Thursday, September 10, 2009

Schedule: City Orientation & Welcome Reception

Hello my followers. Today was my first day in a new country, the country of Morocco in the city of Casablanca. It rained all day today. From what I have heard it supposedly only rains 25 days out of the year here and the rest of the days are just hot, so I feel pretty lucky to have been here during rain. This morning I went on the City orientation with a special visit to the Hassan II Mosque.

The mosque was absolutely stunning. Our tour guide said that they can fit 20,000 people on the inside and 80,000 people can fit outside the moque. Crazy! The architecture was beautiful. The ceiling, the lights, the doors… it was phenomenal. The main entrance that the king comes through 2 times a year, the door weighed a total of 14 tons, 7 tons per door. Oh my goodness. Luckily no one has to push those open, they are actually electric. Another fascinating fact about the mosque is that it has a sunroof. When the days are nice they open the roof to left the light in. I wish that I could have seen that view it would have been truly captivating. Oh well. Next time.

After visiting the mosque I then attended the welcome reception. Not really sure of what was going to happen, I am really excited that I went. I made 2 new friends from Morocco name Abdullah and Soufine. They were totally cool and such gentlemen. :D We got to eat some local delicious treats as I was able to have the famous mint tea for the first time. Now the saying goes that when a boy thinks that a girl is cute he serves her tea that is sweeter, now if the the boy doesn't like the girl then he serves her tea that is not sweet. So I hope that you can figure this out… I was served some very sweet tea from the waiter. It made me smile. By the time that dinner was over I was definitely not ready to say goodbye. So we decided not to say goodbye to our new friends so we took a few photographs and decided that we would meet up on Sunday and hangout. What a great end to the day.

Oh and just for future reference. The sweets are really sweet and the drivers are crazy. I have never heard so much honking in my life and the use of the gas pedal was ridiculous. I swear that we went over a speed bump going like 60mph and our bus driver just laughed and laughed. Morocco has definitely left it's mark on me… my butt is soar.