Sahara

The Sahara Desert was amazing. We had to ride about an hour and a half on camels to get to our campsite, so that was incredibly uncomfortable. I christened my camel Gouverneur Morris after the Pennsylvania representative at the Constitutional Convention in 1787, and also an all-around cool guy. I took a lot of pictures and in a few minutes I am trying to upload them again. The campsite was very cool - there were eight tents with mattresses in them, but we dragged them out to sleep under the stars. We could also see the Milky Way, which doesn't happen in DC. The first thing we did when we got there was run up the tallest dune surrounding the campsite, then we had some photo shoots around sunset and after that we played some frisbee on the ground (the actual campsite was on a level surface).

Dinner was some Moroccan soup and (surprise, surprise) chicken with vegetables, which is basically the only thing I have eaten this entire trip. I am pretty sick of Moroccan food already. Ahmed, another student from San Francisco, brought a ukulele and I learned a few songs (the little melody from "Measuring Cups" by Andrew Bird and the beginning part of "Portions for Foxes" by Rilo Kiley). Later that night we had a campfire, but the temperature was actually perfect - not too hot and breezy on the way there and cool at night. Two other girls and I tried to sleep in the dunes, but we came back down with the rest of the group after a while.

We woke up at 5:30 the next morning to watch the sunrise, which was not quite as pretty as the sunset but still very cool. We went back on our camels right after breakfast - I was on a female camel on the way back, who I named Margot after the character from "The Royal Tenenbaums." Then we went back to the hotel we stayed in on Friday night to shower and swim, which was heavenly. Later that afternoon we had to leave for a different hotel about half the distance back to Marrakech. We toured the "casbah" (the old walled city) - where several movies were filmed, including the snake pit from the first "Indiana Jones" movie and parts from the beginning of "Gladiator." It was quite neat, but I can't really describe it without pictures - check out http://picasaweb.google.com/k.zitelman sometime for some photos.

Then unfortunately I was very sick on Sunday night/Monday from eating over the weekend, so the bus ride through curvy mountain roads at 70-ish miles an hour was not pleasant. However, I was able to listen to Andrew Bird's "Fingerlings" and "Fingerlings 2," which were both excellent. I am about halfway through "Homicide" and I will resume reading "A People's History of the United States" when I am done with that. I think I have gotten over whatever sickness I have, so I am feeling a little more confident. Yesterday I had some crepes at a French restaurant here in Marrakech, but they were not nearly as good as Crepes a Go Go back in DC. The schedule for the next few weeks is just straight classical Arabic from 8 to 5 (with about three hours off in the middle of the day). On July 14 we leave for Essouira on the Atlantic coast, where we will live in a hotel for a week before returning to Marrakech for an exam and then a day of concluding activities. We are going to have some guest speakers next week after school but I am not sure what they will be talking about.

I am usually online between 1 and 2 in the afternoon my time (8 and 9 a.m. EST) so if it is easy for anyone to be on Gmail, feel free to Gchat me any day except July 1, 3, 8 and 10. I heard Billy Mays died... how heartbreaking. Any other news from home? I would love to get some more emails in addition to the frequent Kensington news updates (ha) from the parents.