Close encounters of the royal kind

The King of Morocco, His Majesty Mohammad V, is in Meknes.  This means that Meknes has been going insane.  It's also very clean.   It is the strangest type of insanity I've ever witnessed.  Apparently this happens any time the king goes anywhere, all the trash gets picked up and things get repainted.  There are flags everywhere (or alternately, long strips of connected flags that cover the front of basically every restaurant.)  Probably the strangest thing though is the trees.  Besides being trimmed (mostly into squares although there are some with lots of little round tree bits that look particularly Dr. Seuss-like) the bottom 3-4 ft. of every tree trunk has been painted white.  Before this happened you could see remnants of paint from last year.

An off topic side note.  I'm passively watching an Arabic cartoon about gnomes which is drawn in such a cutesy style that it looks like a bunch of little girls with massive beards... And now they're ripping their hair off  in one giant piece...  Annnnnd now one of the intentionally female characters (i.e. has pigtails and even more eyelashes) has a beard... which is trying to kill people.  I really don't understand cartoons in any language.

OK.  Back to the king.  I was waiting for the bus trying to get home from class when the king drove by unexpectedly.  There weren't any crowds or a parade or anything, I guess he was just hurrying to get somewhere.  Those of us who were waiting looked up as we heard some police motorcycles with their sirens on and saw the king texting in the back seat of his car.  It was very surreal.  I see pictures of the king EVERYWHERE.  Every restaurant, every shop, people's homes, any store that develops photos will have dozens of pictures.  I kind of forgot that he was a real person.  After that several dozen highly decorated horses went by.  This was unrelated to the king, they were going to the site of the agricultural fair.  It was nice to see such pretty horses.  There are a couple that graze on the school lawn a lot and they look pretty sad.

Going back to the cartoon situation, now Arabic dubbed Scooby Doo is on.  I should probably go turn that off... I just realized that with my haircut (especially since I really need a trim) and glasses I look like a tall version of Velma.  Halloween costume?  Perhaps....

Laila Saida  (Good night)

In which the author realizes she should not blog when tired.

Soooooo.... Ye olde blogging website as some pretty interesting features.  For instance, I just found out that I have an international audience. Specifically me (Team Morocco!), 2 people from Germany, and 3 people from Mother Russia.  How exciting.  They most likely came to me via my most common search query: "How to train orange tree to topiary."  I really do have the most exciting blog in the internet.

Because spring break happened, I have become a strange semi-nocturnal beast.  This makes 8 AM classes exceedingly unpleasant.  Especially when those classes happen to be Arabic.  I guess it's time for the nocturnal menace to re-diurnify herself.

Laila saida y'all.  (Goodness I need sleep)

For your viewing pleasure.

Hybrid Christian/Muslim graveyard.  Not pictured - graveyard cats.  Also not pictured - the adorable puppies I found here.  Why they're not pictured - because I'm a dinkus and deleted my memory card before checking if all the photos made it on to the computer.  Someone please alert Mensa about their newest inductee.

I think you will find that most of my pictures are trying to be artsy.

That's a banana tree behind me.  I'm very excited. As you can probably tell.  Banana.  Bananananananananana.

I like this one.  This is me getting lost in Tangier's medina.

Artsy photo of waaaaaaayyyyyy too small coffee cup.

BUDGIE.  Actually a cage full of budgies.  They must feed them something special to get them so brightly colored.

Okie dokie.  Good night!

Superpowers

I made it to Tangier in one piece!  Luck is on my side, because the hostel I'm staying at is in the middle of the medina (the old walled city) and is therefore rather hard to find.  I was scared that the taxi that took me from the train station part way into the medina was going to lose a rear view mirror or something, the streets were so narrow.  I was very happy to get out of the car and be able to walk myself because at least two people can pass each other in the opposite direction when on foot.  The hostel is really nice.  It is very tiny in terms of land usage, but it goes up 5 stories.  A lot of the buildings here are like that.  I went to a cafe today that had stairs at over a 45 degree angle to get to the door, and then there were 4 floors.  In the medina there aren't any skyscrapers, but there sure are a lot of tiny, tall buildings.

Anyway, today I was walking through the medina and I stopped by a flower shop.  Morocco grows and sells a lot of roses, so even the smallest shop is full of beautiful, wonderful smelling flowers.  I tried to tell the shopkeeper that I thought his flowers were beautiful, but I don't think he spoke much French (which is rather common here, what with Spain so close.  Not good for me....)  As I was about to leave he motioned for me to stop and made a bouquet for me free of charge.  This isn't the first time this has happened.  I've gotten free roses at nearly every flower shop I've stopped at here.  (I promise I don't loiter around flower shops hoping for gifts.)  I also get gifts when I go into normal shops sometimes.  It's always something little, like a key chain or a small piece of jewelry, but still.  It's very strange here.  I feel lie I have a neon arrow over my head.  

It's like a strange superpower, being able to make people stop talking, do a double take, follow you around. Honestly, I don't like it one bit.  I vastly prefer the anonymity of the US, but it is interesting to experience this.  It honestly makes me feel really lonely.  Being a celebrity must be so much worse, I feel sorry for them.  

Sorry this is a short post.  I'll hopefully be able to put up some pictures some time soon.