and smooth; there were jetties of rocks and tidal pools bookkending the swimming beaches. The water was empty, because the locals are very sensitive to the cold. Even more so than me.
Actually the sands of New Jersey are disappearing as fast as the hairs on my head (still numbered). A nor'easter did the trimming.
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