I wrote this last night on the plane from Paris; I'm now sitting in the airport in Rabat (!!!) waiting for our guide to get here with a bus. It's 1:35pm here.
My watch says that it's midnight in Detroit, from where we departed. This won't get posted until we hit ground in Paris at the earliest, which should be in about two and a half hours. Depending on how much wifi costs in DeGaulle, I might even just wait until we hit the hotel in Rabat, which will be at around two in the afternoon there, so... about eight in the morning back in Nashville? Hell if I know, I'm not a scientist. Posting might also be delayed by my intention to take full advantage of the drinking age in France. Anyone know how to say "Overpriced drink fruity enough to get my ass made fun of back in the States," in French?
The two days before departure were fairly stressful, I won't lie. We had full days of class, 9 to 3, getting a crash course in Moroccan history, culture, etc. That was fascinating, but on top of that having to 1) Pack up my stuff (and figure out what's going into storage, what's going home, what's going to Morocco, and what's going to Israel), 2) Coordinate all of my paperwork (as if travelling to the Middle East weren't complicated enough, leave it to the Army to make it more so!), and 3) Find time to say goodbye to everyone left me pretty burnt out. I found a bit of time to spend with my girl, which was rad. She packed me the Cadbury bar that I'm snacking on right now, in case you wanted any evidence that she is, in fact, the bomb.
All said and done, I needed a bit of a break. While having no Internet on this flight is a bit frustrating (I have a ton of work that needs to get done, including an eight-page paper about the Intifadas for my CULP deployment... fun), it's also incredibly relaxing. Having no choice but to not work, all I've done in the past six hours is nap, watch "Argo" (excellent, five stars) and "A Good Day to Die Hard" (considerably worse, but lots of explosions and sinister Russians, so... 3 out of 5 blazing AK-47s), and read a bit. "Argo" was a good reminder that not everything is perceived elsewhere the way it is in the US, especially when it comes to the region of the world to which I'm heading. As someone who takes immense pride in being from the greatest country on God's green Earth, I sometimes forget that. Hopefully, this journey will challenge some of my views. Admittedly, I'm not going to Baghdad, but I sure as hell ain't going to Newark, either.
We're not scheduled for anything once we touch down in Rabat other than checking into our hotel and having a group dinner at the Center for Cross Cultural Learning (CCCL) where we'll be having a lot of our lectures. In the interim, I might see if anyone else wants to go exploring. Or, I might just nap. Life is full of mysteries.
The flight tracker says that we're off the coast of Ireland, and while I can't see any ocean or land from my seat in the center column, I can see the sunrise out of the window across the aisle. Coupled with AC/DC's "Shoot to Thrill" blasting in my earbuds, this is seeming like as clumsily symbolic a place as any to wrap this post up, so I think I'll try to catch a few winks before we hit ground.
Yippee-ki-yay, North Africa. Stay tuned!
Arabic Word of the Day: المغرب, Al-Maghrib -- Morocco
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