SHARK ATTACK

So we have continued surfing, in the last week. The second time we went, the waves at the local beach were small so they bussed us out to a nearby beach. There were 12 of us in the van and it was about a 20 minute ride out to this other beach. It was a gorgeous sunset while we surfed, and I accidentally grabbed a jellyfish while I was paddling out to the waves. In the bus, there were 3 little kids (8-9 years old) that were trying to talk to us. They were talking to us about America and for whatever reason whenever someone finds out that we are American the first thing they say is OBAMA. So of course this little kid was saying Obama and asking us a bunch of random questions. He then left us all speechless when he said "Could you please ask the king of America to stop sending soldiers to Afghanistan to kill Muslims?" Awkward.

While we were surfing, Chelsea got hit by some kids surfboard, therefore resulting in a black eye. We decided we were going to tell the other kids some crazy story about a shark attack, not thinking that they would actually believe it. Christina and Chelsea came up with a story, and later that night I got an email saying that Nate and Karina had bought the story no questions asked and that we were all to go along with it.

This was the story: chelsea was surfing and christina looked over and saw a big dark shape under the water. so she tried to yell and warn chelsea but this scared chelsea and she fell off the board onto the black shape which happened to be a shark. the shark got scared and got tangled in chelseas surfboard leash and dragged her under. conveniently there happened to be a reef where she got dragged under and so she tied the leash to the reef therefore tying the shark onto the reef and then she swam back to safety.

Karina and Nate still believe this ridiculous story.

The next time we went surfing it was at the local beach and there were very small waves so we just spent the time messing around in the water. These waves were so small that we literally had to run (in the water) after the wave, pushing our boards and throw ourselves onto them to get enough speed to stand up. It was still fun, and we have one more lesson left, and then we are going to try to get a free lesson out of throwing a goodbye party.

CASABLANCA!

So since we are in Morocco and the only thing anyone knows about Morocco is Casablanca, we had to make a trip to the famous city. We had a scheduled trip with the school to go to the beach on Sat the 24th so we decided Friday night was a prime time to make a trip to go clubbing. We got out of school and headed to the train station around 5:30 on Friday the 23rd. Aya, Lauren and I all got on the train in one station in Rabat while Gabrielle and Alix got on at the other station. We arrive in Casa and the two groups reunite to figure out our plan for the night.

We decide to head to our hotel (which we had only reserved one room for because we just wanted to leave our stuff their while we were at the club). It took us a while to find the hotel since no one seemed to know where it was or WHAT it was. Finally we found it, checked in, dropped off our bags in one of the nicer hotels we had been in so far and headed off to find some dinner.

We picked a cute little cafe and ate dinner while people watching. We decided to go see the mosque, (Hassan II) the largest mosque in

Morocco and the 5th largest Mosque in the world. So after dinner we found taxis to take us to the Mosque. We passed

Ricks Cafe on the way

, sadly we didn't get to go in. It was only about a 15 minute drive to the mosque and it was absolutely breathtaking. We spent a few hours walking around and taking picture

s. It was such a calming experience, you could tell that everyone there was in complete bliss. There were families sitting everywhere and kids playing on the grass. People were praying everywhere on the steps and in the building. We couldn't go in but the doors were open and the inside was

BEAUTIFUL. It is the highest religious building in the world, the minaret is 200 meters high I believe and it can house 105,000 worshipers at any one time. Half of the surface of the mosque lays over the Atlantic, and you can see it through a glass floor. Unfortunately we didn't get to see this since we couldn't go inside.

After we got our fill of the Mosque, we headed back to the hotel to get ready and drink

before going out. We changed, did our makeup and hair and Lauren, Alix and I drank

some before we left. The man at the front desk of the hotel walked us out to the main road and hailed taxi's for us, telling them where to take us and we drove to the main road with

all the clubs. It is a straight road with probably 50 clubs in a row across from the ocean.

We had been told that cover for each club would be about 100 dH each. We ended up getting into 4 clubs for free. Each club told us that we had to buy tickets, to which we replied no, nevermind and turned around to walk away. The guys then ran after us and let us in for free. Every time. It pays to be pretty American girls who are not prostitutes. We

then figured out why they wanted girls, there were NO girls in most of the clubs, those that were were

completely covered and sitting on the sides, we were the only girls that danced in any club. There was a lot of hookah and chill music, definitely different from American bars and clubs.

We finally found a club that we really enjoyed, except it was extremely hot since it was

underground. We decided to go get waters at which point we could tell there was something wrong with Gabrielle. She apparently had started feeling nauseous in the club and was really hot and we just wanted to get her back to the hotel and find a way home. We had planned to take the 5 am train home, but that was still 3 hours away. We decided to just go sleep at the hotel for a little and try to rehydrate her until the train came.

At 4:30, we got cabs to the train station and were back in Rabat by 6:45.

We had to be up at 8 to be at school to leave for the beach at 9, so of course all of us were exhausted.

We took a bus to Tamara beach which is about 15 minutes away from Rabat. We got there

and all of us passed out on the sand for a few hours. We then spent the remaining time relaxing, building sand castles and playing in the waves. We had originally planned to head to Marrakesh for the remainder of the weekend, but we all decided that we were too exhausted for that and it would be a better idea to spend the weekend in Rabat relaxing.

We left the beach and spent the rest of the day in AMIDEAST doing homework and using their internet. We headed back home around 9 and all of us passed out early. The next day Kajari, Alix and I decided to try surfing with Christina and Chelsea. We headed out early the next morning to the surf club and bought 2 lessons. They took us down to the beach and we essentially had two hours of doing whatever we wanted. I headed back home after this, ate some of aya's breakfast and then we passed out again until 3. The only reason we woke up was because they woke us up to show us the food on the table. We spent the rest of the day catching up on sleep and doing homework.