Well here we go, we left the house at 1PM EST, we being mom, dad, and I, for JKF International airport. Made a few stops but made it to JFK around 3:30, and said goodbye to dad at the door, and mom walked into the airport with me to help get everything squared away. I actually saw a Moroccan guy that I play soccer with on monday nights there, he was dropping his brother off who was on the same flight I was. I got up and checked my bags in and the guy gave me my ticket and told me my seat was 12A, window seat. SWEET! well I said goodbye to mom, and I was proud of her that no tears came rolling... :) So skip through the long security line, and waiting at my gate, and I got to my seat and there it was 12A, but there was no window... there was a window in the row in front of it, and a window in the row behind it, but row 12 had no window. So I was kinda bummed about that, but I sat down in my seat and looked at the seat in front of me, no screen there were decent sized screens in the aisles, but as it turns out one of them was in line with row 12, so I couldn't really see that one and the one in front of me was broken, so there went the idea of watching a movie, or watching the clouds pass by, and as I sat down I realized that the lock that locks the back of the seat up was broken, so I couldn't sit back too far or the seat would lean back into the person behind me. AWESOME!
So I laid my head on the table in front of me, thinking I could sleep for most of the flight. Well I woke up 30 minutes later when they were serving dinner, chicken and mashed potatoes, along with some cheesecake, actually pretty good stuff. But unfortunately my body took that as a power-nap and figured I wanted to stay awake for the rest of the flight. So I decided to turn on my Ipod and finish listening to Mark Driscoll's 7 week series on the Peasant Princess (Song of Solomon), which was a really good sermon series. Well next thing I know the guy next to me (Sander) taps my shoulder and points to the screen in row 12 and so I lean back into the guy behind me and look at the screen. "Time to Destination 1:14" After that I started counting the minutes, I even set the timer on my iphone to countdown so that I wouldn't have to keep looking at the TV screen. Well that was it went by surprisingly fast, I would look out the window in the row in front of my like every 2 minutes. With 19 minutes left in the flight I saw the most beautiful view I had ever seen. The lights of Casablanca:
That's when I knew I was almost home! Anyways the next 20 minutes I couldn't stop looking out the window in front of me, just watching the city at 5:45 AM, when the sun had yet to rise. The song I had to play on my ipod for this occasion was "Coming Home" by P-Diddy which made it even greater of a moment. We landed at 6:05 GMT, 1:05AM EST. I almost ran to the security line, to get through passport control, thankfully with no problems, and on to pick up my checked bags, which included a 65L Deuter backpack, filled the brim, and a duffel bag, both weighed almost exactly 50 lbs (limit). I saw my friend's brother and helped him grab his bags since they cam out before mine. Finally after what felt like forever of waiting my bags came out on the belt and I was off to catch the train into Casablanca.
The train to Casa was fairly uneventful and quick. I met some friends at the Casa train station who were gladly willing to hold my two checked bags for the week, which was a God-send, that way I didn't have to carry 2 50 lb bags, a 25 lb carry-on, and a 10 lb computer bag (Yes, mom is a GREAT packer, and fit everything for 7 months in all that). They also served me breakfast and were willing to exchange some of my dollars for Moroccan dirhams which was awesome. It was great to visit with them while I waited to hop back on the train to Fes. At 10:20 they took me back to the train station where I hopped on a train to the bigger station in the city and bought a ticket to Fes. I had 40 minutes to kill at the train station so I decided to buy a cell phone at the station and then go sit on the train while it figured it out and made some calls to the people with whom I was staying in Fes.
I slept for a little of the ride, mostly in 20-30 minute increments, so I didn't get much uninterrupted sleep. After one of those naps I pulled out my camera to take pictures, and the lens would only come out about 1/2 way and then it got stuck in that position, so I couldn't take any pitctures, which was a bummer cause I got the camera for Christmas specifically for this purpose. Anyways, near the end of the trip I started talking to the guy who was sitting across from me, his name was Zacharia and he was headed to Oujda, a city further north, but he was a pretty cool guy, he really lit up when I started speaking arabic to him. He gave me his number and email and told me to get ahold of him if I ever went to Oujda. I walked out of the train station at 2:30 and finally got a taxi to the Showalters' house.
Finally my trip was over, I was home! What a day it had been. Well I wasn't ready to go to bed so PJ and Jesse and I went and played some basketball for most of the afternoon, which exhausted me even more. After basketball we had some meatball and fried egg tagine, which is one of my favorites, and we had two guys over to join us, but around my age. After dinner we talked and they told their story, and I told mine and told them my plans for West Africa. After that I skype with mom and dad for a bit, then went to bed around 11:30PM GMT, or 6:30 PM EST, so besides a couple little naps I'd been awake for over 24 hours. I woke up at 1:30AM, and didn't fall back asleep until 4, guess I didn't beat jetlag.
Well I'm safe in Morocco, and glad to be home, I'm sadly expecting this week to fly by though. I'll try to get these out on a daily basis, even if it's just a little blurp.
Blessings,
Mark
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