Zagora, pool hall, and MSA

Hello from Zagora! Yesterday we drove about ten hours through the Atlas Mountains, which were really cool. The landscape is very versatile and varied - we passed through mountains covered in trees that looked like they belonged in North America, and there was also a desert section that was pretty flat and bland. There was also a section that looked like the Grand Canyon - it had huge rock formations and a very twisty road. We spent last night in a hotel, which was incredible because it had air conditioning. It also has a pool! And delicious food. I have lots of pictures but uploading is a lot of work to make happen. Hopefully I will be able to when we get back from Zagora on Monday. There are about 30 up already on picasaweb.google.com/kzitelman, mostly of the plane ride and drive home. I have around 300 to upload.

I also meant to write a post last week about going to a pool hall in Marrakech but I never had time. I went with about 15 other students and host siblings. We probably stayed for about three hours; it was a lot of fun. I had my first "asir banan" (literally: banana juice), which is kind of like a banana milkshake and very tasty. We actually spoke darija (the local dialect of Arabic) to one of the waiters and he kind of understood.

On Thursday, we started lessons in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). I moved up to the advanced class, and my new teacher is much more focused than my teacher for darija classes. I find MSA much easier to make sense of so I am glad we are done with darija.

The schedule for today is visiting a village in the morning and then camel riding in the afternoon! I think we are leaving around 4 or 5 to go to another town. We will leave there on camels for an hour-ish ride into the Sahara Desert, where we will sleep in tents (or outside) for the night and then return on the camels tomorrow morning. Someone is bringing a frisbee so there might be some ultimate on the dunes. Pictures will be taken but who knows if they will be seen by you all. I am very excited for my first camel ride! Next blog will probably be Monday or Tuesday when I get back.